You may download the rules and cards on itch.io, including files for playing on Tabletop Simulator.
Hyperspace Skirmish is a 2-player dueling micro card game inspired by wargames and sci-fi space naval combat. Players command a small fleet locked in battle. In a short and lethal clash, you must find and destroy the enemy battleship before they do the same to you.
This card game was designed with the restriction of only having 18 cards and one page of rules. Furthermore, I had the following design goals in mind:
- Create the feeling of being in command and making tough decisions
- Give players lots of agency and control – low randomness
- Keep games at a brisk pace, <15 minutes per game
Game Loop
The game starts with a setup stage, where both players secretly set up their 4 ships in a 3 wide by 2 deep grid facing each other.
After that, each round consists of 4 phases:
- Draft: Players take turns drafting action cards and formulating a plan.
- Move: The players choose to conceal, move, or activate the ability of one of their ships. The cards they drafted can inform their decisions.
- Act: Players secretly play their action cards onto their ships.
- Resolve: The action cards are revealed and resolved. Depending on the card, the player may get to choose targets for the effect.
By damaging a ship past its durability, it becomes disabled and cannot take actions. It is only destroyed if attacked again.
The game is won by destroying the Battleship or by disabling all ships.
Pillars
- Plan and execute: As players pick their action cards, they will try to formulate a plan for their turn and simultaneously try to figure out the opponent’s plan. While players know each other’s hand after the draft, they still have decisions on how to move their ship, which actions to use, and which ship to give them to.
- Information management: The concealed status of each ship is a tangible and limited resource. Besides information advantage, being concealed makes the ship less vulnerable. Voluntarily revealing your ship – either by attacking or by activating the ship’s ability – gives you an advantage. Over the course of the game, players have to find a balance between maintaining and spending their concealment, while also trying to reveal the opponent’s ships and deny them that resource.
- Strategize: Disabling ships is the quicker route to victory, but destroying a ship gives access to powerful stratagem cards that gives massive momentum. Each ship also have unique traits to influence the battle. With minimal randomness and high agency, players have the freedom to choose which win condition to pursue, and which ships they favor over others.
Design Challenges
The game has undergone three iterations guided by playtests, during which several issues were encountered and addressed.
Pacing
Because of the game’s limited card pool, keeping the pacing quick is important for the interest curve. In the first iteration of the game, several factors resulted in a glacial pace. Options to deal damage were limited, there were cards that blocked damage, and dealing damage to a disabled ship had no effect. This created many turns where nothing would happen, and it made the game boring.
In the second iteration, several game mechanics were changed specifically to ensure progress is made every turn. The card that blocked damage was cut, more offensive options were added, and attacking disabled ships now destroyed it permanently. However, this iteration also introduced several ways to move your ship, giving players too much defensive counterplay and allows them to stall out a losing game they can’t come back from.
In the final iteration, the ability to move your ships was restricted. While this finally solved the pacing issue, it unfortunately had the side effect of making losing games difficult to come back from.
Agency and Game Feel
In the first iteration, players drew action cards from a deck and only played one action per round, choosing from their two cards in hand. The ships were on a 2×2 grid and could not move. While this design had no gameplay issues, an important feedback I received was that playing the game did not feel like commanding a fleet. Players wanted the ability to coordinate their ships and plan their attacks, instead of playing one card at a time and having very limited options.
The feel of commanding a fleet and executing your strategy was the most important design goal for me, so I drastically adjusted the flow and scale of the game to achieve that feel while adhering to the 18 card and 1 page rule limitations.
To scale up the game, I expanded the grid to 3×2 to widen the battlefield to add movement mechanics, and also let the players play two actions per round on two different ships. This change drastically increased the player’s amount of options, allowing them to make offensive, defensive or mixed plays with the combination of action and movement. To adjust the flow, I added the card drafting mechanic. Instead of hoping for a good draw, players can simply draft the action they want. This also let players observe and plan around their opponent’s actions, increasing the strategic depth of each round.
These sets of changes required additional fine tuning, but proved very successful in giving players the feeling of commanding a small fleet and being able to order them around how they like.
Card Balance
Cards that are too powerful or too weak reduces the tactical depth of drafting, so effort was made to keep drafted cards at a similar power level.
E-WAR is an example of a card that was too strong. It allowed you to change any action card after they are revealed, disrupting your opponent or enabling yourself. E-WAR was so impactful, it was always picked or banned immediately during draft. However, the effect was fun and players didn’t want it removed. This led to the creation of stratagem cards, which are excluded from draft and added as a reward for destroying rather than disabling ships.
Drone Run is an example of the opposite: a card that was too weak. It used to be Scan, which simply revealed a ship with no additional effect. If all ships were revealed, it was functionally useless. The additional damage was added to keep it relevant throughout the game, as a unique damaging action that did not require the attacker to be on the same column. After this buff, Drone Run became a reliable card that always made progress.