Read the story on RPS. Cool looking game. I just want to say that in spite not knowing a whole lot about how exactly it plays, I'm still *very* interested in a co-op version, and think I have some friends who would say the same thing. I'd say that amongst my social circle the co-op component would be way more popular than the competitive one for multi-player. Especially if dungeon crawling is involved! If you're thinking about co-op, my advice for this style of game would be to make it as pick-up-and-go as possible. I.e, friends could jump into and out of another friends' single player game in between combats and the balance would be adjusted as necessary.
I'm with Thrull. I know my friends and I have grown tired of competitive gaming. I would love for a cooperative focus. From my perspective, leaving out PvP would allow you to create exciting cards without the worry of balancing - which could lead to more resources spent on more adventures. I'd be more than happy to pay up the wazoo for a frequently updated game where my cards don't get changed because of PvP issues. There is easily a growing trend for cooperative gaming titles.
I have another few questions for you, Jon. I noticed in the Gamasutra interview they referred to Cardhunter as "Flash based." This leads me to wonder if you will be using Flash CS5 for this venture since it has the ability to publish projects in the app store formats directly. Will you be using CS5, CS5.5 or some older version of Flash for this game or am I reading too much into the gamasutra article? In addition what other art software do you have plans on using in your work pipeline for this game? I assume it will utilize a lot of vector based art assets or am I mistaken with that somehow?
Is there going to be a client or we will be forced to play from the browser window? Speaking for myself, I fiercely hate to play from a browser window.
I see GameSpy put up an announcement for this too. Interestingly enough, it answers your question. Browser based, but considering a client.
Just want to chime in and say that yes there is interest in co-op adventures. That would be a blast to do those with other people to get cards.
I just saw the trailer and I'm very excited about this game. It looks like it's going to be awesome! Will there be an SDK or Modtools to allow users to create their own adventures?
This would be great news if it were possible. I would think they would need to have a non-browser client in order for that to work? Especially if they were to have competitive play, they would have to make sure that player made adventures would not reward powerful things. It's probably too soon to really speculate, but it would be an awesome addition. Battleforge had player made content, but you would only earn limited in game currency, so that would be a possibility - would be more a "for fun" option, rather than something to advance your character.
The loot will definitely be random, just like in a regular RPG. We're looking at some other sources of randomness to vary the battles but don't have any real info on that yet.
We play the game in a browser ourselves, but I really want to make a downloadable Air app as well. I understand why not everyone wants to play in a browser window. The game is not actually vector art based - it's pretty much all bitmaps. We weren't really going for that typical "Flash game" look.
Mod tools are on our radar, but, honestly, probably won't be in the first release of the game. Farbs is actually finishing up the board editor at the moment and it runs in a browser too!
Phew - lots of replies this morning. I hear what you guys are saying about co-op and we definitely want to do it. Again, it probably won't be in the first iteration of the game but I can tell it's pretty important to a lot of you.
Finally - feel free to start new threads for any questions. This one will get pretty large if we keep posting everything in here.
I was wowed by the announcement trailer & crushed by board game not included but still wanting to play. Tablet versions would be awesome.
Jon, can I suggest you put something up on BoardGameGeek. I believe you'd get a lot of traffic from BGG. Register the game name and upload the video advertisement.