Director's Note Vol.1
Congratulation
on a successful release of The Caster Chronicles: The New World Order
Admissions! In order to celebrate the release of TCC (as it is often
abbreviated), I would like to extend our thanks to the players who’ve followed
our series in the form of these director’s notes! I hope you enjoy them!
From A Director of The Caster Chronicles : Tsuyoshi Ikeda
Origin
“Being
able to collect cards of cute girls, that alone is fun.”
This
became the backbone of our design. Normal card games involve playing cards and
then rapidly sending them to the graveyard. It makes sense for things like
heinous monsters to die and be sent to the graveyard, but doing the same to
cute girls just felt wrong. All the more so if it happens to take a particular
character the player liked!
“For
starters, let's make a game full of likeable cute girls (without ever sending
them to the graveyard), that is fun whether you win or lose!”
That was
truly the start of everything.
The read will be quite long...so if you want to skip to the last part, that’s totally OK! (lol)
First set “The Magic Battle
Begins” 10/20/2017
・Game Design
Since
this was the first set, we decided to focus on the block mechanic as the
foundation for the set. Rather than having obvious deck archetypes that could
be built, we wanted the player to be able to make whatever they thought would
be fun. From one perspective, this meant there were many decks to construct.
From another perspective, it also meant there wasn’t much direct guidance on
building a deck.
Recently,
there has been demand for simplifying and making the card game more oriented
towards beginners. We have actually tested such design with our designer decks
(a deck made to test some design intent), our conclusion being that simplifying
the game too much would make the individual games monotonous as well as make
the lifespan of the card game itself short. So instead, we decided to design
our first set in a way that would allow future sets to remain interesting.
By
having our first set have no particularly strong themes and contain thinly
spread out components, we allowed our first set to turn into a basis for future
augment ability from future sets, thus keeping those additional coming sets fun
and interesting, as well as allowing the first set to be a critical item for
deck building.
As there was no real deck building hints at the start of the games release, the
majority of gameplay was balanced between players with the majority running
single color decks. However, some highly skilled players began to branch into
multicolor decks and even found an abusable infinite in the game! (As one would
expect from the ingenuity of card gamers!) This led to the eventual banning of
the card “Play Nice”. The card alone was not too strong, but when used with
graveyard recursion decks it could be played continuously every turn. This lead
to long, unfun games, leaving us with no choice but to ban it.
While
“Play Nice” may be banned, there are still similar replacements so don’t lose
hope!
・ Illustration Design
First of
all, I would like to draw your attention to the fascinating card back and card
border designs. Each design contains details that at first may go unnoticed,
yet the more you look at them, to more you discover (particularly in the case
of the card back!). Our card back sleeves also have a nice luster, smooth like
stained glass, so please do try them!
Servants
are this games monsters cards. “So just make monsters!!!” one might think, but
we actually have a reason for doing things differently. In order to lower the
word count as much as possible, we chose things that were already well known in
the world. By not having to explain what our creatures were, we opened up more
space for art and abilities, as well as some flavor text.
In order
to make our casters stand out more, our illustrators designed them with more
exaggerated features. This was poorly received by players (but popular with
overseas players!) Knowing this, we decided to design our second set with a
bigger focus on ‘cute’ design for our casters. Casters should be cute no doubt,
but we hope that each one was able to retain some individuality. We hope
everyone is able to find a character they like!
Character
designs have to incorporate the attribute they belong to, this was largely left
in the hands of the illustrators. The same generally goes for the names and
personality of the characters. This is because the stage for TCC is a school
academy, and to upkeep that feeling of new students full of life entering the
school, we leave the establishment of suitable characters to the illustrators.
Thanks to all the wonderful illustrators involved, we have managed to make a
wonderful cast of students! You have our heartfelt thanks.
Collaboration Booster Pack
“Magical Girl Raising Project” 4/27/2018
A while
back we did a collaboration with the series “Magical Girl Raising Project”.
We’ve designed the set this time with the entirety of the anime’s world in
mind. For the sake of development, I’ve personally watched the anime in its
entirety over four times!
As
giving my impressions of the show would take too long, I’ll restrain myself
(but of course, I’ve become a fan!). One thing we were wary of during the
development process was to not harm the previous games balance. To briefly
describe the set, each character from the series reappears and, just like in the
anime’s setting, scrambles to collect magic candies. The casters are divided
into two forces, justice and evil, in order to make deck building easier as
well as to introduce a new keyword ability called “United Front”. This new
ability also makes an appearance in our new starter deck “Magical Dream 7”, and
might also make an appearance in future sets.
As for
card power, this set alone is able to produce strong decks. We were careful to
not have this set directly strengthen card from the first set, or decks from
other sets. The collector value for this set is very high, we hope you enjoyed
it.
Second set “πth DIMENSION
BATTLE ROYALE” 2/9/18
We
finally released our first follow up set! In it, we introduced seven new Lv2
casters and included two major themes within.
First
off, we had the Genpei War (historic war between the Genji and the Heike clans)
as a major theme throughout the set. Unlike the first set, this time there was
a clear direction within the second set. For players that started this set, we
had two factions that were easy to immediately build. One of the two factions,
Heishi, was very popular at tournaments it seems! For players that had started
with the first set, we also had cards that allowed one to further strengthen
their own decks.
Our
second theme introduced in this set was SoulBond servants. The idea behind
SoulBond was to take casters that had a strong bond with each other and fuse
the power of their souls together, calling forth a powerful servant. The secret
art cards that we prepared for each coupling were well received!
As a
side note, the πth dimension is indeed referring to the 3.14th dimension. In
it, our casters battle in an alternate reality slightly deviating from our 3rd
dimensional world! Please checkout our homepage sites manga for more info!
Extra Edition Promo Cards
In TCC,
there have been many fascinating collaborations, some of these appearing as
promo cards. We had the challenging task of choosing suitable text for the
characters, as well as fitting them into the games environment. From here on
out, we intend to continue to do collaborations.
(As a
secret bonus to those who’ve been kind enough to read this far, a little hint…
prepare.....SoulBond.....take that as you will ;])
Third set “Magical Dream 7”
& “The New World Order Admissions”
Finally,
we have caught up to the current set.
For
starters, regarding “Magical Dream 7”, it goes without saying that the
illustrations are splendid as well this time around! Surely if one had to
choose to start playing TCC from anywhere it would be from this starter. It’ll
definitely be an enjoyable pickup for both new and continuing players so please
give it a try! The themes for this starter are idols and band.
The
symbol skill DCT stands for “Dreams Come True” and is used by cards with the
“Earnest” typing. DCT is a skill that uses the total amount of “Earnest” type
cards in your graveyard to activate powerful abilities. That is to say, the
idols and band cards that have earnestly given it their all have their “Dreams
Come True”.
In
practice, DCT is a very strong skill!
“The New
World Order Admissions” is our expansion set focusing on supporting various
existing deck archetypes! Included is a lot of support for the Tengu archetype
(did you know there are over 48 recorded legends of Tengu? That’s a lot to work
with!), this set will likely redefine how the Tengu archetype is approached.
The third set also has a secrets included within. By all means, please enjoy
the set.
The fourth set has already finished development. The centerpiece
this time around will be as determined by the voting poll all our followers
participated in! Thank you to all our followers who have helped supported the
casters and helped them grow! Included will be a new system that will change
the way magic duels work and, of course, currently existing cards will play a
huge role in our new set, so please look forward to its release!
Thank you for reading this far.
TCC is a game where you can have fun whether you win or lose. (But
of course winning is also fun!) Whether you win or lose the match, as long as
you had fun at the end of the day you’re really a winner!
We hope you enjoy this sneak peak of the upcoming set...
The person in charge of the 49th generation of students, Shirusu
Maga, was looking over the examination scores of the new students, when
suddenly he began to mutter to himself. “...How is that possible...Just what is
going on?”, Something unexpected had occured. The 49th generation was supposed
to be the last generation to make magic contracts with demons.
In other words, starting from the 50th generation of students, the
school would become a normal high school like any other. Shirusu was looking
forward to finally being able to retire to the demon world after so long. And
yet, as he looked at the examination scores, it was clear that the new admits
were endowed with magic power. It seemed his retirement would have to wait.
“However, this source of magic is…”
Confused by the sudden development, Shirusu began to look into the
source of the new students power. “This is...holy power?”, unable to contain
his surprise, Shirusu vocalized his thoughts, when suddenly his phone began to
vibrate.
[Incoming Call from Yukihiko Mashi]
A call from someone introducing themselves as the new director of
the 50th generation had arrived. After a short conversation, Shirusu returned
his phone to his suit pocket before vanishing into an ominous puff of smoke.
Perhaps he could retire after all.