Palazzos, Patronage and Power

Created as an alternative examination performance for a Seminar about History in Games at the University of Vienna.

The game begins in the year 1350: the Black Death has carried off a fifth of Florence's population and the city's authorities are losing power. The player's task is to rebuild the city, using a deck of cards that is continuously changed throughout the run. 

Since there is no tutorial inside the game due to time constraints, here are the most important features:

• To play a card, it can be dragged towards its destination or it can be clicked on once to select it and once on its destination to play it. Districts are highlighted if a card can be played onto them.
• To cancel playing a card, click the right mouse button.
• Every card can be played only thrice; the amount of plays a card has left is indicated visually on the card itself.
• Some cards create buildings in the city, which influence the playthrough.
• In order to see the effects a building has at the end of each turn, the player can click on it.
• To buy cards in the shop on the right, the player uses Florin (the currency).
• The amount of cards in the shop increases with every 4th building of the same type.
  
• To play out cards, the player uses Governance Points - indicated in the top left corner of the card. Once those have run out, the game is over.
• Each district has an associated contentment. Some cards and buildings increase or decrease this. Additionally, not playing any cards onto a district decreases contentment. Highly negative or positive contentment has a corresponding effect on other values.
• A district's contentment is indicated by two numbers, the first being its current contentment, and the second by how much it changed in the previous round.
• Hovering over a districts shows what stats de-/increased in the last round (not what will change in future rounds).
• The price to buy cards in the shop (except for the first one each round) is increased by 1. The same goes for playing cards from the hand - their Governance Point-cost is increased by 1. This means, the more you buy (or play), the more expensive it gets.
• Clicking the "ESC"-key enters into the menu.
• The game is won by advancing to the year 1650.

Royalty-free music by SergeQuadrado (https://pixabay.com/music/solo-classical-instruments-mauro-guliani-sonata-c-dur-pi-240824/)