Throne of Legends
At the beginning of 2017, our design team at SuperHippo was tasked with planning two new games that would eventually be developed and published on the Nutaku platform. The first was Throne of Legends, a collectible card game (CCG) inspired by titles such as Spellstone, while the second was Golden Spy, a game inspired by Piggy Boom.
I was assigned to Throne of Legends, where my responsibilities included designing the game's systems, economy, and monetization, while also contributing to Golden Spy as a Game Economy Advisor.
It was an interesting period because I was becoming increasingly involved in the design of interconnected systems rather than focusing primarily on individual gameplay mechanics or levels.
Throne of Legends was initially envisioned as a game heavily inspired by Hearthstone, but bringing that vision to life proved considerably more difficult than expected. Development progressed slowly, partly because our team was relatively small and didn't have all the resources necessary to deliver such an ambitious project within the expected timeframe. As the months passed, it became increasingly clear that the original approach wasn't working particularly well, and the project was struggling to move forward. Eventually, the business decided to replace the project's Design Lead, and I was asked to take over the design responsibilities. By that point, we had already invested a considerable amount of time into development, so simply starting over wasn't a realistic option either.
After becoming more directly responsible for the project's design direction, I proposed changing our approach in an attempt to save the game. The challenge wasn't simply to come up with something different, but to find a direction that made sense given what had already been developed, the capabilities of the team, and the time and resources we still had available. It was a difficult situation because every decision had consequences for the work that had already been completed, and changing direction during development is rarely straightforward. Still, continuing with the original plan didn't seem particularly promising, so we needed to find a more practical way forward.
The project ultimately took more than a year to develop, and I still remember the final months as some of the most challenging I had experienced from a production perspective up to that point. There was a lot of pressure to bring everything together, and the difficulties weren't limited to game design alone. We had to deal with the practical realities of developing a complex game with a relatively small team, while trying to make sure that the different systems, gameplay elements, and monetization mechanics worked together as intended. It wasn't always a smooth experience, but it gave me a much better understanding of how complicated game development can become when the original vision and the available resources are no longer aligned.
Looking back, Throne of Legends was one of those projects that taught me quite a lot precisely because things didn't go according to plan. I had the opportunity to work extensively on game systems, economy, and monetization, but I also experienced the challenges of taking responsibility for a project that was already facing difficulties. It made me more aware of how important it is to balance creative ambitions with what a team can realistically deliver, and how sometimes changing direction is a necessary part of getting a project across the finish line. It certainly wasn't the easiest project I worked on, but it was an important experience in my development as a Game Designer.
You can also find its original Wiki Page here
Throne of Legends gameplay:
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