When the team at Firaxis Games was first approached about the opportunity to create a new game with Marvel Entertainment, we were obviously very excited! So I wanted to create a game that featured tactical combat.
But I quickly learned that designing a superhero game is very different from creating a game in which soldiers fight an alien invasion. Today, our journey to design an all-new heroic combat experience, why we decided to use cards to represent our heroes’ abilities, and how that system works in Marvel’s Midnight Suns. We look forward to speaking with PlayStation players about this.
The theory behind the cards
To understand why we use cards, it’s important to analyze what makes tactical games fun in the first place. All tactical games are inherently puzzles, and our job as designers is to find the right balance between the puzzles being too easy and obvious, or being too complex to be near impossible. . Our goal is to find a sweet spot where the answer isn’t immediately apparent, but the player understands the mechanics and tools that drive the game to reach the solution. However, skilled players will learn over time how best to use these tools and quickly overcome obstacles. That’s where randomness comes in.
Randomization is a key design element in tactics games. Because it offers a way to make the game unpredictable even when the player has mastered his core mechanics. Players must constantly adapt to new situations to keep the puzzles fresh and surprising. In XCOM he can have great moments, like hitting 25% of his shots, but his blanks on 95% of the points can also make him miss a round.
Another important element of tactical games is fulfilling the player’s fantasy. In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Captain Marvel his entire universe, from his Marvel universe-powered strength and Tony his Stark brilliance, to the Doctor his Strange mystical art and Blade’s vampire-hunting prowess. We have an amazing roster of heroes from. In our early prototypes, we put these characters into his XCOM-style combat with elements like accuracy and cover. The mechanics worked well, but the game just didn’t feel right. After all, these are superheroes! Iron Man does not miss a shot with his repulsor blast. Captain Marvel doesn’t hide in defense when things heat up.
As we removed these XCOM elements, especially accuracy, the game started to feel more heroic…but the combat puzzles quickly became too simplistic. It was easy to have the hero repeat the same powerful attack every turn until the mission was over, and randomness had to be reintroduced to keep the combat puzzles engaging while making them feel super his hero . That’s when I came up with the idea of expressing the hero’s abilities with cards.
Cards are commonly used in games, and players are good at it because they are familiar with the main “mechanics” such as decks, draws, and discards. Drawing cards every turn gave our combat experience the perfect amount of randomness. Because it runs, it feels superpowered in combat, but there is still some strategy needed to solve combat puzzles based on which cards are in your hand.
Fight and think like a superhero
In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, every hero has a unique set of abilities that they use to form a deck of eight cards. When a hero joins a battle, his deck is shuffled and he draws up to 6 cards at the start of each turn.During your turn you have 3 card play Represents the number of times the ability can be used, and 2 redraw Swap abilities you don’t want to use.you can also move Once per turn, you can select a hero anywhere you like.
As for the abilities themselves, I’ll break them down into three categories: attack, skill, When heroic. attack Cards are primarily used to deal damage.for some attacks knock back Force repositioning enemies by throwing them back in a targeted direction – you can deal extra damage by throwing enemies back at objects, other enemies, or allied heroes!
skill Cards are used for support, often providing various benefits to the player or debuffing enemies. Can be used to give positive status effects.
heroic Cards are very powerful abilities that deal significantly more damage or have stronger effects on the battlefield.Marvel fans will be delighted to see the many iconic hero abilities represented in these cards.Heroic cards require a resource called heroism, generated by playing attack or skill cards. Using objects on the battlefield also requires heroism. environmental attack No need to use card play. With heroism, you can bring down lampposts, explode barrels, pick up piles of newspapers, and even slap your enemies in the face.
Combat in Marvel’s Midnight Suns is uniquely accessible, easy to pick up and play. There is no movement grid or cover system, heroes are automatically repositioned to reach their targets. To play an ability, he selects one of his cards from his hand and simply selects the target enemy or area. That’s all. Captain America gallops across the battlefield and Hydra knocks out his goons.
After mastering the basic rules, combat becomes surprisingly deep and complex. There are so many factors that coordinate tactical puzzles in every mission, turn, and action.
- What are my hands capable of?
- What heroes are there in this mission and how do their abilities interact?
- Which enemy poses the greatest threat? Are there dangerous villains to deal with?
- Should I spend my heroism on heroic abilities or take advantage of the environment?
- Can I use knockback abilities and terrain to maximize my damage output?
And if that’s not enough, we also offer eight difficulty options to test your tactical prowess. Just want to get your hands on some supernatural marvel stories? Choose your story difficulty. But what if you want to agonize over every decision? Ultimate III is the way to go.
We can’t wait to see how you solve tactical combat puzzles when Marvel’s Midnight Suns launches on PlayStation 5 on December 2, 2022!
