Zvery — Ivan Živanović

How I used Content design on Zvery

Designing the individual pieces a game is built from, such as cards, abilities, items. Also creating narrative pieces within larger games such as quests or episodic content.

Designing the cards of Zvery →
Each Zvery gets a random "adaptation" of its type, a card that lists four skills. Will to Live shows the cost on the left and the effect to the right.

Skills can deal damage, manipulate your rolled dice, change Zvery stats and all kinds of effects. The harder a cost is to achieve through roll, the stronger the effect. For example, a single die deals 2 damage, whereas a 9 (which is any amount of dice adding up to 9 or more) can deal 3 damage. Most adaptations have their own kind of ultimate ability. This one lets you revive a creature for the cost of four 5s.

3 Oct 2023
Designing the cards of Zvery →
The third and final card type are mutations. These cards have two effects that are active at different times.

Mutations are laid out before and active during fights as "area effects", i.e. they create additional effects or conditions during a battle, which is the bottom effect. Varking for example lets players set a die before rolling their dice, a very powerful effect.

If the active player defeats the wild Zvery, they could choose to take this card and give one of their Zvery the top effect. Crucially, unlike adaptations which need to match the Zvery's typing, a mutation can be any type. This creates interesting interactions between their abilities.

3 Oct 2023
Cosmoon →
Obviously Pokemon has the classic insect type evolutions, so I thought that it might be cool to do something similar. I also changed Curloon's colors to match Cosmoon's. I wasn't satisfied with the original anyway.
Cosmoon is a void type Zvery and it's just an astronaut butterfly. In the design-gif you can see me scale back the anthropomorphism back a lot and I think that was a good move. Not only can I not draw humans, it just looked out of space (some pun intended). I like giving the creatures some things that are human objects but which just look like part of their body. (They usually become goggles for some reason.)

7 Feb 2023
Shardoon →
I have incorporated ChatGPT into my process, of course. It really just makes the initial research fun and dynamic. I decided on a type (crystal) looked at the card I wanted to create a creature for, and abstracted its trait as: "what's an individual animal that can damage two or more animals at once." I got a list in which the Australian Stonefish was mentioned. Looking at the fish it might as well be a crystal, but more importantly, it has so much personality without even adding anything to it, so I quickly settled on that one. Then I asked ChatGPT about the detailed anatomy of this fish where it mentioned, among other things, that it has 13 spinal spikes that contain its poison. So obviously this was what would become the crystal theme of the creature: crystal spikes.

10 Jan 2023

Other games where I used Content design →

How I used Pixel art on Zvery

How I used Playtesting & iteration on Zvery

Watching people play, reading their feedback and changing the design because of it.

Designing the cards of Zvery →
Bubbcat was among the first Zvery cards, and it started as a pencil sketch on paper. Here it is next to the latest version:

Overall, it's much easier to read and understand what's going on. The die icon is for readability, and while there is a case to be made that symbols actually increase cognitive load because they have to be learned, this one literally represents what a player sees, so it may even increase processing speed.

3 Oct 2023
Woox →
I decided to pixel the Zvery from the lower levels upward. I probably should have done that from the get go. Why? Because during playtesting the beginning should be the most enjoyable so that the players want to continue playing. The difference between a card having even a bad art work and no artwork at all is indescribable. Currently, a lot of the fun is missing because the lower level cards often don't have artwork. Why didn't I do it sooner? Well, mostly because I got an idea and just started pixeling and often they just didn't look like level 1 or 2 Zvery. Lesson learned. Here's Woox:

8 Jan 2023

Other games where I used Playtesting & iteration →

How I used Collaboration on Zvery

Working in a team: aligning people on a vision, sharing work, communicating decisions, providing and receiving feedback, offering help where needed.

Blohked →
For Blohked, I tried to make it a little in perspective because Simon rightly pointed out that all of them are either front-facing or 90 degrees from the side. EEeeeeveryone's a critic these days. But yea, I just had to try and it took me quite a long time, to be honest. The design is pretty basic, but I wanted to get into this perspective stuff asap. Anyway, let me know what you think.

19 Dec 2022
Ohmkey →
Simon gave me feedback that there was nothing he could connect with Ryndomorph. I agree, Ryndomorph simply didn't have a well-defined vibe, or personality. So today I wanted to push it a bit. I tried creating a powerful and confident Zvery.

Here's Ohmkey:

It was definitely a challenge with the pose and everything. I also tried my hand at a bit more explicit story-telling. I even used more than the usual amount of references.

14 Dec 2022

Other games where I used Collaboration →

How I used Gameplay design on Zvery

Designing what the player does from moment to moment: mechanics, the core loop, choices, risk and reward.

Designing the cards of Zvery →
Catching in Zvery is a nifty mechanic where you add the current health with the catch value and roll your dice to get a number higher than the total catch value. So for example, Bubbcat starts with 21 total catch value, but as you fight and reduce its health, the catch value reduces.

For roll of five dice, the average result is around 17-18. Initially, its catch value was 18, which means that even at 1HP, it required an above average roll to catch. Since it is level 1, it should be very easy to catch, which is why we lowered it to 12.

3 Oct 2023

Other games where I used Gameplay design →

How I used Balancing on Zvery

Tuning the numbers so every option is worth picking and the challenge feels right.

Designing the cards of Zvery →
Catching in Zvery is a nifty mechanic where you add the current health with the catch value and roll your dice to get a number higher than the total catch value. So for example, Bubbcat starts with 21 total catch value, but as you fight and reduce its health, the catch value reduces.

For roll of five dice, the average result is around 17-18. Initially, its catch value was 18, which means that even at 1HP, it required an above average roll to catch. Since it is level 1, it should be very easy to catch, which is why we lowered it to 12.

3 Oct 2023
Designing the cards of Zvery →
Each Zvery gets a random "adaptation" of its type, a card that lists four skills. Will to Live shows the cost on the left and the effect to the right.

Skills can deal damage, manipulate your rolled dice, change Zvery stats and all kinds of effects. The harder a cost is to achieve through roll, the stronger the effect. For example, a single die deals 2 damage, whereas a 9 (which is any amount of dice adding up to 9 or more) can deal 3 damage. Most adaptations have their own kind of ultimate ability. This one lets you revive a creature for the cost of four 5s.

3 Oct 2023

Other games where I used Balancing →

How I used Player psychology on Zvery

Using psychology understanding, such as motivation, reward, flow and competence, to design and tune the experience to match what players need.

Woox →
I decided to pixel the Zvery from the lower levels upward. I probably should have done that from the get go. Why? Because during playtesting the beginning should be the most enjoyable so that the players want to continue playing. The difference between a card having even a bad art work and no artwork at all is indescribable. Currently, a lot of the fun is missing because the lower level cards often don't have artwork. Why didn't I do it sooner? Well, mostly because I got an idea and just started pixeling and often they just didn't look like level 1 or 2 Zvery. Lesson learned. Here's Woox:

8 Jan 2023
Guarach →
It feels like, by simply adding a mouth and an expression, the design was elevated to something worthwhile. Perhaps it's my imagination. Let me know what you think, but it seems humans really cling onto any kind of anthropomorphic feature to give something personality. Yes, I do generalize from my subjective experience onto the broader population.

21 Dec 2022

Other games where I used Player psychology →

How I used Research on Zvery

Studying games, design literature, or subject matter to inform my designs.

Ryndomorph →
Today I made a void creature. I wanted it to be like a space jellyfish. So this time I heeded (head?) my own advice and made some sketches before starting to pixel it out:

I was looking at some pictures of jellyfish and now I get why they are so often inspire alien designs. They are really interesting, and one of the references I used kinda turned out like a skull. As you can guess and see from my sketches, I basically fixated on that idea, and I liked some of the sketches so I tried to make that.

13 Dec 2022

Other games where I used Research →

How I used Graphic design on Zvery

Laying out information so it reads at a glance using hierarchy, contrast, and gestalt principles.

Designing the cards of Zvery →
Every Zvery card type looks different. Form follows function, of course, but apart from allowing players to quickly distinguish the card type, it also serves a second purpose. Namely, adaptations and mutations are meant to be tucked behind the creature cards.

As you progress through the game, and as rewards get bigger, you start collecting a lot of cards. Soon, they're taking a lot of space and become overwhelming and one Zvery's cards may spread over to another's. To save a little space and to reduce the cognitive load of searching for the card you need as well as making card ownership more concrete, I designed the cards to be placed behind the Zvery.

After a few turns, your board might look like this. Cleaner than if the cards were completely fanned out. Still, there's a lot of room to improve the design of the cards. Right now, they look pretty flat, some texture like gradients or other effects on the backgrounds would help make them more interesting. However, the design is partly a result from attempting to make it printable at home.

3 Oct 2023

Other games where I used Graphic design →