Le repère

Le repère is a solo card game, in the vein of path card games such as Slay the Spire. The Algebraist crosses areas populated by creatures that feed on a number, and has to find, each turn, what the creature has done to it. A game is an expedition through three areas of five floors, with guardians on floors five and ten. The game has you handle functions and their inverses.

Each turn, the creature applies a function to a number, shown as points of light. You lay out operation cards in a row, and the row forms a chain that must undo the function: the number passes through it card by card, in full view. When the chain undoes the function, it strikes or it protects. Taming a creature requires having written the inverse of its function. You do not win by inflating hit points, but by knowing how to calculate.

The game first existed on my game table in TypeScript. I am now porting it to my engine in Rust, as a standalone application. The rules were copied first, then the scene, then a playable application, and each step is checked against reference cases drawn from the original. The art is drawn in lines of light on a black background. The final images remain to be prepared, and autosave and sound to be added.

I first imagined a cooperative expedition, then a game in the style of Slay the Spire, which still seemed to me too mathematical: I wanted to get closer to the best path games. The arena, with its creatures, its floors and its areas, is the form that stayed. I refuse to reward size, and I reward the cleverness of the manoeuvre.

Porting to the engine has two aims. I want a standalone game, outside the shared table, and I want the engine to come out more complete from this experience, since every need of the game becomes a logged request for it.