I spoke with the creator of Mirror's Game Another Fantasy! Here are his answers to my questions:
Q: Please describe your trading card game!
A: Mirror’s Game is a fantasy card game where the goal is to eliminate your opponent’s stocks. Players use creatures and spells to accomplish this. Stocks can take damage, up to five each, but only one stock can be lost per turn. This gives players a chance to react to what’s developing on their opponents field. When your opponent runs out of stocks, you win!
Q: What inspired you to create your own TCG?
A: I have always enjoyed drawing creatures and things, my first attempts at detailed design was when I really liked making fake Pokémon and giving them stats like in the video games and move sets. As early as Kindergarten I was already crafting imaginary scenarios for other kids, I would draw my own mechas then make up elaborate stories for them and tell them to the other kids, then I’d tell them I’d have more to tell them another day. I am sure a lot of that was probably regurgitation from television. In High School I began to be interested in Pokémon TCG again, and thought of different ways to remix that, custom cards that only had Pokémon TCG as a reference point besides a vague understanding of lands from MTG being “like energy cards but for everything”. A lot of incomplete ideas, random numbers and cool sounding things I’d assign to doodles until something began to emerge is what most of my early designs boiled down to. It wasn’t until I played more games and developed a better understanding of card advantage and balance did I begin to feel a sort of confidence emerge from my TCG inspired work, there was no longer a vacuum, there began to be context and cards began to inform each other, which lead to more productive creative sessions eventually.
Q: What TCGs did you grow up playing as a kid?
A: I live in the US so any references to school years in the following response are based on that. My earliest memories are sitting in my uncle’s 70s style home with a conversation pit styled groove that now held a huge CRT tv, and sitting there on some random day is where I find the vivid memories of the first time I saw Pokémon cards.
My older cousins were lying on the floor discussing the cards and stuff, I was already familiar with Pokémon in general at this point, I previously collected bottle caps in Mexico. I remember very clearly that they were trying to play a game with the cards that I didn’t really understand at all. I was maybe 3 or 4 years old at the time. I don’t know when I realized my cousin had the base set charizard card, but I remember that eventually becoming a part of my tiny mythos of the cool cards that surrounded my life that I’d eventually go on to explain to friends in elementary school. I am getting ahead of myself though because I remember that even before elementary school I had begun to collect Yugioh cards. I didn’t really know how to play like many kids at the time. My mother had some general intuition about it and made me keep my holographics away from my cousins and in protective binders. I remember the day we moved into a new house just months before I’d begin kindergarten, and my first thoughts in that house was where I was going to put my Yugioh stickers. I am pretty sure I was introduced to it by those same cousins in the time between the first introduction to cards and school, alongside Digimon cards at some point too but even back then we knew those were kinda sucky compared to the other two LOL.
At some point early in kindergarten my love for cards became focused on Yugioh. I still didn’t play properly I think, mostly playing video games that didn’t follow the proper rules. Wasn’t til years later I’d play video games with proper rules heavily, but still make classic mistakes like unable to differentiate negation and destruction. It was in the second grade that, in a very weird move for a second grader, I rejected the Yugioh GX series and decided I was no longer a fan, to the dismay of my best friend at the time. I also had a short stint with Duel Masters at some point in time before the 2nd grade. After Yugioh GX, I wanted Pokémon cards since I’d been playing Ruby and Sapphire versions with those older cousins. Around this time is when I picked up the ex Emerald starter deck with Milotic, mostly cuz I knew milotic was really strong in the video games. It was the first time I was able to teach myself the rules of a card game. Around this time I also obtained Neopets cards that I learned the rules of and a ton of Harry Potter cards I never used, only got those because I found them on clearance.
My interest in cards persisted in elementary school, in 4th and 5th grade I had a better grasp on games and their rules and began playing Pokémon heavily with friends up until around the 6th grade. At some point I began keeping up with new releases and pokemons worlds events and stuff. Also during this era, a friend of an older cousin I lived with at the time left behind a stash of magic cards that I found. I didn’t understand them at all, we just made up our own game with them in my neighbors driveway, but it was the first time I got to see some magic cards up close. I vaguely remember the neon sign for the game hanging up at a local store in a flea market I frequented when I was in elementary school being my only exposure to the brand.
In 8th grade and High School, I began playing Pokémon after a short break in order to have more stuff to do when Regional events came to town. I was mostly into Pokemons VGC series in the years between. My senior year I was reintroduced to Yugioh and I began selling Pokémon cards when I turned 18. It wasn’t until my adulthood that I finally learned MTG.
Q: What sets Mirror's Game Another Fantasy apart from other TCGs?
A: A lot of what is in Mirror’s Game is familiar from other games, and on the surface could be interpreted as nearly identical, but the functions often take on a new context and new roles given the rules. The sense of familiarity is intentional and we like to wear our influences on our sleeve.
One thing that I think is under utilized in card games is a system where mana (in this game it is called stars) is consistently regenerated the same on every turn. The only major success I’ve seen with such a system is Slay the Spire, which is an excellent game. It is a bit harder to implement in real life but, I think it is manageable. I think as long as we don’t have the stars fluctuating constantly within a turn (like floating stars or something like that) we should be fine for some time. So refreshing to the same amount of mana you begin with, it’s not an original idea in this game, but coupled with other variables it starts to take on a different meaning from other games.
The thing I haven’t seen done is the segmented life total like in Mirror’s Game. It seems obvious since it’s similar to video games, recently I watched a round of King of Fighters that somehow reminded me of our game. What is a bit difficult to understand in a paper game is the breath between lives. I think Smash Bros. handles it excellently with their platform, and I’d often try to use this analogy of imagining that the time between losing a stock and your next turn is like standing on the recovery platform in smash bros., but Smash has done a great job keeping the action going. Many do not consider this moment at all, and don’t recall what I’m talking about when I mention this mechanic in smash every time.
When you combine these two factors while also making the means of damaging the segmented life total a different variable from the numbers to resolve combat between creatures, a broad range of potential design is revealed in a way that comes almost naturally after a while. The context of each card cost in this system also becomes easily digestible over time, such as expected damage per cost or expected ability of a card by cost. Creating fun mixtures of all variables is what gives the game it's feel. It can take a long time to establish such a strong correlation, games like Yugioh and magic didn’t have much to go off of, but we can use their work to create a baseline for what we can and should do, and not waste time retreading water we do know has many consequences beneath it.
Q: How did you come up with the name Mirror's Game Another Fantasy?
A: It was actually a name I came up with for another game that I moved over to this game because it sounded cool. The Another Fantasy part came first, however it is very generic and it’s not the first game to use this name either. Originally it was meant to be a bit ironic and self aware, since the earliest versions of the game featured even more references and inspiration from other games, mostly MTG, condensed into fast turns because of an incorrect belief that doing certain actions was fun in and of itself, when in reality we needed much more context to define what made some of those homages worth referencing in the first place.
Q: How long have you been working on the game?
A: It’s been on and off since 2018. It faced periods of inactivity, and huge roadblocks in development due to lack of knowing how to fix some design mistakes without killing parts I wanted to leave in. Eventually though, I had to make choices and leave ideas on the cutting room floor. Internalizing the understanding that repeating mistakes of past games is unnecessary was a big help, and further investigation into properly costing cards and such proved to be the necessary steps to reviving the game and move ahead. I think that once one of my co-developers introduced concepts like bounds, things really began to take shape. They also convinced me that spell cards were more of an inevitability and an involved tool than I originally envisioned things to be like. This also helped me accept the way things were developing and how they should develop. Occasionally there are things a game needs to be better and replayable that wouldn’t be possible in our system without such additions in mechanics and compromises.
Q: What is the illustration/design process like?
A: Art is Expensive. It’s worth it though. Expensive is the word that summarizes what you experience as a developer with no art skills. I did a lot of the art myself, so that saved on cost. However, a more important word I want to give to prospective designers is the word Fulfilling. I borrowed a lot of art originally, and later compensated artists in the way they wished to be compensated. It wasn’t until late in development in set 1 that I was commissioning new artists that didn’t have any work in the game, this is why many of the featured artists have multiple arts and only a few artists have a single piece in the first set. I say it is fulfilling however because of the great sense of relief that washed over me as I finished the last payments for usage of art. I want to mention a friend of mine who is also a developer of the game, and is someone who also contributed some important designs, not just money :P. They helped pay for a large chunk of the licensing of pre-existing art from another friend who let me borrow so much of his art initially. Also, I personally paid for new commissions from the same artist to replace some art that wasn’t fitting the full frame of cards that were likely to receive a full art later on. I owe the artists a lot because I do not think we would have sustained interest in development if we had not integrated nice artwork we borrowed from generous friends at the point in which we did. It is often advised that you should not develop assets before you know a system works, but I’d say the opposite is more useful in creating work that is good and salvageable later if it’s flawed. Weaponizing sunk-cost to work in your favor is sometimes necessary to push through lulls and difficulties in the development cycle. I am also thankful for the extreme patience those artists have had in terms of receiving money.
As for card design, I don’t want to reveal the “secret formula” since there isn’t really one, but there’s a lot of language choices and things that give cards more or less impact, and sometimes art informs the designs as well retroactively or initially. It’s a complex process, and balance isn’t always the number one priority, stomping out problematic designs is usually better than limiting creativity from the beginning of the design. We don’t have a perfect formula for cards, just a general idea of what we expect when we spend a certain amount of resources for an impact on the game, and cards that under deliver we try to bring up to speed or remove if they feel useless after all. It’s often informed by other designs, some of which are ones that start to feel ancient at this point, but these types of reference points help us establish the identity of the game further.
Q: When will the game officially be released?
A: The date keeps changing unfortunately due to delays and personal life things coming up, but right now we want Sept 8th to be the date. It was previously Sept 1st, but shipping delays set us back by a week. It’s a small project though so I am pretty comfortable moving dates especially when a good chunk of product is already out there.
Q: What are your future plans for Mirror's Game Another Fantasy?
A: We do not plan to use Kickstarter at the moment, but we haven’t completely eliminated the option from our discussions. Currently we plan to make set 1 to order, allowing players to buy in at the level they feel comfortable and only create more if there is sufficient demand after the fact. We intend to launch a second set no matter what happens, and try to push for a 3rd set and 4th set that would try to reprint cards if it’s necessary or introduce more ideas if we find reprints unnecessary at the time due to sufficient supply. I think a slow burn type of game will be more sustainable in the current TCG environment. Being a flash in the pan as they say is likely to leave players feeling burned by the game if it fails to live up to the hype. I think establishing honest expectations and good communication is key to having a game last long enough to find itself. Games like Force of Will are surviving and in some cases thriving. If I got even half the player base of that game I would consider the game a success personally, however my financially invested co-developers may think otherwise :P
Q: Will you be at any upcoming conventions?
A: We just missed Southern Fried Gaming Expo, we didn’t have enough product to provide a great experience at the time and I knew we wouldn’t be on time so I didn’t investigate further. We plan to be at Market Hugs in Atlanta in the Fall, in November. It’s not a convention, but it is a free market for selling homemade goods and offering services. It seems far away, but it will be here before we know it. The market is run by a friend of a friend. I don’t know how many TCG scene people will be there, but I think the style and art will likely appeal to an audience there. Locally there have been some sports card shows that seem like good testing grounds for this sort of thing as well.
Q: Do you have any advice for someone looking to make their own TCG?
A: I think the more you know about what you’re getting into the better chance you will find realistic expectations for your project and satisfaction with your work. If you have a basic understanding of card game strategy, assuming your focus is on gameplay, you should move on to consuming as much of the free GDC talks on YouTube regarding board games and card games as possible. There are also many relevant video game related talks such as Civilization’s design one and Diablo’s development history that teaches you so much about what you can expect to endure. There are also talks regarding day to day life of small, but not microscopic developers that can help you establish expectations for potential twists and turns in your life following your ventures into game design and publishing. Try to create a situation where you face as few surprises as possible. With enough knowledge it can become more so that any time you are surprised in this area it’s a pleasant one. Besides that, play a lot of magic. Reflect deeply on what you like and don’t like, and let that inform your decisions. That does not mean clone magic, but it does mean that you should learn as much as you can from the work set forth by others in the past.
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