Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and now Youtube Music!
Big episode! Alexis Janson breaks down their game Once Upon a Galaxy. Along the way we crossover the ideas and brainstorm how to steal some of that technology for our own Magic designs. Alexis was a Beacon host way back in the day, so you know they’re ready to go deep on the design behind Galaxy.
We’ve also got a preview card from the upcoming set, Candylar: The Sweet Set!
Check out the game: https://galaxy.fun
The dev twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/playgalaxygame
Yukmouth streams the game daily: https://www.twitch.tv/yukmouth
Alexis’s bsky: https://bsky.app/profile/alexisjanson.com
Topics and tidbits:
- Alexis is one of the old school Beacon hosts!
- Coming out from behind the WotC curtain
- The Million Dreams team
- doing game design right in the code
- Galaxy starting point: pick two cards, battle, pick two cards, battle
- Can you play Magic with just two cards?
- Pai Gao, Type 4, Omniscience Magic, etc
- Drafting cooler cards as you go along
- Early stats really matter in Galaxy
- How to carry over advantages over several quick Magic games?
- Captains in Galaxy are just a passive ability, not a creature
- How to make early game matter in formats with tons of scaling?
- Devin Low says “you’re dying”
- Frontier justice in commander
- Hearts instead of life totals… more like “I can be hit X times” than “I can be hit for X total damage”
- Well I’m at -950, what’s your life total?
- Galaxy starting stats top out (for Legendaries) at 20-30, with one 50/50…
- But eventually Galaxy stats can get into the hundreds or thousands. It’s not vanillas that are cool, it’s synergy!
- Semi-sorted decks that have cooler cards towards the bottom
- Putting yourself in a position to get lucky
- +EV plays vs “correct” plays
- Mid-game scaling decision point: all-in end the game now or reset with a fresh set of late game units
- Falling in love with a low-tier common draft after draft
- 5 character cap on creatures in play
- The cap makes it so you have to find better characters, not just a variety of them
- But the cap also makes it somewhat easier to catch up, as a bad early board is easier to replace
- How small can we make the decision tree and still be a good and deep game
- A small squad of 5 means you also get attached to your crew
- Anne Bunny shout out
- Even with a 5 character crew, you really only are looking at replacing maybe 2 or 3 of them
- Getting that roguelike “what do I want to build today?” vibe
- Giving identity to decks a “green elementals” deck has more identity than “green big guys”
- Taking pictures of fireworks
- You never have multiples of characters in play, instead they merge
- Your first dupe is a “silver” upgrade which is a free redraft (and maybe other triggers)
- Silvering is somewhat similar to cantrips in Magic
- The third copy is a “gold” upgrade that doubles the base stats, maybe doubles the abilities, and give a Treasure
- Treasures are sorta like enchantments, and you can collect as many as you want
- Goldening gives a reason to invest in older units
- The split between the doubling reward and the treasure reward of gold is interesting
- All buffs are permanent, even for characters you haven’t drafted yet
- The treasure pool is different for each tier of character, so the treasure choices get strong as the characters do
- Copying effects scale with the game
- Late game treasures are often pure-stats hammers (like +10/+10 in Magic)
- Mid game treasures can encourage you to shift builds
- The pool of draftable cards is weighted towards the higher rarity, ensuring you’re not just looking at commons all game
- Tim’s backup strat of taking a bunch of random legends and hitting them with True Love’s Kiss
- Because of small pack sizes and few rerolls, that draft pool has to serve up plausible options more often
- Knowing the “Whammies” in your RNG: effects that feel real bad but hopefully aren’t too common
- Asynchronous play: your opponents are real people who built those crews but did so against other ghosts
- No timers, can even leave and come back and pick up where you left off
- “Legacy” games (where game pieces get stronger permanent between plays with stickers) vs digital games
- Sticker cubes
- Slot buffs: Places for units to stand that give stats to their occupant
- Positioning of units overall gives back some of the control that you lose in autobattlers
- Spells are a fourth shop choice that generally buff units, but can also affect random enemies instead
- The spell slot is, at least, a backup slot that gives you a consolation prize if the units offered aren’t useful
- Spellcasting is the focus of the new expansion, Candylar!
- “Candy” spells can have the “Sweeten” ability, which amplifies future Candy
- How do candy cards get into the pool?
- Each of your captains can bring along a “deck” which adds a dozen cards to the core pool of 100 or so cards
- If you include any candy in that deck, you also get Candy spells in the spell pool
- The deck is like if you got to pick a dozen cards to mix into a cube before the draft
- “Treasure Find” characters get a specific, unique treasure as a prize, maybe like conjuring in Alchemy
- Diluting the common pool can be a bad choice in a competitive setup, as early silver/golds are good and having a bigger pool reduces the chances
- Since diluting the common pool is generally bad, that then means the “collectible” (goes in a deck) commons can be juiced a bit
- Exclusive spoiler! Netherbinder
- Treasure hoard: Get bigger for each treasure you’ve accumulated
- How to map “you get luckier stuff” into Magic?
- “Your cascade cards can’t hit one drops”
- A mix of fantasy and full goofball art
- Uniquely qualified for this design challenge
- Rhox Anne Bunny
- Bonus end of episode shoutout to a certain fowl!