Hello Everyone! Today I have an interesting entry for all to see; an interview with the one, the only, Kyle! Enjoy!

Re: Blog question
1. How did you come up with the idea for Shadow Era?

I have always been interested in TGCs since the first edition of Magic: The Gathering. Although there was never anybody to play with in my small town, I still had a huge collection of cards and enjoyed looking at the card art and creating decks. Actually, I don't think I ever played a single game!

The lack of good TCGs with real strategy on the iPhone had me thinking again how cool it would be to have a full-scale card game on your mobile device, enabling you to easily play with other people around the world. But I knew that I had to go all out to make the game the best it could be. I hired some of the most talented artists I could find, and as I'm sure you have seen, the results are amazing!


2. Even though the beta hasn't even officially started yet, some of the forum members here have been giving some ideas for different types of cards that we think would make cool additions to the game, can we hope to see some of those ideas become reality if they work well within the game?

Absolutely! A great part of the community is that there are many different people from different backgrounds that come up with good ideas for cards. Since we plan to keep churning out expansion packs as long as there is demand for it, we'll need some fresh ideas


3. Were there any difficulties transitioning from porting a game (Battle for Wesnoth) to creating a whole new game from the ground up?

I have a lot of experience designing and programming games, way back to the "Kyle's Quest" series on the Palm Pilot, circa 1998. But this was the first time using an existing game engine, Unity3d. It's a totally different method of developing games, and let me just say that it's wonderful! Not to get too technical, but Unity takes care of all the 3d stuff so we can focus on creating scripts for the cards. The game editor lets us examine and make changes to the game in realtime, to get that perfect camera position or play with particle effects. And the real bonus for us is the simple cross-platform support, allowing us to publish to web, iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC (and soon Android) with just a few clicks.


4. Will we ever see a site-wide Shadow Era tournament once the game is actually out?

When the game launches, expect to see epic tournaments with huge prizes! In addition to the long-term chess-like player rankings and leaderboards, the tournaments are scheduled events that let you compete against the top players for a chance to win prizes, everything from booster packs to a new iPad.


5. Is Shadow Era more fast paced or slower gameplay wise?

It depends on your playing style and experience. The game interface definitely makes it easy for experienced players to throw down those cards in rapid-fire succession, while newer players or more strategic thinkers will want to carefully read the card text and weigh their options. The match-making system will always let you find a player at your skill level though, and the turn timeout can be adjusted when you create the game.


6. What is the storyline like in the offline campaign, and on that note how long are you hoping for it to take to be completed?

Well, each class has their own storyline, that tells the story of Shadow Era from their own perspective. There are various missions to complete, that has you battling against AI decks as you level up. In total there are a few hundred missions for each class, and you can also switch classes anytime you earn a new Hero card. So we are talking about a huge amount of content, as well as repeatable end-game missions.


7. How are you going to go about the fact that people could just close the Shadow Era app if they are losing a match? Will it automatically forfeit if connection is lost?

Players will still gain some experience even if they lose, so it is usually worthwhile just to surrender rather than disconnecting. In ranked games, disconnecting too much will negatively affect your ranking, so you really don't want to do that on purpose... In tournaments, judges will determine whether a disconnect counts as a loss, or if they should be allowed to replay the game.


8. Do you ever think we will see Eney's Kyle the Creator card become reality? Perhaps an exclusive card for you?

In theory, super-powerful cards but with a high casting cost would make good rare cards... But maybe I'll keep this one for myself

That's it for the interview, I hope you enjoyed it! Also a big thanks to Kyle for actually letting me interview him!