A 1-vs-CPU card game across 3 lanes, inspired by Magic: The Gathering but built to last 1-2 minutes per match. Read your opponent, counter or bluff — and climb a campaign that crosses five valleys.
Magic: The Gathering is a wonderful game, but also one that demands time: a serious match takes 20-30 minutes, often more. Varco started from a precise question: can you take the essence of that kind of challenge — cards, mana, creatures, bluffing — and compress it into a match that lasts 1 or 2 minutes, playable even during a short break?
You play 1-vs-CPU across 3 lanes, over multiple rounds: whoever brings the opponent's life to zero wins. The mechanic that gives the game its identity is asymmetric reveal: you don't just deploy cards, you read what the opponent might do, choose whether to counter or bluff, and only at the end of the round do you find out who read the situation better. Between rounds, surviving (wounded) cards return to hand, dead ones leave the game — and it continues until one "arcane" (either player's mage) hits 0 life.
The campaign moves across a map — the Five Valleys, one for each of Magic's five colors — where every node is an outpost to conquer. The same deck works everywhere: you can take on any already-unlocked level, in any valley and order, and levels already won stay replayable. A mascot mage accompanies the run with contextual hints on which outpost is best to attack first.
Varco is a personal project that leans on the illustrations and names of Magic: The Gathering cards to quickly build a recognizable roster of creatures and effects, while the rules — lanes, asymmetric reveal, multiple rounds, growing-deck campaign — are written from scratch and don't replicate the game's official rulebook.