In particular, I like the part where you build your deck from a set of themed sub-decks before the start, and then it's up to you to find the synergies between those themes. Not sure if there's an existing term for that mechanic. I think it may count as a form of a deckbuilder, but editing the deck's contents isn't part of the main game loop. Maybe a deck drafter?
I also like that it's a compact card game that doesn't take long to learn or play, and plays well with only 2 players. The only other drafting games I've found have a board, lots of pieces, and are aimed at 4+ players.
Trying to search for games like Compile is a bit difficult, because in the other threads I find, people like to focus on the lane battling aspect, which I could take or leave. I'm mostly interested in compact drafting games for 2p. Anyone know any?
Don't know if you've given it a try yet, but magic the gathering cube is basically exactly this with the added facet of 32 years worth of cards to play with.
OP's ask sounds similar to MtG's Jumpstart decks... if you like MtG, that's worth looking into. (To make it replayable, you'd need to separate out the themed card packs after each play session so you can choose / combine them again.)
This was my first thought, as well. I don't know of other games that function this way, but am definitely looking into Compile, now 👀
So, I've been out of the scene for a while now and did not know about JumpStart. After looking into it, this sounds like an absolutely blast and I'm literally going to dredge out my cards too tinker with this later today.
It plays like Cube Lite. It's great if you want to make a sort of box set that you can break out when friends are around that let you jump into a game in a few minutes, but with a much wider variety of decks than you'd otherwise have available without running a full draft.
Hah, I've never heard of the cube format, but from what I've read in the last 5 minutes, the responsibility of constructing this 720+ card cube, much less transporting it, sound like deal breakers. I'm not against gameplay like MtG, but I like compile because I don't need to think about the cards out there that I don't have. It is also nice that teaching Compile is a 5-10m process, though. I can't throw the cube in a bag on the way to a pub, and casually teach magic to someone over a beer.
So while a lot of people talk about cube as a big wild thing, I actually had a lot of success with a smaller, more contained version. When you do a classic draft, you get 3 boosters per person, and lands. So if you set up a cube with 45 cards per expected player and enough land to go around, that's only ~300 cards for 6 people. A fat pack holds about 400 on it's own so transport really just a smidge more in² than a paving brick.
Teaching is the hardest part though. It's got a low barrier to entry, I've taught people in 20min, but keeping it simple will really dumb down your potential when it comes to making a cube.
This could be worth exploring, thanks for the idea. I'm not really interested in building a custom cube, I'd rather have a well playtested set of cards that are fun together. It looks like I could just pick a popular/smallish cube from this website to try it out.
On conversation with another poster I actually learned about the JumpStart format and that might be even more up your alley. Instead of diy boosters like cube does, you make preselected stacks of 20 cards. Everyone picks two, shuffles them up and you jump in. Apparently there's premade packs already and once you get tired of those they're pretty easy to diy your own.
Im planning on putting my own together, then printing up reminder sheets for each stack so I can use them to teach the wife and kid.