Amazia
Date: June 2016 - July 2018
Platforms: PC (planned) and Mobile (released
Role: Game Designer
Genre: Digital CCG
Leo Games was a new indie game dev startup that I joined as a co-founder. Leveraging my formalist game design background, and the means available to us, we decided to create an online multiplayer CCG.
Amazia was a digital CCG inspired by a variety of CCGs including Duel Masters, Yugioh, and Hearthstone. The combat and mechanics were designed to be unique and innovative without copying any game’s design as a base blueprint.
At the beginning, I used paper prototyping to play the game on paper to validate core design aspects.
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Great attention was spent on creating dynamic negative feedback loops to pull the game towards a state of interactions and letting players always feel like they can make a comeback.
The result was a fun, interactive, balanced, and deep game.
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This was one of many A3 pieces of paper that were printed and then cut to play the game on tabletop
The game was initially planned for release on PC in international markets but after a request from one of the startup’s funders, we pivoted to the local Iranian mobile market. Designs for the game were changed and simplified to accommodate that pivot. The PC’s large screen granted us access to more interactable space for players’ inputs. Furthermore, the mobile gaming market’s audience is more casual and therefore the complexity of the game had to be lowered.
The 2 main mechanical changes were the removal of the “Commander Cohorts”, a number of fighter cards that a player always has access to (akin to a small uncustomizable version of the Extra Deck in Yugioh), but to be able to use them had to sacrifice or fuse certain cards from their hand to draw them out of the Commander Cohort and into the player’s hand; and the second major change was the removal and replacement of the “Stockpile”, a zone where at the start of every turn a top card from the deck will be deposited into which formed the mana of the player, but also doubled as a search, as each commander could draw one card from the stockpile into their hand each game (at the cost of losing mana).
The simplified mobile version that included the automatic mana system an no stockpile. "Shield Triggers" as seen here were one of the primary mechanics designed as negative feedback loops to let players catch up.
As the sole designer I designed every card and mechanic, contributed to their implementation through code, and built the lore of the world of the card game. I also worked with outsourcers who created the artwork for the cards and coordinated with developers to make sure we were on schedule and budget. The game was successfully launched and gained over 140,000 players within the first year, and enjoyed a year of live ops support where we released 2 expansion packs.
Example code for one of the card effects.
Example card art that I worked with outsourcers on creating.