it was a really long wait for this video but I never expected 40 minutes of Mirror World! It's an incredible looking game and (imho) you have done an incredible job with it
I think you showcased one of the most important things of game design very well, takeing a break from something you're struggling with and trying something else for fun. But for me it was morso the opposite, i set aside some game mechanics for new ones only to later use those scrapped game mechanics in a different game. Not every idea is a bad idea, sometimes it just needs the right environment to flourish.
I'm really glad that part came through! More than anything that was the part I really wanted to communicate through this process, since it's really easy to get discouraged along the way when things don't work out the way you expect.
I've been following this project since the start and I'm very proud and happy for you to work through the hardships of game design to create this awesome prototype! Congrats on all your hard work!
This game feels pretty great. I have some highlights here: • I love the final implementation of the shadow lord. • Looking at the top two, drawing one and charging the other is awesome. I thought about this a while ago. It keeps some of the hand selection of resource systems like Duel Masters without making it a long and complex decision (especially for new players) which is my biggest problem with it. • The effects of the locations are pretty much perfect. Especially noteworthy that one of them is something completely unique to your game. Overall great job with the videos!
And here's some feedback that popped to mind as I saw the gameplay: • I'm not in love with lifedecking still, for the same old reasons. I appreciate that costs return resources to the deck, but it seems inelegant. I don't know if players would intuitively count your deck *plus your resources*, I think it would feel bad if you lose with a lot of resources when you were planning to spend them, etc. • The starting front/shadow lord has a lot of peculiar rules that bring attention to themselves because they are so similar to how other units work but not quite the same: - When visually scanning the field for fronts without shadows, you look for one and two-card pairs, but the shadow lord is "hidden" behind a double-faced card. - To reverse units, you tap any units at the temple. To reverse the shadow lord, you need units at the temple but instead it taps itself. I understand this is balance-related but it's a bit jarring because it feels like they should act the same mechanically. - The shadow lord is the only unit that cannot attack immediately upon reversing. With other units, you could set up a turn so that you reverse and immediately attack, but with the shadow lord you are 100% sure that it's not going to. - Absolute barrier. I think you should change it to "This cannot be destroyed" for the front and "This is reversed instead of destroyed" for the shadow lord. Not being able to be attacked makes that "protecting the location" loophole that feels like an actual cheat. Plus, if a shadow lord has a good effect, you can choose not to attack and your opponent can't do anything to it. Being able to attack it and defeat it (even if it only delays it for one turn) is much more interesting, and it's already hard because of its stats. • I don't know if tying "units you need to tap to reverse" and damage is ideal. It is one fewer stat, but it leaves you with no option to make a powerful shadow that needs a bit cost but isn't aggressive. I do appreciate that the shadow effect can give it extra damage. • Overall I would like to see bigger costs for shadows and bigger effects in general. The card flow is there, the resources grow with the game, you can go a little crazier. Right now, the game's rhythm is a bit too constant turn after turn, and it gets a little long. If expensive shadows are a problem for screw reasons, then perhaps fronts with effects with very high costs for the late game. A lot of this might not make sense for the balance of the game (which I'm not familiar with) so of course take it with a grain of salt. And everything I didn't mention is probably working great. Good job again!
@@fernandobanda5734 All of these are great points! - Lifedecking - personally I really like trying to build your deck and pace your effect use to make sure you don't end up with a pile of resources left over, but I can see how that would be a bit fiddly for a lot of players. For now I like how it plays, but it's definitely something I'd need to keep a close eye on during playtesting. - Starting front / shadow lord - Currently, the starting front is the only one with full art (no text box), so it stands out on the field decently well. Revesing it with its own ability also felt natural pretty quickly in my testing - I did originally have it use the temple to reverse, but this wasn't working since rank 3 is really hard to hit, and if one player can do it and the other can't it really unbalances the game. Similar with being able to reverse and attack - the shadow lords would have to be substantially nerfed if they were able to reverse each turn and attack. Having a delay allowed me to make them much more powerful and imactful, and also left room for the other cards to be relevant. As far as absolute barrier - I started with the starting front only having ability-targeting-protection, and when it was attacked it would just reverse to the shadow lord who had huge power, but no barrier protection. Similar to using the temple to reverse, it was hard but not impossible to beat over the shadow lord, and if you did it would really unbalance the game. This is another thing where I like the current rules well enough now, but is worth keeping an eye on if/when I pull the game out for wider playtesting. I'm still not 100% on the wierdness of the shadow lord completely protecting a location if it's your only unit there, but given everything else going on with shadow lord balancing, so far it's the least wierd solution, and it does really emphasize the positioning aspect of the game. - Manifest rank - the rank actually worked out pretty well - in both cases I don't really want a range past 1 or 2. More damage than that swings the game too quickly, and more units needed to flip is too difficult to keep that many units at the temple. It worked out surprsinginly well as a single stat, and as you mentioned, effects can boost damage output when needed - that's decent part of red's colour pie. - Costs - Higher manifest ranks don't really work due to the limitations of keeping units alive at the temple. There's definitely some room for higher ability costs, though - this deck was actually a bit minimal on this, black especially has a fair bit more costed effects than I found room to add in this sample deck. Good call on the rhythm, though - that's been a struggle for this game almost from the start. It's a lot better than it was, but there's room for improvement, for sure. Thanks for the comments! I appreciate that you took a really deep look at this system - you have a really good understanding of it. Pretty much everything you pointed out here was something I had skipped over in the video, but was either a solution to an earlier problem, or something I need to keep an eye on in any further testing, or both.
@@tcgacademia No problem! I was really invested in the gameplay because it seemed a lot of fun. I hope the feedback was useful even if just to reinforce the decisions you already took.
First off, let me say I love that this isn't high fantasy tolkien styled tcg. Second, i have been waiting for the completion of this project for a while but i have a few questions, hopefully i didn't miss anything in the video and end up sounding like a fool. 1. is there a synergy or any restriction on colour use? 2. why not have the locations oriented landscape instead of portrait? 3. do you find moving the cards around so often tedious? 4. will you continue to develop the project, maybe to the point of sales and distribution?
Good questions! (And I agree, there's not enough card games out there that let you battle with transit planners and office clerks.) 1. A lot of the time faction/colour restrictions are a bit of an afterthought for me when designing a game, so I'm not surprised I didn't mention it here. When you reverse a card, you can only reverse if the Front matches the Shadow, or if the Front activating the temple matches the Shadow. So far this seems to make 2 colour decks relatively painless, but it does make 3 and 4 colour decks somewhat tricky. 2. Honestly, most of the art I found was in portrait, so that's just what I stuck with. Good call, though, they should definitely be in -portrait- landscape (edit - just noticed I said portrait twice here, LifTafari91 is correct that they should be in landscape)! 3. In the previous version (rule 6), where you kept putting them back into standby at the end of each turn, that was really boring. There's still a fair bit of moving units around in this version, but I've not gotten bored of it here - you're repeating moves a lot less and each move you make is a lot more deliberate. 4. Not any time in the near future. As much as I like the game, TCGs are really, really intimidating to publish. I also have a decent backlog of smaller game projects I want to release. I'll keep Mirror World in my back pocket, though - I'd love to be able to actually release it some time in the future once I have a bit more experience selling and distributing games!
I thought the time away from your initial game had a great concept: a deck with good/evil cards, choosing which side you'd wanna play as and using abilities on the cards chosen on the field. I'm excited that you found the answers you were looking for in Mirror World, but it'd be cool to see you flesh out that quick thinking process
I'm keeping that game in my back pocket, for sure! It was an interesting idea, but it would work better as a smaller, stand-alone game, rather than trying to build it up to a full tcg system.
Man I love your vids 😄. As a hobbyist designer your perspective is really interresting. Are you planning on releasing the rules for your game to the public at some point?
Thanks! I would love to, but the art budget a game like this would need does give me some pause. I have some other game projects on the go at the moment, but I'd love to be able to come back and give this a proper release at some point in the future.
happy that you done with the core rule, and I still can see the design spaces where it can really explored (like those two shadows at the end, that's hard to guard, maybe in future effect that can intervenes with another location) overall I'm glad following the process of this game
Thank you! And yeah, one of the things that really convinced me the game was in a good spot was that I kept thinking of new mechanics I could add. Sometimes in a game I'll run into a wall where it's hard to think up of new effects, and sometimes there's games that feel like wide open playgrounds. This is honestly one of my favourite features of TCGs, and I'm really glad I got Mirror World to a place where I was getting that feeling.
@@comettcg8830 It's especially nice for me, since I was coming off working on a few smaller games where I was struggling to find new effects. Probably my favourite part of working on a tcg system!
The game really looks appealing, and the gameplay really smoothes out the comprehension of the rules. As it stand, it still seems like the temple is the most important location, but it doesn't overshadowes the other two as crucial parts of the battlefield. I think this is a huge flavor win, and having a game were all you need to play is a single deck is HUGE. I'll never press enough how having multiple decks (like in FoW, Yu Gi Oh or Wixoss) is tedious even tho it creates a lot of design space, and having to track life totals in abstract numbers (like in Magic, FoW and Yu Gi Oh) is also something that makes for slow setting up of the game and requires more space on the table. The game is really appealing and I'd love to try it for myself ! Do you plan on sharing card lists of starters decks to print and try, or even to sell some sets of printed cards ? Anyway, let us know, and keep up the great work !
Only needing one deck to play is definitely something I appreciate about Duel Masters, so I'm glad I was able to make it work here! As far as releasing it goes, it's in a bit of an odd place - because all the art is just stolen from Pixiv, I'd only release it as is if I was 100% sure I was not going to do any further work on the game. Anything past this point in the design process is where I start needing to use art I have permissions for. So as long as I'm not sure how far I'm taking this game, it's kind of up in the air.
you are probably one of my favorite youtubers and Ive only seen 5 of your videos, keep up the good work. Also, how do you physically make those cards, they seem nice and I would love to know for my final projects
Thanks! I actually have a video that goes into making cards - 'designing playtest cards'. I also did a stream where I muddle my way through making a basic card frame in photoshop - that one's less interesting, but if you're feeling really, really lost it might also help.
Interesting. Any chance of you sharing your rules document for us to try it ourselves? I wan to get a little hands on with the game, see how it feels. It reminds me a bit of Marvel Snap, but with more depth. I really like the Life Decking = Sanity and Location mechanics.
I'm kind of in a weird spot where I'm not quite sure what I want to do with this game. I'll definitely share it in some form, though, just need to figure out how far I go with it!
For the upcoming year will you be working on your non TCG card game? The one mentioned in your Channel Review and Goals video. I find it interesting how different it is then designing a TCG, honestly I think it is harder. Though non TCGs do have some advantages, TCGs always have that risk that the optimal decks are the more boring ones and when it is released it is released no need to make expansion packs constantly. I am not intending to add any pressure but I am interested in the softwares you use. I use the Affinity art softwares and Tabletop Creator and port directly into Tabletop Simulator for testing.
Honestly, the game is mostly done at this point, but I keep second-guessing myself, especially when it comes to making the video showing it off. I do still want to make some progress on it by the end of the year - even if it's only a TTS mod to move the game into a final round of playtests. Really, though, I need to just do it - so thanks for the nudge, I honestly really appreciate it! As for the software, I just use an image editor (pixlr) and word docs. For a while I was setting up templates using a game engine and coding individual shapes, which was honestly not bad, but getting the graphic options of a dedicated video editor and the instant feedback whenever you change the placement of a box or text is too useful. I do want to get into using a proper editor, though, as it does make changing and balancing cards a lot easier. I've been getting some good suggestions from the comments, so thanks for adding a few other options to check out!
One aspect that I'm curious about is the decision to make the full damage guaranteed regardless on whether the attack succeeds or fails. Any reason or previous testing that made that seem like the right choice? It seems like a bit of an odd move, especially since it would lead to scenarios where someone could hit a point where the lack of ability to block damage means that even if they play perfectly they could be fully cognizant of a game that is logistically impossible to win. While a lot of people don't like them, I do think that floating ideas that can aim to prevent snowballing via mechanics does have value. A lot of lifedecking games implement a trigger system for this reason, I think. That said, Mirror World's mechanics have developed in a way that might make triggers a bit rough to work with, considering it would be very easy to shift them onto the bottom of your deck which would make the endgames really samey and dreadfully annoying. So a system that is in a lot of games being stapled in at the expense of the more interesting and unique cycling of the core resource loop, I can see why triggers might be passed on.
The system was based on Weiss Schwarz, which does something similar with guaranteeing damage in an attack. In this system I was worried about the game stalling out a little too easily, , which is doubly bad with life decks since taking more damage from just drawing your cards rather than from the opponent is not a great gameplay experience. Guaranteed damage on attack ended up working out to give the game the pace of play I was looking for, so I tried it and ended up sticking with it. There's still a ton of interaction in the damage race, since you have a relatively high amount of freedom in your attack targets. I've found that you usually only can guarantee your loss in the second-to-last turn, and the race tends to be pretty tight right up to the last turn, so there's still a lot of uncertainty right up to the end. I was actually thinking of triggers as something to add to Mirror World - it's actually a pretty simple concept to add to the base rules. It ultimately wasn't necessary for the first wave of card designs, so I haven't dug into it much yet, but I'm definitely keeping it in mind as future design space. They can't be too crazy, but something like 'target unit gets -2000 power this turn' or 'add a card from your resources to hand' or 'put a shadow from your resources into play' are all designs I think should work out - although I haven't tested it yet.
Hey this series is rad, and just happened to show up in my yt recs while I've been preparing to start the playtesting phase of my own tcg. I'm curious how you made the actual physical cards, did you design your own template for the card layouts, and if so, how?
I did! I actually made a few videos about designing the physical cards - there's one video on Playtest Cards, and a live stream I did where I made a card from from scratch. Hopefully they're helpful!
Have you considered a removed-from-the-game zone? My first thought is "life gain" decks might eventually become too powerful by constantly renewing your deck, so maybe removing the initial card on attack from the game could somewhat negate the issue. Also, no shuffling? If that's the case, once you've gone through your deck it's deterministically set, so it completely removes randomness from the game. Perhaps sending "returned to deck" cards to a different zone, then if an action requires more cards in the deck you just shuffle and add them to the bottom, similar to Dominion, or adding them in a random order if there's more than one sent there.
I hate repeated shuffling during a game, so I deliberately left that out. You nailed it on life gain being a problem, though. The first few cards in the design are probably fine, but I don't think the game can realistically support more than a small handful of cards with 'cards to the bottom' as life gain. I was thinking of adding 'phantom cards' to your deck as a more balanced form of life gain if I took the game further - very basic token units that would still add to your deck total, but wouldn't enable life gain loops. I think it's somewhat inevitable that games need a 'no really, it's gone for good' zone, so a removed-from-game zone will almost certainly happen at some point.
@@tcgacademia Glad to hear back. Your deck size video came across my feed and I immediately clicked, then watched the playlist. As someone who's into game design it was an absolute blow to my ego thinking I knew anything about it then having someone explain in detail all the things I missed. You do an amazing job.
Are you worried about the locations holding too much of the game’s mechanics, as opposed to living in the decks, in the cards chosen by the player to create a strategy?
I actually tested for that! It ends up balancing out just fine - any deck can draw some extra cards by tapping units at the temple, but it's still somewhat limited and some strategies are going to want more draw. Same with the other locations. It's a bit like drawing at the start of your turn doesn't limit card draw effects in most games. I do have to keep a close eye on Front abilities, since on-play effects work much better than tap effects, since they want to tap at locations, but it does balance well, at least from what I've seen so far.
I noticed that it doesn't matter how many of what units you stack on location since the attacker gets to choose who they attack and will always choose to attack the weakest unit, I feel like the defender should get that choice
How has lifedecking affected deck construction in your game? I'd worry that decks would be heavily pushed to include a full playset of most cards to avoid milling key pieces, unless the game supports a lot of discard recursion.
Most strategies so far don't really mind losing a few key cards, and there's enough recursion effects that more card-specific gameplans should still be able to function. I'm sure it will require some balance adjustments to make sure it works in the future, but so far it feels like it's not a huge issue.
@@tcgacademia Hmmm, definitely something to keep an eye on. I'm interested to see how difficult it will be to balance recursion, since so many cards will be sent to the discard.
@@thebigcheese1905 So far it's not too bad. Black has most of the graveyard recursion, and it's also the slowest, most late-game focused colour. In my experience, with a 30-card deck, the game is fast enough that there's not a ton of time to take advantage of a fully-stocked graveyard, so it keeps itself balanced that way. Definitely something to keep an eye on in the future, through!
As much as I'd love to actually get the game into a releasable state, it takes a pretty massive art budget for a game this size, and I don't want to release it as an independent game using a bunch of borrowed art. (I also have no experience making TTS modes.) Keeping the options open for the future, but not releasing the game at the moment.
@@tcgacademia Dropped a separate comment but I would urge you to consider AI art, despite the negativity around it. I do not see it as a valid reason to stop a good game and lots of honest effort go to waste. In fact I think it's even unfair that some other dude's monetary gain is considered "worth" your loss and the loss to all the potential players of your games.
ngl, the game sounds really cool. If it was a board game (like, you buy everything together as a single thing, build the deck or play with precon decks and then you put them back to the box ans you dont need to buy boosters), I'd consider buying it ahahhag
I kind of stumbled a bit at first as I was trying to expand it - then once I started coming up with mechanics for the game I found I just had tons of ideas coming in. Location-specific effects really add an interesting layer onto the game.
the king is back! what do you think of Undercards (online tcg game)? Its card economy its interesting because you only have 25 cards in your deck, and CANT have more than 7 in your hand. If you draw a card while you have 7 in your hand that card is discarded, and if you draw whitout any cards in your deck, you get damaged.
I haven't heard of that game, but the restricted hand size is interesting! It's a really good safety valve to let the game have more card draw than usual. Sounds like there could be a fun balancing act between keeping a full hand of options, without letting your opponent force you to draw too high.
I am not a professional artist but if I can help you with border art and character art, I could put it on the game crafter for you. If you don't wont to that's fine just thought I would make the offer. (Edit) If you do take me up on my offer just a few questions. 1. do you want flavor text. 2. do you want different card borders for every color like Buddyfight, or just something uniform. 3. do you want the eldritch lord to look different from the other fronts and shadows or not. 4. do you want your card back to stay the same as your prototype or you want me to design something different.
I'm not quite at the point where I think it's worth it, but if I do decide to go further with this game I'll keep you in mind - definitely appreciate the offer!
I think you should figure out a way to mix and match starting fronts and Shadow lords having every starting front have a specific Shadow Lord seems pretty limiting and predictable
The fronts only have the barrier effect and a flip effect, so it's really only art that changes - which is basically what I intended for them, since it lets the locations do their work in the early game. But it's really the shadow lord that makes the starting front interesting, which is why I wanted them to be linked on the same card.
The secret is watching way too much anime (and vtubers), and embracing chuunibyou cringe. It's amazing what you can come up with when you just ignore the little voice that says "don't do that, that's ridiculous."
Also, I'm glad someone thinks those names are cool, because I was literally telling myself it was maybe a bit too ridiculous through most of the design process XD
I really like the Hololive art too bad its gonna be scrapped if you someday decide to make it a profitable game Also what about implementing that only if you have the bigger attack or power number deals damage instead of a 100% damage deal no matter what?
Worth checking to see if damage on success in combat works better - I like the current set up, but dealing damage with successful attacks does feel better for most players. I've been writing some fiction based on the game, and while it does feel a bit hololive-ish in parts, it actually works out well enough on its own. I really love the art, though, so it will be hard to let that go.
pixiv.net - I own none of it, I just grabbed it to illustrate the alpha test. If there's a specific art you like, just let me know - I can point you to the artist's page!
The inconvenient thing about 0, is that the next step up from 0 is 1. Then, the step up from 1, is to 2, and if you have 2 of something, you have double what you had, when you had 1- whereas, the jump from, say, 9 to 10, is not as dramatic.
@@ninetales1234 I actually ended up making a full video about that - 1 to 2 is a much bigger jump than 2 to 3 or 3 to 4. Starting resources actually work really well to smooth that out!
Yeah, it wasn't an intentional design inspiration, but I do think double-sided leaders work better than single-sided. It gives the player something to build towards over the game.
@@tcgacademia yeah and i do believe liek hwo the dbz tcg leader is perfectly find to do that way and the whole inspiration fro the magic duel sides card are a good touch and not bog down the player with to much hcard management
it was a really long wait for this video but I never expected 40 minutes of Mirror World! It's an incredible looking game and (imho) you have done an incredible job with it
Thanks! I was worried about the length - it felt like I was starting to get a little too self-indulgent.
this feels like a project moon tcg, i will be watching your career with great interest
Also i really like that this game doesnt have a lot of type of cards, only the shadow lords, and the fronts and the shadows
I still think it's really cool Vanguard managed a TCG with only 1 card type.
I think you showcased one of the most important things of game design very well, takeing a break from something you're struggling with and trying something else for fun. But for me it was morso the opposite, i set aside some game mechanics for new ones only to later use those scrapped game mechanics in a different game. Not every idea is a bad idea, sometimes it just needs the right environment to flourish.
I'm really glad that part came through! More than anything that was the part I really wanted to communicate through this process, since it's really easy to get discouraged along the way when things don't work out the way you expect.
Thank you for posting this series, appreciate seeing your thought process, troubleshooting etc
I would play this. The mechanics and theme are right up my alley.
I've been following this project since the start and I'm very proud and happy for you to work through the hardships of game design to create this awesome prototype! Congrats on all your hard work!
I somehow missed this comment when it was posted, but it definitely brightened my day seeing it now. Thank you!
At first I wasn't too hip on your game, but seeing it play out I see how well the theming worked and I really dig it.
This game feels pretty great. I have some highlights here:
• I love the final implementation of the shadow lord.
• Looking at the top two, drawing one and charging the other is awesome. I thought about this a while ago. It keeps some of the hand selection of resource systems like Duel Masters without making it a long and complex decision (especially for new players) which is my biggest problem with it.
• The effects of the locations are pretty much perfect. Especially noteworthy that one of them is something completely unique to your game.
Overall great job with the videos!
And here's some feedback that popped to mind as I saw the gameplay:
• I'm not in love with lifedecking still, for the same old reasons. I appreciate that costs return resources to the deck, but it seems inelegant. I don't know if players would intuitively count your deck *plus your resources*, I think it would feel bad if you lose with a lot of resources when you were planning to spend them, etc.
• The starting front/shadow lord has a lot of peculiar rules that bring attention to themselves because they are so similar to how other units work but not quite the same:
- When visually scanning the field for fronts without shadows, you look for one and two-card pairs, but the shadow lord is "hidden" behind a double-faced card.
- To reverse units, you tap any units at the temple. To reverse the shadow lord, you need units at the temple but instead it taps itself. I understand this is balance-related but it's a bit jarring because it feels like they should act the same mechanically.
- The shadow lord is the only unit that cannot attack immediately upon reversing. With other units, you could set up a turn so that you reverse and immediately attack, but with the shadow lord you are 100% sure that it's not going to.
- Absolute barrier. I think you should change it to "This cannot be destroyed" for the front and "This is reversed instead of destroyed" for the shadow lord. Not being able to be attacked makes that "protecting the location" loophole that feels like an actual cheat. Plus, if a shadow lord has a good effect, you can choose not to attack and your opponent can't do anything to it. Being able to attack it and defeat it (even if it only delays it for one turn) is much more interesting, and it's already hard because of its stats.
• I don't know if tying "units you need to tap to reverse" and damage is ideal. It is one fewer stat, but it leaves you with no option to make a powerful shadow that needs a bit cost but isn't aggressive. I do appreciate that the shadow effect can give it extra damage.
• Overall I would like to see bigger costs for shadows and bigger effects in general. The card flow is there, the resources grow with the game, you can go a little crazier. Right now, the game's rhythm is a bit too constant turn after turn, and it gets a little long. If expensive shadows are a problem for screw reasons, then perhaps fronts with effects with very high costs for the late game.
A lot of this might not make sense for the balance of the game (which I'm not familiar with) so of course take it with a grain of salt.
And everything I didn't mention is probably working great. Good job again!
@@fernandobanda5734 All of these are great points!
- Lifedecking - personally I really like trying to build your deck and pace your effect use to make sure you don't end up with a pile of resources left over, but I can see how that would be a bit fiddly for a lot of players. For now I like how it plays, but it's definitely something I'd need to keep a close eye on during playtesting.
- Starting front / shadow lord - Currently, the starting front is the only one with full art (no text box), so it stands out on the field decently well. Revesing it with its own ability also felt natural pretty quickly in my testing - I did originally have it use the temple to reverse, but this wasn't working since rank 3 is really hard to hit, and if one player can do it and the other can't it really unbalances the game. Similar with being able to reverse and attack - the shadow lords would have to be substantially nerfed if they were able to reverse each turn and attack. Having a delay allowed me to make them much more powerful and imactful, and also left room for the other cards to be relevant. As far as absolute barrier - I started with the starting front only having ability-targeting-protection, and when it was attacked it would just reverse to the shadow lord who had huge power, but no barrier protection. Similar to using the temple to reverse, it was hard but not impossible to beat over the shadow lord, and if you did it would really unbalance the game. This is another thing where I like the current rules well enough now, but is worth keeping an eye on if/when I pull the game out for wider playtesting. I'm still not 100% on the wierdness of the shadow lord completely protecting a location if it's your only unit there, but given everything else going on with shadow lord balancing, so far it's the least wierd solution, and it does really emphasize the positioning aspect of the game.
- Manifest rank - the rank actually worked out pretty well - in both cases I don't really want a range past 1 or 2. More damage than that swings the game too quickly, and more units needed to flip is too difficult to keep that many units at the temple. It worked out surprsinginly well as a single stat, and as you mentioned, effects can boost damage output when needed - that's decent part of red's colour pie.
- Costs - Higher manifest ranks don't really work due to the limitations of keeping units alive at the temple. There's definitely some room for higher ability costs, though - this deck was actually a bit minimal on this, black especially has a fair bit more costed effects than I found room to add in this sample deck. Good call on the rhythm, though - that's been a struggle for this game almost from the start. It's a lot better than it was, but there's room for improvement, for sure.
Thanks for the comments! I appreciate that you took a really deep look at this system - you have a really good understanding of it. Pretty much everything you pointed out here was something I had skipped over in the video, but was either a solution to an earlier problem, or something I need to keep an eye on in any further testing, or both.
@@tcgacademia No problem! I was really invested in the gameplay because it seemed a lot of fun. I hope the feedback was useful even if just to reinforce the decisions you already took.
The biggest disappointment of this video is that you're not playing in knight gloves. Or however they are called.
Gauntlets are surprisingly difficult to play cards in XD
AWESOME VID BRO. Informative. nice to see your design flow!
congrats on completing this project. your videos inspired me to create a tcg too
Awesome! I'm really glad to hear they helped inspire you!
First off, let me say I love that this isn't high fantasy tolkien styled tcg. Second, i have been waiting for the completion of this project for a while but i have a few questions, hopefully i didn't miss anything in the video and end up sounding like a fool.
1. is there a synergy or any restriction on colour use?
2. why not have the locations oriented landscape instead of portrait?
3. do you find moving the cards around so often tedious?
4. will you continue to develop the project, maybe to the point of sales and distribution?
Good questions! (And I agree, there's not enough card games out there that let you battle with transit planners and office clerks.)
1. A lot of the time faction/colour restrictions are a bit of an afterthought for me when designing a game, so I'm not surprised I didn't mention it here. When you reverse a card, you can only reverse if the Front matches the Shadow, or if the Front activating the temple matches the Shadow. So far this seems to make 2 colour decks relatively painless, but it does make 3 and 4 colour decks somewhat tricky.
2. Honestly, most of the art I found was in portrait, so that's just what I stuck with. Good call, though, they should definitely be in -portrait- landscape (edit - just noticed I said portrait twice here, LifTafari91 is correct that they should be in landscape)!
3. In the previous version (rule 6), where you kept putting them back into standby at the end of each turn, that was really boring. There's still a fair bit of moving units around in this version, but I've not gotten bored of it here - you're repeating moves a lot less and each move you make is a lot more deliberate.
4. Not any time in the near future. As much as I like the game, TCGs are really, really intimidating to publish. I also have a decent backlog of smaller game projects I want to release. I'll keep Mirror World in my back pocket, though - I'd love to be able to actually release it some time in the future once I have a bit more experience selling and distributing games!
I love this kind of video, please continue!
I thought the time away from your initial game had a great concept: a deck with good/evil cards, choosing which side you'd wanna play as and using abilities on the cards chosen on the field. I'm excited that you found the answers you were looking for in Mirror World, but it'd be cool to see you flesh out that quick thinking process
I'm keeping that game in my back pocket, for sure! It was an interesting idea, but it would work better as a smaller, stand-alone game, rather than trying to build it up to a full tcg system.
Man I love your vids 😄. As a hobbyist designer your perspective is really interresting. Are you planning on releasing the rules for your game to the public at some point?
Thanks! I would love to, but the art budget a game like this would need does give me some pause. I have some other game projects on the go at the moment, but I'd love to be able to come back and give this a proper release at some point in the future.
happy that you done with the core rule, and I still can see the design spaces where it can really explored (like those two shadows at the end, that's hard to guard, maybe in future effect that can intervenes with another location) overall I'm glad following the process of this game
Thank you! And yeah, one of the things that really convinced me the game was in a good spot was that I kept thinking of new mechanics I could add. Sometimes in a game I'll run into a wall where it's hard to think up of new effects, and sometimes there's games that feel like wide open playgrounds. This is honestly one of my favourite features of TCGs, and I'm really glad I got Mirror World to a place where I was getting that feeling.
@@tcgacademia oh that feeling of thinkning the potential of "oooh I can do/add this" is amazing indeed
@@comettcg8830 It's especially nice for me, since I was coming off working on a few smaller games where I was struggling to find new effects. Probably my favourite part of working on a tcg system!
Good job, you finally did it!
The game really looks appealing, and the gameplay really smoothes out the comprehension of the rules. As it stand, it still seems like the temple is the most important location, but it doesn't overshadowes the other two as crucial parts of the battlefield. I think this is a huge flavor win, and having a game were all you need to play is a single deck is HUGE. I'll never press enough how having multiple decks (like in FoW, Yu Gi Oh or Wixoss) is tedious even tho it creates a lot of design space, and having to track life totals in abstract numbers (like in Magic, FoW and Yu Gi Oh) is also something that makes for slow setting up of the game and requires more space on the table. The game is really appealing and I'd love to try it for myself ! Do you plan on sharing card lists of starters decks to print and try, or even to sell some sets of printed cards ? Anyway, let us know, and keep up the great work !
Only needing one deck to play is definitely something I appreciate about Duel Masters, so I'm glad I was able to make it work here! As far as releasing it goes, it's in a bit of an odd place - because all the art is just stolen from Pixiv, I'd only release it as is if I was 100% sure I was not going to do any further work on the game. Anything past this point in the design process is where I start needing to use art I have permissions for. So as long as I'm not sure how far I'm taking this game, it's kind of up in the air.
you are probably one of my favorite youtubers and Ive only seen 5 of your videos, keep up the good work. Also, how do you physically make those cards, they seem nice and I would love to know for my final projects
Thanks! I actually have a video that goes into making cards - 'designing playtest cards'. I also did a stream where I muddle my way through making a basic card frame in photoshop - that one's less interesting, but if you're feeling really, really lost it might also help.
@@tcgacademia oh okay thank you!
wow this does seem like a really solid and interesting game 👍
Interesting. Any chance of you sharing your rules document for us to try it ourselves? I wan to get a little hands on with the game, see how it feels. It reminds me a bit of Marvel Snap, but with more depth. I really like the Life Decking = Sanity and Location mechanics.
I'm kind of in a weird spot where I'm not quite sure what I want to do with this game. I'll definitely share it in some form, though, just need to figure out how far I go with it!
@@tcgacademia Hmm, any way I could contact you privately?
For the upcoming year will you be working on your non TCG card game? The one mentioned in your Channel Review and Goals video.
I find it interesting how different it is then designing a TCG, honestly I think it is harder. Though non TCGs do have some advantages, TCGs always have that risk that the optimal decks are the more boring ones and when it is released it is released no need to make expansion packs constantly.
I am not intending to add any pressure but I am interested in the softwares you use. I use the Affinity art softwares and Tabletop Creator and port directly into Tabletop Simulator for testing.
Honestly, the game is mostly done at this point, but I keep second-guessing myself, especially when it comes to making the video showing it off. I do still want to make some progress on it by the end of the year - even if it's only a TTS mod to move the game into a final round of playtests. Really, though, I need to just do it - so thanks for the nudge, I honestly really appreciate it!
As for the software, I just use an image editor (pixlr) and word docs. For a while I was setting up templates using a game engine and coding individual shapes, which was honestly not bad, but getting the graphic options of a dedicated video editor and the instant feedback whenever you change the placement of a box or text is too useful. I do want to get into using a proper editor, though, as it does make changing and balancing cards a lot easier. I've been getting some good suggestions from the comments, so thanks for adding a few other options to check out!
yeah, it would be awesome to be able to test out the game in tts. If that's in the cards for you.@@tcgacademia
Hang on did you move a charged resource to the office on player 2's first turn?
One aspect that I'm curious about is the decision to make the full damage guaranteed regardless on whether the attack succeeds or fails. Any reason or previous testing that made that seem like the right choice? It seems like a bit of an odd move, especially since it would lead to scenarios where someone could hit a point where the lack of ability to block damage means that even if they play perfectly they could be fully cognizant of a game that is logistically impossible to win.
While a lot of people don't like them, I do think that floating ideas that can aim to prevent snowballing via mechanics does have value. A lot of lifedecking games implement a trigger system for this reason, I think. That said, Mirror World's mechanics have developed in a way that might make triggers a bit rough to work with, considering it would be very easy to shift them onto the bottom of your deck which would make the endgames really samey and dreadfully annoying. So a system that is in a lot of games being stapled in at the expense of the more interesting and unique cycling of the core resource loop, I can see why triggers might be passed on.
The system was based on Weiss Schwarz, which does something similar with guaranteeing damage in an attack. In this system I was worried about the game stalling out a little too easily, , which is doubly bad with life decks since taking more damage from just drawing your cards rather than from the opponent is not a great gameplay experience. Guaranteed damage on attack ended up working out to give the game the pace of play I was looking for, so I tried it and ended up sticking with it. There's still a ton of interaction in the damage race, since you have a relatively high amount of freedom in your attack targets. I've found that you usually only can guarantee your loss in the second-to-last turn, and the race tends to be pretty tight right up to the last turn, so there's still a lot of uncertainty right up to the end.
I was actually thinking of triggers as something to add to Mirror World - it's actually a pretty simple concept to add to the base rules. It ultimately wasn't necessary for the first wave of card designs, so I haven't dug into it much yet, but I'm definitely keeping it in mind as future design space. They can't be too crazy, but something like 'target unit gets -2000 power this turn' or 'add a card from your resources to hand' or 'put a shadow from your resources into play' are all designs I think should work out - although I haven't tested it yet.
Hey this series is rad, and just happened to show up in my yt recs while I've been preparing to start the playtesting phase of my own tcg. I'm curious how you made the actual physical cards, did you design your own template for the card layouts, and if so, how?
I did! I actually made a few videos about designing the physical cards - there's one video on Playtest Cards, and a live stream I did where I made a card from from scratch. Hopefully they're helpful!
@@tcgacademia oh that's perfect, thanks for the quick response, I'm really glad I found your channel
Have you considered a removed-from-the-game zone? My first thought is "life gain" decks might eventually become too powerful by constantly renewing your deck, so maybe removing the initial card on attack from the game could somewhat negate the issue. Also, no shuffling? If that's the case, once you've gone through your deck it's deterministically set, so it completely removes randomness from the game. Perhaps sending "returned to deck" cards to a different zone, then if an action requires more cards in the deck you just shuffle and add them to the bottom, similar to Dominion, or adding them in a random order if there's more than one sent there.
I hate repeated shuffling during a game, so I deliberately left that out. You nailed it on life gain being a problem, though. The first few cards in the design are probably fine, but I don't think the game can realistically support more than a small handful of cards with 'cards to the bottom' as life gain. I was thinking of adding 'phantom cards' to your deck as a more balanced form of life gain if I took the game further - very basic token units that would still add to your deck total, but wouldn't enable life gain loops. I think it's somewhat inevitable that games need a 'no really, it's gone for good' zone, so a removed-from-game zone will almost certainly happen at some point.
@@tcgacademia Glad to hear back. Your deck size video came across my feed and I immediately clicked, then watched the playlist. As someone who's into game design it was an absolute blow to my ego thinking I knew anything about it then having someone explain in detail all the things I missed. You do an amazing job.
Are you worried about the locations holding too much of the game’s mechanics, as opposed to living in the decks, in the cards chosen by the player to create a strategy?
I actually tested for that! It ends up balancing out just fine - any deck can draw some extra cards by tapping units at the temple, but it's still somewhat limited and some strategies are going to want more draw. Same with the other locations. It's a bit like drawing at the start of your turn doesn't limit card draw effects in most games. I do have to keep a close eye on Front abilities, since on-play effects work much better than tap effects, since they want to tap at locations, but it does balance well, at least from what I've seen so far.
I noticed that it doesn't matter how many of what units you stack on location since the attacker gets to choose who they attack and will always choose to attack the weakest unit, I feel like the defender should get that choice
How has lifedecking affected deck construction in your game? I'd worry that decks would be heavily pushed to include a full playset of most cards to avoid milling key pieces, unless the game supports a lot of discard recursion.
Most strategies so far don't really mind losing a few key cards, and there's enough recursion effects that more card-specific gameplans should still be able to function. I'm sure it will require some balance adjustments to make sure it works in the future, but so far it feels like it's not a huge issue.
@@tcgacademia Hmmm, definitely something to keep an eye on. I'm interested to see how difficult it will be to balance recursion, since so many cards will be sent to the discard.
@@thebigcheese1905 So far it's not too bad. Black has most of the graveyard recursion, and it's also the slowest, most late-game focused colour. In my experience, with a 30-card deck, the game is fast enough that there's not a ton of time to take advantage of a fully-stocked graveyard, so it keeps itself balanced that way. Definitely something to keep an eye on in the future, through!
Wonder if Tabletop Simulator could have Mirror World as a mod? Or will you plan to make a physical cards buisiness out of it? Or a video game?
As much as I'd love to actually get the game into a releasable state, it takes a pretty massive art budget for a game this size, and I don't want to release it as an independent game using a bunch of borrowed art. (I also have no experience making TTS modes.) Keeping the options open for the future, but not releasing the game at the moment.
@@tcgacademia Dropped a separate comment but I would urge you to consider AI art, despite the negativity around it. I do not see it as a valid reason to stop a good game and lots of honest effort go to waste. In fact I think it's even unfair that some other dude's monetary gain is considered "worth" your loss and the loss to all the potential players of your games.
ngl, the game sounds really cool. If it was a board game (like, you buy everything together as a single thing, build the deck or play with precon decks and then you put them back to the box ans you dont need to buy boosters), I'd consider buying it ahahhag
The game and its mechanics are very interesting, altough im not seeing much room to evolve. Maybe i should see all the cards to know it.
I kind of stumbled a bit at first as I was trying to expand it - then once I started coming up with mechanics for the game I found I just had tons of ideas coming in. Location-specific effects really add an interesting layer onto the game.
the king is back! what do you think of Undercards (online tcg game)? Its card economy its interesting because you only have 25 cards in your deck, and CANT have more than 7 in your hand. If you draw a card while you have 7 in your hand that card is discarded, and if you draw whitout any cards in your deck, you get damaged.
I haven't heard of that game, but the restricted hand size is interesting! It's a really good safety valve to let the game have more card draw than usual. Sounds like there could be a fun balancing act between keeping a full hand of options, without letting your opponent force you to draw too high.
@@tcgacademia yes! it also makes tall decks way more viable
I am not a professional artist but if I can help you with border art and character art, I could put it on the game crafter for you. If you don't wont to that's fine just thought I would make the offer.
(Edit) If you do take me up on my offer just a few questions.
1. do you want flavor text.
2. do you want different card borders for every color like Buddyfight, or just something uniform.
3. do you want the eldritch lord to look different from the other fronts and shadows or not.
4. do you want your card back to stay the same as your prototype or you want me to design something different.
I'm not quite at the point where I think it's worth it, but if I do decide to go further with this game I'll keep you in mind - definitely appreciate the offer!
I think you should figure out a way to mix and match starting fronts and Shadow lords having every starting front have a specific Shadow Lord seems pretty limiting and predictable
The fronts only have the barrier effect and a flip effect, so it's really only art that changes - which is basically what I intended for them, since it lets the locations do their work in the early game. But it's really the shadow lord that makes the starting front interesting, which is why I wanted them to be linked on the same card.
I have a great question for you. How the hell do you come up with those freaking cool names for your card.? 😮😮
The secret is watching way too much anime (and vtubers), and embracing chuunibyou cringe. It's amazing what you can come up with when you just ignore the little voice that says "don't do that, that's ridiculous."
Also, I'm glad someone thinks those names are cool, because I was literally telling myself it was maybe a bit too ridiculous through most of the design process XD
I really like the Hololive art too bad its gonna be scrapped if you someday decide to make it a profitable game
Also what about implementing that only if you have the bigger attack or power number deals damage instead of a 100% damage deal no matter what?
Worth checking to see if damage on success in combat works better - I like the current set up, but dealing damage with successful attacks does feel better for most players. I've been writing some fiction based on the game, and while it does feel a bit hololive-ish in parts, it actually works out well enough on its own. I really love the art, though, so it will be hard to let that go.
Hey, just curious - where did you get the art for this?
pixiv.net - I own none of it, I just grabbed it to illustrate the alpha test. If there's a specific art you like, just let me know - I can point you to the artist's page!
none specifically, but thanks!@@tcgacademia
This sounds vaguely like Marvel Snap
Is there a way to get hands on this game?
Not yet! I'd like to get some proper art and actually release it one day, though!
I want to play the game now 😭😭
Always good to hear! There's a lot I need to get better at with game publishing, but I really want to release this at some point!
@@tcgacademia i would love it if this game got released 😍😍
4:22 I agree, I think MtG would be better if the game was designed so that every game, a player starts with some non-zero amount of Mana.
The inconvenient thing about 0, is that the next step up from 0 is 1. Then, the step up from 1, is to 2, and if you have 2 of something, you have double what you had, when you had 1- whereas, the jump from, say, 9 to 10, is not as dramatic.
@@ninetales1234 I actually ended up making a full video about that - 1 to 2 is a much bigger jump than 2 to 3 or 3 to 4. Starting resources actually work really well to smooth that out!
@@tcgacademiawell, dang, I will go find it then
the shadow lord reminds me of force of will leader cards or like dragon ball tcg leader cards
Yeah, it wasn't an intentional design inspiration, but I do think double-sided leaders work better than single-sided. It gives the player something to build towards over the game.
@@tcgacademia yeah and i do believe liek hwo the dbz tcg leader is perfectly find to do that way and the whole inspiration fro the magic duel sides card are a good touch and not bog down the player with to much hcard management
Hey tcgAcademia do you have a discord? Would you be willing to import this game to Tabletop Simulator?