Jun 7, 2017

Fable Fortune - Wimbles

Hello, Heroes!

My name is Tom "Wimbles" Wimbush, Lead Designer of Fable Fortune from Mediatonic, and I'm here to share some more of the new cards that will be coming to Fable Fortune as part of the 0.3 update this Friday, 9th June. Lets jump into it!

This set of elite soldiers, recruited directly from Logan's Royal Guard, represent a serious boost in power for any budding Safeguard decks out there. The ability to use Guard on these soldiers to pump up your other units, or generate an endless stream of Safeguard-triggering Royal Cadets, means that Safeguard decks now have the tools to really take over the board and generate more resources than their opponents during the mid and late game. Using effects like Blockade on a board full of these guys is pretty strong, to say the least.

It'd be an awful shame if these loyal Royal Guards had nothing to, well, guard, so we're introducing a brand new (and totally not tyrannical) King of Albion to keep them all busy. Meet another of our brand new Fabled cards: Logan!

A 5/5 for 8 Gold might not seem like the most enticing set of set of stats at first glance, but there's a lot of hidden power packed into the misunderstood monarch. Wait, what's that fancy bold Conjure word all about, I hear you ask. Conjure is a new keyword that we're using to describe all of our effects that allow you to choose 1 of 3 cards from a selection and add the chosen card to your hand. It's an effect that we're planning on using a lot more in the future, and making it a keyword ability allows us to create synergy with it later down the line ('After you Conjure...', 'Your Conjured cards...' etc).

Logan is a perfect example of what makes Conjure great, because the choice of three very different and potent Royal Decrees is what makes him so appealing for a range of decks and situations.

Choose to Conjure the Military Service decree and you'll later be able to summon a further 6/6 worth of Royal Cadets for just 3 Gold, making Logan an effective 11/11 for a total of 11 Gold. This is a powerful play on almost any board that's hard to remove because the stats are spread across multiple units.

Alternatively, you could Conjure the Field Surgeons decree to heal your Hero for a whopping 10. This will go a long way towards stabilizing your position against more aggressive decks so that you can start to take over the game with some powerful expensive cards.

Speaking of expensive cards, Logan slots very well into the sort of 'big unit decks' that cards like Pressgang find a lot of use in by choosing to Conjure and play his final Royal Decree: Martial Law. Play Logan, put him in Guard and pass the turn. Next turn you can play Martial Law and any three units in your hand, regardless of their normal Gold cost. For example, you could play these three units in a single turn:

Boom. That's a huge amount of stats and board presence in one turn, not to mention that The Lady of Rosewood will also summon something monstrous from your deck before your opponent's turn even starts. Speaking from experience, this the type of game-changing play that can completely blow your opponent away.

New synergy cards, a new keyword and a brand new Fabled card - this card spotlight's been pretty stacked! Sound off in the comments and let us know what your favourite new card is, and be sure to tune in tomorrow for another sneaky card spotlight before the update goes live on Friday.

Happy chicken chasing!

Tom "Wimbles" Wimbush

Jun 5, 2017

0.3 Update - Coming 9th June!

Fable Fortune - Wimbles

Hello, Heroes!

My name is Tom "Wimbles" Wimbush, Lead Designer of Fable Fortune from Mediatonic, and I'm excited to announce that a big update will be coming to Fable Fortune this Friday, 9th June. You can get a taste of some of the changes that will be coming in that update by checking out my previous Sneak Peek and State of the Game announcements.

It's going to be the biggest update to the game yet by a wide margin. Over 150 cards have been tweaked and redesigned, resulting in more competitive matches and deeper deck-building sessions. Shapeshifter, Prophet and Knight have all received pretty substantial reworks to firm up their core identities while encouraging more deck diversity, and some big existing game features have been heavily revamped to provide you guys with a much better user experience.

Not only that, but we'll also be introducing 30 new collectible cards. This is a pretty substantial bump to the existing card pool and adds some spice to the competitive metagame. Here are a few new cards to whet your appetites with:

First up, the masochistic Flagellant who has the potential to become a complete monster in Alchemist, Prophet and Knight decks that focus on healing and buffing. Each instance of damage that he takes makes him stronger, so exposing him to attacks from weaker units turns him into a potent threat very quickly, especially if you can use buffs and heals to keep him alive. As a new Basic card that you will all have access to, we think he goes a long way towards making those decks more competitive right from the get go.

Next up, the resilient Reanimating Wisp. This little guy represents a huge amount of value, as when it dies it summons a 2/2 version of itself, and when that 2/2 dies it summons a 1/1 version. The 1/1 is its final form before it finally shuffles off the mortal coil for good, so it's not quite immortal, but it does a pretty good impression of it. Wispy's three lives makes it annoying for your opponent to deal with when played just on its own, but it's super powerful in dedicated Last Laugh decks (Reanimate + Reassemble The Bones hype!) and is a hard to remove threat for mass-buff decks that rely on having a large board presence.

Finally, a preview of one of our brand new Fabled cards: Demon Door! A powerhouse in dedicated controlling decks, Demon Door represents a huge amount of value in a long and drawn out game. Being able to refill your hand with as many as three spells or units can often give you the resources you need to really put the pressure on your opponent. Not to mention that you can find units or spells from outside your deck, or even from other Heroes' card pools, giving you crafty options you might not normally have access to. The choice between units and spells also adds an extra dimension to your decision to choose between Good and Evil, as well as an incentive to really push for that second and third Quest completion as fast as possible.

This trio of previews is all for now, but stay tuned this week for some more teasers on what's to come, with a full (and ginormous) list of patch notes going live on Friday after the update.

The sheer scope of these changes means that we'll need to reset the accounts of everyone who is currently playing in the Closed Beta. Barring any unforeseen problems, this should be the final account reset that we will be performing, so any rewards earned and progress made after the 9th will be everlasting. As stated in our FAQ, everyone who has already bought packs via a Steam purchase will be fully compensated with an equivalent number of bought packs after the reset. As a thankyou to our awesome Closed Beta army, anyone who logs into the game during the two weeks after the update will receive 5 card packs to jump-start your new collections with. This is a time-limited offer, so make sure you log in to get your hands on these sweet rewards.

I must also announce at this point that we have now closed our Closed Beta signups. We'll be releasing a whole bunch more codes to those of you who signed up to the Closed Beta once the update has gone live. For anyone who didn't manage to sign up: keep your eyes peeled for further announcements on Steam and Twitter as we head towards Early Access.

Happy chicken chasing!

Tom "Wimbles" Wimbush

May 4, 2017

Fable Fortune Sneak Peek #2 - Card Collection Update

Fable Fortune - Wimbles

Hello, Heroes!

My name’s Tom “Wimbles” Wimbush, Lead Designer of Fable Fortune from Mediatonic, and I’m here today with another Sneak Peek at some of the new features that we’re currently working on. This Sneak Peek is all about collecting cards and building decks. As I mentioned last time, we’re making some pretty significant improvements to this area of the game, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of those changes with you all.

It’s worth saying that any screenshots here represent work that is currently in progress and therefore subject to change, but that we’re all working super hard to get these changes into the game to you as part of our move to Early Access.

Let’s dive into it.

Improved Deck Assets

The way that your decks are currently displayed on the collection screen leaves a lot to be desired. You can’t really tell which deck belongs to which Hero, so you often have to give your decks quite obtuse names to help you remember which is which. Enter our new deck designs:

These colour-coded, Heroic looking decks paint a much clearer and prettier picture of which deck belongs to who. We’ve also resized and reshaped them while making some improvements to their fonts in order to help with legibility, particularly at lower resolutions.

You might have spotted the pencil icon below the name. Clicking on this icon will allow you to rename that deck (!!!), which I know is something that you guys have been asking for for a while. We’ve also updated the ‘delete’ button asset to be more in keeping with the new style so you can still quickly and easily delete any decks that you noknow longer want.

Deck List Update
In much the same way, we’ve also been implementing a big change to how the list of cards in each deck are currently displayed during deck-building. We wanted to make it much easier to see more of your deck at a glance so that you don’t have to do so much scrolling back and forth while putting your deck together. Unveiling Deck Lists 2.0:

This new and improved display can show you the contents of an entire deck in a single pane if your deck is composed of two copies of 15 different cards. Duplicate copies of cards now handily stack together for ease of viewing and even if you use a lot of unique cards in a deck, scrolling up and down the list to look through all the cards is a breeze.

Each card ‘token’ also features its art, not just because the art is gorgeous and worth showing in as many places as possible, but also to help more visual thinkers remember which card is which. They are also coloured to match their Hero with Neutral shown as grey to help get a feeling for how much of your deck is made up of Hero specific cards.

There’s also a sweet animation that plays once you have completed your deck as a way of celebrating what should be a really cool moment. I can’t wait for you guys to try it out.

Highlighting ’New’ Cards

Once you’ve busted open some packs, the first thing you often want to do is go and check out all the new cards in your collection. This is something that we’ve made much easier with our ‘New’ card highlight.

This effect is shown during pack opening to highlight any cards that you don’t already own a copy of, which makes busting open your first stack of packs really exciting.

Once you’re done opening packs and you head into your collection, the card categories which contain new cards will have a notification showing you that the category features some new cards. You can then go and flick through your collection and mouseover or inspect the cards to dismiss the notification. You can also use the search bar, which I spoke about last time, to search for your new cards by just typing in ‘new’, which is a great way to start thinking of new decks that you can build around your recent acquisitions.

These are all improvements that we're looking to add into the game as we move into Early Access, but as I said at the start this is all subject to change as we race towards that goal. This also isn’t everything that we’ve been working on, but I’ll be saving some of those juicy details for a future Sneak Peek.

Let us know what you think by posting a comment. As always, we love getting your feedback as it helps us focus our efforts on the areas which affect you guys the most.

Happy chicken chasing!

- Tom “Wimbles” Wimbush, Lead Designer (Mediatonic)

May 3, 2017

State of the Game Review (03/05)

Fable Fortune - Wimbles

Hello, Heroes!

Welcome to the very first set of "State of the Game" review for Fable Fortune! For anyone who doesn’t know yet, my name is Tom “Wimbles” Wimbush and I’m the Lead Designer of Fable Fortune from Mediatonic. This state of the game review is an experimental initiative from the design team aimed at communicating what is currently on our radar in terms of game balance and card design. We hope that it will provide some insight into what we’re exploring and a look ahead to what changes you might be seeing at some point in the future.

First, a disclaimer: everything here is subject to change, and absolutely nothing said here should be seen as a firm promise that something will be changed. These are just our current thoughts on a wide range of topics so that you guys can get a rough sense of what our priorities are based on internal playtesting, community feedback and player analytics. However, we are hoping to address some of these topics as part of our Early Access update.

These reviews also won’t touch on upcoming features; you can check out the Sneak Peeks to see what new features we’re currently working on. These reviews are strictly about ongoing work on card design and balance.

Buckle in. It’s going to be a long one.

Board Wipes

We know that this has been a hot topic in the community lately, though it’s been a talking point internally for far longer. Board wipes (effects that deal damage to multiple units) that only affect your opponent’s board, like Surge of Fangs and Leeching Swarm, are extremely powerful because they allow you to do two things very well: lose less and win more.

Preventing yourself from losing, or ‘losing less’, is an essential tool for any card game (or competitive game in general) as it stops you being powerless once your opponent has the advantage. This is what two-sided board wipes that affect ALL units, like Stench of Death, are good for: resetting the board state and allowing you to start making a comeback in a game that you were losing.

Pressing your advantage, or ‘winning more’, is key to closing out a match before your opponent can swing the game back in their favour. These effects are also important to have in a card game that wants to foster a diverse range of decks (like us!). However, one-sided board wipes like Surge of Fangs and Leeching Swarm allow you to win more while also serving as an excellent tool for making you lose less. This means that there is basically no reason to not include them in your deck right now. We’re aware, and we’re looking into it.

Fabled Cards

I mentioned this in the last set of patch notes, but we’re currently exploring some changes to many of our Fabled cards. Our Hero-specific Fabled cards (Reaver, Leech, Inga, etc) should feel like powerful units that are closely matched to that Hero’s playstyle and that you want to include in many of that Hero’s decks. Conversely, neutral Fabled cards (Nostro, The Guildmaster, etc) should be cool, unique cards that you want to build a particular deck around.

Currently many of our neutral Fabled cards are too consistently powerful and too easily slot into too many decks. This skews the game too much in favour of players who own a lot of Fabled cards and therefore makes the game less fun for newer players with smaller collections. On the flip side, many of the Hero-specific Fabled cards are too niche and/or not powerful enough to warrant being played in many decks. This means that getting a Hero’s Fabled card is less exciting than getting many of the neutral Fabled card.

Neither of these things are good for the game, and we’re investigating how we could improve them.

Mythic Cards

Similar to Fabled cards, Mythic cards should fulfill a similar role to neutral Fabled cards, in that they should be cool, unique effects that you want to build a deck around. Some of our Mythic cards aren’t quite there yet, so we’re exploring some alternative designs for them so that they can hit that target.

Quest Balance

The balance of the Quests within each location is also in need of some tuning. For example, the current values for each Quest objective mean that picking the Gold spending Quest in the Crucible is by far the most attractive option. This is leading to problems with Quest diversity, where players are trending towards picking only one of the three Quests in each location because some are too hard to complete in a reasonable time-frame. This isn’t our intention at all, and we’ll be exploring some options for how this might be improved.

Quest Rewards

Completing your Quest and earning a reward should be an awesome moment during a match. Right now, the Quest rewards on offer are a bit flat and uninspiring, which is really taking away from the satisfying moment that we’re trying to create. We have a few ideas for how we could revamp these rewards to be both more exciting and more interesting from a deck-building and gameplay perspective that we’re in the early stages of playtesting, but this may take some time to refine.

Hero Powers

The way that you improve your Hero Power by completing Quests has a few distinct issues.

Firstly, not all Hero Powers are created equal. Offenders like the Good Shapeshifter, Good Prophet and (to a lesser extent) the Evil Alchemist are stronger or more consistent than many of the other Hero Powers. For example, there is rarely a reason to choose to go Evil when playing as Prophet because of the overall strength of the Good Hero Power, which fundamentally works against our goal of wanting to make each Quest completion offer you a meaningful choice.

Secondly, the nature of each Hero Power’s scaling means that some tend to perform better in the early or late game, making the choice less meaningful as one option tends to outweigh the other depending on how late in the game it is. When combined with the uneven power levels of some of the Hero Powers, this means that many games will play out the same way with players selecting the same Good/Evil choices over and over again.

Finally, the granular way in which the Hero Powers get stronger with each Quest completion makes them harder for new players to understand and hard to balance for us as a design team.

As I hope you guys can appreciate, there are pretty complex issues that will take a lot of work to solve, but we are looking into it.

First Player Advantage

Currently, players who go first have too much of an advantage in terms of overall tempo (presence on the board; ability to dictate action in the game), and consequently have a higher win rate than players who go second. We’re in the very early stages of looking at the strength of Trophy cards to see if we can address this balance in this way, or if it will require a deeper change.

Morality Cards

Morality cards, like the Hero-specific Fabled cards, are often too niche or not powerful enough to warrant being included in a deck. This is a real shame, as we think their transforming nature is really exciting and taps into the meaningful choices that define the Fable franchise. There are a whole heap of redesigns that we’re currently iterating on so that we can ensure that Morality cards are appealing and hit an appropriate power level.

Hollow Men, Hobbes & Bandits

All of these races are currently lacking a strong identity, which is reflected in the lack of Hollow Man and Hobbe decks currently being played. Bandits are a popular deck choice, but only because they have some particularly powerful cards and not because they promote interesting and synergistic gameplay.

We have some large-scale changes to Hollow Men and Hobbes that we’re currently playtesting to make sure that they feel like the creatures that you know and love while also serving as the basis for some new and interesting decks in their own right. Bandits will get a similar treatment at some point, but as they are currently seeing play we’re happy to leave them as they are right now and then revisit them at a later date.

Heroes

Shapeshifter

Ah, Crimson. You sure do like killing things.

The Shapeshifter’s strength right now is her ability to kill her opponent’s units. All of them. All the time. This harkens back to the control decks from Magic: The Gathering’s past, where you were able to just sit back and counter all of your opponent’s cards. Fun to play, perhaps, but oppressively powerful and not exactly fun to play against.

We want Crimson to be actively interacting with the board by playing units of her own and augmenting them with a range of interesting spells. Dealing damage and killing units should definitely be her speciality, but that shouldn’t be the only thing that she’s good at, and she shouldn’t be able to rely on it to the exclusion of everything else. We’re currently redesigning and tweaking many of her cards to help broaden her playstyle and make her play in a more fun and interactive way.

Prophet

The Prophet suffers from similar problems to the Shapeshifter, in that he has one viable playstyle that revolves almost exclusively around healing and using removal spells. In situations where healing isn’t useful, the Prophet tends to fare badly, and many of his units aren’t strong enough to compete against the various neutral choices that are available. We’re currently looking into revamping many of his units and updating his spells to help give him some new design space to tap into.

Knight

The Knight is also quite limited in terms of his strategic diversity. Peasant-based strategies don’t have quite enough support right now to be competitive, and the cards that support Peasants have very little to offer a more mid-range or controlling style of deck. The end result is that the Knight is leaning quite heavily on his powerful midrange cards and many of his other cards don’t see any play. Not exactly optimal, so we’re retooling some of his cards to fit more easily into a wider range of decks.

Merchant

The Merchant is a hard Hero to build decks around, but internally we have a few Merchant decks that perform quite well. We’re excited to see you guys starting to pick these up. In some configurations these can even be too hard to handle if they get off to a dream start, so that’s something we’re still keeping an eye on.

We’re also looking at making some adjustments to the Merchant’s units to make them fit more easily into different decks, and ensuring that he has more options to answer the strong early game cards available to the other Heroes.

Alchemist

The Alchemist is suffering from a combination of a lack of strong individual units and few ways to claw back tempo once she has lost it, meaning that her powerful buff cards often rot in her hand without a good target. We’re focusing our efforts on these two areas and have some early ideas on how we could shore them up to bring her more in line with the other Heroes in terms of power level.

Gravedigger

The Gravedigger has proven to be surprisingly strong, but we’re happy with her overall direction. Depending on how some other changes pan out, she may need more support (particularly for her more aggressive decks) but I don’t anticipate needing any large scale changes at this point.

That’s all for this state of the game review. As I said at the beginning, this is primarily a way for us to share our thought process and current priorities with you all, and should not be seen as a roadmap of exactly what’s going to happen over the coming weeks and months as it’s all subject to change.

It’s a pretty extensive list and I’d love to hear what you guys think about it all, so feel free to sound off in the comments with your thoughts. Also, please do keep your feedback coming. We find your insights a really valuable part of our design process. Ultimately we want to make sure that you’re having as much as fun as possible while playing the game, and letting us know what you think is the best way that you can help us to achieve that.

Happy chicken chasing!

- Tom “Wimbles” Wimbush, Lead Designer (Mediatonic)

Apr 12, 2017

0.2.1 Balance Patch Notes

Fable Fortune - Wimbles

“Hello, Heroes!

Ahead of a more significant feature update as we go into Early Access, we’re continuing to refine the state of the game’s balance through a series of balance patches where we adjust the stats and abilities of our cards. Our aim is to bring into line any cards that are proving to be too consistently powerful whilst also giving some underplayed cards a nudge towards competitive viability in order to maintain a broad pool of exciting archetypes and decks for you guys to explore.

Scroll down for a full list of changes broken down by Hero, then sound off in the comments to let us know what you think.

Happy chicken chasing!”

- Tom “Wimbles” Wimbush (Lead Designer)

Heroes

Gravedigger:

Buffing Arise, nerfing Cemetery Bannerman.

“Arise has got a bad rep, but it’s also not quite there in terms of its power level compared to other similar effects so we’ve reduced its cost by 1 to make it more of an appealing removal spell.

Cemetery Bannerman meanwhile has proven to be a bit too strong in the early game, which was warping our ability to balance the Gravedigger’s other low cost cards. We’ve toned it down a little while trying to retain its role as a way to maintain board control in the early turns.”

Card changes:

Arise: Cost reduced from 4 to 3.
Cemetery Bannerman: Cost reduced from 3 to 2. Number of 1/1 Shamblers summoned reduced from three to two.

Knight:

More support for peasants.

“We’re generally looking to give peasants a bit more support as they’ve not quite been living up to our expectations compared to the more popular midrange Knight decks. In particular, Muster hasn’t been the powerhouse that we thought it might be, so we’re reducing its cost to get it to fit at a more convenient point during a battle.

On the subject of peasants, we also have All Peasant and Correct. Bit overcosted, eh? Oops. It’s better now, I promise.

Even though we want to give peasant decks a bit of extra power, Master of Bacon has proven to be surprisingly strong in combination with Angry Mob, Blacksmith and similar effects. We’re making him more fragile without reducing his potential to snowball the early portion of the game.

Puncture also really doesn’t need to be able to smack your opponent for up to 8 damage on top of already being a very efficient spell, so we’ve restricted it to only hit units. ”

Card changes:

All Peasant and Correct: Cost reduced from 9 to 6.
Puncture: Changed possible targets from any enemy to enemy Units only.
Master of Bacon: Health reduced from 3 to 2.
Muster: Cost reduced from 6 to 5.

Merchant:

Blockade and Broadside buffs.

“Blockade just isn’t doing what we want it to do for the Safeguard and control Merchant archetypes, so we’ve brought its cost right down. To zero, in fact. Boom.

We overnerfed Broadside way back in the heady days of Alpha, and are restoring some of its former glory to help the Merchant claw back control of the board during the midgame.”

Card changes:

Blockade: Base cost reduced from 2 to 0. Increased the cost of the Invest option from (+2) to (+3).
Broadside: Reduced the cost of the Invest option from (+3) to (+2).

Prophet:

The start of something greater.

“The Prophet is one of the most problematic Heroes in the game right now, because he only really does one thing: heal. This allows him to play a long and controlling game quite well, however he has few options if he wants to play anything else. We’re currently testing a whole suite of balance changes for the Prophet internally, but ahead of that we wanted to get some updates out to address some of his more egregious cards.

Healing Beam does too little to warrant a slot in your deck, while Leeching Swarm was too expensive to act as a useful board sweeper. Oasis was far too expensive for what is a very niche effect. Sleeping Sands was an interesting, but ultimately confusing design that didn’t do enough to impact the state of a match, so we’ve redesigned it to help you maintain board control after you’ve already established it.”

Card changes:

Healing Beam: Cost increased from 2 to 3. Healing increased from 6 to 8.
Leeching Swarm: Cost reduced from 7 to 6. Healing reduced from 5 to 3. Now heals all friendly Characters instead of just your Hero.
Oasis: Cost reduced from 3 to 1. Now only heals all Units instead of all Characters.
Sleeping Sands: Redesigned to (1) “Set an enemy unit's Strength to 0 this turn and remove it from Guard."

Shapeshifter:

Toning down the Predatory Balverine and Good Hero Power.

“Shapeshifter remains on notice for possibly being too strong overall, but we wanted to start by addressing the potency of her Good Hero Power. Right now, once you get reduced to low Health when playing against the Shapeshifter, you’re on an incredibly fast clock as they’re able to chip away at you for 2 damage pretty much every turn just by using their Hero Power. That’s not a fun situation to be in, so we’ve changed the extra damage trigger to use Strength instead of Health, meaning that it’s still a powerful tool for board control but not for slapping your opponent in the face.

Predatory Balverine is a premier Shapeshifter card that stands out as being too strong right now, so we’ve adjusted it to be more of a midgame control unit rather than a lategame powerhouse.”

Hero Power changes:

Focused Rend (Good): Changed to deal 2 damage if the target has 5/4/3 Strength instead of 5/4/3 Health.

Card changes:

Predatory Balverine: Cost reduced from 7 to 5. Strength reduced to 5, Health reduced to 4. Rend damage reduced from 3 to 2.

Alchemist:

Making Potion of Youth & Recipe for Success more appealing while making Glassblower & Huckster less oppressive.

“Glassblower is a terrifying card when your opponent manages to keep him alive for more than one turn, so we’ve reduced his Health so that it’s a little easier to deal with on the turn that he’s played.

Huckster was competing with Chesty for the title of strongest turn 1 play in the game, and that really shouldn’t be the case. Less stats for you, sir.

As the Alchemist already has a lot of ways to fill up their hand, Recipe for Success wasn’t really an appealing option at any point in the game, so we’ve kept the hand-buffing effect the same while reducing the card’s cost and ability to draw.

Potion of Youth has seen almost no play so far, and rightfully so: the effect was too difficult to build around. It’s now a much more reliable Health buff which can be comboed with all sorts of units to create a monster, which is rather more fun and effective.”

Card changes:

Glassblower: Health reduced from 5 to 4.
Huckster: Strength reduced from 2 to 1.
Potion of Youth: Redesigned to (2) “Give a unit +5 Health."
Recipe For Success: Cost reduced from 7 to 5. Number of cards drawn reduced from 3 to 2.

Neutral Cards:

Sir Walter arises! Plus some more support for various archetypes.

“Sir Walter was the prime example of a problem we have with many of our Fabled cards right now: he was just too damn good. Too much value, too consistently, and therefore far too able to take over the game. He also went into every deck that you could fit him into. Not exactly what we were shooting for, so we hotfixed him a while back while we worked on an updated design.

We want our Fabled cards to be exciting. The kind of card that you want to build a deck around, or can use to really spice up an existing deck. Not something that you just put into all decks at all times.

So. Sir Walter now has a Big Entrance that sets the Strength and Health of all units in your hand to 4. We’ve really liked this effect in testing and its indicative of the kind of direction that we want to take our Fabled cards moving forwards, so you can expect more changes of this nature in future updates.

Leaving Sir Walter aside, we’ve also tweaked a few other units. Stampeding Fans and Arms Dealer are supposed to be payoff cards for a deck that aims to quickly complete Quests, but they just weren’t fulfilling that role so we’ve given them some extra power. Wasp Queen, Westcliff Recruiter, Friendly Crone, Malignant Wisp, Magehunter and Potato Farmer were all just slightly under the bar in terms of being playable, so we’ve given them all a slight nudge in the stat department. Greatwood Troll meanwhile was providing too much value in an aggressive deck for what was supposed to be a Safeguard/controlling card, so we’ve toned it down a little.

We also reworked the early game all-star also known as Bandit Ambusher to be more of a midgame value unit. He was just providing too much power too early in the game.”

Card changes:

Arms Dealer: Cost reduced from 6 to 4. Strength reduced from 6 to 4. Health reduced from 4 to 3.
Bandit Ambusher: Cost increased from 2 to 6. Strength increased from 3 to 6. Health increased from 2 to 4.
Friendly Crone: Strength increased from 2 to 4.
Greatwood Troll: Safeguard damage reduced from 3 to 2.
Magehunter: Health increased from 3 to 4.
Malignant Wisp: Health increased from 2 to 3.
Potato Farmer: Big entrance damage increased from 1 to 2.
Sir Walter: Redesigned to (6) 4/4 with "Big Entrance: Set the Strength and Health of all units in your hand to 4."
Stampeding Fans: Strength increased from 4 to 5. Health increased from 4 to 6.
Wasp Queen: Cost reduced from 4 to 3. Health reduced from 5 to 4.
Westcliff Recruiter: Cost reduced from 4 to 3. Health reduced from 4 to 3.

Apr 7, 2017

Fable Fortune - Sneak Peek #1

Fable Fortune - Wimbles

Hello, Heroes!

I just wanted to share with you a sneak peek at some of the work that we’ve been doing behind the scenes since the last update. Alongside general balancing and bug-fixing, we have some awesome new features in the pipeline that I think you’ll all be really excited about. Some of these changes are a direct result of feedback from all of you, so please keep your feedback coming so that we can continue working together to make Fable Fortune the best game that it can be.

I can’t tell you yet when these updates will make it live, but we’re all working crazy hard to get them to you as soon as we can. The features below are just a sample of the many improvements we are looking to make to the game in the coming weeks and months. Look out for future sneak peeks which will contain some more info on some of the features below, as well as some of the other exciting changes that we’re working on.

Card Collection Revamp

We want to make building decks and flicking through your collection as fun and accessible as the rest of the game, so we have a few big changes planned for the card collection.

First up, you’ll be able to use our brand new search bar to search your collection to find the cards you need. Just start typing to search for any part of a card’s name, rules text, Gold cost, Strength, Health, Rarity, Race, type, and more! You can even use logical operators (>, =, etc) to help narrow down your search to units that cost more than 3 Gold, or have more Strength than Health, for example.

You’ll also be able to search for ‘New’ to find cards that have been recently added to your collection, which will be handily highlighted in green. No more trying to remember what new hotness you got out of your card packs.

We have a pretty huge change planned to the way that we display cards in your deck so that it’s easier to see more of your deck at a glance. We’re really excited about this change, but we’ll expand on this more in a future sneak peek.

Last up: something that I know you guys have been asking for. Mousing over a Morality card will show you that card’s Good and Evil transformations, so that you can better build your decks around these exciting and powerful cards.

Steam Friend Invites

We’ve heard and agree with your feedback around needing a better way to play together with your friends, so we’re working really hard right now on getting Steam Friend invites into the game. This will allow you to play friendly PvP matches against each other or team up with/hilariously betray each other in Co-op.

Battle UI Polish

One thing that we’d like to improve about battles is the general readability of some of the key elements, such as the Gold chest and the Hero Power button. We’re currently working on some new animations, VFX and 3D art improvements which will help to highlight when you gain and spend Gold, as well as when you use your Hero Power. These improved Hero Power animations will also better highlight when you go Good or Evil. Hype!

Card Pack Opening Revamp

Finally, I don’t want to spoil too much here, but we’re making some big improvements to the speed and wow factor of busting open your card packs, including highlighting any new cards that you’ve earned. I can’t wait to see what you guys think.

That’s all for now. If that’s left you hungry for more then be sure to tune into the next sneak peek when I should be able to share some brand spanking new info with you all.

Happy chicken chasing!

- Tom “Wimbles” Wimbush, Lead Designer