A box of mini-games
Thirteen games now share one collection, from a card battler to a football manager. What each one is, why they are small on purpose, and the two newest.
The heart of Glødkeeper is a box of games that all play with the same cards. In the summer there were eight or nine. There are thirteen now.
Why mini-games
We call them mini-games on purpose. Each one is quick to learn, fits on a phone screen, and is over in a few minutes. They are boards, cards and pieces, illustrated, not 3D worlds. That is a choice about what the game is for: something you can play on the bus, in a queue or with a cup of tea, that still asks you to think.
The thing that makes them more than a list is the collection underneath. Every Glødkin has sixteen traits, and every game leans on different ones. A team built for one game will struggle in another, so the interesting question is never “who is best”, it is “how do I build a collection that holds up everywhere”.
What’s in the box
The games page sorts them into cards, versus, puzzle, arcade, sports and solo.
- Glødstone. The card battler. Build a deck from your collection; every card’s rules are checked by tests so it does exactly what it says.
- Trait Clash and Trait Trumps. Fast head-to-heads where you pick which trait to fight on. Single taps, quick rounds.
- Brawl and Team Bash. Squad battles.
- Memory Match. Memory boards with specials to earn and play, and a spinner that picks the level.
- Mindout. A race up a hex minefield against another player’s run. Your team’s traits are your health, and your Glødkin act as radar.
- Mechmatch. Heads-up blackjack.
- Trait TriPeaks. Solitaire across a hundred levels with layouts of their own.
- Smashlings. Bat and ball against walls of bricks and bumpers.
- Cascade. A puzzle board.
- Glodball and Lobbers. The two new ones, below.
Glodball
Football, but you are the manager. Pick an eleven from your squad, or let it pick for you, choose a formation, then play the match one decision at a time. With the ball you choose a play from a whiteboard of options that depend on where your players actually are. Without it you choose how to defend. There are corners, free kicks with real walls, cards, injuries, and a team talk at half time. Scores come out like football scores, not 25 to nil.
Lobbers
A siege game. Your Architect sits on a hill, and you decide how many of your sturdiest Glødkin stand guard: a shield wall, then a roof, then more rows. Everyone not guarding throws things: arrows, spears, boulders, drills that tunnel through the hill, and pies. Every Glødkin guarding is one not throwing, so defence has a real cost.
Both are built and being tuned during the alpha, so expect them to change more than the rest.
What we retired
Not everything made it. One game in development, Downfall, was stopped in October. Better a smaller box of games we believe in than a bigger one with a few we don’t.