Greetings Deckbuilders!
When the last spark of humanity flickered out, we asked ourselves: what if survival meant defending the final ember in a frozen world?
The main source of inspiration was Game of Thrones, especially its battle scenes—whether between humans or against the White Walkers. Scenes like lighting the flames beyond the Wall to block the undead’s advance left a deep impression on us. These moments helped define the game’s tone: enemies far greater in number, the tension of defense and counterattack, the unity of mankind, and the ever-present winter setting.
In addition, classic RTS titles like StarCraft and Warcraft II shaped our early gaming memories. The thrill of commanding units, coordinating forces, and achieving that “1 + 1 > 2” synergy became a foundation for several core mechanics:
Troop synergy
Interaction between abilities and keywords
Complex, sometimes unpredictable “battlefield chemistry”
We didn’t initially choose the card-game direction because everyone was a fan of TCGs. Instead, cards felt like an intuitive and flexible way to present strategy and decision-making—they could just as easily have been miniature soldiers on a battlefield. But once you introduce “cards,” you inherit a whole world of TCG-related concepts. As development continued, we explored and played similar titles to refine our understanding.
In early versions, FrostBound wasn’t the grounded tower-defense game you see today. Players originally commanded a floating fortress. After completing the tutorial, the castle would literally rise from the ground and take flight. The concept was to explore how, after a great cataclysm, a lone ark could search for and preserve civilization.
Ironically, I’m not a particularly seasoned or passionate card-game player—at least not compared to our planners. Naturally, the game’s rules were influenced by titles like Gwent and Slay the Spire.
That lack of deep card-game experience became both a blessing and a curse:
We weren’t constrained by what card games “should” be.
We spent tremendous effort later to make the logic intuitive for traditional card players.
It allowed us to create a subtle “new genre,” blending roguelike, tower defense, and auto-battler elements.
For a long time, we jokingly called it “a card-based version of Plants vs. Zombies.”
As a hybrid between card and tower-defense systems, FrostBound delivers a unique “battlefront tug-of-war,” where waves of enemies crash forward and soldiers hold their ground. Including structure cards (which act like relics or permanent effects), the total number exceeds 500 cards.
There are no deck restrictions by hero or class—everything draws from a shared pool. Our goal was to give players extreme freedom and truly emergent strategies, letting each player find their own path to victory.
Beyond the roguelike randomness and vast card pool, one moment stands above all others—the defensive counterattack.
Just like in Game of Thrones, humanity starts under overwhelming pressure, then strikes back. During early demos, when players were pushed to the last line of defense and managed a desperate comeback, their excitement was unmatched. We’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.
We designed comeback mechanisms, tuned enemy waves, and refined difficulty pacing to encourage that reversal moment. When a player truly feels like “the last bastion in winter,” retreating step by step until rallying to victory—that alone makes all the effort worth it.
Since many of us are huge fans of survival games, our early concept gave significant weight to management and survival aspects. It made sense, given that the player is a city lord.
Originally, the player commanded a floating fortress waging wars across snow-covered lands, ultimately to defeat the northern calamity.
A variant of this idea replaced the floating fortress with a hex-grid city builder, where building placement and adjacency created gameplay relationships.
At that time, the game loop was much longer than it is now. Players not only fought battles but also built farms, banks, and other basic infrastructure.
Eventually, we realized that these mixed systems didn’t blend well. The roguelike structure required shorter, tighter sessions, while management systems demanded longer playtime and more complexity.
So we started simplifying. We redesigned the game into one where the player explores the world on a floating city, visiting points of interest, engaging in battles, and gathering resources from forests and mines, while a storm constantly pursued them from the west.
It sounded great on paper, and the initial prototype even worked. But over time, we found that the complexity wasn’t matched by long-term fun. It was novel at first, but hard to balance.
Ultimately, we chose to focus on subtraction, removing the management systems entirely so players could fully immerse themselves in the combat experience. All metadata was reorganized into a clean and straightforward interface, making each run shorter and more focused. That’s how we arrived at the game’s current form.
As for art direction, we experimented with multiple styles early on, but after considering development cost, team capacity, and visual consistency, we settled on the current look and continued refining it from there
Feb 2024 - Pre-production & research stage
May 2024 - First Demo
Our goal was always to make players truly feel the thrill of battlefield strategy. To achieve that, we went through countless iterations and hard lessons. Early versions were brutally difficult — during prototype testing among friends, the demo’s completion rate was under 5%.
In early builds, monsters had no attack limit per turn. Once combat began, it was a fight to the death.
Combined with higher base stats, this created an intense “last stand” tone that became part of the game’s emotional foundation.
Elite cards, now a key source of mid-battle progression, used to function just like regular defense cards — going to the discard pile when defeated and unable to earn reputation unless they scored kills.
Naturally, the overwhelming difficulty led to frustration. During a private playtest about two weeks before the Steam demo, a few hardcore card gamers loved the challenge, but most players were overwhelmed. The idea of “heroic comeback” sounded thrilling, but being powerless against the enemy just felt cruel.
We reflected deeply and made immediate changes.
The root causes were complex mechanics, poor onboarding, unbalanced numbers — and most importantly, low tolerance for mistakes and excessive reliance on luck.
Beyond improving tutorials, we implemented two key changes:
Elite cards now return to your hand when destroyed or withdrawn.
Restart options were added, including replaying a turn and eventually replaying an entire battle.
After these updates, feedback shifted from “this makes no sense” and “it’s too hard” to “I pulled off an amazing round!” and “This game is awesome!” — reactions that kept us motivated.
Our 500+ cards have undergone at least 2,000 rounds of numerical tuning or reworks. At first, we treated balance like an equation — comparing costs (resources, timing, player decisions) against expected value or payoff.
For a long time, we tried to “balance the math.” We built spreadsheets and ran analyses, but eventually abandoned that approach. In hindsight, there were three main reasons:
True balance takes years. With a small team and limited resources, we couldn’t endlessly fine-tune like big studios.
Player behavior changes everything. The same card can feel wildly different depending on a player’s build or timing.
Emotion can’t be balanced. Players crave moments that feel beyond numbers — the thrill of risk and reward.
We learned that experience matters more than equations.
For example, there’s a “casino” event with huge variance: harsh penalties but enormous rewards. Players found clever ways to exploit it for massive gains and joked about “smashing the casino.” It became a running community meme.
There’s no “right” conclusion here — we’re still exploring. But perhaps this spirit is why players affectionately call us “Wheelchair Studio.”
Lyra Studio was officially founded in September 2024. It all began with a few old friends from across the country, people who had known each other for over a decade. Each had gone their separate ways, faced their own setbacks, but ultimately came together again, united by our shared love of games and a common belief.
Next time, we’ll dive into how we built our first enemy faction - and why they freeze their own troops to gain power.
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