Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Indie, Card & Board Game
Takara Cards
New version: 69!
TAKARA Cards - Beta 0069:
- New Reputation Exchange System and UI: When you have 5 reputations, you can exchange one. If the gods have Mercy on your Karma, the reputation to be exchanged will be a Curse. - Some Improvements in the Character Creation Tutorial and Introduction texts. - Attempt to fix bugs related to Tutorial and Hull of the ship. - Base Karmic Magnitude of Reputations is now 5 (was 6). - Events now give more reputations, overall. - Events give "more" karma overall. - New events. - Intro event now has more responses per Karma. - Event System can now GIVE a random Reputation, by type. - Mines now correctly show how much Damage they deal (if they don't have energy). - Some minor improvements.
New version: 68!
TAKARA Cards - Beta 0068:
- System of influence of Equipment Cards by Attributes Implemented. Several Equipment Cards are now influenced. - Overhauled Jump Turn Generator: Max number of turns is now 7 and THREE turns is now possible (previously never rolled). - Destiny System (samsara) now gives preference to events with Magnitude greater than 3. - New jump transition! :D - Relative Corner Tavern implemented: There are three events focused on Search cards, initially. - It is now possible to earn broken Wanted Equips. - Income tax events. - New Intro Events! - Fixed bugs in function to win Search cards (in events). - New tutorial slides, inserted based on test feedback. - Improvements and changes in the Tutorial texts. - Fixed some bugs related to the Mouse on the grid inside the tutorial. - Manual is now accessible at the end of the Tutorial and in the Persona Creation Screen. - Introduction Message in Character creation. - Attributes Screen now informs what each one means when hovering the Mouse over it. - Manual now remembers the page it was on. - Various other minor improvements.
New screenshots and Steam NextFest
Hi! A quick update:
The game has come a long way since our last post here, so we've decided to update the game screenshots on the Steam page. These new screenshots show some of Character Creation, Navigation and events!
Also, we would like to announce that we are going to participate in the next Steam NextFest, in February! :D We are very happy with the the game and looking forward to getting it into the hands of players. :)
Thanks to everyone who added Takara to their wishlist!
Creating the Board Interface
Hello, my name is Daniel Pinheiro Lima and I am a production artist at Post Mortem Pixels. On Takara Cards, one of my roles is to help develop the look of the game's interfaces. In this post I want to show a little of the development of what we call the "combat board":
The design development started with a Layout mockup created by Filipe Dilly, game designer of the game.
From this concept I created a series of "mockups" images of the finished interface. These images already brought additions of some features that were being discussed in our production meetings. In the first version I placed two wide margins to suggest a ship cockpit inspired by 80's and 90's movies and anime, a small progress bar between the ship and its destination at the base of the interface, in the lower right corner a music visualizer and a dialog window in the upper right corner. All these elements were removed for good reason: Some were moved to other parts of the game and some didn't add to the game experience.
In later versions the progress bar was replaced by a concept of "links" that we have in the current version of the game. These connections serve to show which elements influence the board or have some connection. I've tried to keep the dialog and music viewer interface, but you can see that these elements make the interface cluttered and distracting and have been removed.
In the following versions I inserted a preview of the cards and made a general adjustment on the position of the buttons and elements for reading the ship's state on the left.
After some versions, which received another cleaning pass on some of the excesses, I felt the need to create a small animation demonstrating how these elements would work within the game. I even added some sound elements:
All these versions of the interface design were done in Inkscape, a vector drawing program, with it exporting each interface element to Blender and creating an animation was a very agile process.
With the animation done, Dilly felt confident enough to proceed with the interface design within Godot, the game engine we are using. This same process is used to create and refine all the rest of the interface.
I hope you enjoyed this look behind the production. We still have a lot of work to do before launch. We have other posts planned about the interfaces that the game requires, and I also want to talk about my work modeling and animating the ships and effects.
Seasoning with a taste of 90's anime
Hi, my name is Keiko and I am artist and concept artist in Takara Cards!In this post, I will share a little bit behind the visual direction of the game!
Like many, I have fond memories of growing up in the 90's and getting in touch with anime for the first time through broadcast TV, They became HUGE here in Brazil where I am from, and everyday at school we would discuss the last episodes: whether Sailor Moon developed a new evolution of her powers, which Zodiac Knight was the strongest, the highlights of the tournament in Yu Yu Hakusho... looking back at that time, it felt like I was in an anime watch club of massive proportions! Watching those series and being able to talk to friends about it and also making new friends because we shared an interest for those animations made everything even more fun!
When Filipe Dilly - main game designer of Takara- told me that the visual direction of the game would make reference to the anime of those years, I was thrilled! There is a shared love in the team for tokusatsu and anime of the 80's and 90's, and we keep in mind that it should show in the final result.
Maybe these references will pop out to an attentive eye ;) The idea of creating for this universe in Takara making allusion to the anime of those years keeps me excited throughout the process!
Among other visual influences beyond those, one to remember is the video for "Bad Apple!!", part of the soundtrack of the Touhou Project series, which greatly impacted me!
If any there are any questions, feel free to leave it in the comments and we'll answer them!
Hi! My name is Filipe Dilly and I'm the main designer and programmer of Takara Cards. Me and three other people work on the game: Daniel Pinheiro (Animation, Art), Kawakeiko (Art, Concepts) and Rafael Assunção (Music).
Takara started with the idea of re-making our first game, NEXT JUMP, on another Engine (Godot) with HD graphics and some design improvements (plus a decent tutorial). The motivation for re-making a game rather than creating a new one was simple: Use this experience to learn and migrate to Godot (from Stencyl), as well as develop a production process between the three of us before making a more complex game.
But one Saturday afternoon, inspired by posts from designers making card games using a "regular deck of cards", I decided to make a simplified version of NEXT JUMP:
To my surprise, the game turned out great! Much better than the original, in my opinion. It's also easier to understand (the tutorial was one of the biggest problems with the original game)! I started experimenting with the idea of making a new "incarnation" of NEXT JUMP using cards as an interface, and Takara Cards was born!
The current game is more complex and deeper than the prototype above, but some things have remained, like the 3x4 grid:
One of the advantages of cards is the flexibility they give to the game: It is possible to make Equipment much more variable and interesting than before, which was one of the points I wanted to revisit in the original. And speaking of cards, the player have two types of "Decks": Equipment and Maneuvers. Up to six Weapons or Accessories cards can be "equipped" on the Ship and when your Hull drops to zero, the damage starts to hit the Equipment itself! "Breaking" the cards!
Maneuvers cards are the pilot's "skills" and the player can have as many as they want in the Deck. Maneuver cards can also "evolve" as you level up.
These are just a few examples of how different the game is from the original inspiration, but this post is long enough, so I'll end it here.
For our next post, we'll talk about the main influences on the game's visuals: Anime from the 80's-90's! :D
If you have any questions about the design, particularly how it compares to NEXT JUMP, feel free to ask in the comments below and we'll answer.
