Designing UniVersus: Design and Development

Today, I’m going to walk you through the steps in designing the cards in UniVersus by explaining two distinct classifications of game design work: design and development. Each has different goals, but combined, they lead to the cards you play every week.

What is Design?

During our design phase, we focus on shaping the world in which we’re building our set. We often start with what we call “worldbuilding,” but because we work with interpreting worlds through the TCG medium, it’s more accurate to think of this phase as “world translation” or “world interpretation.” We start by consuming the media from the world we’re learning about, taking notes, documenting quotes or references that might make for great card names or flavor text, and imagining how we can take what the world is about and put that into mechanics on cards. A few of the questions designers ask themselves during this timeframe are:

• Who are the most important characters in this world?

• What are the most important elements of this world, and how might those translate to card mechanics to reflect the world?

• What symbols might represent this world?

Design also has the job of considering the gameplay elements we want to address and including those as well. Are tournaments taking too long to end? Designers need to consider shortening game times and bringing rounds to a close in a timely fashion. Is learning to play difficult? Game designers look to marry thematic elements of the world with the functional elements of game mechanics to build authenticity while solving gameplay needs together.

When the design phase is complete, an initial playtest card file is ready for development.

What is Development?

Building on the initial design file, the development phase sees those cards hammered into the final versions you play with. Development’s big focus is on creating fun and balanced gameplay. The questions developers ask themselves look like:

• Is this mechanic fun to play?

• What is the most “broken” thing I can do with cards in this set?

• Am I excited to build around some of the cards found in this set?

While playtesting happens during the design phase, the majority of games occur during development. We dedicate hours each day to simply jamming decks against one another, built both with new cards and the cards they’ll appear with in the Standard format. We also schedule Sealed Deck and Booster Draft playtests to understand how balanced and fun the limited play is for a set. A set lead may make dozens of changes to cards every week during this portion of the process.

The End Result

The UniVersus cards you hold in your hands are the end result of the design and development teams working in unison with one another. There are many, many other steps involved in producing those cards (editing, art design, production, manufacturing, the list goes on!) but those are two significant game design steps for creating new UniVersus cards.