Yomi: Fighting Card Game (beta)

Yomi is the Japanese word for “reading,” as in reading the mind of your opponent.

Yomi: Fighting Card Game is a simple competitive card game that simulates a battle between two characters. Each deck in Yomi represents one character and can also be used as a regular deck of playing cards with beautiful artwork.

Learn More About Yomi

• Download the basic rules.
• Download prototypes of all decks at the bottom of the page.
• Read an article about the game's design
• Download the printable rules FAQ for clarification about tricky interactions.
• Visit the Yomi forums

Champion fighting game tournament player and tournament organizer David Sirlin (with the help of friend Thomas Grové and usability artist Tom Cannon) designed the game to test the two most important skills in competitive gaming: Valuation and Yomi. Valuation refers to your ability to judge the relative value of moves (or cards) as they change over the course of the game. Yomi, the game's title, refers to your ability to guess which moves your opponent will make. There is more to it than guessing, though: some players have the uncanny ability to “guess” right almost every time, no matter the game.

The basic gameplay of Yomi is a special kind of paper, rock, scissors. Each turn, you play your move as a face down card simultaneously with your opponent. You then reveal the cards to see which player landed a hit; attacks beat throws, throws beat blocks/dodges, and blocks/dodges beat attacks. You get a different bonus depending on which of the four movetypes you win with, so the payoffs for the paper, the rock, and the scissors are all different. By knowing your opponent's personality, you can guess whether he will tend to play it safe often, or go for big combos at every opportunity.

If you win a turn with an attack, you get to perform a combo by laying down more cards for more damage. You might have to build up a good hand over a few turns before you go for a deadly combo. If you hit with a normal attack (a numbered card) you can keep laying down increasing consecutive cards for a “chain combo, “ such as a 2, 3, and 4 (of any suits). After any normal, you can also combo into a special attack (a face card). If that special move is marked as an “Ender,” you can't continue your combo, but if it's a “Linker,” then you can. Each character also has his own “combo limit” that dictates how big his combos can be.

If you get hit by a combo, you can play a joker from your hand to “burst” out of trouble. Be careful though, as you only have two jokers in your deck, and your opponent can use a joker of his own to cancel your joker.

The Many Uses of Cards

Each card has one move on the top and one on the bottom (such as Attack / Dodge), giving you two options per card in the combat phase. But there's also another use for each card: powering up for aces. At the end of each turn, you can discard any pair in order to search your deck for an ace (a super move). Three-of-a-kind gets you two aces and four-of-a-kind gets you three aces.

Because each card has so many potential uses, there are a lot of interesting decisions to make. You want to collect pairs to trade for powerful aces, but you also want runs to use for chain combos. You want low numbered cards so your fast attacks will win in combat, but you also want high numbered cards to deal good damage.

How you use each card is a test of your Valuation skills. The value of each option changes over the course of the game, depending on how many cards you have in your hand, how many your oppoent has, how many jokers have been used so far, and so forth. On the other hand, you don't even need a good sense of how much each option is worth if you have the power to guess right every turn: the power of Yomi.

Yomi Playtest Decks, Verison 7.5d

Only Jaina's deck contains art representative of the final quality. All other decks will contain only one repeated image until release. These decks are provided solely for balance playtesting.