What I Am Working On: Poor Poker

What is it?

In searching for a game to develop, I became very interested in the idea of learning more about a genre I have not played very much. This led me to start playing lots of genres I have not experienced much up to now, and of those I found myself playing poker quite a bit.

  • Prominence Poker

  • Poker Night 2

  • Tower Unite

Most poker games feel incredibly similar to each other, so in an effort to branch out and try something new I decided to create a new form of poker where the goal of the player is to lose as much money as possible rather than gain it.

This brought with it several unique design challenges, and the more I thought about how a game like this could work the more I wanted to try and see what I could make of it.

Enter: Poor Poker!

Why poker, of all things?

There are several different types of play, all of which are reflected in different video games in some form.

— What are these called? Types of play in game theory? I may have to dig through my notes to find these…

What will be posted here?

As I develop Poor Poker, I figured it could be a useful exercise to track my development process as a sort of reference, both as a promise to myself that I will continue to work on this game and as a point of reference for anyone interested in game development who wants a peek behind the curtain. Granted, this is a game I am developing entirely on my own and not with the backing of a large studio, but the process of designing and developing a game contains the same steps across the borders of companies. Hence, I hope this exercise will still prove useful to whoever is interested and is reading this.

I will be posting all updates to the game here as I develop them. Did I iterate on the game’s logo when inspiration struck on a Monday afternoon? I’ll post it. Did I create a mockup of one of the characters from the tutorial level? I’ll post it. Did I change two words in the design document I am currently working from? I’ll post it (with a bit less pizazz and flair than the other updates, but nonetheless).