Developer Tako Boy is looking to break new ground with their current project, the forthcoming card battler/RPG,Cross Blitz. Unlike most digital CCGs, which are driven by a core PvP mode,Cross Blitz’s centerpiece is a meaty single-player campaign with five playable heroes possessing their own unique storylines. But a robust single player campaign isn’t the only departure from the genre’s typical conventions. The game’s arcade-like pixel art style, high-energy soundtrack, and plethora of old-school, RPG spiritual predecessors also set it apart from the typical card battling crowd.
In an interview,Game Rant discussedCross Blitz’influences, development, and plans for the future with Tako Boy’s programmer Tom Ferrer and artist Phil Giarrusso.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Game Rant: How would you describe Cross Blitz to gamers who have yet to hear about it?
Phil Giarrusso: I would frame it as an RPG/card battler hybrid with lots of quirky characters, in a very unique, interesting and kinda comical fantasy world. That is a lot of words, but it’s hard to describe without those buzz words.
GR: What mechanical features, in your opinion, set Cross Blitz apart from other card battling games?
Tom Ferrer: I think the RPG mechanics set it apart from most roguelike card games and PvP card games. It makes the game feel more like a single-player, fun experience, but withthe complicated mechanics of a normal card gamelikeHearthstone, Magic,Yu-gi-oh!,or things like that.
PG: We also have a very strong narrative focus with this game. One of the main reasons we developedCross Blitzis that we feel there are so many card games right now with such a heavy PvP focus. I don’t necessarily want to say we wanted to make something more casual, but we wanted something easy to get into with lots of game modes where you don’t have to engage ina highly competitive game.
Something we’ve seen when people are talking about other card games is that people don’t want to exclusively play against other players. I personally don’t like 1v1 PvP games that much, because they make me really stressed out. I want something else I can play where I can use those fun mechanics against an AI, level up my character, and feel like I’m progressing through something.
GR: Cross Blitz has five playable characters. Do all characters share the same pool of cards? Any unique abilities?
PG: Yeah! So basically, there are five different heroes—one for each of the game’s factions. Each faction has unique cards and unique abilities that only that faction can use. Tom has a better understanding of the deeper mechanics, but depending on what hero you play, you will have access toa different pool of cards. But there are also neutral cards that can be used by every faction, so you can build a deck by mixing and matching. Each hero also has unique hero powers, which are spell cards you can pull. We’re planning on adding 2 heroes per faction eventually. We definitely want each hero to capture a very different playstyle.
GR: Can you tell us a little bit about them?
PG: We’ve assigned traits to each faction. Like, Violet is the chaos faction. Quill is the little mouse character; he’s a thief and part of the fortune faction, which is about hoarding gold, and theft mechanics. Then there’s the war faction, starring Redcroft who is the big guy. That faction has a lot of brute force cards and minions. Marina is the nature faction, our sprite elf, so lots of nature based cards. Abilities where you can put thorns on your minion, to reflect damage. Seto,the fish monk guy, is the balance faction. Different ice magic spells, and lots of martial arts type cards.
So there are tropes in there, but we are trying to break away from those at least a little bit by adding some uniqueness to every character. Violet isa pop starin this universe. So she’s not just your typical, dark magic witch character. She actually uses her voice to use magic. And her story revolves around other rival music bands that she battles against.
We felt like so many card games are about dark fantasy. You haveMagic,and that more traditional, D&D style vibe to the game, and we wanted to step away from that. Plus, we likemore cutesy stuffwith our aesthetic and design decisions. So we thought this was a good chance to delve into that.
GR: How do the deck building mechanics work? Is card acquisition randomized, or are certain cards guaranteed?
TF: Both of those are true. Card acquisition is randomized through packs. You will get packs through story modes, but you will get static cards from story events, like collaborations. Every hero will team up with other heroes, and say, if Redcroft teams up with Violet, she may give him the War card. Every hero also has their own card associated with them.
PG: There’s an element of randomization, so each player will get a different set of cards. But there are defined moments in the game where you get specific cards. You only ever usein-game currency. We don’t want people spending real money to get game currency to buy card packs. We’re keeping everything self-contained within the game.
TF: Yeah, the card packs are more a randomization element for PvP. So if you do want to engage against other players, there’s some more variation. Also, if a new player dives into PvP without unlocking other characters first in story mode, that’s another element of randomization.
GR: Which game mode did you conceptualize first: the Campaign, PvP, or Roguelike?
TF: PvP was the easiest one to do first. I designed it so two people could just play cards against each other. And then we went off and designed the story. And I think, at first, it was designed to be like aYu-Gi-oh!,Hearthstone…a very PvP focused experience. But we decided that we didn’t want to push that free-to-play, PvP angle any more. We worked onCreatures of Aether, we’ve worked in mobile game development for the last three years or so. And we wanted to go in a new direction.
PG: Yeah. All the other modes just kind of evolved from the core card battling experience. And from there, the question was “how do you expand those mechanics to makemore interesting, diverse game modesthat have that central card battling mechanic at the heart of the game?”
GR: Many card dueling games feature limited narrative, and the campaign modes frequently act as tutorials for multiplayer or other endless play modes. ButCross Blitzseems to have more story than other titles in the genre. Can you share some more details about your storytelling and setting?
PG: Sure! We can’t go into too much detail about the individual character’s narratives, but as of now, there are five different campaigns where you play as one of the heroes. You see the story from their perspective, but all these events are kind of happening around the same time.
For the game’s release we’re hoping to have two story campaigns for each hero that you can play through. All these stories are leading to an overarching narrative. So each hero gives you lore bits, and tells you what’s happening in different parts of the world, which is called Cross Dawn Island. We drew outa bigLord of the Rings-like map, where you can see all the mountain ranges, and different towns and places.
I don’t know exactly what other details I should share. Redcroft is our pirate character. He and his crew are framed for raiding a ship on the West coast of the island. So he has to do an errand for the princess of the local kingdom to free his crew. Meanwhile, Quill, as the thief, is involved with the underbelly of the game’s main city, Dawn Dell. Basically, we want each story to develop these characters, so it’s easier to tell more stories with them moving forward.
TF: To add a little more context, each story is a self-contained book, so each campaign will be released as books. Book 1 will be available on release, and then Book 2 later on, and Book 3 is as far as we’ve planned right now, but we could go further depending on the success of the game.
GR: Why did you decide to go with a pixel art aesthetic?
PG: I’ve been doing pixel art since I started on games in 2013. And before that, I messed with pixel art for fun. I had no idea what I was doing, just kind of dabbling. I was hired on my first project when this guy who was working on his first game saw my work online. So that’s kind of how I got into it. I just continued doing it because it’s just a more specialized art medium that is really good for getting work.
But personally, for Tom and me, we justlove that aesthetic. It feels like you’re solving a puzzle every time you work out a problem. Especially withCross Blitz, because it’s such a UI-heavy game. you may’t just resize stuff willy-nilly. Once you make a card a certain size, that has to work for every kind of situation. It also helps that the asset sizes are so small.
GR: Pixel graphics have always had an enduring appeal, and especially with indie games lately. Do you think it’s mostly a matter of nostalgia on gamers’ part, or is there more to it than that?
PG: I think there isan element of nostalgiafor sure. A lot of those indie developers are expanding on those ideas. But I think there is something about pixel art that justfeels like a video game, and it’s a really quick way to capture that vibe. It is so unique to video games in general. It’s iconic like that. People also say the barrier to entry is lower than other art styles, which I can understand, but once you get into it, you discover it’s more challenging than it seems. So I think the lower barrier of entry for getting started is another factor. And if you are working small enough, you can produce assets very fast. But as you soon find out, when your sprites get bigger, the work gets exponentially longer.
GR: The song featured in the Steam Trailer evokes a 16 to 32-bit vibe. Can you share some details about the game’s music and sound design?
PG: We’re working with this music artist named CactusBear. I don’t know his exact history, but he’s been working in the industry for a long time. He worked with us on our last game,Candies ‘N Curses, and he did a really good job with that too. We really wanted the music inCross Blitzto havea unique vibeto it. Not just a JRPG, where it’s like “Here’s the Happy Map Song! Here’s the Quaint Town Song!” And granted, we want a little bit of that, because we are trying to capture that vibe. But we also wanted this soundtrack to be a little more quirky, a little more poppy, with a lot more energy to it.
With a card game, it’s sometimes hard to express energy in a dramatic or tense situation. So I feel like music and sound design is a huge part of that. We want it to feel like you’re in an intense battle, and not just throwing cards down. So we are excited to be working with Cactusbear again; he’s such a good dude, and we hope more people can find his music through our games. We want to share that with as many people as we can.
GR: What do you think the most important element of a solid card dueling game is? Strategic balance? Broad selection of cards? Fun combos? Or something else?
TF: Definitely, for me, it’s synergy. You want to be able to use cards that help you use other cards in other ways. You want your cards to feel like they have multiple uses. I don’t want a card that will be used in just one deck. That’s why we had factions so you could split those up. Balance is really huge too, and if you have factions, you’re able to kind of split cards up that would be broken together. And that’s also where the neutral cards come into play. They let you use faction cards completely differently. That synergy is just super important to me.
PG: The versatility, to me, is just very important to me. We only have 5 heroes, which—compared to some other types of card games—is kind of small. So we want to ensure you’re able to play them a bunch of different ways, which leads into the hero powers I mentioned earlier. You can equip three hero powers at a time, but there are a bunch you can pick from. So much of the game is battling cards, so we want to keep that interesting for as long as possible without things getting stale.
GR: What were the greatest challenges you have faced in development so far?
PG: So many challenges. This game is so hard to make. All games are so hard to make! For me, it’s definitely… the workload is really tough for such a small team. It’s really just Tom and Me and working with Cactusbear on audio. So when Tom is coming up with all these cool ideas for cards, and is like “Here’s 30 new ones!” I’m like “Oh. Great. I just need to design 30 new characters and do their pixel art, and animate them…" and so on.
Other than that, I’d say the hardest part for me is UI design. I come from a graphic design background, but just making sure the user experience flows nicely, everything looks good, and is utilized properly, and sized right…From an outside view, it’s like “oh cool, a level up screen,” but there are so many use cases to account for. Then I hand it to Tom and he’s like “But what about this case?” and there will always be something I haven’t thought of.
TF: Yeah, again, my favorite thing is synergy, like I said, but coming up with that synergy is challenging. I look at all sorts of games, like other card games and RPGs, and really anything to help me. You’ve got to come up with ideas, and then theme them. Like, “you take damage when this comes into your deck. What is that? A bomb.” AI is also a big challenge. We haven’t implementedreally impressive AIyet, but when you are playing a single-player card game, the AI needs to feel really good.
GR: Do you have an estimate of when Cross Blitz will be releasing?
PG: We’re hoping for early access by the end of the year. And then for a 1.0 release? We’re aiming for Q3 next year. But who knows? No promises!
TF: When it’s done (laughing).
GR: Are there any plans for Cross Blitz DLC or other post launch support?
PG: Yes. Every time we update, we want to be adding new game modes or more story content. Every time we do a story update, we’ll release new cards along with it. Every character in the game has some kind of card associated with them. There are lots of new game modes that can be derived from the mechanics that already exist in the game. Tom has so many ideas. I don’t think we will spend much time on cosmetic stuff. We would rather just focus on creating new content. And in a card game like this, there’s only so much you may do. Like “oh, wow, a new card skin.” But we are not going for IAP.
GR: Can you share some games or other media that influencedCross Blitz’s design, either mechanically or aesthetically?
TF: Initially, it’s like…I’ve been wanting to make a card game for my entire life. I’ve been playing card games since I was a little kid. I playedYu-gi-oh!. Then I got really intoHearthstone, and I’m still into it to be honest. Then there’sFire Emblem. Really huge game in my life. So those types of mechanics… you can see all those games inCross Blitzfor sure.
PG: I don’t really come from a card game background. So Tom proposed this game and I was like “Alright. I get to choose the next couple games,” (Tom laughs). To me, my biggest inspiration wastheBreath of Fireseries, and how the games have all these different anthropomorphic animal characters wandering around as if it’s completely normal. I think that helps the world ofCross Blitzfeel more fun. AndFinal Fantasy, obviously. I’m a really bigFinal Fantasyfan.
I’m a really bigDragon Questfan. I love howDragon Questis such a whimsical adventure. You have all these crazy and unique monster designs inDragon Quest, especially compared to other games. Like, it’s not just “this is a standard goblin, this is your standard wolf-thing,” it’s like “Here’s a mini-knight man riding a slime!” And that’s the kind of stuff I want to push for inCross Blitz.
Also,shout out toOdin Sphere. Just love the world they created in that game. AndCross Blitzhas a similar dynamic with five characters who interact periodically. Some strike up friendships. Some don’t get along. I really just love that style of storytelling.
Game Rant: Is there anything else you want people to know about Cross Blitz?
PG: I just hope people think it’s cool. I want them to try it. Like, if you like RPGs but aren’t big on card games, I hope you give it a try anyway. And if this looks cool,please wishlist it. It gives us a bigger presence. And if the game does well and people like it, we plan on adding on more content to it.
