back in the beginning of 2025, i 100%'d the video game inscryption. it was a masterpiece of a game, with the rpg elements being on point. i loved the game from start to finish, and the story is pretty involving. back then, i got so inspired i decided to pull some of my efforts to make a short card game that used like two decks of cards for certain elements, but only one deck for a more simple and effective version of the game. i didn't really give it a name (not that i remember), but my notes say it's called "Death Row", so we'll roll with it. this post was made because i wanted to catalogue the rules and scrapped mechanics (maybe possibly even more mechanics along the way? hm???)
24 cards are distributed between you and your opponent. 12 cards for you, 12 cards for them. 2 of every rank from A to 5 (aces are 1s here), a 6 and a King (tiebreaker). the game is divided into 3 rounds per match. every round, you and your opponent will place down 4 cards face down on their respective side. there are 4 slots placed horizontally for each side, and each player may choose which card goes in which slot of their side. after both players have finished placing their cards, they will enact the point counting and proceed to the next round.
point counting is a relatively simple process. for every column of slots, players will reveal their cards. if your card's rank is bigger than the opponent's, you gain both cards in the column and add them to your points pile and vice versa. in the case of a tie, both players put their respective cards in their own points pile. tiebreakers force ties on their given colum and will be worth the same amount as the opponent's card. to keep track of each card, it is recommended to keep a separate pile for each tiebreaker and then add them individually when the time comes to tally. this is done for every round up until the third, where the tallying happens at its end. tallying is the sum of every rank in your points pile + the respective tiebreaker piles. whoever tallies the most points wins the match! it's an extremely simple game, but it has strategy behind the play and the luck aspect of traditional card games like poker and truco (brazilian card sport)
at the beginning of the blog post, i explained that this idea came from inscryption. more specifically, this came from act I/kaycee's mod, which is basically just an RPG with leshy being the DM. there was never a fully written campaign, but certain elements for a possible roguelike styled two player campaign between the player and the DM showed up at some point.
at some point, the game used two to three decks. these extra decks were used for the card events. certain events involved trading cards in the deck, thus why a third deck was needed. before showing you the events, there is a need to give context. low cards are cards with ranks from A to 3. high cards are cards with ranks from 4 to 6. with the context given, below is a list of every card event planned:
it is important to denote the system in which events are accessed. after each battle, three random cards from the event deck were put on the table. the player could choose between each event. repeats were allowed. the campaign also started with a battle instead of events. after each event (except 6), the player went to the next battle, up until a boss fight.
much like the deck mechanic in inscryption, there were also planned deck features for the campaign. at the beginning of the run, an ace, a three and a 5 were removed from your deck. the player was then given a choice between 6 new choices of 3 cards, each a different deck. they didn't have any names other than internal names, listed below.
those are all the definitive aspects of the RPG elements. all the other elements were scrapped in the name of being "too complicated" or "outdated". nothing stops them from coming back reworked, however.
at the game's infancy, it was played with a deck of 10 cards, without the six and the tiebreaker. since that happened, the implementation of a mechanic called blessings was shelved. it involved using the last two cards of your deck, which didn't really fit in with the rest of the gameplay since they made the last round only have 2 cards instead of 4. blessings, except for certain ones, could be activated on any round, but only after the card placement and before point counting. below is a list of the remaining blessings, each of them represented by a piece of chess. it is important to denote that [remove] is used as a tag to say how a blessing was activate (in this case, removing them in a separate pile). [points] is a tag for adding the two cards to your points pile. blessings always had to be activated. if not on the first, the second turn.
to further parody inscryption, items were also planned, but scrapped. they could be gained from an event representing the joker card at random. items didn't fit into the gameplay, as they were used unfairly when against another mechanic which we'll talk about soon and were generally broken. below is a list of all items.
the campaign used to have bosses, an event that came after 4 battles and replaced the normal events. 3 bosses were planned to appear, but only a single one, The Trinketeer, had mechanics planned: using items each turn. this made the fight either extremely easy or extremely unfair, thus why it was scrapped. below is what was scrapped for bosses.
if you reached this part and read everything (wow.), you must be wondering about what happened to Death Row. though i don't play the game anymore, i picked it up again to make it now available as a video game! no plans for release dates, but stay tuned! i might post progress. that's it for this post, which is by far my longest. didn't realize i had this much to talk about the game, but it happens! see y'all later!! :]