Disclaimer: The below write-up is nothing more than my personal, very rough high concept of an idea that I had, more of a pitch if you will. As a fan and an avid player of the game, I felt like conceptualizing my loose thoughts, molding them into something that could be further developed into an actual game mode.

The Witcher Contract (a working title) takes inspiration from deck-building games to create a unique and fun single-player experience in Gwent. Basically, I am breaking down the design of Dream Quest and Hearthstone’s Dungeon Run since I think both are extremely well designed delivering tons of fun with really engaging gameplay. While doing this, I am also adding a few twists to the formula that are more in line with Gwent’s fundamental gameplay mechanisms.

The main objective of the Witcher Contract is to defeat nine one of a kind bosses of progressively higher difficulty. Each boss is a uniquely tailored combat encounter with a distinct theme. This mode is meant to be highly repetitive and having failed runs (even due to either input or output randomness) is a natural process of the overall gameplay experience and part of the intended learning curve.

For now, I am going to avoid going into greater detail on specific systems such as the boss generation system (I’d have to specify how many bosses there would be, during which exact challenge of the run from the 1-9 range they could appear etc.) and instead I’ll try to present the fundamental ideas behind the overall concept. Also, keep in mind that any abilities/cards and whatnot displayed on the mock-up diagrams are nothing more than placeholders that require a lot of balancing and fine-tuning.

When the player starts a witcher contract run, a leader has to be chosen for the remainder of that specific run. Each leader has a predetermined ability and to some extent, unique cards that can be chosen later on to create and continuously improve the player’s deck (there are leader unique cards and cards that are shared across all leaders). After the leader is chosen, the player gets to build a starting deck.

The starting deck consists of 10 cards. 10 times, the player is presented with a selection of 3 random cards from a prearranged pool (the power curve of cards in the said pool is completely abstract when compared to standard Gwent cards). 1 out of these 3 cards may be chosen to be permanently placed into the deck. It is also worth noting that the player deck size also affects the initial card draw during the actual combat encounters but I’ll elaborate on the matter later on. Basically, the initial card draw is always equal to half of the player’s deck size, rounded down – the card draw variable does not increase upon reaching the value of 10 so after the 3rd challenge it remains fixed. Mulligan count itself is yet to be defined.

After all 10 cards have been chosen by the player, two random bosses are initiated from the boss pool and the player gets to choose one, subsequently triggering its combat encounter.

Challenge No Deck Size Ini Card Draw Card Draw: RS 1 10 5 1 2 13 7 1 3 17 +1 Prize card 9 2 4 20 10 2 5 24 +1 Prize card 10 3 6 27 10 3 7 30 10 4 8 34 +1 Prize card 10 4 9 40 +3 Prize cards 10 5

*RS – card draw on round start (round 2 and 3).

If a challenge ends with a tie, the player will encounter another boss of the same difficulty level.

Also, some bosses (same goes for prize cards) are exclusive to their respective leaders to ease the mode’s balancing and allow for more extravagant (for a lack of a better word) designs.

The player may choose to abandon the run at any given time and start over.

Now I’ll try to present a rough outline of how one such boss combat encounter could look.

Boss Name: Gaunter O’Dimm.

Boss Ability (needs wordsmithing, just want to expose the logic behind it, might be too complex): At the end of every turn, present the player with a choice of 3 cards. The card chosen by the player is shuffled into their deck only for the remainder of this combat encounter. After that card is played or discarded, a random unit on the player’s side of the battlefield is destroyed and permanently removed from the run (not sure about the latter without prototyping, it would probably need to be turned into a mode exclusive keyword if it were to be implemented).

Combat encounter goal: Gaunter O’Dimm cannot be beaten by conventional methods. In order to win the round, your overall power when both you and the boss have passed has to be exactly equal to that of the boss. If your overall power is lower obviously you lose the round but if it is higher you also lose the round.

Bosses have a predetermined deck that forces the player to adopt a certain playstyle in order to win (the said deck scales in size with the player deck, being somewhat affected by diminishing returns).

After beating a boss, the player is presented with a choice of 3 cards (3 times after each combat encounter thus adding 3 cards in total to the deck – also after specific challenges a bonus choice of additional, more powerful prize cards becomes available to the player, adding a 4th card to the player deck).

The main incentive and the driving force to play the mode is to experience new, (hopefully) fun encounters. With that in mind, additional enticements should probably be introduced such as cosmetic rewards for beating the mode with all 4 leader characters (with the achievement system that was introduced in Homecoming, there are a lot of possibilities).

I was also considering the implementation of a high score system that takes into account parameters such as how many cards it took for the player to win each challenge (card play count), how many rounds were won and lost, overall time completion and so forth. Obviously, some of these would have less of an impact on the overall score than others (would have to come up with an algorithm for that and the most optimal variables for the said algorithm).

Players could compare their scores on an in-game leaderboard and compete in a weekly/monthly seasons.

This is optional though and probably the very last on the pipeline, depending on how many development resources such a feature would drain (I suppose the already implemented in-game ladder would ease the coding/backend engineering required, to a certain extent at least).

I think the most appealing feature of this mode is that it opens up a lot of design space as far as designing content is concerned, allowing for the inclusion of some truly wacky cards that could never see the light of day in standard Gwent format. While the overall balancing might prove quite tricky, given how the mode and its loop are both structured, it is fine to have a varying power curve for cards and sacrifice the overall balance for a more unique gameplay experience, I think.

The Witcher Contract also gives an opportunity to flesh out fan favourite characters from the Witcher universe and bring them to life with Gwent’s gameplay mechanics which might be a selling point for certain audiences such as fans of the Witcher series, be it previous games, books or different media. While I can’t comment on the game’s metrics, I’d guess that a significant portion of Gwent’s potential target audience is single-player oriented, meaning the mode could positively impact the game’s retention and attract players that are not really interested in the game’s loop/activities (perhaps even attract them to the said loop and activities!).

The Witcher Contract’s sub-systems still require a lot of fleshing out, as of right now the mode is more of a high concept than anything, aiming to pitch the idea and perhaps establish rough design outlines. More complex designs such as AI behaviour patterns for specific encounters and their implementation are still to be determined.

As for the payment model of the mode, I’d try to avoid affecting any of its gameplay aspects through targeted microtransactions. Instead, I’d consider releasing the Witcher Contract along with a standard Gwent expansion to build up the hype for the game which should lead to increased revenues. Then again, I am not a marketing expert so that is something best left for a comprehensive discussion. Basing the payment model on the one already attached to the arena mode is also worth considering.