Memory Duel

If simpler is better, today's idea for a multiplayer game should be among the best. Readers are probably already familiar with the widely popular basic gameplay. Several rows of cards are laid face down. The player can click two cards to flip them over. If the cards' faces are identical, both are removed. The game is won when all cards have been cleared from the screen.

The multiplayer version, more precisely the specific multiplayer version i'll describe, is just a bit more complex. Both players operate on the same screen with the same cards. At the beginning of the match, the cards show their faces for a short time, then flip over. The players now compete to reveal matching pairs.

If it would just be regular cards, and the competition was only focused on revealing the highest number of pairs, the game could become stale before long. However, a strategic element is obtained by having cards that depict different kinds of attacks or powerups. The exact graphics would ofcourse be determined by the chosen context: if we decide to create a modern war type duel, than possible pictures would depict tanks, artillery, missiles etc; a humurous bussiness environment context could have instead comical represntations of a salary raise, industrial espionage, corruption investigation etc.

Each pair of cards, when revealed, is cleared from the screen, awards some points, and affects the match in at least one additional and unique way. This special power of each card is naturally dependant upon the context we chose for the game and the specific picture on that card. In our war game from above, for example, matching two tank cards may "launch an armored assault" upon the game area, capturing a random 4-6 cards. These cards are now surrounded by the color of the relevant player, and locked so that only he can flip them over. The effect should last for a limited time only, with all unused cards reverting back to normal status when it ends.

More examples: clearing a pair of "Industrial Espionage" cards in the bussiness-themed game will give that player the option to see all remining cards exposed for a short 2-3 seconds; other possible effects are creating a scoring multiplier that will give you more points for clearing later pairs, handicapping your opponent in several kinds of ways (like making his cursor harder to control), multiplying your score total (or dividing the opponent's total) by a >1 value (a power that should be saved for the last stages of a match), granting the player x-ray vision so that he can see through the back of the card his cursor is floating on (necessarily a limited time effect), slowing down the flipping over animation of your opponent, being allowed to flip over 3 cards instead of 2 (if the first 2 to be flipped aren't a pair), etc etc, the possibilities are quite varied.

When all cards have been removed, the winner is the one with more "points" (or whatever thematically suits the game - money, love, rank) or less "damage", if you want to reverse the principle of accumulating points into that of causing negative points to the other side (more suitable for a war theme).

Note: You may wish to prevent cheating-by-screen-capture through eliminating the preliminary phase where the cards are shown face up. In that case the game creator will probably also take care not to include any powerup that directly exposes the location of a significant number of cards.