I spent a couple of days last week working on some of the various things that need to be done to put Car Washer: Summer of the Ninja (my last indie game) on Steam.  Specifically, I was working on Steam trading cards and all the related content.

Honestly, I never paid much attention to Steam trading cards in the past.  Turns out it’s a bigger and much more complex system than I thought.  First there’s the trading cards, which are randomly added to your inventory every so often as you play the game.  Except that you can only get about half the cards (chosen randomly) that way.  To get the rest you have to trade another player for them, or buy them from another player for real money.  If you get a complete set of cards, you can trade it in to craft a badge.  Crafting a badge lets you display it on your profile and also unlocks a random emoticon and profile background image (which you can also trade and sell).  But that’s not all.  Collect all the cards again and you can craft a level 2 badge and get another emoticon and background.  Then do it again, and again, all the way to level 5.  But that’s still not all.  If you’re really lucky you may get a rare foil version of one of the trading cards instead of a normal one.  If you somehow manage to get a full set of foil cards you can craft a special foil badge.  A little complicated?  I suppose it does appeal to seriously hardcore completionists though.

Anyway, I ended up having to make a lot more images than I thought I would.  But it did get my thinking about what type of cards, badges, etc. I’ll make for Aurora’s Nightmare.  Aurora’s Nightmare hasn’t been approved for Steam yet, but that’s mainly because I’ve yet to submit it (I plan to wait until the demo is finished).  But anyway, I fully expect it to be on Steam eventually, so it doesn’t hurt to do a little planning ahead of time.