Why Early Access?

“The battle simulation is finished, and it is deterministic: which is the genuinely hard part of a real-time card game. What is not finished is the only thing that cannot be finished in private: the metagame.

A competitive card game is decided by the thousands of matches nobody has played yet. We need a live ladder to find the cards that are quietly broken, the openings that always win, the Sworn Pairs that turned out to be mandatory, and the ranks where matchmaking stalls out. Fifty testers cannot generate that. Ten thousand players over a season can.

Early Access is not us asking you to fund the game. It is us asking you to help decide what the card pool becomes.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“Approximately twelve months.

We will leave Early Access when two conditions are met: the ranked ladder has completed two full seasons without an emergency balance patch, and the card pool has grown to the point where deck archetypes stop converging on the same handful of Sworn Pairs.

If that takes longer than twelve months, we will say so on this page rather than ship an unfinished competitive game to hit a date.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The full version is planned to add:

- Draft mode: build from random picks, three losses and you are out, with rewards that scale to wins.
- The complete card pool, roughly three hundred cards, with finished faction identities.
- Tournament and spectator support.
- The full cosmetic pipeline: board themes, tower and idol skins, seasonal tracks.
- Balance across the whole card pool, tuned from the ladder data that Early Access exists to collect.

Player progress carries forward. There is no wipe at full release.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“Playable and complete as a game, not a slice.

Included today: real-time three-lane battles with the full card-stage system; the Oath Hand and Sworn Pair mechanics; over two hundred cards including twenty heroes with four evolutions each; cross-match card mastery; the collection and deck builder; offline Practice on three difficulties and the single-player Ladder against five named champions; and online Quick Battle and Ranked with server-verified match results.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“The 4x Oath Sigil rate is an Early Access rate for everyone playing during Early Access; when the game leaves Early Access we plan to settle it to 2x. And the "I Was First" victory flourish is planned to be granted only to accounts that played during Early Access: it is retired at full release, permanently, and is never sold or granted afterwards. Founders keep it. This is subject to a change.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“Every balance change ships with the ladder data that justified it, posted to the discord official page before the patch goes live: win rates, pick rates, and the matchup that caused it. Proposed card changes go up for discussion a week ahead of the patch.

Card and mode suggestions are tracked publicly, and the roadmap is updated at the end of every season with what moved and what did not.”