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Hello everyone!My name is Jasper and I’m the game designer for Spells of Genesis(SoG). As the game is still in early stage, it’s a very busy time for me! I’m writing this blogpost to tell you more about the decisions we are making when designing the game, the iterative process and some of the problems we’ve encountered.The most challenging aspect of designing this game, is that we want the game to be easy to learn and play, but also very strategical when you progress. We want to make the game fun for casual players, as well as strategically interesting for “hardcore” players. This is what leaded to SoG, a combination of a trading card game(strategic) and an arcade game(skill).

After testing our game internally, externally with different audiences and on the Tokyo Game Show(it was awesome there by the way), we found out that there were a lot of good things in the game, but also some things that were not optimal. For designing the new version, we’ve taken this feedback in consideration. I’ll sum up some of it below:Good things about the game that we want to keep:

  • The game is easy to understand. You see your enemies, and the only objective is: kill them without crossing the death-line.
  • The gameplay is intuitive. From the moment you touch the screen with your finger/thumb you can see the aim-line following your finger, and when you release it shoots the orb. When you hit an enemy it deals damage and bounces off, which are also very logical.
  • The gameplay is repetitive. This might sound odd, but what I mean with that is that you get in a flow when playing the game, the next orb lines up automatically and you just have to choose (strategically) where you will shoot it towards.
  • The gameplay is user-friendly. As the shooting-angle is not to wide, you can aim very well with your finger. You can also play the whole game without having to move all over the screen with your finger.
  • There are a small amount of numbers. We experienced with other prototypes that the more numbers(health, attack etc.) there are present on the screen, the more it scares away players.

Things we were not content with and wanted to change:

  • There was still one number present: the health value. Even though we’ve put it in a health bar, it was not very intuitive and readable. Also this number did not make much sense as you didn’t know the attack value of the orb you were going to shoot with.
  • The missing of the attack and explosion data. To make the game more casual, we didn’t put these numbers on the screen, but if you want to play the game strategically, you need this numbers.
  • You have to destroy your own orbs. I’ts counter-intuitive to first shoot your characters towards the enemies, and the next turn you have to destroy them again. Destroying your own orbs shouldn’t be a core strategy in the game.
  • You shoot the same character multiple times. Once you’ve shot all your 4 characters, you will shoot the first one again, and so on. This means that you can have the same character multiple times on the play field, which feels strange in an Card game/RPG.
  • The lower the health, the better the orb. This is due to the fact that you will have to destroy your own orbs. As the attack and explosion values are: the higher the better, it is confusing to have a health as low as possible.
  • Player versus Player(PvP) is not really optional. The current game setup is aimed at Player versus Enemy and it’s not really possible to make it a PvP. We want the game to also be PvP.

For tackling all these problems, we had to get back to the core of the game, and try different ideas. We’ve learned a lot about this and were able to make changes in the game, which tackled the bad things, and kept the good ones. Next week I will write another blogpost, informing you about the awesome new version, which is a big improvement on the one you’ve seen so far.I hope to have given you some insight in what we are currently working on in terms of game design. Now back to work everybody! And have a good weekend!Jasper

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EverdreamSoft

EverdreamSoft

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EverdreamSoft is a Swiss-based company specialized in the development of casual and online trading card games for smartphones giving communities of gamers...

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