Isaac, The Gathering!

Its time for a new item! this week… Mom’s Perfume!

This new “status effect” item is part of a cycle of new items that cause status effects on enemies, moms perfume causes “fear”.

there were some items that gave status effects to enemies, but this time we are doing it in a more interesting way, now the status effect isnt just a % chance, when a tear hits it does the effect.. now you actually see the tear with the effect on it when you shoot (note the yellow tears in the gif). on top of that each status effect will change the enemy visually, here is a poison effect + moms perfume + another new item… (ideal for an isaac build based around status effects)

there are quite a few pretty awesome new effects i cant spoil here… but im sure if you use your imagination you can come up with some.

but now on to the thing ive been wanting to talk about for almost 2 years but couldn’t. its somewhat isaac related seeing as i pulled a lot from its design (pretty abstractly though), but either way…

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I GOT TO HELP DESIGN A MAGIC CARD!

i honestly never thought id type those words. It has been a dream of mine for a very long time, see magic the gathering was probably one of the most important games in my life.. especially when it comes to game design.

I got into MTG when i was 13 (94ish), my best friend AJ told me that i needed to see this card game that was like DnD, where you could summon demons and dragons to fight along side you. i watched these kids playing at the local boys club and when i saw Keldon Warlord hit the table i was floored… “he gets bigger the more creatures you have in play” AJ said. i was already thinking of amazing deck ideas based on the card that play a lot of little creatures so the warlord came out mega huge!… i was sold, i went to a comic shop and picked up a starter deck of revised (because unlimited starters were 4 bucks more!) and my love affair with magic was born.

2 years ago i was lucky enough to be one of quite a few other game devs to be asked to help design a card for the next core set, M15. i had a hobby of designing magic cards, myself and a few other game dev friends of mine actually designed a whole fake set of cards just for the hell of it one month.. so when i was asked to submit a few card ideas i went through my notes and sent in a cycle of cards i called “the children”.

the cycle was a series of 1 drop creatures in each color that were designed to be rare, think 1 drop titans.

i cant find my notes for all 5, but the 3 i submitted to wizards were these.

Blue Child-

U

t: untap target land you control, you may only do this when its not your turn

0/2

Green Child-

G

Flash, when this creature takes damage put a +1+1 counter on it

0/3

Black Child-

B

T: pay 1 life put a +1+1 counter on this

T: remove X counters from this to do X damage to target creature or player

1/1

I really liked the Blue Child a lot, but it wasnt an ability wizards wanted to print in a core set and leaned more towards the Green and Black cards. in the end i decided to focus on the black 1 drop because i felt it was a lot more interesting.

the cards name became Cruel Sadist, a psychotic child that feeds off the player to grow stronger then unleashes it on creatures or players, i had pushed the idea of the card being a succubus or vampire type creature that would drink your blood and spit it at stuff, but wizards liked the idea of a crazed child assassin a lot more.

the card was designed to be kind of like a

Guul Draz Assassin that could possibly protect itself a bit earlier and had more options late game. i really like reactionary decks, i could see myself playing it in a blue black control deck that waited till the eot with a counter spell, but if nothing was played then i put a counter on my guy to raise the threat. it could also be a great anti green card, killing off any early game mana elves and the like.

i like cards that give me a lot of options, killing creatures, growing larger, damaging players or just being an agro 1 drop were all options so this was the card i wanted to push through.

sadly my design was a but too OP and needed to be taken down a few pegs. the design team played around with the card, adding a black mana to each of its abilities and even moving it down to an uncommon to see how it played there. There was a great deal of back and forth on the card but in the end this was the final design for Cruel Sadist.

Remind you of anyone?

Not exactly the micro titan i had planned, but im sure she will find a home somewhere.

it was great working with the team, i learned a lot about the design process and how much testing actually goes into these sets.. i now understand why they make them 2 years in advance. its such a huge honor to have been a part in one of the best design games of all time and look forward to drafting the hell out of this set.

xoxo

-Edmund