The Metagame

A game for GDKO 2025 about participating in GDKO 2025...

Mouse only.

The theme was to include a bunch of references to other participants' games. I thought it would be better to include all of the other participants games.

I had a full fledged buff system for cards but I decided to cut cut last minute because there were a couple bugs. I also couldn't get all round 1 games. And the leaderboard was also cut last minute. At least I was able to keep local PvP working, online PvP will come next :)

Anatomy of a card: 

On the left side there are the card stats, the right side includes a diagram of where a unit can claim influence.

• The number in Yellow is the claim power a unit has over all the tiles it can claim.
• The diagram on the right side in yellow shows that this unit will claim tiles to its right and in a top/left diagonal from where it's played. When there is a number in the center, it indicates the number of tiles it can claim on a line beyond what can be displayed, that is, 5 tiles to the right and 5 to the top/left diagonal.
• The number in Pink is the attack strength of the unit. 
• The number in Blue is the defense of the unit.
• A unit with more attack strength than another unit has defense can neuter it and take it's place on the board.

How does claiming work?

Let's look at the following example:

In this case, Kitty is the only unit that has any claim over tiles labeled with A. Then Pigeon had only claim of tiles labeled with B. Tiles marked with C are claimed by both Kitty and Pigeon but since both have the same claim power (yellow) they are contested and do not count towards either player. Mushroom has a smaller reach than Kitty but it has a claim power of 2, therefore tiles labeled with D which are claimed by both Kitty and Mushroom, they belong to Mushroom. Tiles labeled with E are claimed by Mushroom and uncontested.

In the example below, Player 1 played Goblin and Fox. Then Player 2 played Caveman and Bee. Since Caveman and Bee have more strength (pink) than Goblin or Fox have defense (blue) they were neutered and the claims assigned to Player 2.

Credits:

• The images for the cards are publicly available in itch.io and belong to the amazing participants in GDKO, from round 1 to round 3.
• Background and GDKO logo used with permission from Xanderwood.
• Skull: https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/skull-low-poly-1857648
• Music CC0 from https://tallbeard.itch.io/music-loop-bundle
• All the sounds CC0 from https://freesound.org/
• The hexagonal tiles are derived from CC0 Kenney assets and made available for free as part of my hexagonal tiles asset pack.
• If anyone would like the cards, with or without buffs for any reason, ping me.

Meet some of the cards (note that last minute I had to disable buffs so I converted them to regular cards instead):