Monster Battle

[water dog]

Sounds really neat! Haven't seen anything like the affinity mechanic before, where relative position matters both horizontally and vertically. Looking forward to seeing more, in particular I'm curious how the combat will work (similar to Hearthstone, Yu-Gi-Oh, or something unique).

Hearthstone gives me a lot of inspiration for the game so it shouldn't be surprising to know that combat will be more Hearthstone-y! Your opponent is free to attack regardless of yours or their board state, but often times taking out their monsters first is the best thing to do instead of taking the fight to their face. I'm still kind of ironing out details but there will be no such think and choosing blockers a-la MtG or needing to have an open space to hit your opponent a-la Y-u-Gi-Oh.

I was also toying with the idea that your Hero isn't actually on the battlefield and can only be attacked through an "opening" in your board space. So if you had an empty monster slot on your board and the enemy places a monster parallel to that, they could attack your face, otherwise they'd have to attack what's there. I'm not sure I will go through with this because I think it could make the game feel slow and oppressive.