We had a chance to field a Q+A session with Kard Combat producer Hamish Millar about some of the development, features, and future plans for the iOS strategy title. If you've got questions about this upcoming card casting contest by Hothead Games, we've got some answers.
D: How much influence did Magic: The Gathering (“MtG”) have on Kard Combat?
HM: A pretty huge influence, but not in the way that you might think. The game would never have come about if Richard Garfield (creator of MtG) hadn’t played Alexey Stankevich’s Astral Tournament and Astral Masters. Richard saw something great in those games so he and his pal Skaff teamed up with Alexey to start working on a sequel.
That game was released in 2008 under the name Spectromancer. Kard Combat is a spiritual successor to Spectromancer, and the latest step in the evolution of these games generally. Kard Combat is what happens when the greatest card game designer in the world sees a videogame with great potential and then lets a studio like Hothead take it to a handheld platform like iPhone and iPad.
D: It's a free download - are there cards, boosters, or cosmetic additions available for purchase or is the title ad supported?
HM: The game has a certain tone to it, so we wanted to keep ads out. You get a huge amount for free: five campaign battles, three single duel battles and unlimited multiplayer battles and a large starter deck, all with any of the four mage classes (Holy, Death, Machine and Dominator).
From there, you earn cards in the campaign that go into your collection and can be used in the other game modes. The campaign is called “Tower” mode because, in the story, you are ascending a great tower to defeat the Arch Mage at the top, battling a different mage on each floor as you go. Completing the Tower with any mage takes about 3-4 hours and gives you all the cards you’ll need for that class.
While you can do pretty well in multiplayer and Single Duel with the base deck, for a single mage purchase of $0.99, you can get all the cards you need to be as powerful as anyone else online. For gamers, I see that as a huge advantage over the traditional CCG model.
In addition to that, players have the option to buy the full game with all four mages for $2.99 or pay $9.99 to buy all mages and unlock all of their cards and rewards immediately. The latter option works very well for people who are interested in multiplayer without having to complete the campaign for their mages.
D: Will there be tournaments or some sort of online ranking system?
HM: Right now we have OpenFeint and Game Center leaderboards. There have been some heated battles here at the office as some of us struggle to stay on top. Some of the new players out there are really good! Beyond that, we are planning a drafting and tournament system for a later update to the game.
D: What was it like working with Richard Garfield on the project?
HM: I’m sure that Richard is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. Almost all of the card values, spells and abilities were designed by Richard and his company, 3 Donkeys. We took a system design that had evolved over the course of many years of play testing and iteration and set it in a brand new universe, building it specifically for the iPhone and iPad interface from the ground up.
I was a little nervous about what Richard would think of it all, but he’s got that knack of offering insightful feedback while still being a really nice guy. He’s always busy but a bit of a dream come true to work with.
D: Are expansions planned to add to the core game?
HM: Yes. Details are yet to be announced, but we are planning to release an expansion fairly soon after our worldwide release, along with other content to simply to reward our fans that have bought the game. We’re also addressing a lot of suggestions through the in-game feedback button. I’ve set it up so that every suggestion gets emailed to the whole dev team.
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