Our Journey

It all started with an idea; what if there was a way to play a card game that told a story. What if instead of trying to just beat your opponent, you went on a journey.

The first concept

This was a thought I had late one night while trying to think of how you could improve traditional card games. 14 hours later I had mapped out what the game board would look like, created two 40 card decks hand written on paper and typed out the first draft of the game rules. I was ready for a playtest. 

I invited Streettrees and Doorjak to come over and embark on the very first journey. They read through the rules, I explained how to set up the playmat and away they went. After 3 games, I had some feedback and went back to the rules to make some adjustments.

Now that I had a game concept, I needed to find a way to actually make some cards. From here I reached out to MizTiique, an artist in the twitch community I worked with in the past. After a lot of begging and pleading…just kidding. I explained the game and my goal of standing on three pillars: fun gameplay, interesting lore and stories, and featuring different artists. MizTiique loved the concept and wanted to be a part of this journey. After a few calls, we decided the best way to fill the artwork for two test decks would be to host a sketch contest. The artwork for the first test doesn't need to be pretty, we just needed to get something into people's hands to test the game itself. 

We ran the contest and had two amazing supporters enter. Between Klebism and FacelessJim, we had almost all of the artwork we needed to produce the two decks. MizTiique got to work creating the cards and connected me with two very creative people to start working on the lore of the game, Necrovarius and Warped Goblin. 

After a quick introduction we had a very long call brainstorming what ideas we had for different terrains within this fantasy world. Our goal was to create 4 different nations or terrains to start. It didn’t take long before Necrovarius and Warped Goblin had bounced ideas around and we worked out most of the details on what these terrains looked like, who lived there and what made that terrain special. Necrovarius got to work typing out some more details and I went back to focusing on the test decks.

After MizTiique finished up the cards, I requested a few last minute changes and off to a printer they went. Once the test decks arrived, I sought out some more people to help play test the game. I thought this will be easy. I'll get a couple people to play the game, confirm how awesome it is and we can release the first alpha test publicly. We gathered a small group of local friends consisting of Occifer, Rhnaga, Stcheeviee and Kitten to play through some games. 

The feedback confirmed the game fell just short of being awesome. Gameplay was taking a little too long, and there were moments in the game where both players could not do anything. Occifer took a set of decks home and played through a couple more times with another friend Gabe. They came back with some suggestions to help with the gameplay. With this feedback we added in a few new cards, changed one of the game mechanics and played through a couple more times over a few weeks. Finally we had a game that was fun to play and ready for a public test. 

I circled back to MizTiique and gave her a list of all the changes we would need to launch a public test. Being my picky self, I also asked if we could redo the back of the cards and card frames. To create something closer to what we might want to see in the final release of the game. Also, if it wasn't too much to ask, could she have all of this done in two days so we could get this off to the printers to test one last time before the end of the month. MizTiique grinded out all the changes in 35 hours, along with some extras. Truly legendary. 

So with the help of Occifer and team, we now had some gameplay that was enjoyable and cards selected for test decks, along with the edits and new frames from MizTiique. It was time to go back to the third pillar, story and lore. After reaching out to Necrovarius and Warped Goblin, they were both too busy with other things to help push out the story further. It was a sad loss, but I appreciate the work that they had already invested and understand that life can get busy. However, the story must be told and I needed to find someone who would challenge me and ask questions about the lore. I reached out to ReneqadeGrenade, a friend who I have worked with in the past and shared my same love for all things nerdy.

ReneqadeGrenade came in and did just that. Read through what we had so far for the lore and poked a bunch of holes in it. Asking questions and making suggestions to help build more back story that will not only set us up for a first release, but future expansions as well. ReneqadeGrenade also brings a ton of knowledge on other areas of game development as well and I am very excited to have them join us and be a part of the journey. 

This all brings us to the launch of our first public alpha test. I am very excited to share the game and have you join us on this journey as well. Through this test we are hoping to get more feedback from the community on the gameplay and mechanics. We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions that will help us shape the game itself for future releases. While we are running the public alpha test, we will be starting on the beta test. Beta will be more focused on exploring the four terrains that will be featured in the first set. Here we plan to focus more on testing the cards themselves as there will be a lot more of them. How those cards play on the board with each other and ensuring that there is a balance between the four terrains. We will also be featuring fully rendered images from various artists for the first time in Beta and can not wait to see how that starts to turn out.

Thank you all for your support on this journey. Please make sure to join our socials and discord for updates. 

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