When the Firaxis Games team was first approached with the possibility of creating a new game with Marvel Entertainment, we were obviously super excited! We knew we wanted to make a tactical fighting game because we had a lot of experience making those kinds of games with XCOM.
However, we quickly discovered that designing a Super Hero game is very different from creating a game about soldiers fighting an alien invasion. Today, I’m excited to talk to PlayStation players about our journey to design an all-new heroic combat experience, why we decided to use cards to represent hero abilities, and how that system works in Marvel’s Midnight Suns.
The theory behind the cards
To understand why we use cards, it’s important to break down what makes a tactics game fun in the first place. All tactics games are essentially puzzles, and our job as designers is to strike the right balance between that puzzle being too easy and obvious, or nearly impossible and incredibly complex. Our goal is to find the sweet spot where the answer is not immediately obvious, but where the player understands the mechanics and tools to manipulate the game and find the solution. However, over time, seasoned players will learn the optimal way to use these tools and quickly overcome any obstacles. This is where the chance comes in.
Randomization is an important design element in tactical games, as it provides a way to make gameplay unpredictable even when a player has mastered the basic mechanics. This forces players to constantly adapt to new situations and keeps the puzzle fresh and surprising. And that’s how you end up with those amazing moments in XCOM, like hitting a 25% clutch shot…but also how you end up missing those 95% close range rounds!
Another critical element of tactical games is fulfilling the player’s fantasy. In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, we have an impressive roster of heroes from across the Marvel Universe, ranging from the cosmic strength of Captain Marvel and the brilliant mind of Tony Stark to the mystical arts of Doctor Strange and the vampire-hunting prowess of Blade. Our early prototypes placed these characters in XCOM-style combat with things like hit percentage and cover. And while the mechanics worked well, the game didn’t feel right. They are Super Heroes, after all! Iron Man doesn’t miss a hit with his Repulsor Blasts, and Captain Marvel isn’t going to take cover for protection when things heat up.
As we removed more of these XCOM elements, especially the percentage hit chance, the game started to feel more heroic… but the combat puzzle quickly became too simple. It was easy to repeat the same heavy attack with a hero every turn until the mission was complete. We needed to reintroduce randomness to keep the combat puzzler engaging while still making you feel like a superhero. That’s when we came up with the idea of representing our hero abilities in the form of cards.
Cards are great because they are commonly used in games and players know the key “mechanics” like a play, draw, and discard. Drawing a hand of cards every turn gave us the perfect amount of randomness for our combat experience. Our heroes feel super powerful in battle because their abilities never fail and always do exactly what they say, but there is still some strategy needed to solve the battle puzzle based on the cards you have in hand.
Fight and think like a superhero
In Marvel’s Midnight Suns, each hero has a unique set of abilities that you use to form an 8-card deck. When heroes are brought into battle, their decks are shuffled, and at the start of each turn, you draw up to a 6-card hand. During your turn, you have three card games which represent how many times you can use your abilities, as well as two redraw to swap abilities you don’t want to use. You can also Move a hero of your choice wherever you want once per turn.
Regarding the abilities themselves, we separate them into three categories: Attacks, Skills, and heroics. Offensive Cards are primarily used to deal damage. Some attacks have decline which forcefully repositions an enemy by knocking them back in a targeted direction – You can deal extra damage by knocking them back into items, other enemies, or even your allied heroes!
Skill cards are used for support, often providing a variety of advantages to the player or weakening the enemy. While these cards don’t deal damage, they can be used to draw cards, heal characters, grant positive status effects, and more.
Heroic Cards are incredibly powerful abilities that deal significantly more damage or provide more powerful effects on the battlefield. Marvel fans will be thrilled to see many iconic hero abilities represented with these cards. Hero cards require a resource called Heroism, which is generated by playing Attack or Skill cards. Heroism is also required to use items on the battlefield in Environmental attacks which do not require a deck of cards to be used. If you have the heroism, you can knock down lampposts, blow up barrels… even pick up a stack of newspapers and punch your enemies in the face, all without spending a single deck of cards.
Combat in Marvel’s Midnight Suns is uniquely accessible and easy to pick up and play. There is no movement grid or cover system, and heroes will automatically reposition themselves to hit their targets. Playing abilities is as simple as selecting an ability card in your hand, selecting the target enemy or area, and that’s it – Captain America sprints across the battlefield to knock out some jerk Hydra!
After mastering the basic rules, combat can also be surprisingly deep and complex. There are so many factors that adjust the tactical puzzle with each mission, turn and action.
- What abilities do I have in my hand?
- Which heroes are on this mission and how do their abilities interact?
- Which enemies are the biggest threats? Are there any dangerous villains to deal with?
- Should I spend my heroism on a heroic ability or use the environment?
- Can I use knockback abilities and terrain to maximize damage?
And if that’s not enough, we also have eight difficulty options for you to challenge your tactical skills. Are you just looking to get a great supernatural Marvel story? Choose the difficulty of the story. But what if you seek to torment yourself with every decision? Ultimate III will be the way to go.
I can’t wait to see how you solve the tactical combat conundrum once Marvel’s Midnight Suns releases on PlayStation 5 on December 2, 2022!
