To continue showing you some more of the viking game I’m working on, I thought I’d talk a bit about a very central part of the game – the viking cards.
There are a few different types of vikings in the game. There are common viking cards and four rare viking classes, shown below: the Chieftain, the Rogue, the Shaman and the Berserker.
The vikings are also divided by being from three different regions, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland and there are three tiers or strength levels for each type of card. The players will start the game with only tier one cards and as they progress will have the possibility of getting cards from the higher levels. The picture below shows an example of common viking cards of the three tier levels.
Designing the cards was a very interesting challenge, both to find a way for the interface of the cards to convey all information and to illustrate the different levels and classes of vikings. The dragon ornaments are an element that I’ve used at many places since I like the celtic and nordic design and I wanted these details to reappear through the game. Below is an example showing the evolution of the card interface design, this time showing the berserker class.
I have tried to make the vikings themselves feel down to earth and keeping dramatic fantasy designs away in favor of a more realistic approach. The goal was for the vikings to feel mundane and relatable and to give the impression of strong warriors heading to the battlefield in a world quite like our own.
There are many aspects in managing the deck of viking cards, both the balancing of the different classes and types, getting higher tier cards and also upgrading cards. Each individual card can level up, have it’s armor and weapon upgraded, and be equipped with booster cards. The formula works a bit different than many other card games, but upgrading and levelling up your viking deck is very compelling and it’s been really fun designing the cards.
This was my second post about “Valhalla, Raids and Gold” which is a mobile game I’ve been working on for the last one and a half year, in my next post about the game I’ll go through the design of some of the environment tiles. Thanks for stopping by!