The TAGD 2020 Game Jam's theme was "Changing Perspectives," so my immediate first thought was to design a game where the rules can change on a whim. My vision was to design a game where players' perception of what's happening in the game could change at any moment. During the initial design phase my mind drifted towards the quickly changing nature of court cases found in the "Phoenix Wright" series, and I looked to see how I could adapt that sort of gameplay to a multiplayer environment. Specifically, I wanted to design a game where players could surprise their opponents in a "Gotcha" moment, similar to the dramatic reveals found in the Phoenix Wright games. For "Gotcha" moments to be possible, players can't know what evidence their opponent has before dramatically revealing their grand plan. For this reason, a hidden information card game was a natural fit. Additionally, court rooms in general have two sides looking to do two very different things. The defense is looking to absolve their client of wrongdoing, while the prosecution is looking to convict. This made asymmetrical gameplay an obvious choice for the card game.

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    Next came the actual mechanics of the game. Both players needed to have drastically different goals, but in a court room the facts need to be established before either side can make a compelling case. We decided to make the play field a chronological set of events to match this idea. Both players can play a card to enter evidence into one shared timeline, but each player is looking to manipulate the evidence to play towards their win conditions. Of course true to the name Kangaroo Court, the rules can change at any time. Every card has a secondary effect, and the most important of these effects is changing the rules of the game. When a law card is played, the rules that decide what combinations of evidence are considered valid for both players' win conditions change.

 

    One of the keys to the design of the game is the fact secondary effects will always activate whenever a card is played whether it helps the player who played the card or not. I designed cards this way to force players to make tough decisions about the types of evidence they put into the timeline. Adding one piece of evidence to the timeline might work towards their current win condition but might also give their opponent an additional win condition to play towards. Players never truly know whether the decisions they're making truly work towards their own ends or if their opponent was one step ahead of them the entire time.