The beginnings of Halunka
I had the idea for Halunka when I was about 13-14 years old. The origins are a bit fuzzy, but there are two things about it that I remember.
The first was that I always was interested in TCGs but never actually got to play them. But I always liked the idea of them. Especially having cool characters with their own personal flair that one could get attached to. And it is also a very interesting challenge to concentrate a full character into a single card.
The other is that I always wanted the characters to move across a board. I don't actually quite remember the direct inspiration for that, but to me the boardgames I was used to almost always included pieces moving across a board. And even then, I thought that the combination of special characters and movement could lead to interesting strategies.
And so I made the first card design.
As one can see, there are many things about the old design that got cut. The one part that I find quite funny, in hindsight, is how high I put the attack power. Every character had at least an attack power of 5000 or higher. And since a big part of the game is adding the numbers on these cards together they get out of control quickly. But simply remove 3 zeroes and suddenly things are a lot more manageable.
The full - I suppose you could call it - design document is quite long and detailed. Perhaps one day I'll transcribe it all to a more legible form. But for now it will stay in its messy handwritten form (which is not helped by the notes I added to it approx. 10 years later when I found them again - they are the green notes on the margin).
Still, there are some highlights I'd like to share:
Originally, I included an elemental system. Each character had an associated element which would determine what other characters it could combo with. My favourites being magic - which could combo with all other elements, and ordinary - which could combo with none.
Another scrapped idea were the different so-called modes. There were approximately 5-6 different rulesets that would modify the way the game was played. I.e. people could add extra defense or attack to their units, or maybe characters could suddenly attack from short or long range! The grand finale of this was a "rule mode" where players could switch between rulesets on the fly.
But some things stayed the same! Most notably, Movement Cards (or as they were used to be called: Advance Cards) have essentially stayed unchanged. Even the fact that they go from 1 until 3 is identical to the original idea.
I also repurposed a lot of the character names, but I'll get into the details of how I converted the ideas into a playable prototype next time! Stay tuned!
(written and posted: 2025/09/28)