Cross Post of Development Update 1 from Danfornace.com:
Hey guys. Working on Elementimals 2, I knew that I wanted to add more purpose and strategy to the Elements that each card has. So far, I have done this in two ways.
The first way has been in the test build for a few weeks now. Just like in the first game, each game board has four elements slot on it, one for each element in the game – Air, Earth, Fire and Water. These slots are placed randomly on the empty board at the beginning of each game. When placing a card, if you match the element slots, for example a Green Card onto an Earth Slot, then all the numbers on the card get +1. If you place a card on the wrong slot, for example, a Blue Card onto an Earth Slot, then all the numbers get -1.
The new addition to Elementimals 2 are Triple Element Slots, which were suggested by one of my colleagues. Triple Element Slots are exactly what they sound like, slots that have triple the power. When placing a card onto a Triple Element slot all its numbers either increase or decrease by 3 instead of 1. In standard play, there will be 3 Element Slots and 1 Triple Element Slot. The position and power of the slots is different each game.
The next addition that I want to add to the game to increase the purpose of the Elements is that some Cards would have special Card Powers. Right now I have a couple ideas for Card Powers, and all of them revolve around Elements. The first power was the most obvious to me. It is the ‘Pool Power’.
The ‘Pool Power’ is represented by an icon of the type of power that (Air, Earth, Fire or Water). When a card is placed, the Pool Power activates – all the numbers on the card increase by 1 for each card in play of the ‘Pool Power’ Element. In the below example, there were four earth cards in play so all of the Earth Scorpion’s numbers increased by 4.
Currently Pool Powers can only be found on cards with a matching element, but as the game develops I will play around with how that works. Imagine for all cards that have a Pool Power, you could get a card with any of the four element powers. What is more useful for a fire deck – a fire card with a fire power or a water card with a fire power? The answer may seem simple, but remember there will always be at least a single Water Slot on every element board.
Card Powers will end up costing extra deck resources when building them. Currently the Pool Power increases a card’s deck points by 2. In other words, a 2-2-2-2 card with a Pool Power costs the same in your deck as a 4-4-4-4 card. If this is not balanced enough, then I will play with limiting powers or making them cost more.
As the game develops, a fire deck may look something like the above screenshot. If the player waits to play their two fire cards then the first will get at least +3 on all numbers and the second will get at least +4.
You can check out Card Powers in Endless Mode right now at
Elementimals.com. I plan on tackling another power this week, which relates to elements but unlike the Card Power is stronger early into a match rather than late into a match. I will keep you guys posted.
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