Hi all,

I’m looking for some suggestions and hoping you might be able to help me out.

Quick backstory: My 7-year-old has ben getting really into Uno the past few weeks, so there’s always a deck lying around. Always looking to test new ideas out, I’ve been experimenting with how a game of patience/solitaire might work if played with a deck of Uno cards, and I’ve actually come up with a few simple rules that work, while retaining the nature of the Uno cards (so far had some interesting test runs with Klondike and Pyramids).

While playing around with these “Unotaire” variants, I’ve been getting that feeling of something creeping up on me; a game idea, just over the horizon, but not quite close enough to make out yet. It’s like being able to taste a new card game, without having it in your mouth yet (if that makes any sense).

As this unknown game is still mostly unclear to me, let me try to describe how it “tastes”:

  • It’s something you can play on your own, not unlike Solitaire.

  • It has its own deck; it’s not played with a regular deck of cards (and it might have more or less than 52 cards).

  • It probably has no other components than cards. You pick up the pack, remove the cards, place them just like so, and you’re off.

  • It might be able to somehow tell a story. I’ve been thinking a lot about Reigns (the mobile/video game) here — simple decisions lead to big consequences further down the line.

  • Like Reigns, the game is somewhat linear; you might start with the cards laid out, in something akin to some Solitaire pattern, and you try to make it through to the end and “win”. You might pull it off, you might not. Much like Solitaire.

  • I can’t stop thinking about Tarot. 56 “standard” cards in 4 suits (minor arcana), and then the 22 suitless major arcana cards. Tarot also has various patterns/spreads (3-card, 9-card, celtic cross, wheel, etc.) in which you lay out the cards, and some set rules as to how to “read” them (and then, of course, massive amounts of subjective interpretation from the “reader”). Not suggesting a fortune telling component, just that the “flavor” of Tarot cards makes sense to me in this context.

  • If it’s possible to piece this thing together in a way where it can also be played by 2 (or more) people, that would be grand.

  • The game doesn’t need to be quick, but it wouldn’t hurt if it was fast paced; Hmm, I’m stuck! Deal out 3 cards from the draw pile, flip them over real quick, look at the top one, Oh this means I can do this… and so forth.

The main thing here is the variability of the deck; shuffle the cards, and you will have a fairly unique adventure. Same framework as your last game, but the path will be completely changed. Maybe the story will be capable of varying wildly from game to game as well. Or maybe the story needs to go away.

And the Solitaire aspect of the thing, meaning having to lay the cards out in some specific way, which creates the “path” you need to navigate in order to win (not a literal path).

My problem is that I don’t really know any games that come close to this genre. The only thing that comes to mind is The Lost Expedition, but that has a lot more components and mechanics than what I want.

The might also be some deck-based dungeon crawlers out there that are worth a look, but I haven’t found them yet.

I’m hoping some of you might suggest games to look at for inspiration, mechanisms that might deal with driving a story without any components beyond a deck of cards, and just general thoughts.

Thank you for any and all feedback and/or suggestions! I’m looking forward to (hopefully) hearing from you 😃🤘