To whomever it may concern, As it seems that there is some new energy being pumped into the game, I'd like to give the following feedback: Imo, if there is a flaw to CH, it is the graphic design. The gameplay is great, some stuff might need tweaking, but CH is a clever and original game that ranks well above average in terms of enjoyment. However, the graphic design is so weak that it puts a majority of people off, before they even try the game. Many of my gamer friends have reacted like that. As an example, the Gothic police that is all over the Multiplayer interface is ugly and hard to read. Its only redeeming feature is that is is medieval and that it was used in the original D&D material. But that in itself is certainly not enough to justify such a ridiculous choice of police. It looks like it was designed by Gary the Geek himself, it's silly. A few of my gamer friends have had peek at the interface and refused to play because of the choice of police, even before I would explain anything about the game. Same problem with the characters: not only are they two-dimensional cardboard figures, but they are also fairly ugly. In this day and age, you are competing with really slick looking games. CH will never be a hit with such poor graphic design. Some of the graphic design is acceptable, though, like the battle maps. They look reasonably good imo. If you guys wanted to make a hit game, then a complete graphic redesign would be a must.
I agree with you on the font. In particular, it's hard to distinguish "3" from "5". But I strongly disagree about the character art. I love the cardboard cutouts, and I know many other players also tried this game because they liked that style. And another thing I like about this game is that it is NOT trying to use a 3D engine for a 2D game.
If the FONT is what puts a person off of playing CH, then, they were beyond hope, anyway. People THAT picky aren't worth the Knights worrying about, quite frankly. As a matter of fact, even more frankly, if people are avoiding CH because non-4K, non-3D, non-RAM-devouring graphics, then, let then walk. Gameplay objectively matters more than graphics, anyhow.
Actually, I've come across a few people over the years that were extremely happy and enthusiastic about the artwork. It does have a "real life" "3D" quality that mimiks a real life board game. Personally, I don't care about artwork except mostly liking simple, like this. But I suspect it's easy to underestimate the impact of the art. If you look at the developement "archives", it took a lot of work and a looooot of changes to get the artwork and look and feel it where it is. ("Squarely in the 'Paper' Camp" or the like is what I think the artist called it.) I'm not in the mood for more LONG posts right now, but more options is almost always a better thing though. Especially if you can hide the option to customize obscure things under an "Advanced" -> "Really Advanced" -> "Scary" -> "Serious, I'm not a Moron, let me change stuff!" menu
I would agree with some parts. Yes, the font isn't ideal and I stumbled a few times over such details, too. For some characters I believe the front and back art work are a bit too similar (the chess pieces and the machines in the Wizard's Workshop are two examples), it's hard to see without hovering the mouse over a minion, whether it is facing the camera or not. Or that it is possible that one character covers another character (or terrain) such that the essential information, health and attachments, aren't visible anymore without hovering (but for this particular thing, I don't know if this is solvable at all, the game resembles a physical table top instance, and even there covering can occur based on perspective). And - more Game Engine related - details like that you can't inspect attachments once you activated a card and are in the "targeting phase". The last one is more of a bummer than any graphics because the graphic style is just the way this game SHOULD look like. When End of Flash was a thing I was looking into other similar games. Just to realize that many similar games are more like movies interrupted by short game scenes. Okay, this is a bit exaggerated but still, having cut scenes when the time I have for my turn is finite... ??? I would even go this far to say, that Card Hunter would benefit from a "chess by mail"-equivalent game mode. Having matches that are supposed to take days and don't require you to end them before you leave the map. Why I bring this up is to demonstrate one thing. I don't need characters that have an idle animation, or that complain when they are bored. They are pieces of paper on some stands. That they make sounds when playing a card is already a nice bonus. But not every game needs hyper-realism. They should tell me where they are, that's it!
Can't say I agree. I think card hunter's fusion of retro-dnd and board game aesthetics are really charming/well-executed. It's definitely a unique aesthetic choice among comparable video games/CCG's, which is a pretty big since most big CCG's tend to have a recognizable art style. If anything I'd say double down on it and get Ben Lee to do more awesome art for future content
The artwork ages splendidly, some of the stuff that lies around next to the board feels dated though, the stuff like pens and cans, meant to convey even more tabletop feeling.
