Kohdok talks about Elestrals for a bit
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- Опубліковано 13 кві 2024
- A glimpse into the first TCG on Kickstarter to get a seven-digit result.
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#tcg #tradingcardgame #gamedev #elestrals - Ігри
I like that the element of the card is on the side of the illustration border, it makes it easier to see what it is when the cards are stacked on top of each other, BUT for some colorblind people (or even just dummies like me) I do think the little swirl in the middle of the pillar should match their element so you can see it at a quicker glance.
Honey wake up! New Kohdok dropped
Elestrals has been my jam since it was announced. The gameplay is super interesting, as you said kinda combineing pkmn and ygo gameplay.
The community has asked for bundle style product but its not happening just yet, though they are changeing starter decks to try and be a mid point between that by adding 3 boosters to each deck and changeing the box design for the second set.
Personally i like the shatterd stars as a secret lair esq option. The whole purpose is to keep things accessible and heavy reprint policy, but to keep something for collecting chase cards. Like a base player getd 1 bundle for play set of 3 cards and some spice. Collectors will go heavy and then be able to distribute (idealy) their extra stuff and hopefully keep secondary prices down on pieces. And then finding staples andbsuch in starter decks also helps the competive accessibility.
Its all sorta pros cons in the end but ive been playing the game sicne day one and its a blast.
Adrive also listens to the community super well and loves taking feedback is nice to have a transparent creator.... ok this got long but elestrals hype 😅
Elestrals is super fun and I've been enjoying it ever since it was released. I do agree that having different backings for spirit cards would be a great QOL change. I love their dynamic resource system and how you have to constantly decide whether playing a certain card is worth investing some of your life in. I personally enjoy Shattered Stars, but I know it's not for everyone. Overall I really enjoyed watching this video and hope you had a great time opening all the product!
You were my childhood I'm so glad to see you still going
I feel like Elestrals would be served well with a video game, or an online game world.
The hope is to develop an RPG video game one day!
Personally, I want to see a TTRPG (table top) for Elestrals but like the video game that would be long ways off.
Great review. Thanks for your thoughts!
I feel like if you're going to do a game with distinct resource cards, you absolutely have to make those cards something conceptually different to all the other card types in the game. Making the resource cards look like creatures is probably really confusing. It's a problem I've run into myself, I tried a lot of different ways to make resource cards more of a "thing" than just MTG's lands or Pokemon's symbols-on-balls, but whatever I tried to make them I always ended up misreading them as some other type of card and would miss that I had a resource card in my hand.
To make them more distinct, you can make resource cards horizontal. That's what I did.
I don't know how to feel about the overall aesthetic decisions. I know that having a coherent visual identity is important but I've always gelled with games that have more variety than what Elestrals seems to offer.
Like a lot of Japanese TCGs that aren't tied to an existing IP tend to debut with a lineup that explores varied aesthetics, something like "Warrior - Dragon - Monster - Cute" since it casts a wide net and they can experiment with aesthetics as well as gameplay motifs from there. If you aren't into Pokemon-style creature collectors, and specifically Greek divine myths, and also like the designs of the main Spirits that must be run in every deck, well, you're going to be seeing that exclusively. What if you love to play Fire decks but don't gel with the Fire Spirit Elestral?
I admire the confidence in marketing that it implies but at the same time feel like for a game that is aiming for an audience of both Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh fans it might benefit from having some cards that lean to the Yu-Gi-Oh side of things from a visual standpoint.
Pokemon-style games I think have a really difficult balance to strike, because if you make things look too different from each other, they all look arbitrary, like they were assembled for a Neopets-type website rather than being the inhabitants of a coherent fictional universe, and if you make things look too similar, you're only appealing to one type of person's tastes. And whatever you do, you're still locking yourself pretty much to only being able to appeal to two of the standard five themes (beast and dragon). Even Pokemon is beginning to struggle with this now that they've reached the 1000 pokemon mark, new pokemon are increasingly feeling pun-based or random - would anyone really feel like anything was missing if Flapple didn't exist?
See, I'm the opposite. Games that have too much variety have zero identity to me. The overall aesthetic is what captured my attention and the fact that, despite the internet hate I see about Adrive for whatever reason, he is very straight forward about the game and the growing pains their team faces.
I do agree with Kohdok in that they need to primarily focus on getting into LGSs and flesh out the lore and the world more. It would go a long way to create that rabbit hole effect that Pokémon has and help people start caring more about the adorable creatures.
@@Celticmoon79 Everyone gets this for something, because everyone has something they particularly like. The problem is that the more consistent a game's aesthetic is, the smaller net it's casting, so it gets a small number of people who really like what it's doing, when it may benefit more from having a larger number of people who like it less.
@@Celticmoon79 aDrive and the community is hard at work connecting with the LGS. The lore is also coming along in large chunks. There is a video released back in March with three more planned later this year about once a quarter. Eventually the lore will be bound in a book but that is sometime next year.
I thought the aesthetic is too generic.
Those critters could perfectly be digimons.
It's kinda funny that a bunch of kids who grew up knowing that a lot of the pokemon knockoffs were unpopular, not good or both and then grew up to make their own pokemon knockoffs that are unpopular, not good or both.
Elestrals seems very strange in how brazen its branding looks like a knockoff. Down to advertisments with smooth cg creatures doing a pose in a generic environment.
I don't see a future for Elestrals but it would be cool to be proven wrong.
shatered stars would be an amazing organized play reward but that seems very unlikely for many reasons
They gotta spice up their creatures I agree.
Do something they haven't done, or just be meta with it and break the fourth wall like I'm doing with mine. It's not a Pokemon ripoff but it will have a creature version of it.
@@clairbeeguitarwe have an OP tournament packs in the works that’s absolutely incredible!
It makes sense though. For older fans of Pokemon, the Pokemon franchise is kind of dead now. There aren't anime being made for adults, they don't really make spin-off games anymore, and the mainline games have been pointless for almost ten years. You've got a lot of people who still love Pokemon but who no longer have an opportunity to indulge that, so they're making their own Pokemon games to try to recapture that love. It's not just knock-offs either, the Pokemon fangame scene has exploded in recent years, there are thousands of people making them and at least two game engines on the market designed to let non-programmers make Pokemon games.
I think you're spot on and that totally explains the insane popularity of Palworld too. @yurisei6732
I can see these little critters in a Neopets or tamagotchi like game as a side thing for people to learn more about them, but that's just additional resources they probably might not have
Pleassse 🙏
I really appreciate you giving this an honest review. You're a good man.
I like the guts system from the monster rancher card game game. I remember that the video game & live card game play differently.
Thorough
One of my biggest tcg pet peeves is calling the mass release of a kickstarter game "1st ed." It’s not the first printing. That is not what 1st ed means. Not only that, but if "1st ed" sells out, what do you do? Print a third box? That may have worked in the 90s, but in today's age you wind up with the metazoo situation.
I also got a distaste when influencers were given seeded boxes with serialized cards. What's the "value" of these when you just give them away. I think kickstarter boxes being available for only 20 dollars more than 1st ed is pretty indicative of how much collector demand there is. This game can not survive distribution.
There is a huge quality difference between kickstarter and 1st ed. They switched manufacturers for better sorting, better card stock, and better ink. It also let's people who waited to see how the game was going to do out of KS to have a chance to buy the core set, which set 2 onward are built around.
ok, Rudy
oh yeah, this thing
Vampire TES and Rivals are not the same thing and both are still going.
They play nearly the same. and TES is only ongoing unofficially, like the old Star Wars CCG.
@@Kohdok While there was a period of time that people were doing unofficial stuff, the Black Chantry run of VTES *is* actually officially licensed from White Wolf/Paradox. Has been since... like, 2018?
@Kohdok The new VTES starter deck set was in stores, wasn't it?
@@Kohdok They are still releasing product. Mostly new preconstructed decks with new cards.
@@KohdokRivals is as different from Vampire: The Eternal Struggle as Duel Masters is from Magic: The Gathering.
Would you PRETTY PLEEEAAASE make a video on Buddyfight?! Or at least when the 10 Year Anniversary set drops later in the year??
He hates Bushiroad tho
There going be a 10 year set drop...it been about ten years?! Am rewatching the anime it was a great watch. Easy to fallow runs and fun to watch more than yugioh anime. I don't have people to play against so I never bought the cards.
@@jdvred9210 You can love a product but hate a company. Same with loving a country but hating the government.
@@zerokura I love it too & am watching it. I’ve been collecting tons of cards on EBay & TCGPlayer.
@@braydenleaderofthetirkins1143 Yes. But he hates their games.
He even removed the one video he made about ranting over vanguard.
To your point about Vorthos being a flavor of Timmy, you're not entirely wrong but Johnny/Timmy/Spike are more to do with what you want out of the game, Johnny likes tinkering, Spike likes winning, and Timmy likes spectacle. On the other hand Vorthos and Mel are aesthetic and having to do with what you like about the game, Vorthos being into the art and lore and Mel being into the raw mechanics. (And yeah this game has absolutely nothing to give Vorthoses)
The overlap between Timmies and Vorthoses being very high though. Like, what is a Vorthos Spike? What does "winning" mean to someone whose draw to the game is the artwork? Or a Vorthos Johnny? What is "tinkering" to someone whose draw is the flavour text? This is the limitation of this player type system - every player is every player type to some degree and even a timmy isn't going to be particularly interested in using a pure vorthos card (see MTG's recent run of "draw a card" commanders that no one is feeling enthused about).
@@yurisei6732 This is what I mean by Vorthos/Mel being distinct from Timmy/Johnny/Spike. You can see some overlap between Timmy and Vorthos but that's about it. And yeah, any player has some of all of the psychographics, it's more about identifying what players like and how to appeal to them. Timmy isn't a person so to speak, and it's not even a category of people. It's aspects of a game that many people like to different degrees.
I'd love a compilation of various game's starter decks that have been released since you've done individual videos. The yugioh 2 player starter I think you would find somewhat interesting to dissect.
The Transformers card game (not the recent deck builder) had giant cards and even bigger cards
I understand wanting them to have more fun facts like Pokemon, but at the same time, I simply have no interest in playing a game that is, on-purpose, aesthetically a Pokemon knock-off, when Pokemon already exists and has a successful TCG.
That said, I agree it needs more identity. I just don't think leaning into make yourself more like your competition is a good way to do it.
b o x
Does Lore make or break people buying a game? Game mechanics/fun is 100% to me and Lore is always a bonus. Curious if others actually buy because of lore? I understand being drawn to art but beyond that seems like a bonus.
IDENTITY is the key here. ESPECIALLY for something collectible. For instance, Flesh and Blood has cards depicting its major characters getting up to all sorts of epic feats, so each character feels like they have an identity tied to their many depictions of combat prowess.
The single biggest promotion working in Elestrals favor has to be PokeAimMD
I read Penterror and am immedietally taken to the vision of a Dragapult
As a heavy Mel, do you feel like this game is worth putting time into? And cost wise, how available and affordable are the basic versions of cards?
Also is there, dare I say... LIMITED?
The words "Resource Card Investment Portfolio" do anything for you?
No limited officially supported, but we've done some little drafts and sealed stuff in the community and it works well enough. As for affordability of base rarity stuff. Honestly not too bad. I know a couple people who secondary marketed 3x of every card for about 200usd...and that's every card for the cost of about two booster boxes. An actual deck is pretty cheap to make if only makeling the deck and not a whole complete collection
Edit- not to say 200 is some magical affordability thing. But being able to have an entire set for the cost of a single deck in other established tcgs is pretty neat
@@wertsTCG Yeah that sounds reasonable, especially for a player building only one or a few decks. Is there a preferred simulator option for people who don't have any local play nearby?
@@Kohdok You know it baby. Having your resource-colour split be more about 'how many per-colour you can cast each game' rather than being about variance/consistency has the gears A-TURNIN'!!
A fully comp deck is probably about 100$ because a lot of the staples are about 5$. Most cards are really cheap. I wouldn't do limited with what's out yet bc there have been sorting issues. They switched manufacturers which has helped sorting with 1st ed and new set, but there are still kinks being worked out.
I have a homemade TCG I've been working on, for years now
Where you start with 100 (Soul points) and you spend them to play monsters and accessory cards.
With free to play cards to give extra soul and if your soul hits zero; you loose.
If anyone knows of a similar featue in another game, let me know.
Your complaint about the lore is sort of understandable. What you don't know is who is writing the lore. There is also the time factor to create the videos which will give the lore. For some people, the lore doesn't mean much but for others, like myself, lore does mean quite a bit. We just have to trust the process with the lore.
You forgot to talk about the SD having a rule book which most TCG don't do anymore as well as having a spin down dice. As for the overall design, that would have cost a lot more money to make.
I think the product is good, but i have so little faith in games outside the big three without like proven success first. I just hate the feeling of buying something that never gets off the ground.
Kinda a catch 22 for most TCGs , people don't want to buy Into something that isn't quote un quote proven. But games can't prove them selves without people picking it up. I will say the gameplay is super fun and the community around it has been super welcoming and awesome .
I would say the card art looks like it was ripped from Deviantart but that would be doing a disservice to Deviantart
this tcg is like making a TV show/Video game based TCG, but the TV show/Video game it was based on DOESN'T EXIST. I don't think that would end well for this product.
Takes time! We will get there =]
#BringBakuganBakAgain
This looks like Lightseekers TCG, it’s the exact same card boarders, how is this not flagged
Your view of the gameplay meta feels pretty off, but I would rather you play some than me um actually.
That Vyceris is a sick pull. 5 Power is a magic number in the game so far and the bodies are big pressure. One of my favorite cards exc giving itself +1 while it has Earth is weird.
@Reimu-Shrine-Maiden no reason to be negative lol get a life
The thing I don't like about Elestrals is the card text, a brand new game shouldn't be as wordy as Yugioh. Not wordy as in they have lines and lines of text, most cards are rather simple but they are written to be as wordy as they could be. No simplification or effect structure anywhere, pure plain text.
This was a design choice to use plain English text because I believed it would be easier for non card players to get involved.
Part of my inspiration of designing the game is to get people who have never played card games to play Elestrals. TCGs were a big part of my childhood and I want to share that!
@@aDrive I understand trying to lower barrier of entry. Too much terminology, keywords and special phrasing does make a game more unapproachable for a first experience, but something that also discourages new players, as Yugioh has proved for years, is too much card text. It doesn't matter how simple the text is, if you consistently reach a certain threshold of characters on most cards, new players might not want to engage with it.
Elestrals text box is also the same proportions as a Yugioh text box, and Yugioh already has one of the smallest text boxes of any card game. In a couple of years if the game doesn't change the full-text style of writing you will be making the text smaller and smaller
A child is perfectly capable of understanding:
"When (this card) [trigger]: You can [action] 4x[symbol] to [effect]"
instead of
"When this [card name] does [full-text trigger condition], you can [full-text action] [symbol][symbol][symbol][symbol] to [effect]."
This is the main thing that *appeals* to me about Elestrals. Having a PSCT structure would be beneficial, but there's no need for simplification. Remember, "simplification" actually just means "making cards not say what they do" - it means moving card effects into the rulebook.
@@yurisei6732 elestrals has the same text box proportions as Yugioh, the smallest text box out of any card game out there.
It also has the same full-text approach of writing its text as Yugioh. In a couple of years they will have to start making the text smaller and smaller.
Yugioh has proved for years now, that cards full of small text and long run off sentences can be just as alienating and off putting to new players as text boxes full off keywords and symbols.
elestrals has the same text box proportions as Yugioh, which has the smallest text box of any card game out there. It also has the same full-text approach of writing text as Yugioh, which means in a couple of year they will need to start making the text smaller and smaller.
Yugioh has proved for many years now, that a card full of small text and long run off sentences can be just as alienating and off-putting to new players as text box full keywords and symbols.
If you're looking for lore in my TCG, Ohohoho be prepared to pull out your glasses and read a Tolkan Level in depth lore, a bit more simple but I just can't help to flesh out everything as if it/they was real and actually function, I like to create systems and watch the Goldberg machine clock go.
And the amazing thing is that all the stories are cannon and connected at some extent, I have years here and to come of polishing and giving quality to my work, you can say I'm a perfectionist, that takes their time, sometimes.
Also what's a ETB?
That's also not a good thing lol. I really hope that you've retained a solid core lore structure that can be understood without a deep dive.
Tolkien 🤣
@@yurisei6732 Working on a list of consistencies, for everything and not just the card game, I'll also be active and help them piece together the puzzle which is my world.
I don’t see them on tcgplayer. Must not be a real tcg, oh well
They are currently In review for tcg player
Keep in mind tcgplayer sold metazoo, goes to show what they consider “real tcgs”
What is y'all definition of a real TCG, what are the signs of it being a real TCG, give examples as I take note.
On tcgplayer for one
watered down pokemon/digimon wanna be?
But I like Zaptor, honestly could be their mascot.
I feel like I'm already confused with this game. It feels like it's got too many mechanics going on and not in a good way. It's borrowing too much from too many things. Digimon and Pokémon feel like good games because they're not too complex as a whole. But Digimon, for example, has great layers in deck building due to the Inherited abilities mechanic and finding great combos. The egg deck/hatchery is easy to understand. Winning is straightforward. Etc. But the fact they're doing like...'egg deck', attack and defense positions, 'mana/energy' values, 'evolving', having a back row, a slew of key words for people to learn, etc. Just watching this I felt more lost as he tried to explain this games mechanics when I can usually pick up what someone is putting down when explaining new tcgs. Been playing them a majority of my life.
And yeah, the art does nothing for me at all. It struggles to have a blend of 'cute' and 'badass' that YGO/Pokémon/Digimon manage to produce and the designs of the creatures doesn't vibe with the whole 'Greek' angle they want to have at all.
@@TaskMaster5 How much mechanics is enough to work?
@@TaskMaster5 anime wifu the card game, it must be done.
@@kagemushashien8394 I don't know. You can have a game with a lot of mechanics but they need to feel like they are congruent with your game. This game feels like it's just grabbing everything in the toolbox simply because they exist, not really enriching the experience or feeling thematic.
This looks like Metazoo
There's too much damned text on these cards. If your deck can have a Savannah Lions... do that, especially during your first year. When your creature cards have 5 lines of text, and 1/3rd of that is keyworded actions... you're doing it wrong.
Partially, but the reason cards tend to get this wordy is because they're being designed with conditions or limitations. Avoiding wordiness tends to mean either making a less interesting game (eg early MTG, with lots of vanillas and french vanillas) that isn't really appropriate for modern card game audiences most of whom have some experience already; or starting overpowered and having to ban a load of cards when you later release their balanced versions (eg compare Yugioh's Pot of Greed to its later Fixed Pots of Greed).
@@yurisei6732 "less interesting"? Magic is the gold standard, and it's best cards are still the simple ones. You need cards players can understand, and interesting mechanics. If your mechanics aren't simple or interesting, cut them.
@@williamsimkulet7832 Magic really isn't the gold standard, it's an archaic sacred cow that persists solely from its existing momentum and that every new card game is desperate to improve upon. It also has had the most complexity creep of any card game, because no, simple games *don't* sell.
@@yurisei6732 MTG has had too much complexity creep, but at least some of this has been in favor of improving diversity in limited. But, for better or worse, MTG is still the gold standard among CCGs - it's far easier to understand that most games and has learned not to "cheat" it's core game rules as often as, say, Yugioh or Pokemon, the 2nd tier games. MTG has problems, but if you print a 3/3 for W or a 5/5 for 1G, it'll see play. In fact, Tarmogoyf was famously vanilla 5/6 for 1G "with extra steps" and dominated for about a decade. This game won't live that long.
@@williamsimkulet7832 Yes, in virtually any game, there's some level of undercosting that makes a vanilla playable. That doesn't make it fun though, which is why MTG prefers complex 2/1s for 2 over simple 3/3s for 2.
Ngl this TCG just sounds like a cash grab
Currently about 20 person tourn fires every weekend with some bigger events sometimes. I really love the gameplay. It's very cheap to get into with singles.
I assure you I didn’t walk away from my cushy YT career I worked tirelessly for in order to pursue and infinitely harder and riskier business just to cash grab 😂
@@aDrivegood thing he was talking about the game, not you?
@@akiradkcn Adrive is the creator and owner of Elestrals...so very much relevant comment