Hands On: CardWarden (iOS)

If you've spent any amount of time in the social-gaming circuit, chances are you've bumped into card games. Whether you played poker or Magic the Gathering, you've probably got some fond memories of playing cards with friends. If you spent enough time playing games, there have probably been more than a few times that you've dreamed up your own games. That's the idea behind CardWarden by Michael Azzara: users should be able to create their own digital cards, and play their own digital games.

CardWarden allows users to create their own decks of cards from within the app. Users can import cards via the iPad's camera, or directly from the camera roll, provided they would rather design the cards digitally and import them that way. By pinching, panning, and swiping, users can precisely position their card art onto their digital cards. Want to create double-sided cards, or multi-back cards? There's support for that as well.

Users are given up to 20 boxes, and in each of these boxes, a player can store 120 decks as well as 120 cards per deck. That means that a player can house over a quarter of a million unique cards within CardWarden -- an impressive amount, for sure. Creating decks takes no effort, requiring a simple tap on the cards the user wants in the deck. Once a user has created a deck, they can take their cards and play games in GameCenter with other users. While playing, users can tap cards to simulate standard functions of both cards and decks. This includes flipping cards over, placing cards to bottom of decks, shuffling, removing cards from play, adding tokens, and tap/turn mechanics as well. This means that users can play all manner of games, from standard card games like poker to emulating the play styles of popular CCGs like Yu-Gi-Oh.

The biggest and only notable downside to CardWarden is that the interface leaves a lot to be desired. The text is often fairly hard to read, and the background is distracting. Occasionally the app fights the user a bit, feeling overwhelmingly unintuitive at times. We think that the UI could be overhauled and replaced with something a bit less visually cluttered. Then this app would become a must-have for any card game enthusiast.

Overall, we're extremely impressed with the amount of features that CardWarden offers, and (barring some aesthetic issues) are excited to see such an app available on the App Store. We think this could easily be an invaluable design and play-testing tool for all novice game designers. CardWarden is an iPad exclusive that costs $2.

Who CardWarden is for: Fancy yourself a gaming enthusiest with some fun ideas for your own game? This is a must-have tool that can help you create and play test your very own ideas.

Who CardWarden isn't for: If you're not the type of person who has ever really toyed with the idea of creating their own card game, chances are you probably won't find much use with this app.

-- Amber Neely (@SurferAmber)

by MacNN Staff

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Hands On: CardWarden (iOS)