Mémoire viveBig Brother tries out his cards before he plays
Mémoire vive has three opponents, named after school years. The strongest one does something the other two don’t.
In Mémoire vive, you play against the Night-light, the little AI that lives in the house. It has three levels, and I named them the way you grow up: Nursery (Maternelle), Year 3 (CE2) and Big Brother (Grand frère).
All three defend lane by lane, counter-attack, and count their opponent’s ink to know when they can’t play anything else. They can also trace the spells you draw, the Marker Stroke and the Lasso.
Big Brother does one more thing: before playing a card, he tries it out on a copy of the game. He looks at what would happen, then he chooses. That works because the simulation is deterministic: at 20 ticks per second, the same game replayed always gives the same result. It’s also what makes online play work: the two phones compute the same game, and only exchange the moves.
The rest of the game, in numbers:
- 123 cards: 80 troops, 9 champions, 13 buildings, 21 spells;
- 10 arenas, which are the rooms of the house;
- 20 decks for the Night-light;
- and not a single image: everything is drawn by code, in ink, with stains that keep a memory of the game.