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Rights holder seeking developer - Dragon Line

Posted: 21 May 2015, 00:24
by CB Droege
I'm the rights holder for Dragon Line, a two-player tactical card game. I think it would be a good fit for BGA, and I'm looking for someone who would like to take on the development. I'm also the designer of the game, so I would be on-hand to assist, if needed (or to keep out of the way if that's prefered :D )

The game is a good seller. It's well-balanced, and has some really great art assets (which I have the originals for to improve the graphics translation).

Here's a summary of the game:
Dragon Line is played with a 35 card deck. Seven dragons apiece in five 'suites'. Each dragon has different stats (health and damage) and an ability depending on their suite. The game is divided into three phases:

In the 'build' phase, the players build their dragon army by taking turns looking through the split deck and drafting dragons into their hand until they each have six dragons.

In the 'line-up' phase the players choose their starting line of four dragons, which will face off against their opponent in the first round of the 'battle' phase.

In the 'battle' phase, the players secretly plan attack strategies, calculate the dragons' attacks, remove destroyed dragons, and replace them with dragons from their hand in a series of rounds. The winner is the player who doesn't run out of dragons in their hand first.

There are no dice in combat, so all of the battling is math and tactics. The dragons' abilities are straightforward and balanced, but the way those abilities can interact with one another can become more complex, and create interesting situations.
Here is the BGG page if you want to look closer (the full rules are posted there as well): https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/156576/dragon-line

I've messaged the Admins to let them know that I'm making the licence available for use, but have received no response as yet. I don't have access to the list of properties up for development, so I don't know if it is up there yet.

Let me know if you have any questions for me.

Re: Rights holder seeking developer - Dragon Line

Posted: 21 May 2015, 08:56
by pikiou
It looks like a fine game! And very easy to adapt on BGA considering the very few types of interface interactions (clicking on cards and activation tokens, no need for an undo button). Easy to the point someone new to BGA Studio could handle it. With the challenging and rewarding difficulty of implementing simultaneous play.

The main drawback is its current popularity. There are no videos for its rules, as simple as they are. The BGG page reveals that no one plays it. So it could end up being played as much as The Jelly Monster Lab >< I do think it'll be more successful, but there is that risk, and you'll have a hard time finding someone to spend 15 hours adapting a game that no one could be playing anymore in a couple of months.
I'm telling you this because I'm right in the middle of a dev like that. The self-editing author is really nice, I like the game it has a lot of potential, but I'm really afraid it won't be played and it's quite demoralizing :(

Re: Rights holder seeking developer - Dragon Line

Posted: 24 May 2015, 06:02
by CB Droege
Thanks for looking, Pikiou.

It's a relatively new game from a small publisher. It doesn't show much on BGG, but that's partly because I just added it to the system. :)

I've taken it to several table-top gaming conventions to demo it for people and everyone who plays it falls in love with it. It sells very well at these shows, so I'm nt too worried that it wouldn't get much play (I know I'd play it alot at least) :D

You're right that it is a fairly straightforward game. It would be a great project for a novice BGA developer to cut their teeth on. I considered learning the dev studio stuff for myself to get it out there, but last time I did any software development was 20 years ago, and I was really bad at it, so I decided to leave it for another.