Strange World’s Magic: The Gathering-like card game is fully playable

The world of Disney strange world is, well, weird. There’s the crazy underground realm full of blob-like creatures cloaked in warm colors, but even the “normal” land of Avalonia is different from our own. Directors Don Hall and Qui Nguyen wanted to create a world without technology when building Avalonia, and the result is a retro-futuristic solarpunk setting where people have personal airships but no cell phones or televisions. One thing that Avalonia does share with our world? Teenagers are still avid gamers, and that includes Ethan Clade (Jaboukie Young-White), the farmer’s son-turned-reluctant explorer Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal).

“We wanted Ethan to be a gamer because our kids are gamers,” laughs Hall. “Every kid, every teenager is a gamer right now.”

Image: Disney

But the filmmakers manage without computers and consoles strange world had to rely on another source of inspiration for Ethan’s gamer interest: tabletop gaming. Input Original outpost, the trading card game that Ethan and his friends love. In Original outpostplayers must work together to build a settlement in the wilderness and learn to cooperate with the environment. We don’t really learn the specific mechanics of Original outpost inside the movie, but Hall tells us the game is fully fleshed out.

“There are rules. And there are more cards than we show,” he explains.

“It’s playable!” Chimes in Nguyen. “It was obviously based on a little bit katan and Magic the Gatheringas if these elements came hand in hand.”

If the general plot of Original outpost – so living with the wild instead of conquering it – sounds familiar to me, that was 100% intentional. Ethan plays the game with his father and grandfather, bombastic explorer Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid). The two older men are more interested in attacking the creatures and defending their fortress from the environment than understanding them. Cue Ethan groans and tries in vain to get her to get the point.

“The rules of the game [were] actually secretly the theme of the whole film,” says Nguyen. “It was a nice trick that Ethan could say: Hey, that’s what this whole thing is about, living in harmony with the environment around you.”

strange world is now on Disney Plus.