Hi Aces! Tom here, Captain of the Starship Trinket.
For this issue, we'll talk about the basics of designing, concepting, implementing, and illustrating cards. But first, we just released a new trailer in The MIX Fall Showcase! Battle Chef Brigade fans might recognize the narrator!
Check it out below:
Watch on YouTube
We're excited to continue to show you what we're working on in updates to come. But for now, let's get back to cards!
Designing new cards
Making a single-player card battler game is very different from making a multiplayer one. Balance and long-term meta evolution are not our goals! Instead, scenarios in Battle Suit Aces are designed around different goals, like setting up the player to feel cleverly powerful and offering surprising combos via guest characters that fit the narrative.
We have an enormous spreadsheet of ability, item, and scenario ideas that we're always adding to. When I start designing a card, I'll often peruse that spreadsheet to see if there are any that fit the story or tone of whatever the card will be. That's happened a lot recently as I worked on some of the end game battles - we finally implemented a bunch of neat abilities that we can now foreshadow or just use earlier in the game.
Once a card has basic abilities in and it feels ok, we get to test our assumptions. Do the Nautilus monster's abilities synergize well with the other sea-inspired cards it'll be paired with? Does it use the right energy type to make it more or less potent? Is it understandable to the player? We'll tweak cards a lot as we play through the game.
At this stage in a card's lifecycle, cards just use placeholder icons.
Finalizing art
At some point, Eric will decide that it's time to add art to the cards. We're focusing on the early-game cards now, but sometimes we want to get a cool monster's abilities into a trailer, so we'll move it to the front of the line and give it at least a rough colored version.
There are a bunch of stages for cards, but they always start with a rough sketch. That's then refined to make sure the pose is strong and the card's icons won't get in the way.
Of course, there are more than just monsters in the game! Pilots in their Battle Suits are the real stars, so they get a corner of the card as well. Here's my favorite Suitsmith, Mirabell. For a long time, we struggled with our desire to make a ton of rich, lovable characters and our excitement over mecha gameplay. Pairing them together and having both on the cards helped us acheive both.
Integrating FX
One of the final steps in designing a card is to integrate some quick effects for its abilities. We've set up a pretty good pipeline for defining different kinds of projectiles (e.g. a beam, a machine gun effect, or guided missiles), impacts, and muzzle flashes. We top that off with some controls to apply gradient colors to the textures. With this pretty small toolset, we can achieve a wide range of effects to really drive home the power behind your mecha's attacks!
See you next time, pilots!
- Tom