Probably Designed: Eddie Cai and Kev Chang Part 2

This is the second part of an epic two part conversation with Eddie Cai and Kev Chang. Eddie is the lead designer at Pengonauts who released Star⭐Vaders earlier this year. Kev is the director of Box Dragon Studios in Sweden. Their game, As We Descend, went into Early Access at the end of May.

Introduction

Harry Dean Hudson: This week's episode is a continuation of a conversation that we started last week with two game designers: Kev Chang of Box Dragon Games, and Eddie Cai. Box Dragon released As We Descend into early access at the end of May, and Eddie's studio, Pengonauts, released Star Vaders at the end of April. Both games are what we would call roguelike deck builders.

What that basically means is that the games are run-based. As a single player, you go through a run until you finish the game, and then when you start over again, you start fresh. A deck builder is a type of game where the player collects cards over the course of the run that go into their deck, and then when they draw cards, they're drawing from the pool of cards that they've collected.

Periodically you draft cards, which is a process through which you bring more cards into your deck. In a draft, the player is given a few options of cards and can usually take one card and add that to their deck. And this, of course, changes the character of the cards that you see when you play and what shows up in your hand.

I can, of course, only recommend last week's episode. I think we had a really interesting conversation, and we covered a lot of ground around drafting and card pools and how you design these card pools for these types of games, and give the individual runs for the player additional character and what we call "run identity."

This episode picks up pretty much where we left off in that episode. We were talking a bit about how you build a draft pool for one of these games, how big it needs to be, and how that plays into the different probabilities and chance. We start this episode with my questions following on from that topic.

I hope you enjoy.

Eddie, Kev, and Harry

Harry Dean Hudson: I guess it's interesting because there is some probability to it. You're going to see a certain number of cards and you're going to get a certain number of choices that you get to make. And if you take something like a Magic: The Gathering draft—if you're playing limited and you're drafting—the fact is, because you're opening a whole pack of cards and you're passing a whole pack of cards, you see a lot of cards. So you get a really good sense, even though a set might have like 180 cards or something if it's a limited set or whatever, you see the cards pretty quickly in a few drafts because of the mechanics of how the cards flow around the table and what you see.

And in a lot of the digital games—the run-based or the roguelike deck builders—you might take 10 runs to start to see some cards. You just might not see them. I'm kind of curious... there's a little mix of how the numbers work in the math, and that has to do with the size of the pools and how they're curated for the different play experiences.

But then there's also a bit about player expectation that fits into that. I think that both of your games do this curation around the card pool that is pretty interesting and does lead to a focused experience when you're playing the game. You get the identity of the different units or of the different characters and of the packs, for instance. But that's a very curated experience, and you might have to do a lot of runs to see what the overarching pool looks like.

Kev Chang: Definitely. It's one of those things where there's almost this fine line you're riding between just teasing enough at the possibilities that could be—with "oh, there's the potential for more. There's this rare that you can't take right now that you wish you could"—versus the known certainty that you will probably be able to build around this idea. If you take this card, you're going to get rewarded for it.

And I think if you felt like the game was too random—you don't know if you will ever get a payoff—you'll just take stuff. It'll feel random. It'll feel like, "Hey, did the universe gift you a build today?" If, on the other hand, the game is too consistent, every run feels the same. There's no variation. Is it even a run-based game? If every single time you're just like, "Oh no, it's a tech tree," right? You just get to choose.

And funny enough, tech tree is one of those things I actually wanted to bring up in this call. That's one of the under-explored ones. As We Descend is kind of tech tree-like because you don't get all your units at once, right? Star Vaders, you get all your booster packs up front at the first draft choice, but you could very easily imagine a universe where those draft choices are presented as you clear more content throughout the game. Units you draft throughout the game, so you get to expand your card pool as you go.

So you go from a 60-card pool to an 80 to a 100 to 120. But you could imagine a roguelike that goes deep in this territory where the game is about how you expand the pool or alter the pool as you go. There are already games that kind of explore the opposite of this—Brotato or games like that—where once you start taking some cards, the game really shifts the odds in your favor so you get a build out of whatever you're making. And that is definitely a viable path, but maybe it doesn't feel like a deck builder anymore.

Eddie Cai: Does it not feel like a deck builder? I always find the pacing of a real deck builder to be... early game, you're trying to figure out what strategy you're going for. Late game, you're trying to refine the strategy. Basically, Brotato—what it does is when you get a weapon of certain tags, you have more chance of finding more items of that tag afterwards. So the RNG kind of pushes you towards things you already have so that you can start refining your build.

But yeah, it does limit—basically, interactions that the developer not that they didn't intend, but it's like you can't predict every single cool synergy in the game. So that type of limiting the card pool limits the cool synergies in the game more than it helps. But even then, in a typical roguelike, I feel like near the end of the game you've found your build already, so it might be counterproductive to expand a card pool afterwards. It would be just a different pacing from the usual, I guess.

Kev Chang: I think it depends on the structure of the game. I think Slay the Spire hints at this structure a little bit, and I think As We Descend takes it quite a bit further—maybe not in a way that the audience expects, again going back to that topic.

So in Slay the Spire, there are a lot of enemy encounters that require quite specific solutions from you. In fact, you would consider that they might hard counter you. Like there's the Time Eater—where if you play 12 cards, it ends your turn. So people who do infinite decks and decks that generate lots of shivs, you're pretty upset when you see that character. There's Awakened One that gains power whenever you play a power. So it almost feels like the game is like, "No, can't do that fun, cool thing you want to do."

And I think that the existence of those bosses and those heavily skewed elite encounters makes you build your deck in a way where you actually kind of diversify your deck. You don't make it too all-in on one idea because if you only do infinites, then you'll die to Time Eater, right?

I lean into this a bit further with As We Descend. There are quite a few monsters that hard counter you if you cannot deal ranged damage, if you cannot do auto-attack damage, if you cannot move. And obviously this has to do with the fact that you can choose which units to deploy, so you can always choose the right counters.

I think it might go against the fantasy of what you want to do in a roguelike—or like Eddie said, you kind of want to be refining your build into late game. You don't want to still be thinking about, "Hey, I need to take this silver bullet card that doesn't synergize with any of my cards. I just take it because it kills the Time Eater." I think that kind of thing might be kind of unfun for a card game player, even if it's quite fun from a strategic or a game standpoint just for being a different experience.

Eddie Cai: Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Asymmetric vs. Symmetric Games

Harry Dean Hudson: One thing that... so I think all of us have played paper collectible card games, right? And of course, the big difference there is that those are symmetric games. And in the digital space, you're primarily designing these asymmetric games.

What is the equivalent in Magic of what you were just talking about? It's like, "Oh, I just ran up against someone who has the Force of Will or whatever else and I'm dead on board." Right? I'm just like, "Okay, that just happened to me." But there's this metagame play and this whole other way of going about it that has to do with how other people are evolving their strategies, which doesn't necessarily exist in an asymmetric game.

So I wonder—one, is there anything that you think about in that space as a designer? What are the things that translate, I guess, or don't translate into the asymmetric space, particularly when they have to do with this card pool stuff and metagame and these sorts of things? I guess that's where I'm going with that question.

Eddie Cai: So I want to mention that I have played tabletop card games, but the ones I've played are asymmetrical.

Harry Dean Hudson: Interesting. Okay.

Eddie Cai: I've never played MTG actually, but Netrunner is pretty asymmetrical, but it's still competitive in a sense. So there are still the same things you're talking about. But the game I've played the most is Arkham Horror: The Card Game, which is cooperative, not competitive, and that makes a big difference. Cooperative is a lot closer to the kind of single-player roguelike type feeling that single-player roguelike deck builders have.

And what makes a difference is that you're not building to beat someone else. You're building for yourself, and a card pool meant to be built for yourself can explore different player fantasies. Like the power fantasy, for example, that really only works well in cooperative or single player, because competitively, well, someone's got to lose. But in a single-player game, you're allowed to be completely overpowered and destroy the enemy in an infinite combo where it would be unacceptable in a competitive game.

So in that sense, the cards that I've designed—a lot of it enables these power fantasies that wouldn't work competitively at all. It's like games like Dominion—deck builders that are not collectible. At a certain point, they have to end the game in such a way that is abrupt because it can't go on too long. Because if it goes on too long, then you're just watching someone play Market 20 times in a row for no reason other than just building up their engine. The engine's got to stall at some point, or else the game's not going to finish.

Which is another difference in single-player deck builders—you never need to stall the engine. You never need to slow it down. You can just keep it running and make it go faster and faster. There's no one to race against. So it frees up a lot of balance problems that would exist. It's a lot easier to balance single-player card games, I'd say.

Kev Chang: So it's funny because I come from a very different perspective. I play a lot more competitive card games, and most of my focus has been on these head-to-head games of drafting, or even Dominion is still PvP, right? So there are still considerations about "does it feel tuned for that?" And I think that's definitely a part of the way I look at games still, even if I'm now working on a single-player one. I probably need to, of course, think about the ideas of power fantasy and whatnot.

But I do think that it does offer a unique bit of experience. It is seeping into the space. If you look at The Bazaar, if you look at Backpack Battles, right? But those obviously have the overt PvP in them. So I think they just signal to players a lot more clearly that they are about that.

So I think for people who are trying to bring in this aspect of "yeah, you want to counter this thing," I think it just has to be done in a very deliberate way that the player feels like it suits their power fantasy. Let you shut down the opponent and let you just obliterate them. But you still have to build towards that infinite, for example, or for building out that "hey, you can kill this enemy on turn one if you get the good combination of units." So I think you can still use that carrot to further your goals, depending on what kind of game you want to build, that pushes someone to build in interesting ways.

Experimentation in Single Player vs. Competitive

Eddie Cai: So one thing I just thought of that is also different between something competitive and single player is experimentation. In a competitive setting, you're more enticed to not lose, I guess. So sometimes it'll kind of push you towards making the safer draft, the safer choice, the more value cards, the more basic strategies that you're familiar with to be able to win.

While I think single player lets you lose. I mean, I hope people don't feel judged when they're losing in a single-player game. But it lets you kind of greed and experiment and try new things better without the pressure of having to win against an opponent. So you can try to force your whacky interaction builds or your infinites. And you can lose horribly, and it doesn't matter because you can just try again afterwards.

Harry Dean Hudson: I think that's interesting. I kind of agree with it, and I kind of maybe see some exceptions. This gets, I think, into progression and other stuff, which maybe is too far afield, but I sometimes feel like as a player of a single-player game, if there's a progression and then you may finish a run and then there's the next level of the run, and then there's the next thing... you kind of do get a little bit of that pressure.

It's like, "Oh gosh, I want to do the thing that I know is good so I can get over this next bar that got put in front of me that's a little bit higher and a little bit higher." And sometimes, depending on your setting or your playgroup or whoever, if you're playing competitively—like if you go to a local game store and if you're doing a draft—you might just go crazy and do something. You know, it's not like it's a big tournament that matters. You might do some crazy things as well. But there's something about the pressure of a progression that maybe I don't always feel like I'm free to do the wacky thing.

Eddie Cai: It's funny because for me it's almost the opposite where if there's progression, I don't optimize my win rate—I optimize my time to win, which means the philosophy is to lose fast, to greed as much as possible, and to do as crazy things as possible early in the run. Because the faster you lose, that means the faster you'll get to the run that will win. So I optimize time to win.

Time to win doesn't mean I'm going to win a lot, but it means I'm going to experiment a lot and fast.

Harry Dean Hudson: Interesting. Yeah, that makes sense.

Kev Chang: It does probably mean you're growing at the game faster than a player who's playing quite conservatively. Because the thing is, you don't—if you play conservatively in a single-player game, you don't know if you're learning a lot about the game in every playthrough. Your experience gain—your player skill per real time—might be actually really awful. Your win rate for your current level might be higher than if you experimented, but you might kind of hard-stuck yourself at that level.

I think that is an interesting psychological thing and has a lot to do with how the progression incentivizes winning versus not winning versus experimentation. And there's a lot of other factors there as well, right? How fun is experimenting? How fun is discovering a new build? And does the progression incentivize other things? Do you unlock the majority of your content through special quests that are like, "Hey, try this different thing. Make an infinite combo. You get this extra card." There are ways to do it, I think.

Harry Dean Hudson: I feel like I don't see it very often. I don't see progression incentives that are incentivizing me trying to break the system or do the crazy stuff. It's always just like "win again, but harder."

Eddie Cai: It seems like kind of the wrong question, where it's like, shouldn't winning the game incentivize experimentation in the first place?

Harry Dean Hudson: I mean, yes, but there's always a harder version to win again at, right? That's kind of the way that progression is laid out in front of you. It's like, "Oh, you won, but there's still more." Right? So it's like you have to do it again, but it's going to be harder this time.

Eddie Cai: I mean, why add the incentive to experiment outside of the run? It's like, might as well make the run itself have incentives to experiment within the run. So then you're incentivized to do different things during the run.

Kev Chang: That's a pretty cool idea actually. Hey, the game—I don't know if you've played it... I don't know the exact name actually. I'm sorry. It's the Eldritch Horror roguelike deck builder. It's the one with the five runic sigils and a bunch of things. Hunt the Shadows or something. They have these mini in-run quests where you can do them, and usually they're kind of wacky. I think if you took that idea a little further and made it really about experimenting to get those, then maybe it would work.

But honestly, of course, intrinsic rewards are better for this, right? If experimenting itself is the thing that gets you a better win rate and is more fun, then the player will be doing that. But you have to then—and maybe this ties back into the card pool discussion—by having this card pool that is restricted and altered and biased, you might be able to shape the card pool in a way that the player is incentivized to actually try out these things because they can't just try the same thing every game.

You don't see the same booster packs in Star Vaders every time. You don't see the same units in As We Descend. So even if you're like, "Okay, every time I see this unit, I win the game." Sure. But there are 13 units, so seeing one out of 13, if you're hoping to high-roll every game... yeah, you could win that way. But that feels like bad odds. I think even a player might recognize that those are pretty poor odds. They will eventually take another character because they have to, and maybe find a way to win with them.

And even better if it's a combinatorics thing, where it's not just additive—it's not just like, "Okay, which four units that I draft out of the 13 are going to give me the best win rate?" It should be "which combination of units will get me the best experimentation rate?" Because then you're really playing with the sort of fire that makes roguelike games so exciting.

The Challenge of Encouraging Experimentation

Harry Dean Hudson: I think it's interesting. I'm thinking about this and I'm like, what is it that I'm trying to put my finger on? It's almost like there's a balance between... I think when you first start playing one of these games and as a player who hasn't seen it or hasn't really played it, you've read some reviews about it. You think it sounds like it's good. It sounds like it maybe is up your alley, and the card pool is deep and the strategy is super deep. And so you're already operating kind of at the edge. You have to learn so much about the game just to get up to snuff. And then you have to learn more to kind of feel like you're good and getting that level of mastery.

And I guess the question would be more like, how do you make experimentation feel good in that context where it doesn't feel like you just get punished because you had a wacky idea? And I don't know, probably some games do this really well. I was just kind of thinking about myself playing—like I experiment a lot when I play something like Magic and a new set comes out. I think that's a really fun space. But I guess I find—and maybe I'm just older or I only have a certain amount of time or whatever—I find that I'm not experimenting as much when I'm playing asymmetric deck builders. I kind of want to find a strategy and progress the game some and see how much I like it. Does that make sense what I'm saying? But maybe I'm just a conservative player or something.

Kev Chang: Or maybe games haven't tempted you enough. That's the thing, right? I think this is an interesting space to push as a designer. Can a game get you out of your comfort zone? Of course, you can't force a player to do this—a player will buy the games that they want and try the styles they want—but it's more once they're there already in your game, because they're drawn to it for whatever it is (the art style, the appeal, the hook). Can you tempt someone to experiment even just a little bit? And then once they take that first step, maybe there's more you can do.

Because we talk about experimentation as this big thing of "try totally different cards, try totally different units, try different builds," but it might be as simple as "try this card you haven't taken before."

Harry Dean Hudson: Are there any games that you can think of where you feel like this kind of experimentation is really incentivized, where you feel like that's part of what you want to do when you sit down and the game just kind of tempts you immediately to experiment?

Kev Chang: Mosa Lina. Different topic.

Eddie Cai: Every time, at least on the highest difficulties—Impossible plus—I can only win if I find an infinite that I haven't discovered before. That's how it feels to me. I've never won Impossible the same way twice.

Harry Dean Hudson: I actually do think Star Vaders is good at this, and I would almost say for maybe a different reason, which goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is that the characters and the mechanics that you have are so different. You have to play very differently if you pick a different character in Star Vaders. And so you just have to learn new stuff and try different stuff out. So I think that actually it is pretty good at that. And I think that it's really something I did notice and appreciate about Star Vaders.

The Magic of Pack Systems

Eddie Cai: I think the characters are cool and all, but the real magic is in the packs system. I think there was a drastic difference between before we added the pack system and after we added the pack system. It's not that the game was bad before the pack system—it still worked really well—but at the deepest strategic level, the hardcore people who have hundreds of hours into the game, the pack system changes things up so much because without some type of modular card pool, you're learning one card pool and your heuristics in your brain and everything is tuned to this one card pool.

So then you learn these patterns of like, "Okay, if I take this card, I should take that card. If I take that card, I should take this relic and I'm going to win like that." Eventually you have this entire heuristic of the entire card pool and then it's as if you've won with every build that's possible already. It's boring. You don't got to think anymore, you just go through the motions, which I think kind of happens in high ascension Slay the Spire. It's like, "Okay, this card, yeah, pick it since it's early, that card, got to pick it because the boss is coming up, blah, blah, blah."

But having the pack system makes it so your heuristics change every time you play. So you have to relearn the card pool or readjust to what you have every time. And it basically makes it so even if you play the same character 20 times in a row, they play differently.

Kev Chang: I think the limitation with character classes as well is that players expect them to be... it's about setting the ground rules and play style. And you can't mess with that too much. You can't be like, "The thing that's going to differentiate your play from one run to another is that character you pick," because that's the character you pick. The player is making a choice of defining their play style. So you're not allowed to be like, "Ah, every time you play the Ironclad, he's totally different." I think players would riot about that idea. It just doesn't work.

So I think the beauty in having something that unfolds through your run that is a discovered aspect that is outside your control is what's needed to push someone to play outside their comfort zone, in order to make sure it's not just another factor that you control as the player.

Harry Dean Hudson: That's super interesting. Yeah, it's just super interesting.

Kev Chang: It's always fun to speculate if games will decide to implement more of this type of behavior. I think it'd be super cool. I think just thinking about existing games and being like, "Oh yeah, what if Slay the Spire had—out of its 75 card pool per character—a 15 card rotation?" They actually have a neutral card pool in the shop. But you hardly see the neutral pool in the shop because A, it's only in the shops and it's only through neutral events, and it's always the same neutral set that you can kind of bank on seeing specific things.

But imagine if that shop set was slightly more common but rotated out and you'd be like, "Hmm, there are so many possibilities to kind of entice a player that I'd love to see that in more games." If this is an underdone thing in games, which I think it is, people should do it more, especially the kind of card pool choice that evolves through a run or that players have some control over, but not entirely.

Eddie Cai: It's funny, you mentioned Slay the Spire because I think one of the most popular mods is the Pack Master mod, which adds card packs to Slay the Spire, and is the original inspiration for our pack system.

Kev Chang: Oh, that's hilarious.

Rotations and Monetization

Harry Dean Hudson: Oh, that's interesting. I mean, what do you think about timely rotations or seasonal packs? Does that become predatory, or... Wizards of the Coast is printing money by rotating the stuff. On one hand, you're basically keeping the card pool and the metagame fresh every three months by having a rotation. On the other hand, you're turning this into a service game where you're basically having to pay in constantly in order to keep playing. In some ways that's kind of the natural—if you have a large enough player base and enough demand, that's kind of the natural evolution. And you can see how in a lot of ways, as a player, that's really cool because it's like, "Oh gosh, you've got this rotation of cards and you see it with not just Magic, of course, with lots of other collectible card games." And that's kind of the way of things.

Kev Chang: I think it's less predatory if you don't charge money for it. I think that's a big part of the reason why it's so problematic. Especially if it is a season pass or battle pass. You can see The Bazaar is experimenting with this idea, and some players really got angry about it, and rightfully so because does it align the designer's incentives with the players?

The designer's incentive, if you're charging for the new content, is always to make the new content or the more interesting stuff, or the best stuff in the new set, to continually get your reason to shell out for it. But I think if you're doing it more for experimentation and seeing what works with your game... that sort of natural card cycling that Eddie was talking about earlier while you're developing a game, you see this naturally occurring in an early access game. And I don't think anyone will bat an eye at this during the early access for Slay the Spire. There are so many cards that were redone, like Fire Breathing used to be "for each attack you play this turn, it deals one damage to all enemies at the end of this turn." And it was just a really bad card. They reworked it entirely to synergize with curses and status effects and it's way more fun now.

Does that count as a kind of pool rotation? Of course, they could do it in a more deliberate way. I am definitely doing a bit of this with As We Descend. There will be new units or units that are adjusted as I kind of tinker with the synergies. But then again, it's early access and I think people expect things to change during early access.

Harry Dean Hudson: I guess the question just becomes then how much do you want to tinker and how much patience do your players have with that tinkering? And when is the game "done" in quotes or whatever? Because it's not like... it's work. If you want to keep adding card pools, it takes time, it takes money, it takes whatever to provide that to players. And so it's not unreasonable to charge for it. It's just more that, when does it become... I don't know, when does it start to feel predatory towards the players? Or when is it not? I'm not sure. This is probably not the right topic for the games that we're talking about, but I think it's kind of interesting because I think if a game is great, rotations are fun actually. I think as a player, seeing new cards come in and seeing how they interact with old cards or maybe old cards rotating out, that's a lot of fun actually. But...

Eddie Cai: There's a difference between rotations... it makes a lot more sense in competitive games. In single-player games, like I mentioned Arkham Horror earlier. Arkham Horror is coming up to the time where it's been 10 years or something, and it's about time it needs some type of rotation because the card pool is just too big. Rotation is usually just to limit interactions somehow so that it's not just power creeping to oblivion. But in Arkham, they are implementing a soft rotation because at the end of the day, it's single player, so you can just... there's no tournaments or anything.

So the soft rotation is basically, "Yeah, you can play with everything you have already, but we're just going to balance future cards based on if you didn't have every card in the game." But single player, if you want to be broken, you can be broken. If you want to limit yourself and challenge yourself with a smaller card pool, you can do that as well. So I don't see that it's necessary to add rotation in the normal way. But you know, you can add more packs to the game. No problem.

Design Philosophy and Longevity

Kev Chang: I think it also goes into another topic about like, does every design need to maximize the space and the longevity of it? Like even just talking about the packs idea of, "Okay, yeah. We have packs that randomize themselves and make your game fresh." Like even with 10 packs, choose three, which is what Star Vaders has right now. It's about to be 11, choose three. So it's going to be way more options. Actually it's already... I think it was 720 or something. I'm not actually doing the math right now, but there are so many combinations of which packs you'll get that each run is going to be super different.

So does it actually need to go from 720 to infinite when you add in a rotation? Because that's what the rotation will do. It just lets you keep expanding it with no worry that you grow the pool too big. And I think if you already have natural limiters to the pool anyway, which is to say, "Hey, we're only choosing a subset of the number of packs you get each run." And for As We Descend it's how many units you get and how many units I'll ever allow in the game. Does it need this idea about like, "Okay, yeah, we could make it support infinite gameplay and infinite depth and infinite content," but maybe it doesn't need to. It's already got thousands of hours of gameplay or whatever it happens to be.

Eddie Cai: My thoughts are like, why would I add three packs and then remove three packs when I can just add three packs and it'll just have like 10 times—a billion times more options and variety if you keep everything together? The problem with rotations in collectible card games is that your card pool effectively is everything. It's not limited, it's not a subset. But implementing something like a pack system lets you subset it. So you're never diluting the pool and you're never making the pool too big as a problem.

Harry Dean Hudson: Are you frustrating players who kind of just would like to see a pack?

Eddie Cai: I mean, in the game you can ban packs so you can kind of make it so you're more likely to see certain packs, but I think the equivalent would be like... imagine if MTG's rules were that you can only play with three expansions at a time and the core set, and then they can keep adding expansions and then you can mix any expansion with each other. You just can't play with more than three expansions at a time.

Harry Dean Hudson: Right, right.

Kev Chang: I think the natural limit there is actually the same as it would be for Star Vaders adding more packs. It's just at what point does the design burden of adding more packs become lessened by you removing packs? Once you start getting packs to interact too well with other packs or whatever it is, or degenerately... obviously for a single-player game, you don't necessarily have to think about it, but you might still run into the issues that Harry mentioned, where people prefer certain packs, people prefer certain combinations of things. And when it's too unlikely for it to happen or it's too likely, you might be tampering with the ability to play the game in the same way that the Magic collectible card game example does.

Once you have 50,000 sets, I'm sure there are three sets out of those 50,000 or 10 sets, which are probably the optimal to build a deck out of. It might not be the case, but you'll eventually trend towards that, and I think at that point you might not want to add stuff on.

Eddie Cai: But then players can play the draft version of the expansion. So you draft three out of X expansions every time you play, you know what I mean?

Kev Chang: You've simply stuffed the game inside another game, so you just keep making more draft games and then you draft which triplet of expansions you get to play with for—

Eddie Cai: Which, which, which, then there's like cycles you drop, which cycles you get to pick expansions out of.

Kev Chang: Hilarious gameception. Just more card game. Just more layers of card game.

[End of transcript]

Pengonauts: https://pengonauts.com/

Star⭐️Vaders: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2097570/StarVaders/

Box Dragon: https://www.boxdragon.se/

As We Descend: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769830/As_We_Descend/