Echoes of Elysium
Digital Card Game

Echoes of Elysium

RANGE OF TASKS:

Research, ideation, conception, visual development, development of gameplay mechanics, AI prompting, image manipulation, image editing, compositing, playtesting, balancing

SOFTWARE USED:

Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher, Affinity Designer, Google Docs & Sheets, Miro, Trello

Echoes of Elysium is a mythologically inspired online collectible card game for PC and mobile that captures Greek mythology through innovative gameplay. The game allows players to craft new stories through unprecedented interactions between familiar characters. Players choose a god or goddess as their class and build a corresponding deck to compete against others. The game allows players to build their decks from a wide variety of cards, including ordinary humans, legendary heroes, mythical creatures, powerful spells, and cunning traps. In a match, players must outwit their opponents through strategic card play and resource management. Uniquely, the gods themselves can intervene at critical moments to turn the tide of battle.

I developed both the digital game concept and a playable analog prototype for my master's thesis. The design process began with extensive analysis of collectible card games (CCGs), Greek mythology, and ancient Greek culture, including interviews with an expert in classical archaeology. This research informed the game's mechanics and visual design. For the gameplay mechanics, I drew inspiration from various other CCGs, combining their most fun elements into a new experience. For the visual design, I blended ancient Greek culture with a modern fantasy aesthetic using innovative AI image generation and manual post-processing. After several rounds of playtesting to refine the mechanics and balance the cards, I successfully presented the game at the GG Bavaria 2024 game fair and received overwhelmingly positive feedback.

The game's art direction blends authentic ancient Greek mythology with a vibrant and expressive visual style.
The game features seven playable gods with unique class identities. Each god has its own strengths and weaknesses, as well as unique class cards, resulting in a diverse and engaging gameplay experience.
The Poseidon class has access to Atlantian and Sea Monster-type units, Water-type spells, and the unique Aquatic keyword which synergizes with Water spells. The class is generally control-focused, with board-wiping spells, healing effects, and high-cost units.
The main mechanic of the Dionysus class is the Drunken ability, which is common to many class cards. It is a luck-based mechanic that allows units to either deal double damage with their attacks or miss and deal no damage at all. The class aims to combine Drunken cards for explosive turns.
In addition to unique class cards for each god, the game also features a neutral card pool that can be accessed by any class.
The game features a variety of unique ability keywords that add strategic depth to the gameplay and combat.
To reinforce the class identity of the gods, each god also has a unique keyword that is only accessible to that god.
The card design features a borderless artwork accompanied by a flat and minimalist graphic design. This allows the vibrant artwork to shine, while ensuring optimal readability of the card's text, numerals and symbols.
A detailed Game Design Document (GDD) covering all of the game's systems and mechanics accompanied the development of the game.
To ensure balanced classes, different card abilities were evenly distributed across different card pools.
Player feedback from various playtests was documented and implemented accordingly.