We're at the finishing line for this Season of the WCDC! I've very much enjoyed this Season - I made an effort to take part more myself, because I realised that as much as I'd enjoyed seeing everyone else getting to flex their creative muscles I'd been too busy to do much creating myself. I'll have to pick a project to get stuck into while we're taking a break before the next Season; then I can tell you all about it!
A short and sweet Conversation this week, with thoughts of other realms.
Works Every Time
We begin by congratulating the winner of the latest WCDC. Well done to Wailor and their Moonclaw Panthara!
As we're on our last competition of the Season, Wailor will be in charge of the theme for the first competition of Season 3 (whenever that may be).
Champion's League
As much as we're a very Hearthstone-focused article, I'd feel remiss not mentioning that another Fan Community Spotlight went up this weekend, looking at some takes on how a few Champions from League of Legends might appear in Runeterra.
Despite being for a different game, I find that reading about the creative process someone goes through can be very helpful when designing your own cards for Hearthstone; while the end product isn't the same, the actual steps to get there have a lot of overlap.
Check out the interview, and look into Runeterra too if you haven't; it wasn't my cup of tea, personally, but I hear great things through the grapevine.
Green Is Not A Creative Colour
While we're on the subject of other card games, I'm interested in hearing from you all - aside from Hearthstone, have you ever designed cards for a card game? Not even just one of the ones we cover on the site, but any card game in general. I've always been curious how active the creative side of the playerbase is for other games.
I know, for example, that there's quite a large community of custom card creators for MtG - and even outwith that you won't find many players who haven't looked at a card and wondered how they'd have done it better. This is especially prominent when looking at banned cards, I find; since erratas are so rare for a physical game, speculation about how they might have fixed a banned card takes on a different form than it does in Hearthstone, where we might instead suggest different nerfs or buffs. In Magic, the discussion is always about how they might have avoided the issue in the first place, rather than what can be done after the fact.
Beyond card games, I find it fascinating to see where people put their creativity. Games like Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm or Awesomenauts (a personal favourite, sadly dying-to-dead) have people speculating to various degrees about what new characters could be added, from the lore implications to full loadout suggestions. They also have an amazing community of artists designing skins for their favourite characters, sometimes as jokes and sometimes as beautiful pieces of art - sometimes both at the same time!
We're creative beings at heart, and I love seeing all the ways we show that when it comes to our favourite media. I'd encourage anyone to get out there and make things for their favourite games - art, stories, nitty-gritty balance changes because you really think that if they just gave Jigglypuff a little bit less lag on Rest then they'd be a real contender; you know, whatever.
The Final Act
As I mentioned above, this week is the last WCDC of the Season! We're saying goodbye with a fun-filled festivities theme!
Comments
Awesomenauts has some of the most creative character design I've ever seen in gaming. Every single character is completely unique, from art design to combat kit to even how they jump, but still fits perfectly into the universe. It's like the high points of Hearthstone card designs, but for every single hero. Truly a shame that the game is dying.
Dying? Are there still players in that game?
Its been a while since I last even heard of this game. Its ftp now, but I doubt anyone but the most loyal of players are still there.
I will agree that its characters are pretty solidly designed. Too bad these kind of side scroller games are pretty much ignored when it comes to multiplayer games.
Really interesting talking point this week!
I love these card games which aren't CGC, like Bang and such. I know they have a specific name, but I can't recall it 😅
Thus I most of my custom cards have been regarding those. My most ambitious project was making and printing a custom version of We Didn't Playtest This At All, which is very lame game, but a blast to play with a bunch of friends.
I've also made custom cards for Bang! and for a couple games by Zombie Paella, an editorial which makes board games themed around the local legends and folklore of my home region.
The first time I ever got into designing my own cards was for Yu-Gi-Oh, which I believe was in-between 5D's and Zexal. I used to be super into Yu-Gi-Oh when I was a kid (clamoring to have my older brother's copy of Theinen the Great Sphinx because it looked like the coolest thing ever), and I grew up with my brother watching the original anime as well as GX. I stopped playing the game around the time 5D's came along, and haven't really played since although I still sometimes watch videos related to the game on YouTube and the game is so much crazier than before. I am also very fond of the GBA games which were basically the first digital card games I ever played, and they're honestly still quite fun. Simpler times, simpler times.
I'm not super active in creating cards for MTG or LoR, but I sometimes try to dabble in it when I can.
What I've always wanted to do though, and have the largest aspiration in my life to do now than I ever have, is to create my own card game. I have made my own small card games as a fun project for friends, but this is the first time in my life that I really want to go serious about it.
I'd play that. I'd play that hard. I'd play that soooo hard.