The Joy of Creation - Lightmare Design Blog, Entry 2

This week I’m going to cover one of the most ambitious parts of Infinity Heroes that lots of people have had plenty of questions about. The Hero Creator, a system that will allow players to craft their own Heroes, units and ability cards. Letting players unleash their inner creativity and even bring their favourite characters and worlds into Infinity Heroes to play with.

Endless Possibilities

Since its creation, the universe of Infinity Wars has been a multiverse. A collection of vastly different worlds to let the imagination run wild. Infinity Heroes will allow players to satisfy that creativity with the new Hero Creator. The Hero creator allows players to make their own cards, customising stats, costs, effects and even choosing or uploading the card’s artwork.

So how exactly will it work?

Well we are still actively developing and prototyping the Hero creator, however how it currently works is that you can create, save, load and share user created Heroes, a custom constructed “deck” consisting of:
4 Unit cards
2 Ability cards
1 Hero Power card
2 Ultimate cards

Screenshot of the prototype Hero Creator

Each of these cards are highly customizable, with every ability in the game able to be added to a card, plus many other variations and new effects as well. All available through an easy to navigate UI that even works on mobile. The card’s stats and costs are yours to mold as you will. When it comes to what the card looks like, excitingly we have an absolutely enormous backlog of animated Infinity Wars artwork that will be available, but we also allow you to upload your own static images for you to use, to make your Hero fit your creative vision.

The Hero Creator is a powerful tool, but when you have finished making your personalized Hero and cards, you need a way to playtest them. All custom heroes can be played against your friends in private matches. Our aim is to make a social platform for sharing of custom heroes where the best decks can be shared and upvoted by the community.

Our community manager Jason Thomas had this to say.

Giving people this level of freedom in a game like this hasn’t been done before. One of the things I’m most excited to see is Micro Communities. If specific groups or fandoms start to get involved all together, it’s going to be really interesting to see how they are managed, and what interesting ideas and practices start becoming the norm.

Gathering Thoughts

So now that I’ve given the broad details of how the hero creator works, I want to address some questions:

Why have this system?

We think that the hero creator can be a big factor to set us apart from competition in the digital card game market. Its an exciting system that fits the multiverse setting of our world, while allowing us to target the early adopter creative crowd in comparison to the more competitive crowd that the core game focuses on. With the removal of traditional deckbuilding from the core game, players who want to express their creativity don’t have as much of an outlet and we feel it is important to cater to as wide a range of the community as possible.

Will the Hero Creator be free?

Access to the hero creator itself will be free, however we are looking into a system to unlock new abilities and artwork alongside purchasing a hero, for example if you buy the mechanical zombie hero “Patient Zero” you would get access to an array of new sacrifice and zombie related abilities to use in the editor. We do however want to balance unlocking new aspects of the editor with player creative freedom and thus are also looking into alternate ways players can unlock them. One possibility is to have them as level up rewards after winning competitive matches in the core game.

What is to stop power creep or 1 cost 20/20's?

Two things, the community voting platform & a point system.A point allocation system is currently in the works that will give you a certain amount of stats and abilities depending on the cost of your card. We are well aware that card balancing is not an exact mathematical equation, but we believe we can use this system to keep the worst excesses in check when combined with community voting.

Finally, what about copyright issues?

Our aim is to make a social platform for sharing, and the same as Facebook, DeviantArt or Instagram: not claim property or monetise it in any way. Because the content is fan made, and not causing any direct profits for Lightmare, we’re in a favorable position. We’re still susceptible to cease and desist notices, which can be acted upon with minimal infraction or cost to development. We won’t enforce copyright laws on our consumers for properties they choose to use unless the owner of said property specifically instructs us to.

Well that’s all for now, as the Hero Creator continues to be developed, I’m sure it will be featured in the article series again. We hope you're all as excited by this powerful system as we are and I can’t wait to see what amazing creations come forth as a result.

Twitter: @ReubenCovington
Discord: Reuben#4049
Email: reubencovington@gmail.com

Reuben CovingtonSeptember 19, 2018