[WIP] Carta Nova - A Collectible Card RPG

Community Showcases
1

Hello all,

I’m developing a Collectible Card RPG, which will feature both offline and online modes. Unlike most CCG/TCG games, it will not have any microtransactions: every card and expansion will be included with the game, and all updates will be free. We are planning to release on Windows/Mac/Linus first, and then port to consoles. It is being developed in Unity 5.

I would like to ask for your feedback on our project, specifically in regards to the presentation and what you think about the busines model (a premium CCG without microtransactions). We are planning to start a crowdfund in the future, so I would really appreciate any suggestions you might have, and try to include any information you ask. I think it is very interesting to hear other developers, and I will update this post regularly as we progress through development.

You can check our first video and more about the project at Square Enix Collective:

I higly recommend Collective for other independent developers, they really help in showing your game to a wider audience. And there are other great projects there, check then out.

Here are some pictures:


2

So are you planning on doing it like an LCG (I believe that’s what they’re called) like Lord of the 5 Rings, where you pay once and get every card? Granted they charge per expansion, but I think the idea is the same. You don’t need to play the booster lottery / crafting and can experiment and just play.

I think those are cool (as much as I love MTG, not having every card at once sucks for brewing), but I’m unsure if the business model of purchasing once and all expansions are free will be enough to sustain the game. I could see it working if it was priced highly (around $40+), but then you might end up just pushing away a large amount of players.

Another factor is that you could include cosmetics for micro transactions unless you are opposed to them in every way. I know there are players who would pay a little to have a special game board / sleeves / tokens? / avatars, etc. Something that doesn’t affect gameplay but makes them feel unique.

Regardless of whether my thoughts help or not, I will be following this project. I love card games :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

Thanks for the feedback! I know about Living Card Games, but I don’ think many people know the term. I would say there are similarities but is not quite the same (and besides, the term LCG is copyrighted, only one company can use it as far as I know).

The great difference is that in LCGs you have to buy the core set and then buy expansions. In our game you start with a basic deck, and can earn more cards by playing the game either offline or online. Part of the fun of the game is to collect cards and build new decks, so I think it is important that there is no paywall. If you see a card in game, you know you can get it by just playing it more. The same applies for expansion sets released in the future.

I really understand your suggestions regarding micro transactions, and I appreciate then, and I would say your points are correct. But everyone on the team is, well, old-school when it comes to games. We want players that buy our game to have the full experience, without any need for extra-payments, even if this hurts our profit somewhat (and I know it will). This is not a knock on other games, it is just an artistic choice we are making.

And as for pricing, we have not decided it yet, but it shouldn’t be different from other indie games. In the 15 or 20 dollar range (again, nothing confirmed yet).

4

Here I come with examples again, but how do you plan on distributing the cards? Is it similar to Hearthstone and their “Adventures” where beating X guarantees Y card, or is it through boosters and somewhat like the Pokemon TCG for Gameboy Color where you are given a booster or 2 for winning? (the ‘expansion’ set was determined on who you played, so if you needed something from a certain set you could play the same guy over and over if you wanted)

Or is it something else entirely, including TBD? :slight_smile:

I totally get the attitude you guys have on micro transactions.

Onto actual game play suggestions, the one thing I personally look for in card games is diverse archetypes with noticeable play differences. Reading your pitch it seems that you guys have this mind, so that’s a plus point.

The big thing I am wary of is “players will be able to draw pre-made-hands during matches.” Could you expand on this a little more? It seems very dangerous if strong synergies / combos exist and could lead to oppressive decks. These can always be solved by banning, but I don’t think any designer ever wants to ban a card. Usually these are the cool cards and it seems a waste to have designed the card just to say “sorry you can’t use it.” Some examples would really help to show what you guys mean by this.

Is your ‘ante’ mode completely optional, or is it required for online multiplayer? I know it can be a real “feel bad” to be lose a sweet card. This may be totally mitigated if the cards are relatively easy to re-acquire though.

My final question, do you have any plans for “premium” versions of cards such as ‘foils’ or alternate arts?

1 Like
5

Don’t worry, I love examples, specially if it includes the Gameboy Pokemon TCG (I think it is a fair comparison to our game). I’m thinking of making a bit of a mix, where you earn packs by playing matches, but have some set cards as rewards for certain achievements (nothing too hard, just a little reward for playing x matches or something). What do you think? Do you prefer one method to the other? I don’t want to force grind, so I’m trying to make progression that feels natural, so simply playing matches will unlock cards progressively.

In regards to the draw, yeah, I think this is the most “controversial” point. The idea was to remove random number generator and shuffled decks, to prevent bad hands from giving you a no-win situation (like Magic’s 0,1,6,7 lands thing). But I see that people are having two worries about it, one being that it takes away the variety of matches (since there is no random element) and the second is that there might be overpowered combos, like you pointed out. Personally, I think pre-made hands makes it feel more tactical, like other turn-based genres (the same way you can customize a team on Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics), and we are working to make it feels balanced. And since both players use the same board positioning is as important to combos as draws.

But I see your point. I’m thinking about including more than one game mode, so there can be pre-made rules (our original idea), shuffled deck rules (like traditional card games) and maybe something else (maybe a mix of both). I think people might like having options, and that would made then more open to try the new mode out.

Don’t worry, “ante” is completely optional, there will be a special area in multiplayer for that, the rest of online modes won’t have it. You can play online without losing any card (I prefer to play with no pressure too).

Hmm, we had not though of premium cards/art/foils yet. I really liked your idea, I will talk to the team about including it on the game. Maybe some very rare alternate cards, sort of like an end-game stuff.

6

Personally I think the grind is completely based on how long the grind is to a reward, namely cards. Using Pokemon again, I didn’t have a problem sinking hours into that game trying to get certain cards. I would play a match and immediately get cards, and even if they weren’t what I wanted, I still got something. Those cards may be total junk to me at the time, or they could spur an entirely new deck idea. The point is that I was rewarded for the game I won. There were in game tournaments rarely that would require me to win 3ish matches before I got rewarded, but that was an exception (usually a “rare promo”) and not the norm. Hearthstone, however, is an example of where the grind sucks. Ignoring quests, I would need to win 30 times just to get one pack for the lottery. The Pokemon TCG is on the extremely quick reward end of the spectrum, while Hearthstone is at the “boring grind” end. I feel there is a safe balance between the two.

The draw is a feature that if you guys can nail down I believe will be your greatest draw. It does have a high potential of enabling oppressive decks, and I’m not a game designer, but I’m sure there is a way you guys can make it work. It may even just be designing cards with the system in mind to avoid combos, although that could get cumbersome once the card count gets large. Getting land / energy / whatever screwed sucks. It’s not fun because neither of you are really playing. As a side note, I love Fire Emblem too so if the feel is similar to that AND a card game, I think I’ll die.

It is good to know that ante is optional. The added pressure can make for a fun game, but it can also be a total experience killer.

The “premium” card is a personal preference, but it does open up a lot of avenues you can go for. Where as Hearthstone offers special card backs for certain things, you can offer alternate art of cards players enjoy. It gives that customization (and by extension bragging) ability without pesky micro transactions.

Overall though, I do look forward to what you guys have coming!

1 Like
7

Hello all,

First of all, thanks again to Acissathar for the suggestions and comments.

Second, as promised, I will continue to do a sort of development blog, detailing how things are going so far.

Well, the feedback phase at Collective as ended, and we got a 89% approval rate, which is great! It puts us at the first page of the most popular projects. We got a ton of great feedback, some nice press coverage and a bunch of new followers at our social accounts. We are off to a great start.

I want to highly recommend Square Enix Collective to all of you out there making games independently. It is a great experience with no strings attached (their involvement in crowdfunding and publishing is entirely optional). They helped to show our game to a whole new audience and were just great to work with. You should check out their site and think about submitting your game. Marketing

On a more technical note (ok, not that technical), I was working with customizable cards this week. Since the game has a great number of skills, it is fun to mix cards with different skills (a pirate with vampire skills, an angel with thief skills). Really fun to play with, a lot of work to code with. I always try to think long term on a project, so I spend a lot of time going through basic stuff so it gets really organized and doesn’t get tangled up when we add 600+ cards to the mix. And considering the limitations we have regarding player prefs and saving (hopefully Unity will add some saving feature soon, an out-of-the-box playerpref visualizer and editor would be nice), I think the current solution works really well.

Basically, I decided to use strings to save a customizable card, building one string when you make the card, saving it, and later loading and breaking the string, with each part going to a variable that sets the status and skills during play. It is simple stuff, and I’m sure someone on the forum has a different solution (serialization or something). But I liked it because it is really simple, easy to scale it up later in the project, and non-programmers on the team can use excel to test it around. I just made sure it is organized and easy to visualize (and yeah, Advanced PlayerPrefs Window helps a lot).

Well, that is it for now. Next time I think I will talk about video editing a bit. Making the video took a long time (man, I need a rendering machine), but you need to have a video. Trust me.