How I Made a Coaching Card Game

Everything started after having a conversation over coffee with a friend. I was making games for a living. You could say I was living the dream. However, something was still missing. I didn’t feel fulfilled. But from that one conversation, I realized that there was something I always wanted to do. Something that would give me my needed fulfillment. This was coaching people through life.

Quickly after that conversation, I got to work. I held coaching sessions for a few of my friends. I felt a great sense of fulfillment when I was able to concretely help another human being. But since I was still a game industry professional, my thoughts quickly went to how I could bring games into my new hobby. At first, I imagined a vivid 3D world full of interesting mechanics the player could interact with. But quickly I realized I should start with something smaller. My next idea was a board game but that too quickly become a convoluted idea with too many moving parts. Then I decided, I am going to make a simple and small card game. It is better to get something finished at least. Once I had the constraint of a card game in mind, the ideas started flooding in. It was also much easier to search for inspiration since the scope was much more defined and other similar card games already existed.

I created the first prototype using Powerpoint where I placed down shapes that represented cards. Of course, I realized that the game couldn’t be played that way. So after some searching, I came across a site called playingcards.io where one could freely create card games that could easily be played online without creating any accounts.

Once I had the first prototype made, I could begin testing. I needed to see how different gameplay mechanics worked. The first prototype on Powerpoint looked like this:

The game already had many components which are in the final game, like the 3 tiered questions (which were inspired by this game) and 5 life categories (which were loosely based on Tony Robbins' Pyramid of Mastery) After this I played around with many other ideas.

And after multiple iterations I came across a design I was finally happy with.

I still wanted to explore the theme of the game and I tested out an idea where the questions were spirits. Here is my initial “very professional” artistic vision of that.

After this test, I updated the graphics a bit and tweaked the design. Then I was ready to have my very first playtest session with another person.

After a few more playtest sessions and iterations the game looked like this: (I decided to ditch the spirit idea)

A few more playtest sessions and major graphical updates later the game currently looks like this:

Now this game is currently part of a 3 game coaching package. To see how the game works and how it fits with the overall package, you should definitely give it a read!