Although my professional background is in software development and my day-to-day now revolves around data engineering and platform architecture, game development is entirely new territory for me. The closest I had ever come to making a game before this was putting together a static cinema trivia app years ago.
This project actually serves a triple purpose. First, it is a way to explore indie game development as a creative hobby. Second, it is a fantastic excuse to introduce my 7-year-old son to technology, showing him how the games he loves are actually built. And finally, it serves as a hands-on experiment to explore the current state-of-the-art in AI-assisted development, testing how far these tools can accelerate the process for someone focusing entirely on game mechanics.
Football Cards (you can play the early build here:https://kunndry.itch.io/football-cards) started as a weekend experiment to merge the things we enjoy the most: the thrill of opening physical football card packs and the fast-paced, accessible fun of games like Minecraft and EA FC.
The Core Idea: Stats, Strategy, and Passive Powers We didn't want to build a complex 11v11 simulator. The goal was to distill football down to a pure, turn-based card battler.
In its current form, the game revolves around choosing the right card and the right stat at the right time (Attack, Midfield, Defense, or Goalkeeper). But pure numbers get boring quickly. The real hook—and the part my son is having the most fun designing—is the passive abilities.
These abilities break the rules of a standard math comparison. Giving a player a "+2 to through balls" or a "+3 to long shots" turns a simple card game into a strategic puzzle where you have to time your actions to trigger your specific player's unique skill. To keep the aesthetic playful, we opted for clean, 2D vector caricatures that focus on the distinct vibe of each player rather than hyper-realistic models.
What's Next: Local Leagues Right now, the game is fully functional as a local 1v1 experience. The core loop works, and it serves as the perfect foundation for what we want to build next.
Our next major milestone is implementing Local Leagues and Sessions. Instead of just playing isolated matches, we are building a lightweight system to track a full tournament session on a single machine. The idea is to persist wins, losses, and points across multiple matches so two players can sit down, draft their cards, and play a multi-round cup with a real sense of progression and a final scoreboard.
We are treating this like a clean state-management puzzle before jumping into full network multiplayer.
Play the prototype, let us know which passive ability feels the most overpowered, and stay tuned as my son and I keep iterating on this League update!