[jonahss]

Ah yeah. TCG is just a quick way to explain it to people so they get what I'm going for. I personally dislike the whole "rarity" aspect of TCGs, though it was fun when I was a kid. Living Card Games like Netrunner are more fun to play IMO.

My elevator pitch usually goes something like: MTG meets Yu-gi-oh meets Pokemon (the RPG) meets Tamagotchi.

[shagie]

Consider Button Men ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/226312/button-men-beat-p... and the original https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17/button-men https://web.archive.org/web/20050205124221/http://beatpeople... )

These were originally implemented as buttons that you could pin on your shirt. There was a game convention long ago where sometimes you'd find two random people wearing them have a "hey! Let's play a game" moment since it also advertised playing the game. Break out the dice that you've already got, sit down and play in a minute or two (with no weird rules you everything ran real fast).

Likewise, you could have the "this is the game" clipped on one's shirt and then playing a digital game with your selected character.

[sdenton4]

Just replace the visible buttons with low-power bluetooth beacons...

[ramses0]

Tamagotchi is the best metaphor. Take a look at this old school BBS game "The Pit" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK69uCBtI18

Could you do a janky version of "Street Fighter" where your dude (and assistant/second character) both had permanent stats + inventory + needing to "rest" or "heal over time" to recover after the battle? Same, but it's more of an RPG "character card + inventory card" vs. "opponent character + opponent inventory"?

The concept of 1x$100 base, and 4x$15 playing cards seems approachable (vis: MTG booster packs).

Definitely look to have some sort of replaceable / lay-in play mat (see the little cards on this toy: https://www.amazon.com/VTech-80-178200-Drill-Learn-Toolbox/d... ). You could have a "Street Fighter" 2v2 playmat, or "Texas Hold-em" flop/turn/river mat. "Scan the QR Code, bluetooth connect to the base, load the 'game' into the device's memory", and then you're phone-free (forever) to negotiate between the base and the cards.

You're "missing" some sort of cover/door on the cards themselves (eg: configure the base station for texas hold'em, and how do you "shuffle" the two player cards w/o revealing their values to others?

Actually, what you should do is to put some sort of pin-pattern on the top that can be accessed from the front or the back (eg: four pins "as rivets" on left and right sides, two pins on top/bottom), so you could "load" or "shuffle" the card face up or face down.

Face-Up + buttons 1/2/3 => the display changes, you take your action, etc.

Face-Down + buttons 1/2/3 => the display changes, but the result is "hidden until revealed".

Another useful tool would be to allow some sort of spinners/selectors on the "cards" themselves (vis: el-grande's spinners: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/105293/el-grande ).

Being able to have some sort of dumb switches or a rotating selector on the cards themselves that are then "read" by the base station will let people do their thinking and take their turns "in their own hand" is super powerful (eg: let people select punch/kick/block on the cards in their hands vs. having to "dock" the card and only then being able to select punch/kick/block) is super-important to enable a smooth-flowing game instead of a novelty toy.

Overall, there's tons of cool options with it!

[sircastor]

> Tamagotchi is the best metaphor.

One of the ideas I’ve been chasing for a decade as a personal project is a set of figures, not unlike SkyLanders or the Disney Infinity figures. They would operate in a Pokémon-like game but retain memories of their interactions I haven’t ever quite gotten it done, but it remains one of my favorite projects to tackle.

[fragmede]

No Sabacc?