How It All Began for Cardaclysm: Fragments of the Four

When I was little, we used to sit on a blue carpet with my brother and spend countless hours playing trading card games. I remember some of these games had pretty serious resource management aspects, which were significantly simplified when digital card games became popular.

Growing up, I played some of these digital card games. The idea of Cardaclysm (or Helmet as it was called back then), was that I wanted to see the cards I had played in 3D, fully animated, reacting to my attack commands or getting hit. I also wanted to add a more serious version of resource management, much like those card games I played as a child.

Helmet It started out as a rapid prototype, and at first, it was just about the battles. I wanted to design a new multiplayer card game. In addition to the different vision of resource management, I also wanted creature upgrades to be a core feature. By summoning two creatures in the same space of the battlefield, you could get an improved and more powerful version of that creature.

A few years ago, as digital card games became increasingly popular, it became clear to me that making a multiplayer card game as an independent developer was no longer a viable option. Most indie multiplayer games like this end up shutting down their servers and then years of work are thrown out the window. Instead, I opted to extend the concept of the game with a world map and orient it towards a single player experience with light RPG elements.

I have rebuilt the Helmet prototype to include a tutorial map and a randomly generated forest map. It included random encounters and very early versions of the deck and upgrade systems. Once I completed this demo, I submitted it to Headup (my editor) for viewing. I also included a single boss in the game, a fiery demon named Infernal.

The guys at Headup were great, they gave immediate feedback and some of their staff were hooked. Helmet pretty fast. They recommended that we include the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as main bosses instead of just Infernal. The name Cardaclysm was born and we hired more artists to complete more than 100 cards planned for the game.

Fast forward about two years and we’ve far exceeded that plan with over 240 cards and 40 artifacts. I’m very proud of what we’ve created and how far the game has come since that early little prototype. I hope we can extend the game even further at some point as I have a lot of ideas to carry on Cardaclysm next.

Cardaclysm: Shadows of the Four is available today in the Xbox Store for Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S.