Welcome to Cloister Cards

Hello all, and welcome to the first release of Cloister Cards, an ongoing project of mine and my first release on itch.io!

I suppose it would be a good idea to introduce myself, as the sole developer on this game. My name is Hugh Milner (although I generally go by DukeLeto42 online), and I am a medievalist, which is to say "someone who studies the medieval world." I earned my M.A. in Medieval Studies this past fall, and along with continuing my studies I have been teaching myself Unity. In the coming months, in between dev diaries discussing the progress I am making, I hope you'll permit me to talk a little bit about how the game's systems try to reflect the past.

Anyways, what is Cloister Cards? Well, if I may quote myself, "Cloister Cards imagines the cycle of medieval monastic life through a deck of cards. Acquire and manage your holdings, feed your growing community's needs, expand your monastery, and define an enduring legacy."

In short, the game revolves around an annual cycle - draw and play cards each season, with the goal of feeding your population, expanding the monastery, and gaining the goods necessary to supply the monastery's annual upkeep before the arrival of winter. Your play is limited by card draw and available manpower, and failing to meet those needs will slowly burden your deck with harmful cards until either disease and hunger drive away its population or until your community's piety declines to nothing. Events firing on the new year may help or hinder your efforts, and you must be careful lest you expand your holdings too fast, growing beyond what you can currently manage.

As it stands, Cloister Cards is fairly early in development. Currently, only the first set of constructions or upgrades are available for buildings, and the game will end when you try to continue construction past that point. As development progresses, higher levels of building construction will become available, culminating in the final construction project and victory objectives. Until then, please enjoy this first phase of gameplay!

The game is available in its current state, and as "pay as you want." You are more than welcome to support development of the game monetarily, but please don't feel obligated to do so. Playing this game, and being a voice in its ongoing development if you enjoy it, is quite enough.