Balance

Balance is a deck-building card game, like Dominion or Star Realms. Developed to be a quick play that is both fun and simple, Balance also has the goal of demonstrating how one can go through life with a healthy balance. The goal of the game is to accrue a high amount of Happiness in a single turn. However, much like real life, Happiness requires both Productivity and Stress.

The design of this game went through several iterations, as I was designing both the appearance of the game as well as designing the game itself. The challenge was making sure both aspects supported each other, and worked together instead of being disparate parts.

Credits

Many of the icons on the cards were taken with permissions from TheNounProject. Each card taken this way has the credit on the front-face of the card. Any other illustrations, and all of the card designs were created by Zev Shields for the purpose of this game.

The quick play rules:

Separate the starter cards, event deck, and Overtimes. Shuffle the main deck and event deck. Hand out the starter decks and have each player shuffle theirs. Each player draws three cards from their starter deck. Before the first turn, flip over the top card of the event deck. That card applies this round. Flip the top five cards of the main deck. Those cards are the market row, and are replenished at the end of each turn.

Every card in the main deck costs Productivity. Cards you play from hand and cards you buy go into your discard. When you attempt to draw from your deck and you have no cards left in it, shuffle your discard pile into your deck.

Productivity is the resource you use to acquire new cards to your deck. Each card in the main deck has a Productivity cost on the top left corner.

Stress is a drawback for a potentially powerful card. For each Stress you accrue in a turn, at the end of that turn you draw one fewer card.

Happiness is how you win the game. The first player to get five Happiness in a single turn wins the game.