My first game: Keyblade War

This is a retrospective on my first game I ever designed, and its evolution into what is now Arena Arcanum:

Keyblade war actually started as a Fanart Project when I was getting hyped up for Kingdom Hearts 3 finally releasing after 6 years in development hell. It started when I created this Keyblade for one of my personal favorite characters, who I hoped would have a major return.

After this came more, ones for worlds I knew were big stretches, but were technically possible. (For those unaware, Square Enix were the publishers for Fullmetal Alchemist.) and I gave them this sort of, card-like design

After I showed a couple of my friends this, I got told this new format almost looked like trading cards. At this point I had been making custom Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh cards for a while and it sparked something in me, and so I designed a simple game. based on the classic card game War.

For those of you unfamiliar with War its rules are simple:

1. Using a standard deck of 52 playing cards deal half to each of the two players.

2. Each player shuffles their half and reveals the top card.

3. The player with the highest value card wins and takes the opponents card (Aces are high).

4. If there's a tie a "War" ensues, and the cards are moved to the center of the table. each player then adds the top three cards of their deck to their respective pile keeping them face-down, revealing the fourth, with the higher value taking both piles, this process repeats if there's a further tie.

5. If you run out of cards during a War your last card acts as the 4th, and any ties are immediately lost.

6. As the game goes on the player who takes all the cards wins, with players forming new decks from their won cards if their deck runs out before then.

Keyblade War was a two-player game, and the rules were modified to imitate a more complex TCG,

1. Each player starts the game with a deck of 15 cards and 10 life. Each player draws a hand of 3 cards.

2. Each player secretly chooses a card and places it face down in front of them.

3. When each player has chosen the cards are turned face up and their values are compared. The player with the larger attack value wins and the loser takes damage equal to the difference, with their Keyblade being destroyed and put into their discard pile. The winner returns their card to their hand.

4. Each player draws a card.

5. Repeat this process until someone reaches 0 life.

After a few playtests it became clear that if you opened up the game with one of the stronger Keyblades you could just keep replaying it and absolutely run away with the game, so I added a magic pool, with points gained at the end of each turn, and some magic abilities to help balance out the cards with weaker attack stats. In addition, defeated Keyblades no longer went to the discard pile as I wanted to let players form a strategy around some of the weaker Keyblade cards.

This played significantly better and I decided to develop this version of the game, with particular focus on the card frame, trying to emphasize the readability of each of the stats.

After copius playtesting and developing upwards of 30 fully illustrated and formatted cards for this game I decided to move away from the Kingdom Hearts IP in order to develop the game for a future market push. This is what eventually led to the creation of Arena Arcanum, the game I've been developing on and off (admittedly mostly off) for the better part of 6 years at this point.

But that game's development is a story for another time.

Until then, find something that inspires you and ride it like the wind,

Best Wishes.