Solo dev questioning the direction of my card game — need honest reactions to an idea I can't shake
I've been building a 1v1 competitive card game for several months now and I've reached a point where I'm second-guessing the whole approach. Rather than sink another stretch of work into something the market might not actually want, I'd rather ask people who think about this stuff.
The current project is a real-time PvP card game — drafting, simultaneous turns, the usual competitive setup. It works. But I keep coming back to a different idea, and I can't tell if it's a genuine gap in the market or just my own projection.
Here's what I keep thinking about:
A 1v1 strategic card game where most of the information is open. You can see your opponent's hand. They can see yours. The depth comes from sequencing and anticipation — what they're threatening, what you can punish, what you're forcing them into. Each match starts with both players picking an archetype from a fixed pool (say 6 to 8), each with its own small set of defining cards. All archetypes available from the start. No collection to build, no booster packs, no pay-to-win. A small amount of hidden information stays in the design — maybe a single face-down card you can reveal when you want, or a few private events — enough to support bluffing without making the whole thing feel random.
The format would be fully asynchronous. Make your move when you have 30 seconds. Opponent plays whenever they're free. A match might wrap up in 20 minutes if both players are active, or stretch across days. No live timer pressure unless someone opts into a faster mode.
The whole thing would be free to play. A paid tier would exist for analysis tools — post-match breakdowns, puzzles generated from your own games, that sort of thing — but nothing that affects competitive play itself.
What's keeping me up: I can't find any digital card game that really targets this space. Card games are usually built around live matches, collection grinding, and metagame churn. What I'm describing is closer to how people engage with strategy games on their own terms — opening an app on a commute, making a thoughtful move, closing it, coming back later. The use case feels real to me but I might be wrong about whether anyone actually wants this in a card game format specifically.
Three things I'd actually value hearing:
If this existed and was free to try, would you give it a shot? Or does the description already sound like something you'd pass on?
What's the strongest reason you can think of that this wouldn't work? I'm more interested in the failure modes than the upsides right now.
If you've drifted away from card games over the years, what was the actual reason — and would something like this pull you back in, or is the whole genre off the table for you?
Genuinely open to harsh takes. Polite encouragement is appreciated but doesn't help me decide what to do next.