Firecrackers

Firecrackers is party card game that’s perfect for playing with your family on New Year’s Eve.

Every turn, you get the same choice: reveal the top card from your deck, or stop.

Revealing more cards will allow you to buy better fireworks from the shop. But if you cause any firework to appear more than 10 times … you explode and get nothing.

It’s a very simple “deck-building push-your-luck game”.

What’s special?

I don’t think I’ve ever created a game before by (purposefully) mixing two genres on purpose.

I like “deck building” games: you start with your own tiny deck of cards, and can buy better ones (or remove the worst ones) over time, “building” a better and better deck.

I like “push your luck” games: with extremely simple rules, there’s constant tension and worry about how far you can go.

So I decided to combine them, just in time to play it with my family during the holidays. As usual—in my experience—combining two proven ideas worked great!

Besides that, this game is part of a series of games that forced me to write a way better text system. I wanted to be able to make some words bold on the cards, or to add icons inline with the text without any hassle, or do anything besides boring flat text.

Many cards in this game will do something with the coins you can spend (if you don’t explode), which is why it was a great testing ground for adding coin icons inline with the card texts!