Yomi is a card game that simulates the mechanics of fighting games like Street Fighter. It takes place in an original universe named Fantasy Strike where martial artists compete in an Olympic style tournament agaist the backdrop of political turmoil. 

 

The first edition, pictured here, features 10 playable characters and won The Dice Tower's Game of the Year award. 

 

Our contributions to this project include:

- Game Mechanics Design

- UX Design

- Indesign pipeline automation with Javascript, Regular Expressions, and Apple Automator

- Card prototyping 

 

Key design goals, constraints, and contributions include:

- Having each character deck double as a Poker deck

- Creating mechanics for each card to have more than one move

- Creating a visual system which includes color coding, icons, and specific text to communicate a card's functionality

 

Yomi was successful funded on Kickstarter and the game was also turned into a cross platform game for web and iPad. 

 

Example cards from one character (Jaina) showing most of her card types (normal attacks, block, throw, dodge, special ability, face cards, and ace). Each Character has at least 8 unique illustrations for their gameplay cards plus a chibi style joker card and a character card: meaning we had to source 60 unique illustrations for the first edition and another 60 unique illustrations for the second edition!

 

When sly players fan their cards just slightly they can gleam a lot of information about their hand. For instance, in this hand the player has (from back to front):
- 2 of Clubs with Dodge and Attack
- 2 of Hearts with Attack and Dodge

- 5 of Diamonds with Block and Attack

- 7 of Hearts with Throw, Block, and a special ability denotated by the * symbol and which will be described in a text box on the center of the card). Most cards also have a data bar with help text bellow it detailing the rules of how to use the card during the combat phase. 

 

Generally the damage and speed of an attack or throw is also related to the poker card number. This 7 of Hearts has a speed of 7.6 and a damage of 7 (as noted in the throw icon in the upper-right corner).

 

In addition to the modified poker cards, each deck also comes with a "quick reference" card with turn structure on one side and general rules on the other and also a character card which most importantly shows your character's total hit points (in the heart) and an innate ability (described in the text box).