Enterplay’s My Little Pony CCG Pre-Review

Recently Omnigamer managed to get an interview in with Enterplay about the upcoming My Little Pony card game, with some images here, here, here, and here.

Granted, the subject matter (an MLP card game) is close to my heart due to my previous project, MLPDCG. That was halted when the official game was effectively announced, though no C&D has been sent as of yet and they still haven’t replied to anything I’ve sent regarding the domain after someone reached out to me about it.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about the game. From experience not only as a long-time card player, but from my own market research and experience with the MLPDCG project.

Here’s what I’m worried about:

  • Keyword-heavy, possibly referring to rules elsewhere. Lots of unusual terminology. Player knowledge burden. The cards in general are more complex then they look at first glance.
  • Small text. Looks to be just smaller than MtG text, which is an adult’s game. Kids will have a bit of a harder time reading this than normal. Also, you mixed Serif and Sans-serif fonts together you monster.
  • Primary market. It’s obvious this is aimed squarely at the teen and adult bronies. However, these fans are known for moving on extremely quickly, so while initial sales will be decent, the sales will fall off somewhat fast. It’s not helping that said fanbase is slowly dwindling, as the game is about a season too late for any real effectiveness.
  • Colors. The yellows in particular look off and hard to see (which every card game has to figure out. Yellows and light greens just don’t print well without a trick like Pokemon’s sponge-matte for visibility) and the gradient does it no good. Color-blindness hasn’t really been taken into consideration which I feel is a shame. The cards end up looking a bit flat.
  • Additionally, the colors look “off-brand”, as the color choices don’t immediately say “MLP” (which is pinks, light purples, blues, and a bit of green). The problem cards are a good one to point out, in that the show does NOT favor darker colors and ESPECIALLY blacks, usually going the purple route.
  • Continuing the design, the screencap area is still smaller than I would’ve liked. Not to mention it has a boring, no-work gradient square border in a show that loves the frilly curves. This hurts the collectibility.
  • The “Faceoff” mechanic, which is also known as Star Wars: CCG‘s “Destiny” mechanic. It didn’t work then and it was notoriously hard to balance, with Light Side winning the majority of the games solely due to Destiny. Cards that can manipulate this mechanic are going to be hard to balance due to said manipulation being inherently powerful. At worst, the mechanic will be so polarizing that one would have to build the deck solely around it (likely being forced to include Zecora, Pinkie Pie, or both) in order to stand a chance.
  • Friend Spam, though I’m not privy to the new changes made so this one may not be as bad. In particular it looks like the MCs may have a hard limit in how many cards that can be fielded, but that’s rather arbitrary.
  • Arbitrary resource gain. Since there’s few ways around it, the player that gets ahead usually stays ahead. Again, it sounds like they’ve changed it from GenCon but ANY resource system like this has problems.
  • From what I’ve been told, the MC cards (the ones required to play the game) are locked away in the starter decks, raising the cost of entry further while limiting availability. It’ll really hurt any form of “pick-up-and-play” the game could have, and that’s one of the big reasons why MtG, PKMN, YGO, and even Cardfight Vanguard have been so successful.

At least it’s not a direct battle game like so many other fangames. Twilight should never have an Hit Point count. There’s likely other positives that I just can’t see without the cards and rules in-hand.

This game, however, just looks to me of the “Hey, we have the licence, it doesn’t matter if it’s any good if the players buy it” mentality that’s poisoning the market for this kind of card game. There’s a massive stigma for IP-based card games (especially screencap games) that MLPCCG isn’t going to improve.

Well, mine wouldn’t have been any better, but it would’ve been nice to be able to continue work on it.

Still Setting This Up.

Yup. Decided to use this theme in the interim, as I don’t quite have enough content for a more expensive theme to show off.

Anyway.

What is this site?
This site is an active portfolio, but not a traditional one. Think of it as more of a personal resource made public. See, I want to make card games in my spare time, and ACG is going to help me keep track of all of it. While I would enjoy it as my job, I simply do not have the funds to self-publish, and I know that my skills are not quite up to par (and just in case, everything I have is digitally signed, verified, and otherwise stamped).

So what exactly will you do?
I’m going to be dissecting card games, posting some basic proof-of-concepts, and finally host my portfolio of fleshed-out card game projects. Any or none of this may be playable, though I will be using a program called OCTGN for any playtesting. (Please note that I do not endorse using this program to play still-in-print games.)

How will you be making cards?
Photoshop. Due to some previous attempts at making a card game, I now have a print-ready template ready to go. I will also be using InDesign for cards that are meant for print, but I will be focusing on the digital aspect of cards for practical reasons.

Why have this site at all?
I’m permanently disabled and very bored (and this will be the only time when I mention the former, as it doesn’t really impact this site at all), and I just really like playing card games… even when I can’t afford to keep up with releases. So I figure I can at least improve what little skills I already have and hopefully pick some new ones up on the way. Additionally, this site gives me an excellent source of feedback, to further improve the games. Even if the site doesn’t end up popular, I’ll still run it as the primary goal is to create a resource for myself to use.

Why ad-free?
Generally, it’s not worth it for a blog of this size. If this actually goes somewhere, I may add them later.

Posts and pages will be put up as I can get to them. There is no set schedule.