A Card Game by Stone Arch Games
Lucid is a game of risk, anticipation, drafting, and resource management for 2-5 (optimally 3-4) players. Preparation and deck-construction takes about 15 minutes, with games taking about 15 minutes each.
In a game of Lucid, each player takes the role of a dream-diver trying to study the consciousness of their subject, while also acting as a subject trying to mislead and evade their diver.
Lucid is an approachable game with high player agency, a great deal of player interaction, and a high skill cap. It can be enjoyed both by casual gamers looking for something quick and easy to learn, and more cerebral gamers looking to pour their thought and energy into a complex puzzle.
Some Details
Lucid is a drafting and deckbuilding game.
Players will draft a private pool of 12 cards, and mix this with 12 always-available core cards to build a 12 card deck.
The 12 core cards serve as a playable deck on their own. This means that it is impossible to draft an unplayable deck.
All of the cards are good! Many drafting and deckbuilding games come with filler cards that are always or almost always inferior to the other cards. In Lucid, some cards are more specialized and some more generally useful, but every single one of Lucid's 85 unique draft cards is a defensible 1st pick, depending on the deck you're trying to build!
Once you draft decks, games of Lucid are short enough for you to play multiple games with them. Since a great deal of Lucid's strategy revolves around hidden information, you may find that the player who wins the first game is often not the same player who wins the most games!
Lucid is a game of risk assessment and anticipation
Many of the most important decisions you will make in a game of Lucid involve hiding your critical cards where your diver least expects them to be. This means balancing what is strategically best for your deck, what your diver's deck is best at attacking, and what would be the least predictable play.
Likewise, your deck will often have lines of play that most efficiently use its resources and time, but make you very predictable to your subject, allowing them to secure their important cards and set traps for you. You will need to balance the need to form a cohesive game-plan with the need to vary your plays to catch your subject off guard.
Lucid is a game of resource management
In a game of Lucid, you will accumulate 3 resources: Insight, Cards, and Will. Insight are the points needed to end and win the game, drawing cards gives you more options each turn, and Will can be used every turn to activate powerful effects on your cards.
Most of the time, any actions you use to draw cards or gain Will could have been used to gain Insight. The key to a successful strategy is figuring out exactly how much of each resource your deck needs to function well, and gaining no more and no less than that amount (which is easier said than done). Games of Lucid are frequently decided by margins of a single point, so every small decision matters!