teamCOIL: we are not afraid to show bones and skulls

About the development of a colorful battler CrystaLords, immediately reminiscent of Clash Royale and Heroes Charge, we talked with one of the authors of the project from the teamCOIL studio – Ivan Zasyadvovk.

Hi, tell us a little bit about the team first (what did you do before, how did you get together, your source of funding)?

Hi! CrystaLords was originally invented by my brother and I in our free time. The team has already formed around the project. We can say that this is the first project for our team. Each of us had our own little background in creating games. For example, I have been doing two-dimensional art in mobile game development for 5 years. We are engaged in the project on our own initiative in our free time.

Why and how did you decide to make CrystaLords?

The idea of CrystaLords appeared in the fall of 2015. She is the result of our experiments. Initially, we experimented with crossing the mechanics of turn-based strategies and KKI. Then one of the main problems of our first trials, we saw excessive “chess” gameplay: each move took too much time, and defense and strengthening were a higher priority than attack.

After several iterations, we came up with the idea of CrystaLords: we switched to realtime, added elements of “castle protection” in the form of crystals that need to be protected and paths connecting the crystals.

How long and with what composition are you doing the project?

Actually, we timed the production itself to coincide with the start of GamesJam Kanobu in February 2016. The team then consisted of 5 people: game designer, 2d artist, UI/UX designer, Unity developer and back-end developer. By the way, we are currently looking for candidates for the last two positions, so if anyone has a desire to join the project, welcome!

At the moment, the project looks like a simplified version of Clash Royale, tell us about the mechanics of the game.

The basis of the gameplay is similar to Clash Royale. The player calls units on the battlefield, units go to the enemy “base”, fighting with the enemy units coming towards them.

The main difference from similar games: most creatures will have their own unique abilities, including activated ones.

We want there to be minimal control on the part of the player, so that tactics are based not so much on the positioning of units as on the synergy between the cards. We try to make this process as convenient and understandable as possible. We are also currently testing captured checkpoints with towers being built on them.

Monetization will be based on gacha mechanics: with booster packs, boost and a fusion of cards. Moreover, we intend to implement this experience almost at the tactile level – up to the introduction of holographic “glitters” on maps.

As part of GamesJam Kanobu, a demo version of the game was released, it raised many questions. How close is her action game to the one you plan in the release version?

GamesJam-the demo of the game turned out to be very stripped down: we did not have time to fully realize the abilities of the units, there were no spells, the units went strictly along the track, observing the queue. Now the paths are more “wide” and units will be able to bypass each other, fight “wall to wall”.

I asked the last question for a reason. I was very concerned about working with the characteristics of monsters. You have a real-time game, and numerical values (ratios of attacks and monster lives) are like in turn-based ones. Why did you take such a step?

In fact, this element of the game went under the knife, as it did not justify itself. Numerical health indicators will be replaced by canonical life bars.

The playtest that we staged at the recently held DevGAMM showcase helped us identify weaknesses in the game, and now we are doing “bug fixing”.

One of the main features of your project is currently the schedule. Tell us about the chosen style.

The main task was to create graphics that would look great on both western and eastern markets. It was also important for us that it was very expressive, bright, but not resource-intensive (a lot of maps are planned).

When designing characters, we are not afraid to show grinning faces, bones, skulls and even insides. But all this is compensated by a bright, juicy drawing. In addition, the setting of CrystaLords is quite eclectic. In one arena, fantasy magicians, knights and shooters can come together in battle with, say, robots, samurai, tanks and animated slot machines. And we also have one trump card up our sleeve, but we won’t tell you about it yet.

And the last question: when to wait for the game?

As soon as we achieve the optimal key gameplay, then we will be able to see the approximate release date. Now I can only answer “when it’s done”.

Thanks for the interview.