Crafting the Enchanting Game World of Grimm

Welcome to another episode of The Gamerheads Podcast! This week, we enter the mystical domain of gaming with Static City Games' dynamic duo, Josh and Kourtney. Our dialogue explores their experiences that propelled them from avid gamers to indie game studio founders, culminating in the advent of their captivating title, World of Grimm.

As we delve deeper into the heart of World of Grimm, we touch upon the studio’s steadfast commitment to both player satisfaction and artist recognition. The episode peels back the veil on how Static City Games has artfully blended inspiration from beloved titles and fairy tales into the tapestry of their own universe, creating a gameplay experience that's as fair to the wallet as it is engaging to the spirit. Ethical practices in the gaming industry are seldom a headline, but Josh and Kourtney are here to show that success doesn't require compromise. We explore the symbiotic relationship between the game and its community, with player feedback being the guiding star for character adjustments and deck-building dynamics. 

Prepare to be whisked away into the fantastical realm of Grimm, where strategy, community, and artistic expression converge to craft an unforgettable gaming odyssey.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This episode of Gamer Heads is brought to you by Magic Mind, the healthy energy drink that will help you take your creativity to a new level. Hi, I'm Celia Schilling from Yacht Club Games.

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Hey, this is James from Mega Cat Studios. Hey, this is Matt aka Stormageddon from Reignite Screen Snark and the Fun and Games podcast.

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This is Stephanie from the Boss Rush podcast and the Boss Rush Network.

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Hey, this is Mark and Kion from Bonta Affold. Hey, this is Sebastian with the PronerdReportcom and the Single Player Experience Podcast.

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Hi, this is Chris Mike.

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And Garrett from Daylight Basement Studio. Hey, this is.

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BaronJ67 from Level One Gaming. Hey, this is Todd Mitchell from Code Right Play.

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Salutations. This is Mike Carroll from.

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Stroll Art. Hey, this is Jeff Moonen from Fun and Games Podcast.

Speaker 3: 0:47

Hey, this is Patrick from the Backlog Odyssey.

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Hey this is Rune from Runic Codes. Hi, this is Andrew from Spallata Birds.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Hi everyone. Jill Grote here from the Indie Informer.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Hey, this is Brimstone and you're listening to Roger Reichardt on the Gamer Heads Podcast and you're listening to Roger Reichardt on the Gamer Heads podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:08

And welcome to another episode of the Gamer Heads podcast. My name is Roger Along. With me this week I have two very special guests, two special guests that I met at PAX. I have Josh and Courtney from Static City Games. Thank you so much for joining me and I'm super excited for both of you to be here and talk about your game, world of Grimm. So, thank you so much for joining me and I'm super excited for both of you to be here and talk about your game, world of grim. So, thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, of course. So before we get into the game and start talking about the game, tell us about yourself, what got you into gaming and, more importantly, what got you into making games you want to go first?

Speaker 3: 1:43

sure, um, josh actually got me into games and gaming. Um, when I was like younger playing games, I wasn't good at it. Um, even now I'm still like a button smasher kind of you know. Um, so I never really understood that part of games. But then josh showed me like wow, you love movies so much. There are games that look like movies, that have you know these beautiful storylines. You really should try it, and so I did, and now I'm obsessed with gaming and love gaming, and obviously I still like the theatrical and art aspect the most.

Speaker 2: 2:29

Yeah, but yeah so josh um, so what I mean? I've been gaming since I don't even know. I think I erased my my mom's super mario world save file it was and it stopped her from playing games forever and like that was a good, valid memory that still exists.

Speaker 3: 2:51

She will tell that story too.

Speaker 2: 2:54

So like she doesn't play games at all anymore, like it's not her thing, like her thing is like did you ruin gaming for her?

Speaker 1: 3:00

I did ruin gaming for her.

Speaker 2: 3:02

Yeah, deleted her save file from Mario World. I think she was close to the end Good times. I've been gaming forever and I started out console gaming, got into PC gaming around high school and it just kind of always stayed. Yeah, I was always kind of dabbling in the behind-the-scenes stuff for game development. I played RPG Maker on PS2 in my parents' with the usb plug keyboard in my mouse yeah with like the huge 300 page prima guidebook that was there, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 3:35

um, but never like saw myself as a game developer. I always thought it was neat, right like I downloaded rpg maker and I was like, oh look, how cool this is. Then I went to school for film and in one of the classes I needed an extra math class and it was an intro to Java. That's fine, why not? How hard can Java be? That was the worst mistake of my life. For anyone who knows Java, it's the worst language. No offense to anybody who likes Java, but it's not. I think it was partially the teacher too. But I ended up almost failing that because I turned in a blank final. I had to get 100% in the class right.

Speaker 2: 4:22

And they're like the teacher. I walk in, the teacher goes all right, you have 90 minutes to make a full blackjack game in Java against the sentient AI that actually plays against you, and I went, wow.

Speaker 2: 4:33

I gave it like 30 seconds and I went no, I sent her a blank project and got up and walked out. That's hilarious. So I was like I'm never going to be a programmer, it's never going to be a thing. Then I was watching hearthstone on twitch and I was like I wonder if they make games on twitch. I'm sure people do. Yeah, I've been. Game development went to the first guy still a good buddy of mine, quasi tv. He's out of new york, um, and I asked him what he's making, what he's making his game, and it was skyhook at the time and he said to Unity, and I said so, he's like, it's free to play, it's free to download and you can make games and the rest is history. Man, I, I, when I step into things, I like, really like, fall out, jump into it. So I later I was starting to work on the first game and next game came out like our first actual release nightfall came out a year later and here we are four games in and world of grim's out early access.

Speaker 2: 5:29

Wow, it's crazy that a random question or random intrusive thought that I acted on made me make games yeah, um, and you guys you started in 2017.

Speaker 1: 5:40

Is that correct? Is that? Yeah, wow, in four games, that's really fast. It's like a really fast turnaround.

Speaker 2: 5:45

I like to think so. One of our games was only three months long for the development cycle. What it is still our most profitable game to date. Wow, being only three months. Wow, it was actually a game, it was a Ludum.

Speaker 1: 6:03

Dare Game Jam submission that turned into a full game because everyone loved it. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, so tell us about the game that you're well like. That's out right now, or it's at least early access World of Grimm. What's this game about?

Speaker 2: 6:14

World of Grimm is a five minute digital collectible card game. It is based on the Brothers Grimm universe and it is all synchronous turn-based combat as opposed to asynchronous like most card games, and it's completely 100 free to play, wow forever and always.

Speaker 3: 6:33

Yeah, I'm not gonna charge you for anything ever, because I don't like when games do that yeah, the feeling of oh, this is locked behind a paywall.

Speaker 2: 6:41

You really wanted this card.

Speaker 3: 6:43

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:43

That's too bad yeah.

Speaker 3: 6:46

Somebody else can get that card and then just whoop your butt every single time.

Speaker 2: 6:51

Yep.

Speaker 3: 6:51

That's horrible.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 6:53

It's a really, really crappy feeling it is, so we don't want anyone to feel that way. Games are supposed to be enjoyable and fun, and you're supposed to want to play it over and over and over as much as you can yeah, yeah, well, and I think that's one thing that impressed me.

Speaker 1: 7:12

Like courtney, when we talked at pax, like that was my first question and you're like this game, like the first thing out of your mouth was this game will always be free to play, like I'm always gonna, it's always gonna be free to play. And the other thing that you said, too, was I don't want it to be grindy or, you know, pay to win as well. Right, like those are the. Those are the things that you don't want to be in the game. But one of the things and I'm going to jump ahead because we're kind of like this seems like a good segue, uh, to this question um, but how do you like? I know, because you told me, but I I guess we can kind of dive into this a little bit deeper but how do you make a profit on a game then that is free to play, uh, doesn't have any kind of gotcha mechanics, like I'm? Hey, let me tell you, I'm happy that you don't have that. But you know, the question is, how do you make money on a game like that then? Of?

Speaker 2: 7:57

course, uh, so our game is actually it has an in-game shop because free to play games, especially games, especially free-to-play card games they have a way to monetize their game and there's a a structure that's been set out as, like the generic. If you have a free-to-play game and you want to monetize it, you should monetize it with these steps to not be predatory and to not feel like it's unfair, right? Uh? Games like League of Legends does a great job with this. Hearthstone used to do a great job with this, right, like Marvel Snap, which is another huge influence of us. They have a fantastic job of this, although the game does get a little bit grindy, about 100 hours, which is still a lot of gameplay.

Speaker 2: 8:43

So we're really trying to have this, this shop that is just cosmetic and purely cosmetic, and that way, if people want to invest into the game, they're more than welcome to and we will absolutely give them fun and interesting content that they can show off to their friends.

Speaker 1: 8:59

Yeah, and then one of the things that I thought was really interesting was that you'll have artists do the art of the different variants, right, but they also get paid as part of the cut as well. Can you talk a little bit more about that as well?

Speaker 3: 9:17

Yeah, I, I feel like that one's fairly basic. We find someone who is a great artist, we talk with them about their pricing and what our budget is, but every single art piece is paid for before it's used in the game. The artists have all rights to it. The company uses it and then afterwards, when someone like you or anyone else playing the game purchases one of their variant art pieces, they also receive a royalty. We wouldn't have games without artists, so I'm not sure why they're not getting paid.

Speaker 2: 9:56

They're severely underpaid in this industry.

Speaker 3: 9:58

Oh, it's so bad.

Speaker 1: 10:01

When I love too that on the cards it tells you who the artist is. Too right, that's. So that's a cool twist on it too like I don't know if I never played any other games that says, uh, not only features the art, but the artist as well.

Speaker 2: 10:13

That made the card as well, so that's really cool I'm actually working on a feature right now that lets you, if you click on a card in your card chest which is our for those of you who have not played our game yet it is our way to showcase your collection to yourself, to be able to build your different decks and see a different variance that you currently own. We're actually working on a system that is not 100% yet, but when you click on the artist name, when you click on a card to look at the details for it, it'll open like a miniature shop that has all of their pieces and you can choose to buy their pieces If you like. Oh, that's really cool.

Speaker 2: 10:49

Yeah, possibly also include some kind of discount if you want to buy their entire collection. Wow their two date collection like whatever's there currently.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Yeah, yeah, I like that. So the game is I mean you kind of alluded to it. I mean there is some inspiration obviously from marvel snap, because you have the three realms and you have, you know, your deck and you play cards against an opponent um, can you talk a little bit about some of the other influences around that and then also tell us a little bit about why you chose the grim universe as well?

Speaker 2: 11:19

sure, uh, so we say that world of grim is a, a combination or a merger of marvel, snap pot, stone magic, the gathering and majora's mask majora's mask.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Oh, I get it. I know I get the reference.

Speaker 2: 11:35

Okay, because of our day and night system, yeah, in a way that, like when you play majora's mask, some of your masks are stronger at night. Some of masks are stronger at night, some of them are stronger at day. Like it all, all of the thematics that exist inside majora's mask really work in our game and, plus, being grim, having different parts of the day really does make a lot of sense yeah yeah, it's the second half oh, if I remember what the second half was uh.

Speaker 1: 12:01

The second half is like uh, why did you? Uh? What? What inspired you to select the grim world?

Speaker 3: 12:08

and why focus on that yeah, no, that's right I, I had an answer and then it was like okay, so um, josh likes to tell the story that, uh, we were actually watching futurama and talking.

Speaker 2: 12:25

Not a sponsor.

Speaker 3: 12:26

Not a sponsor, but please sponsor us. Talking about this card game and wanting to make one, and okay, well, how can we make it free? How can we use something that people are going to recognize? Obviously, you can't use Futurama, which is what we're watching what was the original idea before? Yes, Okay, so the original idea, which is a horrible idea. So bad, we know it's bad, but we thought you know what? Okay, let's prove the concept first.

Speaker 2: 13:00

Let's make it about I don't even think I got that. I don't even think I got that far.

Speaker 3: 13:03

Yeah, it was. We're going to gender swap Harry Potter characters.

Speaker 1: 13:09

Oh, interesting.

Speaker 3: 13:10

So I was like alright, harry Portia, we can do this. We've got this Too naive. It was rough, it was so, so rough, yeah it was not good, it was not no, so then we're sitting down again and I have a very large world of grim.

Speaker 2: 13:36

Sorry, not world of grim we have a pre-writing book called world of grim.

Speaker 3: 13:41

I mean, it's what we're basing the game off of, so we might as well call it the world of Grimm book book the series all of the fairy tales. It is a very large book the pages are like thin, oh gosh, now he's gonna this is awesome.

Speaker 1: 14:02

This is what I love about you two, because this like instantly, you two are so fun to talk with and just yeah, just so personable and like oh my goodness, yeah, that is a really big book, it's a tiny book, so it is a really big book. Yeah, we're not through it all yet we're getting I have read through this once okay. Is there pictures? Are there lots of pictures in there? I don't know, oh no.

Speaker 3: 14:27

Oh, yeah, not really. There you go.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 14:39

That's from the Seven Ravens. Which we have not touched, this we haven't even gotten to that one yet it's on the list.

Speaker 1: 14:44

That's crazy.

Speaker 3: 14:45

But yeah, so literally, in all honesty, this book. Now you can sponsor me with this book, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:53

Public domain. We can't be sponsored by it.

Speaker 1: 14:55

Oh, dang, Well that leads me into why we used it.

Speaker 3: 14:59

It's public domain.

Speaker 1: 15:01

Public domain yeah.

Speaker 3: 15:02

So one great way to keep your game free to play is to use a fairy tale or an idea that is public domain that anyone can then make variant art for, or any type of art for. If you were to choose something else or kind of create your own, like all brand new one, you would have to have backstory. Yeah, you would have to have a lot more and you can do that.

Speaker 2: 15:32

There are games that are beautiful, that have created something that no one else has ever seen before. Yeah Right, soulforce did an amazing job on the backstory of their game. And like there's magic, the gathering never existed before magic the gathering Right game. And like there's Magic, the Gathering never existed before Magic the Gathering their story that exists to the side of all their cards without actually having an actual story based world is insane, Even when they added Phyrexia in. It is literally crazy how much stuff is in Magic the Gathering.

Speaker 3: 16:00

But also think about the amount of money and personnel that went into making that the R&D and just creating it.

Speaker 2: 16:12

Wizards has an unstoppable amount of money.

Speaker 3: 16:15

Yes.

Speaker 2: 16:17

We don't.

Speaker 3: 16:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:20

We do not. Trying to keep the cost down for an indie studio is one of the hardest things to possibly do.

Speaker 3: 16:25

It is.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Yeah, it's one of the hardest things to to possibly do.

Speaker 2: 16:28

it is yeah, yeah most expensive games we ever made, so no, I understand that.

Speaker 1: 16:32

I totally get that. I mean, uh, people always say you want to have the bunch of gamer heads. I'm like there's no budget at gamer heads, so I don't know what you're talking about, so but I mean, so one of the things that I I am really interested in, um, and it's it's awesome to see, like you have this big book and obviously you have plenty of other cards you want to add and new worlds or new realms you want to add as well. Can you talk about that process of creating new cards and new realms and how do you go about making sure that the cards in the realms feel balanced and not overpowered?

Speaker 2: 17:07

oh, there are so many times I make a card and I go this is a great idea. And then I go, oh my god, it's too strong they always end up being too strong, like there are some cards that are created that even some of the newer ones that people haven't got a chance to play test yet are. They're strong, man. There are some cards out there that you, you're gonna get that card, you're gonna go. That's unfair, like like it's kind of why we made an april fool's joke for the peace treaty card.

Speaker 1: 17:33

Yeah, yeah, I saw that.

Speaker 3: 17:34

That was great um we thought it was way, way funnier than it actually probably.

Speaker 1: 17:40

I laughed and I was like this is is April Fools, though right. The other card.

Speaker 2: 17:47

Afflicted Priest is a new card which is actually in the tier 1 unlockables, so that is a new that will be unlocked in the early game of playing. So there's five different tiers in cards. There's basic, standard, mythic, rare and legendary and it's based on the card border. The art for the border gets more and more complex as the tier goes. Basically, after you unlock tier 1 and tier 2, there's going to be more stuff that is accessible to you. You can purchase cards in the shop with gold instead of gems Not the various, but the actual cards. If you've been playing the game enough and you've been collecting the game enough and you've been playing collecting the gold and you want to increase your tier three collection faster, you can buy one of the cards.

Speaker 2: 18:33

For in-game gold that you've received from playing the game.

Speaker 1: 18:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:37

So again free.

Speaker 1: 18:39

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:40

Strictly an in-game.

Speaker 2: 18:42

When you have 200 plus cards in the game. Speeding your collection up is never a bad thing, and you still have to earn it.

Speaker 3: 18:46

You still have to earn your gold, so it's not like anyone can go in there and just Well, you can convert gems to gold, but not many people are going to do that I wouldn't suggest doing that, I just there are way more fun things to spend gold on.

Speaker 2: 19:01

There are.

Speaker 1: 19:07

Or gems on fun things to spend gold. There are, there are, yeah, and and the thing that I like about that, too, is that even when you lose, you're earning gold so it's like you're also progressing.

Speaker 2: 19:12

Yeah, exactly, you always progress in the game. That is our biggest thing. We never wanted to stop somebody from feeling like the there's a there's a really big talk about the art of losing that came out last, last year or the year before that, and it's this really really big thing. I think it was a GDC talk and it talked about how players don't like the feeling of losing as if they've wasted time. Yeah, playing league of legends and playing a regular game of league of legends. And losing a 45 minute match, yeah, um, because your one person got upset near the end and disconnected, that's not a good feeling. Playing against control, warrior and hearthstone and taking 35 minutes to play a card game is not a good feeling.

Speaker 2: 19:56

And I've been there hundreds of times in both of those games. Um, so our idea of changing it to if you go to forfeit the game and it vanishes instead of to, if you go to forfeit the game and it vanishes instead of losing, it's not really that bad anymore. It's a little bit less of a. There's a thing called negative dopamine that we're trying to avoid and it's just a small little nuance. And people that lose games all the time, they just play another game. It doesn't phase them.

Speaker 2: 20:28

But if you're playing a game and you lose and you lose and you lose and it's five minutes each time and eight times in, it just keeps saying you lose, you're gonna stop playing, yeah, yeah. But if all of a sudden you lose by by one power in one location and it just says that one would say you lose, but you like I'm not gonna win it, I, I'm just going to forfeit on this turn six, and it says vanished instead and you're like, oh Well, it wasn't bad. When you concede or vanish, you do get partial experience for your cards. You still get the in-game gold equal to how much power you've had. You just don't get the extra bonus gold. There's a lot of stuff that's still in the game. We don't want the player to ever feel like they're behind because they get matched with people who are too strong, or they get their butt whooped or they feel like they're just not good at the game.

Speaker 3: 21:26

Yeah, that's still going to happen sometimes. Sometimes they get your butt whooped, whether it like they're just not good at the game. Yeah, that's still gonna happen sometimes. Sometimes you get your butt whooped, whether it's a person or an ai sometimes you do, but to minimize the negative impact on that is huge for anyone's psyche while playing a game.

Speaker 1: 21:43

Yeah, yeah, one one thing I think I like about the game too is like the matches are not terribly long. Um, they're really short, and so even even when you are getting your butt kicked, it's like well, like this game's a short.

Speaker 2: 21:56

Yeah, it's not that bad, right? Well, you get your butt kicked, but then you level up a card and you unlock a new card you're like well, it wasn't really that bad, then yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly did I really lose?

Speaker 3: 22:06

No, I don't know, Did I lose?

Speaker 2: 22:07

I just lost my riding hood. She's awesome.

Speaker 1: 22:10

Yeah, exactly, yeah. I mean I will say this I may have been playing this game during lunch, during my lunch hours, because it's so fast to play and I'm like, well, just one more round, just one more hand, just one more hand, just one more game.

Speaker 2: 22:29

We had a successful Kickstarter back in October and there are some of our backers that play one or two matches before they start their new work day. Yeah, every single morning.

Speaker 3: 22:36

Every day.

Speaker 2: 22:37

We think we see them a lot. We see them log in on our backend server. They play one or two matches. They let us know they had fun. It's like almost like a rinse repeat thing that they're. Hey, I just unlocked this. Yeah, I unlocked this one. What's a good strategy for this card? Like, yeah, our backers are our backers. We're so thankful to have them. They're phenomenal for the feedback and and how we've helped, how they've helped shape the game. They had a full month before it went live in early access, wow so yeah, wow, you mentioned about leveling up cards.

Speaker 1: 23:09

Can you talk about how that works and like, what does that do for you? Like it just, does it just add like the legendary cards? Is that does it do anything for that card besides the status of legendary or rare, or is that what it does? I should ask? I should ask that question first. Do you know all this?

Speaker 3: 23:27

um, I know what we're trying to do with it, but it also changes okay, and has changed recently, so that's why he's obviously as cards.

Speaker 2: 23:41

Uh, as cards level up you, your collection level increases. We call it your combined collection level, your ccl, um, and that does unlock you new cards, because that's how that's literally our progression system. It also incentivizes you to swap cards out with new cards, because all of your cards start at level 0. That way you get to try new cards to keep leveling at the speed that feels like you're not grinding the game. We also have small little cosmetic changes that happen. When a card hits level 5, it gets a gold border.

Speaker 2: 24:15

When a card hits level 10, it goes to a holographic card. We're working on the shader for the holographic shader right now, but the border does go holographic. We also have a in-game, so you'll be able to spend in-game gold soon. This is going to take a lot of work from our artists and a lot of work from me. They were able to spend in-game gold after a certain level.

Speaker 2: 24:36

To break the card out of its frame. Oh, um, where effectively all of our cards are created with a foreground in mind, whether it just be the hair from cinderella or whether it be the sword from the huntsman from the oni version of the variant. Uh, it sticks out of the frame, yeah, and if you purchase that, your card now sticks out, but it's completely optional and it is in game credits, right, we don't want you to be like, oh, that's going to be two bucks to to break them out. Now we're good at level 10. A card cannot level past level 10.

Speaker 2: 25:06

Uh, when a card turns holographic excuse me, level 10. When a card turns holographic Excuse me, my voice died. When a card turns holographic, you have the option for 1,000 in-game gold to what's going to be called split the card, which will reset. It's like a prestige. It'll keep the original holographic card and also give you a level zero of the same card with some kind of effect, whether it be a swirly surrounding it or particle effects, or the card goes monochrome. It could get anything like that.

Speaker 3: 25:41

That's new. We don't know what's going on with it.

Speaker 2: 25:46

I think it's a really cool idea and that's something I want to implement as soon as possible. But there's some other things that get done. But it's a really cool cosmetic idea and the system is there for it creating particle systems that look nice as hard.

Speaker 1: 26:02

That's awesome. I dabble in Unity, so I understand what you're saying.

Speaker 2: 26:08

The Unity particle system is by far the best and worst thing about Unity.

Speaker 1: 26:13

Agreed. So what were some of the challenges you faced when creating World of Grimm, and how did you overcome them?

Speaker 2: 26:22

It's a one-five-letter word issue. What is that Money? World of Grimm is a game. It's a one five-letter word issue. What is that Money?

Speaker 3: 26:30

Yeah, Okay so.

Speaker 2: 26:32

World of Grimm is a game that requires art to be successful. Some of our original prototypes were hot garbage, like it was all. Like stock art from the internet, like the fox was like some random fox Rumpelstilz kid was from like a weird grim book on the online like a book. This is like I should. I should send you one of those bills.

Speaker 3: 26:56

It was bad the issue is it might overwrite your save files.

Speaker 2: 27:00

Maybe I won't send you that bill, um, but it was not good. It was back in like february of 2023 and it was just like hey look, we got three realms and you can put cards there, yeah um yeah, look at this. But then we're like, oh, we can't draw, we need to make this better, right?

Speaker 3: 27:23

and like.

Speaker 2: 27:23

at first we had dabbled in like the mid. We were part of the mid journey vibe when that came out and it was like so cool. Like oh, this is a cool way to prototype. Like yeah, we don't have the actual like rights to this art, but if we prototype with it it's not a bad thing. So we literally did a prototype version of every single card art in the game Right, and that was the base art until it got replaced.

Speaker 3: 27:45

For everything we had made so far.

Speaker 2: 27:47

Right, like hundreds of the cards. It was a lot of mid-journey, it was ridiculous. So since then, obviously we now have silhouettes that are in the game for the cards that's not finished, which I'm sure you've seen, but there's zero AI art in the game now, now that there's new findings about it and how it steals from other people, and we don't really findings about it and how it steals from other people and we don't at all, um, but during the mid-journey hype, we had a little bit of fun with it, right, yeah, um, I think everybody probably did not that we ever intended on using it no for the game but I feel like it was a great way to show some of our artists also like.

Speaker 3: 28:30

This is kind of the vibe that we're going with we want it more in this style or dark. It was also a great way to say like you see how when you ask computer to do cinderella, it starts bringing up disney cinderella. I want disney cinderella, cinderella from the story, so she should have a different feel to her. She should, uh, look a little bit different. Obviously we're not.

Speaker 3: 29:00

We're doing everything we can to not be like disney yeah so, image wise, I feel like actually using the mid journey was great in showing them what we want, what we need and what we don't want yeah, yeah I love that um uh because even at pax.

Speaker 1: 29:22

Like how awesome. Like some of the you know, look that card. Yeah, isn't that cool. The Rapunzel card we have more.

Speaker 2: 29:32

I'll tell you what we went through 2,500. No, so Courtney made 2,500 of these cards. I did as you can feel it. It's not the actual. It requires an actual scratch-off. The code is literally a sticker.

Speaker 1: 29:50

The code's a sticker and the scratch off is a sticker, so she spent like days working on it. Are you serious?

Speaker 2: 29:56

I mean outside of printing, you put all the stickers on in the scratch off sticker oh my goodness, two stickers per card.

Speaker 1: 30:03

There were 2500 cards and we only had this many left.

Speaker 3: 30:06

I have a couple you gave me a couple too.

Speaker 1: 30:07

yes, and we only have this many left. I have a couple. You gave me a couple too. Yes, good, we only have 20 left out of 2,500.

Speaker 3: 30:14

So, we gave a lot out.

Speaker 2: 30:16

Most of it was out on Sunday. I was standing in the middle of the walkway, just kind of giving stuff out.

Speaker 3: 30:22

Sunday was a big push, I think, for us. I think Sunday was definitely like a. You know, a lot of these people were either families similar to our family, and so we know that our game works for them and works for parents. So we're like, okay, this is a big parents day. Let's get all of these parents that are just like us, who are gonna love the game for very similar reasons, right, and that was really really great. It was actually watching families with their kids like play together.

Speaker 1: 30:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one thing that I said to like.

Speaker 2: 30:59

That's one thing I love about this game is that it's, you know, fun for me, but also family friendly as well, like, and you know yeah, as well, like, and you know, in the game, yeah, characters, I mean, our main artist is brazilian, so there will be cards that have the brazilian style you know art and they have, like, certain anatomy that may be more accentuated because he's brazilian, which is totally okay our females are gorgeous, is what he's trying to say yeah, nice.

Speaker 2: 31:28

So I'm trying to say it in the nicest way possible. He's, you know, he's around Carnival and stuff, so you get what you get right, yeah, so, but outside of that, he's very, he's a phenomenal artist. Fabricio is like shout out to him.

Speaker 1: 31:46

He's unreal. Yeah, I mean yeah, is like shout out to him. He's unreal, yeah, I mean yeah. The art, his art is fantastic and he drew that Pax Rapunzel. He did, oh really, oh wow, he did a degree in art too.

Speaker 2: 31:57

Wow, and if you see any of the retro pieces in the game, those are his art as well. He's a retro 80s comic artist, oh wow. So he like an 80s comic artist as a trade. Um, so he went as soon as I was like, hey, do you want to do some like comic style pieces? He goes like he's like yeah, absolutely oh, he had those done like immediately really yeah, that's awesome to have like a quick turnaround too, like that's.

Speaker 1: 32:22

That's probably part of the other thing that you probably run into right with artists is that you want a quick turnaround because you want things to get out as quickly as possible as well yes and no yeah um, some of our artists like the way that we do, the way that we work with our office is very laid back and relaxed.

Speaker 2: 32:41

We'll never, we're never sitting there going hey, we got a deadline for two weeks. You got to make sure you get five pieces done, otherwise you're out like we don't. We don't do that. Yeah, when they, when we bring them on, they go hey, I could probably do this piece in four or five days, I go sweet sounds good and like or I can do this piece in two weeks, I'm busy.

Speaker 2: 32:58

Yeah, that's fine. No, like, we still pay them. We pay artists every thursday. We've always paid them every thursday, even if they're working on a piece, so we don't wait for them to be finished. Nice, because I know they're going to deliver. We have a team of 10 artists so far we have a couple more interviews from people from PAX this week coming up and everyone that we've worked with has been reliable. They've always finished their work, they're always true to their word and their pieces are always phenomenal.

Speaker 1: 33:26

Nice.

Speaker 2: 33:28

Some of our variant artists are just literally unreal.

Speaker 1: 33:31

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:32

Like the color work and the artwork, the art, like the line work and everything is just insane.

Speaker 1: 33:39

Yeah, I mean I, every art piece in the game is fantastic. I absolutely love like, and, yeah, I I got my first variant card, which I was very excited about. So, uh, which one did? Oh, I got, I got the frog king. I got the uh, because of course I have my deck, because the frog king, I had the uh, the pirate one.

Speaker 1: 33:59

So oh, the seven seas, one, yeah, the seven seas yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I saw that come up and I was like, oh man, I have a deck built around him, I have to get him.

Speaker 2: 34:09

So he has four or five variants. I think one of my favorite ones for him is by far the sticker.

Speaker 3: 34:15

It's so cute.

Speaker 2: 34:17

You haven't seen the sticker. Didn't you get one of the stickers from the Frog King sticker from the booth? No, I don't think so We'll have to mail you one. They're so cute, so he's got a bunch of different ones. Like, one of our artists out of Morocco is very, very good with color work and so he did a gold rush style for a few cards and the gold rush frog king is like the color pops perfectly. It's really cool. He's got like he's like sitting on a pickaxe. It's really awesome.

Speaker 1: 34:48

I saw that one in the store and it was between that one and it's really cool. He's got like he's like sitting on a pickaxe. It's really awesome, like, oh, yeah, that one, I saw that one uh in the store and I it was between that one and the uh seven seas and I was like gold rush, color pops, so well yeah yeah, yeah anything from from that guy, sal, uh, anything from him is just his color work is next level nice.

Speaker 2: 35:06

He's actually the guy who did all of our UI in our game, so all the menus, all the buttons, everything that's clickable, the game board, the Apple that when you click on it, it like melts and dissolves. Yeah, he did all of that. Wow, he's literally single-handed in all the UI. Art himself Wow.

Speaker 1: 35:27

Wow, that's awesome, single-handed in the way in all the uir themselves. Wow, wow, that's awesome. Uh, you mentioned getting feedback from uh the players. How has any of the insights from your community impacted the game and shaped uh development and future development as well?

Speaker 2: 35:43

hansel was too strong oh, that was the first thing. Hansel used to double his or g. Hansel used to double his or. Gretel used to double his attack and Gretel's attack and it was way too strong. So that was one of the first instances like very beginning, like pre-alpha build one. They played the game and they went dude Hansel's rough, like I can't do that. Hansel and Gretel in the Cloud Kingdom was like 64 attack. It was disgusting, it was just not fair and those of you who do not know Cloud Kingdom is one of our realms in the game, one of our locations, where a card that has an arm playability it triggers a second time yeah so we ended up nerfing Hansel, or we ended up nerfing Gret, or we ended up nerfing Gretel.

Speaker 2: 36:29

We didn't do anything to Hansel. But yeah, I mean our player feedback Is. It's paramount. The whole reason we're in early access right now Is because we need the player feedback. I could play the game a million times and think that Cinderella is perfect, or think that Snow White is not strong enough and they make her stronger for some unknown reason. Snow White's a very strong card. She is a very strong card. I love.

Speaker 3: 36:58

Snow White, though Don't change Snow White.

Speaker 2: 37:01

People playing our game is really it was just an example, of course People playing our game. It's paramount, especially for a game like this, a multiplayer card game game. It needs to have player feedback. We need to get the analytics to see the percentage of players who are including red riding hood in their deck, percentage of players who are including william charming in their deck right and the people that people that are including him, how many times are they winning with him in the deck right? Has he actually on the, has he actually on the field? And if you won because of it, we need to know that stuff so that we can choose whether we just give him one attack or we full out, remake an ability or remake a location, like when we just changed Grandmother's House. Grandmother's House was a location that used to transform a card. The first card you play was transformed to another card and it was not a fun was not fun.

Speaker 2: 37:53

You play a card because you want to play a card. So playing a card that now changes itself without you getting to choose, like what if that's the only place you're going to play the card at, it makes sense. It's unfun. Yeah, right, if you. If you're playing frog king and you want frog king to be King, it's not fair that it gets changed to the Giant, even if the Giant is 14 attack. Yeah, so we changed the Grandmother's House to now turn six. All of your cards cost three. Now you can play two cards that turn, including two big dudes. Yeah, but you would know that ahead of time so you can prepare accordingly, because it would unveil what Turn two, turn three maybe.

Speaker 1: 38:31

Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I mean, I just first of all, I guess I never even thought of this. Thinking about the analytics that you're getting behind the scenes and seeing how decks are being built by people, that's amazing to me. Yeah, that's really cool. That's really cool. That is really really cool.

Speaker 2: 38:53

A lot of it's not finished. In a game like this, we could be building analytics forever, even to the point where how many players have unlocked Crab so far? How many players have used the Shoemaker in a deck with Wise Servant? Why are they using it at the same time? What's the reason behind that? Right, like, how many people have bought the Seven Seas Frog King but they're not buying the Gold Rush Frog King? Right, like little things like that.

Speaker 2: 39:22

We can easily do tons of that. How many people click the shop button and they click the go to buy gems and then they hit cancel in that second? We can do all of that. There's so many analytics that you can actually add in that is not invasive, that doesn't take anything from somebody that feels like private property, because obviously with GDPR and all the stuff that exists around that you don't want to be too invasive on people and if you are, you have to be able to let people opt out of it, which we have a button to opt out for. Yeah, that's all I got. That was long ended.

Speaker 1: 40:07

I have a follow-up question on that then. Is there any decks or any cards that people have been building decks around and you're like I never thought that people would have used a card this way, or really you built a deck around that card Frog?

Speaker 3: 40:22

King, frog King.

Speaker 2: 40:25

Well, people see that and they go that's a great synergy. But then people also see that and they go that's a great synergy. But then people also see that and go. Somebody else plays that too. And all of a sudden they're getting a great buff from their cards. But there are so many good one mana cards in this game. Yeah, there are. And as you play the game and you experience that and you get the tier three and tier four cards that are one mana, that literally are based on what you've seen in tier one and tier two. They're insane. Yeah, right, are based on what you've seen in tier 1 and tier 2. They're insane.

Speaker 2: 40:53

There's a card, the Village Baker. The Village Baker is a 1 mana, 1, 1 that every time he's in your hand at the start of any turn, he gets an extra attack. So he could be a 1, 7 on turn. 6 plus the Frog King, so it's an extra 9 attack burst with only three mana. There's a lot of things you can do. There's a card, the witch mother, which these cards you may have seen through wishing well or from another person's deck, yeah, um, the witch mother, uh, is a zero attack card but returns back to your hand every turn, which is one mana, and she doubles her attack every time she gets back to your hand. So if you have ways to to start her snowball, she could be 16, 32, 64 attack by the time it's turned six. Yeah, she's always back in your hand, unless you get, unless she gets killed yeah, wow, yeah, I love that and that's one thing I loved.

Speaker 1: 41:45

I mean, that's one thing I love about this game too. It's like I don't have every card, but I love when I see a new card that opponent plays and I click on, I'm like, oh, what's that card? Right, it's like one of my favorite things.

Speaker 2: 41:55

Yes, there's so much stuff in this game, like when you realize like you start with 14 cards, there's 188 cards in the game.

Speaker 2: 42:05

It's far so far. Yeah, when you look at it like that, it's overwhelming. That's the whole reason that we do not give you your entire collection. At first, the first playtests, people were able to go in and they were able to look at all the cards and they would never build decks. They wouldn't know what to do. How does a fury deck work? Why would I do a time shift deck? Do I need to do a move deck? Is moving cards that great? What's the reason behind that? How good is Ferdinand the Faithful? Why would I use him?

Speaker 1: 42:36

Who even is?

Speaker 2: 42:36

that.

Speaker 3: 42:37

Is he a?

Speaker 2: 42:37

real character. There's a lot of stuff in this game that, as you slowly introduce the players, it feels better.

Speaker 1: 42:54

That's one thing I do like about the game, too, is the fact that it doesn't. I didn't feel overwhelmed, and when I add it, when I get a new card, I'm like, oh, what would be like if I built a deck around? Like I have Goose Girl, like I try to build a deck around her.

Speaker 2: 43:03

We're going to be buffing Goose Girl. This is just off the record. Buffing Goose Girl this is just off the record. Obviously it can be included in the podcast a little tease. But we're going to give her an extra attack for a card on the deck. A lot of times she only ends up getting three or four attack, which is not fair for a five mana card. Giving her eight attack for the card that only has one health that can get killed off is, I think, a very, very fair buff to her. Yeah, especially when you get further into the game and you can start adding guards back into your deck and stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:38

It changes things a little bit More strategy.

Speaker 2: 43:42

The game is based on. We're trying our best to provide depth and strategy to the game, but also keep it simple. Yeah, we don't want to increase complexity. Magic the Gathering does complexity. Yes, right. All of a sudden there's a new set and it's got four new keywords and there's now 20,010 rules instead of 19,000 rules. They added 1,000 new rules in this.

Speaker 3: 44:10

I can't redo on that, no one's got time for that.

Speaker 2: 44:12

Or like Hearthstone, when they released a new set name and if you don't spend 50 bucks on the new set, you're behind yeah.

Speaker 3: 44:19

Way behind.

Speaker 2: 44:21

And you literally can't catch up. Yeah, so we don't want that A lot of people talk about. Well, how are you going to keep adding content? We just aren't. We are just going to do it. Yeah, and we're going to figure it out. And it's going to be a thing where we set it up, where it unlocks on a certain day and it just does its thing.

Speaker 1: 44:42

Nice. How many cards do you have right now? 180-some, did you say.

Speaker 2: 44:49

Including Peachtree Treaty, there's 189. Peace Treaty's data is in the game still, it's just not in live. I'm going to change Peace Treaty to a one mana or two mana spell that doesn't let players play cards. Next turn.

Speaker 3: 45:07

Which I think is not fair. April Fool's now it's a real card.

Speaker 2: 45:11

Maybe it's not actually a fair card. Maybe we should only play one card next turn, or the first card has to be played at that location next turn. I don't know. Something has to seem fair. Maybe it should just make it a player forfeit. What if it makes player forfeit? What if it makes you forfeit instead? What if it makes you forfeit you don't?

Speaker 1: 45:39

gain experience. You don't get experience and you have to play it and the player and the opponent gets double experience oh, love that for the opponent yeah, that sounds a oh love that for the opponent. Yeah, this sounds a lot of fun. I can't wait to get that card.

Speaker 2: 45:53

Such a great unlock. Maybe we can make that one worth 50 bucks too.

Speaker 1: 46:03

Oh my gosh, I'm done. What are some of the future? What are some of the updates that you want to do, like outside the Peace Treaty card?

Speaker 2: 46:17

Peace Treaty is going to be solid man. June 1st it's coming, so we're looking into quest systems already Daily quest, weekly daily quest, weekly quest, season quest as well. Um, where you unlock, where you get not just in-game gold, you can get gems as well, so you can start accruing your own gems to be able to buy your. You can buy variants without having to spend a dollar. Right, the goal is to let people be able to to enjoy all the great things about the game. If they don't want to spend money, that's cool. If they want to support the developers, that's awesome too. That helps us get more art for the game.

Speaker 2: 46:58

Yeah, right literally have money, the money in the game that we from people that are buying variants. Now it just flips right back to other artists. So you know that does help a lot. We're looking at a new game mode called Draft, which is similar to if you took Hearthstone, arena and Magic Sealed together. It's a deck of 20 cards where you can have duplicates and you'll pick from a set of three cards and they'll be semi-fair. It'll be like three tier two, two mana cards, like stuff like that right yeah, um, or just spells three.

Speaker 2: 47:39

Pick from one of these three spells and it'll be best, or first to seven wins or three losses. Based on your wins, you'll get in-game content. If you win seven, you'll get a mystery variant of a card. That's cool and then, effectively, you're only in it for 15 minutes, maybe as high as 40 minutes. That's not a huge time commitment for something that you're drafting, the process of creating your own deck and playing this different, super enhanced deck with four Snow Whites.

Speaker 1: 48:10

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 48:11

But that would be a process, active decision if you want to play a 15 30 minute game. You're playing a sub game, right?

Speaker 2: 48:28

That mode is going to be. It's going to cost gems to get into it, just because it's fair that the high risk, high reward kind of thing, but it's not high risk like $1, $1.50 is what we're looking at for the actual cost of playing that. But people will end up just playing that mode and that mode only because how many times can they go? Seven wins in a row?

Speaker 3: 48:48

How many times can they go?

Speaker 2: 48:49

seven wins in a row? Yeah, how many times can they? How do they think this deck is going to do People on Twitch are going to be like taking bets the in-game channel bets or whatever channel points. Yeah, oh, this deck is only going to win three wins, right? Yeah?

Speaker 3: 48:59

Stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 49:02

We are introducing season passes as well, although our season pass will only ever be cosmetic. There will not be a Season Pass card. There will be Season Pass variant art that you will unlock. You'll get one for purchasing Season Pass and then you'll get, as you unlock, more content in Season Pass. You'll get avatars, you'll get experience for cards to level up your collection more. You'll get in-game credit. You'll get the money back that you spent in gems. You'll get in-game credit. You'll get the money back that you spent in gems. You'll get that back as you unlock, as you unlock more levels. Cool, um, and we're looking to make it just fun themes and cool art where everything kind of fits together. Uh, our first one that we're looking at we tested a few, a couple different names on people at PAX. Yeah, um, and trouble in Tokyo felt like the one that got the most most good vibes.

Speaker 2: 49:52

So we're talking like the 1800s, you know 1800 samurai kind of samurai version of Prince charming and stuff like that. Right, yeah, um, I think something like that would be a really cool first set, and then we obviously are looking to maybe do that monthly. People that have purchased our Founders tier in Kickstarter, which is our $70 tier, will get the Season Pass forever without having to pay anything. Nice, so that Pass will be available for anybody to buy, but at a $5 increased price, which is not that big of a difference.

Speaker 2: 50:29

So, if they feel like they're going to be playing the game for a while and they want to buy the Founders Pass, they can. It does support the developers, it does support everyone on the team and it supports more art, which is super.

Speaker 2: 50:41

So that's what I'm talking about, where our non-pay-to-win cosmetics are. Yeah, we want people to be able to experience that. We want people to be able to buy different banner art the way your name is on the top for in-game gold. I think that's cool. You can have a UI artist draw a mech version of that banner for a thousand gold.

Speaker 3: 51:03

We've actually even talked about being able to change out the music when you're change out the music. Oh yeah, have different music that you could effectively yeah, yeah, yeah, and it does.

Speaker 2: 51:22

Totally a thing. Also, did you pick an avatar, yet no, I haven't, I haven't picked an avatar.

Speaker 1: 51:27

Like your little person. It I haven't. I haven't picked an avatar yet. Click your little person. It might be frog.

Speaker 2: 51:34

If you click your little person next to your profile name in the main menu, every card that you've unlocked, including variants, has an avatar available for you. Okay, I need to go in and tweak some of the values. Some of them are way too zoomed in. We're talking like right here, yeah, like this is great and I did it like really fast Cause it was trying to do like 300 of them yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:59

During the entire day and I was like I'm wasting my entire day on these avatars. People aren't even going to click on this thing. So yeah, so that People aren't even going to click on this thing.

Speaker 1: 52:10

That's cool. I did notice that my back of one of my decks now has Rapunzel as the.

Speaker 2: 52:17

Pax East yeah, that was really cool, and because there's so many people that have redeemed that already. I believe about 40% of the people who gave cards to have already redeemed their Rapunzel those people have those backs. So if you're playing the game and you play against somebody who has that same back as you there's only four backs in the game right now, so you have a chance to be one of the few that actually has the Pax East card back. As the season pass gets created and stuff, there'll be a Shinto version of the card back. There'll be this. There'll be that. We want the game to feel like you can buy what suits you and what you like so you can show it off and show your friends how cool you are, that you bought a Dr Know-All that plays golf or the track star version of the wolf the sports one is growing on me.

Speaker 2: 53:07

I think the Pied Piper playing baseball star version of the wolf, the sports one is growing on me.

Speaker 1: 53:10

I think the Pied Piper playing baseball is one of the coolest ones. It looks really cool. It does look really cool and it's all Fat Trina.

Speaker 2: 53:18

Oh, okay, there is one character, one of our favorite characters in the game is Fat Trina. Fat Trina is one sentence in one of the stories where it's just at least you're not like your sister, fat Trina. She's in the game, here we go. What does she do? She consumes the other cards at that location and she gets stronger because of it. It makes sense. I don't know what she does in the story. We don't know what she actually does. It doesn't tell us enough. So I don't know what she does in the story. We don't know what she actually does. It doesn't tell us enough. That's it, that's awesome. So we don't have her actual main art done yet, but there's a chibi version done of her already. She's sitting there like eating a foot, like right, it's great.

Speaker 3: 54:00

It's supposed to be. Yeah, I was going to say it's very dark.

Speaker 2: 54:06

One of our awesome artists, uh, luan maximino shout out to him is another artist out of brazil. Uh, he has a whole bunch of cards. You see maximino variants everywhere the sports, the cyberpunk, the steampunk stuff. He did all of that. He's done over 40 50 cards now at this point. Um, and he did a fat trina for which he made her a linebacker with like pizza stains that's cool Like grease all over her face. He did great. He knocked it out of the park.

Speaker 1: 54:38

That's awesome.

Speaker 2: 54:39

So we really enjoy playing with the ridiculousness that we can get into because of our, if our, if our artists come up to us and go, hey, can I draw Red R? Hey, can I draw Red Riding? Or can I draw Sleeping Beauty as an undead character? We can go yeah, man, go for it. And we have that in the game. We have two undead characters. We have Sleeping Beauty and we have True Bride, and True Bride is the like, the weird amalgamation of Corpse Bride before she dies.

Speaker 3: 55:10

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 55:11

So we did an undead version of her, which wouldn't be corpse bride. But we're not calling it a text. We already have, course bride.

Speaker 1: 55:20

That's cool. I, I, I, just I it's. It's amazing to me how many different variants, but also just the creativity behind this game is just and just like. The thing that I think I was most impressed is just all the characters and like the thought process around, like what those characters do and then the realms and how they interact with each other and how they interact with other cards. That's why Sheer luck, Sheer luck, yeah, no.

Speaker 2: 55:47

I can tell A lot of the synergies when I'm making cards. I'm not sitting there going alright, this card is great. What can we pair Frog King with? Frog King was the first card I made, so it wasn't like, oh yeah maybe that's why you like it so much.

Speaker 3: 56:03

I wasn't like oh, I'm not sitting there going.

Speaker 2: 56:05

Maid of Brackle is going to be the best card for Frog King deck. I'm sitting there going. Made of Brackle is going to be the best card for a frog game deck. I'm sitting there going. Made of Brackle is going to be so cool.

Speaker 3: 56:15

Afterwards is when you see how it's going to interact Right, and that's when you playtest it.

Speaker 2: 56:22

Yeah, so we have a combo in the game, which is completely unintentional. They're made at way different times. I forgot that. I made one card when I made a different one, that's so sad.

Speaker 2: 56:33

It's just how it works. There's just too many cards. There's a card called Bluebeard. Bluebeard is a very interesting story that was not included in the book that we have. It's on the Bravestories website as an unincluded story. It was never translated to English, so you have to hit right-click and translate selection to English for the entire story. So that card has a channel ability, which is an ability that's always on unless the card dies or the ability gets nullified, and its ability is when a card gets discarded from your hand. It plays at a random run. So then we also have a five mana spell called invoke destruction and invoke destruction discards your entire hand, oh interesting, it adds a character called Sargas the Firebringer to your hand, which is a six-mana dude.

Speaker 2: 57:32

So it sets you up for a big six-mana card. Oh my gosh, having Bluebeard on the field and him surviving because he has one health. So having Bluebeard on the field and then playing Invoke Destruction dumps your entire hand. Yeah, and you can put it all on the field for free.

Speaker 2: 57:44

Oh my gosh. So is that going to be something that might be an auto-include for people in a discard deck? It might be, yeah, but there are some times people make discard decks and they don't include cards like that. They like the cards that they can guarantee the lowest card gets discarded, the highest card is discarded. Yeah, this card that gets discarded gets duplicated. They can guarantee that stuff and people appreciate that more yeah, so I think it's going to create a lot of different archetypes yeah, that's see, it is so.

Speaker 1: 58:16

That's that's why this game won one of the gamer heads best of packs east.

Speaker 2: 58:20

Because, oh nice, it's on my computer, nice, nice we're gonna hang it up somewhere, but it's so tiny I would have to squint to see it Again. Gamerhead's budget is not very high, To be fair it's an eyesight issue for me and not the actual item. It's an eyesight problem.

Speaker 3: 58:42

It doesn't matter what I hang on to.

Speaker 2: 58:44

We actually have the up there on the top there's our Paxies booth.

Speaker 1: 58:49

Oh, that's. Cool, that's cool this is the office.

Speaker 3: 58:55

This is the office. This is the office.

Speaker 1: 58:56

Yeah, this is my house.

Speaker 3: 58:58

It's a room that became an office.

Speaker 2: 59:02

You just have a lot of kids toys in it. They got all of us. They did the toys go upstairs now nice.

Speaker 1: 59:11

One last thing I will say, because I know this for the fact, like, voice acting, your one of your kids is the cat, right, yeah, she's a talking cat.

Speaker 2: 59:22

And then our five year old is little red cap, only the forest variant. So what we're looking to do is you don't want the cyberpunk.

Speaker 1: 59:28

My girl with his little red cap Okay, but only the forest variant.

Speaker 2: 59:29

Oh okay, so what we're looking to do is you don't want the cyberpunk shoemaker to have the same voice as the original shoemaker. It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1: 59:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 59:39

It doesn't make sense to have the retro style of a card sound the exact same as the regular style. Yeah, you got to put some kind of filter behind that, right. So we're looking at actually having a different voiceover for every single variant. Wow, and then, of course, we can also do premium cards that have premium voiceovers and premium special effects, and we can do all that stuff if we want to. Yeah, maybe something on the horizon, who knows, when we have a team of 60 that are working on the hand. Yeah, there's, yeah, there's. The issue we have is there's too much stuff we want to do and not enough time to do.

Speaker 2: 1:00:11

Yeah, not enough time, not enough money yeah, not enough money is the number one thing, yeah, so if you do like the game, please leave a review on steam. It is 100% free to leave a review. You only have to open the game for 4 seconds and then close the game and you can leave a review for it.

Speaker 3: 1:00:29

But play the game.

Speaker 2: 1:00:32

Please play the game. Because it's a good game 100% play the game, but you can leave a review by just Most games that you unlock a code for. You can't leave a review that counts For you to play games. You can leave reviews if you've played the game for, I believe, five seconds total. No, you're right, it's a true thing. You cannot leave a review for a game you have not played. It has to have been opened once on your computer.

Speaker 1: 1:01:02

What I'll do is I'll actually include in the show notes a link to your Steam page, so that way people can.

Speaker 2: 1:01:09

Yeah, yeah, clicking on it. If you're on your phone, it opens it on Steam on your app oh, very cool, very cool.

Speaker 1: 1:01:22

Yeah, I'll certainly do that. And yeah, I just have to say I love this game a lot. And yeah, if you're a fan of Marvel Snap but get frustrated with the grindiness of it, this game is right up your alley, because this game is not grindy and it's really fun.

Speaker 2: 1:01:41

And, if you like, fairy tales.

Speaker 1: 1:01:42

If you like fairy tales, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:01:44

Even if you like Snow White and Rapunzel and you don't know the dark side of stuff, and you want to know the dark side of stuff, we're there for it, man. We're here, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:01:52

I love that. Thank you so much for joining us. Besides the link, can you tell people how they can find you on social media? And follow you there as well.

Speaker 2: 1:02:02

It is everything at Static City Games, 100%. Just like our LinkedIn, our Facebook, our Twitter, everything is Static City Games. You can actually even go to our link tree, which is linktree slash staticcitygames. That has a link to everything. That's just how that works. We are extremely simple to find. We're the only company that has this wording for a game or for a studio, whether it be games or not. I don't think anything else that's called Static City. I can't put my finger on it.

Speaker 1: 1:02:38

Well, thank you so much, both of you for again joining me today, and I would love to have you back on the show when you have new updates, when you have the season come out and everything the season pass. Love to have you back on the show when, like you, have new updates, when you have the season come out and everything the season pass love to have you back on. So for sure yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:02:51

Thanks. We really had a great time, awesome, awesome, great time.

Speaker 1: 1:02:56

Listeners. Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to give us a listen. Go check out world of grim. It is fantastic. I love this game so much, so go check it out. With that, everybody, stay safe and game on. We'll talk to you next week. Bye.