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"Dark Academia" (a 2-Player Competitive Card-Drafting Game about Balancing Achievement with Mental Health)

SUMMARY

Over the course of eight rounds, players progress through the semesters of a typical undergraduate academic degree, collecting sets of courses from various disciplines and acquiring accommodations to impact their future gameplay. With its increasingly challenging course sets and competitive drafts, the game simulates the stress and competitiveness that many achievement-oriented students experience in undergrad. Just as they do in real life, course sets become increasingly difficult each year, so players must learn to balance achievement and mental health; without setting this balance, even the most high-achieving cannot function.



GAMEPLAY

The goal of the game is to compete and win against your academic rival (the other high-achieving student at your university), which requires completing multiple colour-matching sets of core courses within a discipline, and taking on coveted extracurriculars. The player with the greatest tallied sum of victory points by the end of the eighth and final round (i.e. whose cube has advanced the furthest along the victory track) is the winner.

Importantly, as the years progress, simpler, "intro-level" course cards are removed from the deck while more costly cards are shuffled in, making each year more difficult than the last. Players will only be able to play high-valued sets of course cards if they consistently replenish their mental health with "spoon cards", which contain evidence-based methods of self-care. Drafting and playing “spoon cards” will be necessary to “pay” for high value cards with spoon costs denoted in the top right corner; alternatively, drafting two spoons can allow players to acquire academic “accommodations” (i.e., engine building elements that facilitate future victory point earnings). Thus, the thematic goal is not merely to out-draft and out-play the academic rival throughout the trials and tribulations of undergrad, but also to balance consideration for one’s mental health, which is necessary for students to achieve stable and long-term academic and extra-curricular success.



RULES OF PLAY

Note: More rules are in the "Notebook" at the top (visible once the Game is open in TableTop Simulator)

Game Setup and Starting a “New School Year” (i.e., “Fall Semester”)
1. Players begin the game (and each “academic year”) with a “Fall Semester”, whereby the white semester token on the left side of the school crest, on the orange “Fall” semester circle. Every odd-numbered round marks a Fall term, or the start of a new school year.
2. At the start of the first, third, and fifth rounds--the start of Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3, respectively--a new accommodations card will be revealed and placed in the appropriate spot denoted in the middle of the board by “Y1”, “Y2” or “Y3”. No new accommodations cards are revealed at the start of Y4.
3. Before beginning a new academic year, shuffle the unrevealed accommodations deck and the main deck separately.
4. The player whose cube pieces match the colour of the current semester must remove from the main deck any cards that have the wrong academic year printed in the lower right hand corner. For example, for round three--Year 2--the main deck must have all cards with “Y2”, “Y1-Y3, or no year specified (cards with no year specified stay in the main deck for all eight rounds). Cards from other years should be set aside.


The Round
1. Draft: players draft four Dark Academia cards each.
a. The player whose cubes match the semester colour shuffles the assembled main deck well and takes the top 8 cards from the main deck, dealing to themselves and to their rival, face down, and alternating each card, until both players have 4 cards each.
b. Players then look at their own hands, select one card to draft and place it face down in front of them, before trading hands with their opponent and drafting a second card from this new hand.
c. This drafting process repeats twice more until players have swapped hands three times total and have drafted a new hand of 4 cards.

2. Reveal: players reveal their 4 drafted cards at the same time and announce their moves
a. Both players lay out their four cards and flip to reveal them at the same time, but the player whose cubes match the current season colour declares their intended play first.
b. A move consists of any combination of i) declaring the course combinations the player wishes to make with their 4 cards, and ii) allocating spoon cards (from their 4 cards and/or purchased Accommodations) to "pay" for costly cards in their hand (a card's cost in spoons is in the top right corner), or discarding 2 spoons to purchase an "Accommodation" for the rest of the game. (Note. Spoons are never double-counted).

3. Score: course sets and victory points are calculated and marked on the board with counters.
a. Players score how many victory points each player gained and move their player cube the corresponding number of spaces along the outer victory point track.
b. Coloured counters are used to mark combos made (each player can make each combination only once).
c. Players move along the victory track according to the number of victory points they scored that turn.

Scoring
Players get victory points according to:
a. The size of the same-colour course set they played (victory points earned by set size are shown at the bottom of the game board with numbered gold trophy icons).
b. The number of victory points denoted directly on the cards they played (for either-or cards with two mutually exclusive values, players must declare that they played the card for its victory point value and forego the other value).
c. Any victory points granted to that player by an Accommodation card (player must have "purchased" it that round or earlier by discarding 2 unused spoon cards).


Starting a new Round (e.g., starting “Winter Semester” after a “Fall” Round has Ended)
1. After the “fall” round has ended, mark the start of the new round--the “winter” semester--by moving the semester token to the blue “Winter” semester circle.
2. Set aside all 8 cards that were played in the Fall; only cards from the remaining main deck are used for the Winter semester.
3. It is now the player with the blue cube pieces who sorts the main deck, shuffles it, and deals it out 4 new cards to each player, face down in alternating order. Cards belonging only up until the year that just ended should be set aside, and any cards previously set aside from the main deck should be searched to find cards that belong to the new year.
4. It is also this player who now declares their intended moves first once all cards are revealed.
5. No new Accommodations cards are revealed in Winter rounds.
6. After all victory points are awarded on the board, the Winter semester is over.
7. Move the semester token and modify then shuffle the main deck once again (including any and all cards that have the appropriate year number written at the bottom, including discarded cards) to start the new school year once again from the “Fall” semester, and prepare to draw a new Accommodations card (note: no card drawn for Y4).

Finishing the Game
1. The game ends after the eighth and final round ("Winter" semester of Y4) has ended and all victory points--including any that might have accumulated passively in the background--have been calculated and awarded on the board.
2. The player with the highest final victory point value (furthest along the outer victory points track) wins the game!