Games, music, and code.
The Rise and Fall of Galactic Empires: Continued Development

Rise has been my main game design project for ... probably around six years now.
The current version is a card-driven investment game where the only way you can reap the rewards of growth is through combat. Think Acquire, but instead of a merger it's a galaxy-spanning war.
The board is a spiral galaxy built up of hexagonal tiles with various symbols on them. You start with some power (the game's currency) and a hand of cards in various factions. Play goes around the table in turns:
- Play a card from your hand.
- Build that empire. If it already exists, expand it to an adjacent sector. Otherwise, found it.
- If you placed on an empty sector, gain that sector's reward (one of the empire's agents, some power, or perhaps a few cards).
- Resolve any ongoing conflict. (See below.)
- Recruit up to three agents. Each agent costs power equal to the number of sectors its empire controls.
- If your hand is empty, refill it.
Players resolve conflicts by sacrificing agents -- everyone chooses who they'll sacrifice (of the empires in conflict) and simultaneously reveals. Every stack of empires is rearranged so the one with the most sacrificed agents is on top and the one with the least is on the bottom. If one of the warring empires got no player support, it dies: pull all its disks off the board. Then each player trades their sacrificed agents for power equal to the number of sectors their empires control.
Complicated, but it makes for great play. I just need to draw up some good examples to help explain.
The last remaining detail to manage is card effects. They need to do several things:
- Give each faction a different feel (white expands and collapses quickly, for instance).
- Make the high point of an empire less of a sure thing.
- Make the order of card play more of a puzzle.
This'll be what I work on for the next month or so. Then, hopefully, finally move to art.



