The idea behind my Final Year Project (FYP) was to attempt to expand upon the digital card game Hearthstone with my own unique class. There has already been examples of popular streamers adding their own custom Monk and Death knight classes to the game, as both class exist in the game Hearthstone is based on: World of Warcraft.
However I did not want to get too tied up with lore and spend more time designing which Is why I decided to add a twist by mixing Hearthstone with the art and lore of Telltale Games: The Wolf Among Us. My aim was to be able to add my own custom class mechanic to the game while paying respect to the lore from both both games and the mechanics of Hearthstone without breaking the game.
I decided to research all the mechanics and fundamentals of the game, some of which I was not sure on from my own experiences while playing. I have expanded on this in a "How to" style document explaining the game.
Given that I didn't have the time or knowledge to script a working version of the game to test my custom class I decided to create a paper prototype which quickly escalated into getting every card that exists printed from an commercial printing company.
I used my research to create my own class cards and used what information I could gather online about how Blizzard design cards themselves, and channeled that knowledge into my own cards.
Prior to going to print I posted my cards on various forums and community pages for feedback and asked my friends who enjoy the game as much as me. They provided me with some invaluable feedback and enabled me to realize certain problems before I paid for printing.
However I did not want to get too tied up with lore and spend more time designing which Is why I decided to add a twist by mixing Hearthstone with the art and lore of Telltale Games: The Wolf Among Us. My aim was to be able to add my own custom class mechanic to the game while paying respect to the lore from both both games and the mechanics of Hearthstone without breaking the game.
I decided to research all the mechanics and fundamentals of the game, some of which I was not sure on from my own experiences while playing. I have expanded on this in a "How to" style document explaining the game.
Given that I didn't have the time or knowledge to script a working version of the game to test my custom class I decided to create a paper prototype which quickly escalated into getting every card that exists printed from an commercial printing company.
I used my research to create my own class cards and used what information I could gather online about how Blizzard design cards themselves, and channeled that knowledge into my own cards.
Prior to going to print I posted my cards on various forums and community pages for feedback and asked my friends who enjoy the game as much as me. They provided me with some invaluable feedback and enabled me to realize certain problems before I paid for printing.
The above are some of the custom cards I created for my own class. ( I take no credit for any of the artwork )
A complete list of the cards can be found here.
A complete list of the cards can be found here.
Once I had all the cards printed I was able to begin testing Hearthstone as an analogue game in a tabletop environment. I chose people who were either familiar with the game or with Trading Card Games (TCG’s) so they came from a knowledgeable background. This aided testing as the players were able to use all the existing Hearthstone cards and able to give feedback and advice on playability.
As the images above show the game requires the use of pen and paper as well as computer assistance. The focus of this testing was to play around 20 games to make sure I had taken into account as many possible outcomes from the game as I could think of using popular decks in the current meta of the game.
Pen and paper were used to track health and mana crystals and then an excel spreadsheet was used to track various random number generator (RNG) aspects of the game. I also created paper tokens to indicate status effects on minions and several dice were used to simulate random damage or amounts of damage from features of certain cards. There is also a short amateur video I took on my iPhone available to watch on my You Tube channel which shows my testers playing, while I umpire the match.
Once getting over the initial differences I begun to test my own class in game. I documented all the feedback from everyone involved in the process in any way and used that information to help gauge my success or failure in my design efforts and criticized myself where applicable.
Like most people, I don't create my own decks but instead decks get spread around the internet by professional deck builders who spend weeks fine tuning a selection of cards to perfectly counter whatever the dominant deck is at the time. The deck builders are such a minority of people that the problem posed to me was that I am unable to effectively gauge if my cards are balanced because I am not proficient at deck building. I will never know beyond a doubt how my cards would fare if handed to a professional deck builder but I can at least attempt to create my own deck with my custom cards and test it against various decks. Most classes are inherently weak to a counter class but the balance never usually exceeds a 70/30 win to loss ratio.
The custom content I created worked fantastically but not without a few minor changes being made, but that was to expected. A couple of unforseen mechanical questions aside the class performed well in control matches but less so against aggressive decks, I wrote post testing feedback to present some of the ideas I would consider changing idea, and how certain cards are perhaps a little too strong or weak. I am happy I went through the process of creating an analogue version of the game, it is still just as fun to play as the digital one ( Who doesn't love to be able to sit down with physical cards in hand ? ) and it is something I can keep forever, refine and expand upon in the future.
Pen and paper were used to track health and mana crystals and then an excel spreadsheet was used to track various random number generator (RNG) aspects of the game. I also created paper tokens to indicate status effects on minions and several dice were used to simulate random damage or amounts of damage from features of certain cards. There is also a short amateur video I took on my iPhone available to watch on my You Tube channel which shows my testers playing, while I umpire the match.
Once getting over the initial differences I begun to test my own class in game. I documented all the feedback from everyone involved in the process in any way and used that information to help gauge my success or failure in my design efforts and criticized myself where applicable.
Like most people, I don't create my own decks but instead decks get spread around the internet by professional deck builders who spend weeks fine tuning a selection of cards to perfectly counter whatever the dominant deck is at the time. The deck builders are such a minority of people that the problem posed to me was that I am unable to effectively gauge if my cards are balanced because I am not proficient at deck building. I will never know beyond a doubt how my cards would fare if handed to a professional deck builder but I can at least attempt to create my own deck with my custom cards and test it against various decks. Most classes are inherently weak to a counter class but the balance never usually exceeds a 70/30 win to loss ratio.
The custom content I created worked fantastically but not without a few minor changes being made, but that was to expected. A couple of unforseen mechanical questions aside the class performed well in control matches but less so against aggressive decks, I wrote post testing feedback to present some of the ideas I would consider changing idea, and how certain cards are perhaps a little too strong or weak. I am happy I went through the process of creating an analogue version of the game, it is still just as fun to play as the digital one ( Who doesn't love to be able to sit down with physical cards in hand ? ) and it is something I can keep forever, refine and expand upon in the future.