Hunger Chain is a tactical, deckbuilding monster-hunting card game. You are a hunter working a living ecosystem of monsters that move, fight each other and grow.
1 The game
Monsters live across a small field of 7 tiles that together make up the Hunting Grounds. They roam, clash and evolve on their own. Kill one and you take its Reward, which you can sell for Gils or turn into crafted equipment.
You win by reaching 1100 Gils — through Quests and selling Rewards — or by making your opponent die three times.
It is also a card-collecting game: every card is a page of an ancient diary. Complete the set and the diary reveals the lore behind the world.
2 What we need drawn
For now the focus is the monsters. The game also has plants, weapons and characters, but those are still in a draft stage, so we are leaving them for later.
3 How the monsters should look
Monsters must be anatomically believable. No floating limbs, no magical or alien shapes. They can use fire, thunder, ice, water or poison attacks, but each of those should have a grounded explanation rooted in the creature's biology.
Example. A monster that shoots lava beams can do it because it eats fruit rich in highly combustible fluids and easily meltable rocks. The power comes from what it eats and how its body works, not from magic.
4 The world
- A medieval / steampunk era. There are cannons and guns, but also a lot of physical weapons.
- No magic.
- The one energy source is liquid amber (orange): an extremely efficient, powerful fuel that is also extremely rare.
5 The cards
These are not final, but they show the direction we are after: an aged diary-page frame, an illustrated scene for each monster, and the card back.
Early monster sketches (drawn for a possible video game version) are in the reference doc.
6 The project
Hunger Chain will launch on Kickstarter, with the date still to be set — likely in the second half of 2027. We are looking for artists to create artwork for some of the cards, which will then also be used as promotional material.