The Project
Deck of Delirium is a zany pirate-themed deck-building card game made in the Unity Engine. It was developed over six months by a team of seven. It features three main fights, a tutorial level, and over 40 unique cards to play.
In Deck of Delirium, players select one of three “captains” around which to play or build a deck, and then face off against a sequence of three increasingly-difficult boss fights. Each fight features a set of unique mechanics, which only get stranger and more complex once the player fills their Insanity Point meter and goes insane.
Deck of Delirium was developed in two 10-week phases: a pre-production phase where development was focused on a vertical slice, and a production phase that would produce the final build. Playtests with the vertical slice illuminated what aspects of the game needed the most work, and allowed us to jump into production with a clear picture of what our game needed to be at the end.
My Role
For Deck of Delirium, I served as the lead programmer and main systems developer. I designed and implemented the card events system, player input system, draft system, and custom animation system for the game.
During pre-production, I developed a general event interface that all cards in the game could implement, allowing them to selectively listen to the events needed for their desired effects. I also developed a first version of the player input system, but playtests revealed that it was far too sudden to be readable by inexperienced players.
Before production, I rebuilt the entire foundation of the game to eliminate persistent bugs and to ensure that the new drag and drop player input system and animation systems were baked into the game’s core. I handed card implementation to the design team while I moved on to the draft system, while the other programmer on our team tackled the boss fights. Finally, I implemented the menus and build files.
Sydney Fonderie 