Hey everyone,
Welcome to Part 5 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Today, we’ll be discussing our fourth and final core gameplay mechanic: Team and Deck Building.
The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:
- Exploration
- Strategic Resource Management
- Tactical Turn Based Combat
- Team and Deck Building <- You are here
Team and Deckbuilding
Summoners Fate is a game about mastering creative strategies to achieve the most satisfying victories. To make introducing new mechanics easy and fun, all characters, spells and equipment are represented as cards. With your cards, you can build a team consisting of a Summoner, two heroic companions called Guardians, and a deck of 20 cards. With over 400 distinct cards including 200 diverse characters, players have near limitless freedom to unleash their imagination.
Card Collecting
Throughout your adventures, you collect cards. Cards expand your available strategies so you can tackle challenges with new and exciting solutions. While your collection resets with each new adventure, you’ll have some agency to choose from cards previously discovered to populate your starting deck. Successfully completing an adventure also permanently unlocks cards for Battle mode where you can construct custom decks and play head-to-head against the AI or other players in real-time and asynchronous multiplayer modes.
From the mightiest dragon to the lowliest squirrel, every card in Summoners Fate provides a distinct tactical value. Curious when you might choose a squirrel over a dragon? Continue reading to learn how squirrels can synergize with other cards.
We describe the cards in Summoners Fate as being “strategically diverse” rather than “common”, “uncommon” or “rare” as this best represents the spirit of our card collection mechanic. Other games may require the player to “dust” hundreds of powerless common cards to evolve them into a desired rare card. But in Summoners Fate, there is no grinding, no dusting, no card fusion: each card is distinct, balanced, and tactically useful in the right deck build. Instead of grinding to attain the highest power value, our card-driven system fosters a desire to experiment with new and creative ways to win.
Balance
One of the questions we are asked most often is “How do you balance a game with so many distinct cards and characters?” Imagine a game of rock-paper-scissors and take that to a grand scale. The key is to provide a natural counter for each card. There should never be a silver bullet set of cards or strategies that reigns as most powerful. Rather, choosing the right card, the right strategy at the right timing to counter your opponent’s tactics leads to a victory filled with surprise and excitement.
To satisfy our high quality standard for balance and engaging gameplay, every card and character in Summoners Fate must adhere to three core design principles:
- Provide a distinct tactical value
- Feel awesome and fun to play (either on its own or in synergy with other cards)
- Have another card that counters it
How do we know whether or not a card meets these standards? We bring it to our player community. If a card isn’t balanced or fun, it becomes obvious through player feedback and how often a card gets used or not used. We discuss the design in collaboration with our players and adapt the design as needed.
Managing Your Team
During adventure mode, you can customize your team while resting at camp. Interact with characters to manage your party. Interact with the Cosmic Tortoise to manage your deck.
Hint: If a character is sitting by the campfire and holding a marshmallow stick, they’re in your party. If a character is off to the side without a marshmallow, they’re in your reserve. Interact with characters to manage your team.
The Cosmic Tortoise carries the burden of your card collection. Interact with the tortoise to view your cards. Customize your deck by dragging cards from your collection (bottom) to your deck (top). In Battle Mode, switch tabs to choose your Summoner and Guardians.
Synergy
Characters are carefully designed to not only look unique and distinctive, but to play strategically different. Characters have natural strengths and weaknesses that complement each other to create strategies where the sum is greater than the whole. For example, the presence of a Skeleton Captain on the board enhances the power of all ally skeletons. Build a team of all animals, and you can guarantee that all of your characters are going to benefit from spells like Animal Growth and Breed.
You hurl a squirrel at an Orc. With a satisfying thud, it donks the orc and jumps to the ground. What do you do next? A) Mutate it into the Super Human Hulk Squirrel B) Turn it into a furry suicide bomber C) Breed it into an army of ankle biter rodents
Factions
There are multitudes of factions: Orcs, Skeletons, Dreadnoughts, Ironclads, Animals, Insects, Dragons, Demons, etc. Additionally, you’ve got schools of magic and card types to consider. Build a deck of all Arcane spells and enjoy cost discounts and continuous draw combos with everything in your deck using an Arch Mage as your Summoner. Build a deck of Chaos spells and receive a damage bonus to your cards with the Pyromancer. (Note: We'll dive more into the different kinds of magic in the coming weeks).
No Right or Wrong Way To Build a Deck
The moment you boot up, you’ll be having fun blasting away enemies with all kinds of spells. As you advance to harder levels, the game will present challenges that require you to build strategically focused teams. There’s no right or wrong strategy. Some players like the raw power of destruction spells and blowing things up. Some like to swarm the board with hordes of squirrels. Others still like the cunning approach of holding back and manipulating your opponent to the brink of madness. If we haven’t added enough choices to build your dream strategy, we will listen to you and make it happen.
Coming Next
With over 400 cards including 200 diverse playable characters, Summoners Fate allows you to unleash your creativity, build your dream team and achieve the most satisfying victories. With our four core gameplay mechanics now covered, we’re ready to deep-dive further into the gameplay itself. Coming up next, we’ll discuss how we’ve made the environment meaningful in Summoners Fate.
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