News

Help Improve Prismata’s Wiki… and Win Awesome Prizes! 1

This entry was posted in News on by

Prismata’s greatest strength has always been our community. Since its creation two months ago, the Prismata Wiki has blossomed into one of our greatest community resources for information concerning Prismata. The Prismata Wiki has become a hugely important resource for both beginners and experts alike, as it contains a wealth of information on every unit in the game (basic tips, advanced strategies, and even build orders).

table

The Prismata Wiki contains a lot of really cool stuff, like this massive unit table! Click for the full table.

We want to make Prismata’s Wiki even better by getting even more people from our community involved! Hence, we’ve decided to run a wiki-editing contest.

Yes, a contest. The kind with prizes!

Anyone who makes a contribution to our Wiki in the next month will receive a new rare emote (“I learned that from the wiki.”), and the top contributors could win a Prismata T-shirt, or the chance to develop their own Prismata emote! More information below.

To kick off the contest, I’ve also written up my own highly-detailed article on one of my favourite Prismata units—the Hellhound. It’s pasted below; feel free to use it as a model for your own articles, or even improve it! (more…)

The Future of Prismata’s Art 1

This entry was posted in Game Features Highlights Insight News and tagged Art graphics Prismata on by

 

Zenith_Gate2(1024x600-Watermarked)

Hey, guys!

I’m going to jump straight into this post. It’s going to be about Prismata’s overall graphical look, and how we’ll be upgrading it as time goes on. We get a lot of questions along the lines of “Why don’t you have good art like Game X?”, where Game X is typically a work by a AAA developer with a budget in the millions. Even though these types of questions may be a bit tongue-in-cheek, we do intend to improve our graphics to the point where we are competing with the best-looking strategy games and card games out there. In the next year, you’ll be seeing big updates to our user interface, look and feel, animations, unit art, and tons of other aspects of Prismata’s appearance. Today, I’m going to explain our plans.

Before I get to that, let’s first take a look at the competition.

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The “What Should We Work On” Survey (Plus Kickstarter Final Results and Other News) 2

This entry was posted in Banter Highlights News and tagged Gaming Prismata survey on by

Hey guys!

Athough the weather outside is frightful (an “Extreme Cold Warning” in is effect with wind chills below -30 here in Waterloo), we’ve been huddled in the office getting tons of stuff done! We’re working hard on the Prismata campaign, new social and expressiveness features, improvements to graphics and sound, and all kinds of other stuff.

To help us determine how to best focus our efforts, we’ve prepared a quick survey. We want to know what you think, where our weak areas are, and what to prioritize. Your input is invaluable to us and we’ll be personally reading every single response. Take the survey now!

 

New Faces at Lunarch

The break has ended, we’ve all had a great vacation, and the Lunarch office is again filled with people busy working on Prismata. Our last interns, Whinnie and Rachel, have returned to school, and their shoes have been filled by two new faces—Tom (returning developer co-op from last summer) and Megan (who will be helping grow our community).

Please give a warm welcome to Tom and Megan, who will be getting us lunch and making our coffee for the next four months.

Please give a warm welcome to Tom and Megan, who will be getting us lunch and making our coffee for the next four months.

More news and updates below…

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Happy New Year! Updates, an exciting announcement, and a PUZZLE CONTEST!

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Hi everyone!

I know it’s been a bit quiet lately since Kickstarter ended! We’ve all been taking a much needed holiday break, which for me has meant catching up on sleep, and playing tons of video games with my family. Everyone here at Lunarch will be back to work next Monday, eager to start building in all the new Prismata features that we’ve been dreaming about over the break. I’m excited!

This blog will be a random dump of updates, thoughts, and answers to some questions we’ve been getting often. I’ll also be announcing a new funding milestone, plus a mini PUZZLE CONTEST that I’ll be running this weekend!

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This is it, guys. The Prismata Kickstarter Campaign Launches in UNDER 24 HOURS!

This entry was posted in News and tagged kickstarter skins on by

 

EDIT: KICKSTARTER IS NOW LIVE.

If you’ve been keeping up with what’s going on over here at Lunarch Studios, you might have heard that our Kickstarter campaign is launching tomorrow.  

For the first time since I decided quit my PhD at MIT to found Lunarch Studios, I’m scared.

Not because I’m afraid that we won’t meet our goal (given the size and growth rate of our fan base, we’ll demolish it), or because I’m worried about our ability to fulfill the rewards (many of them are already ready to go).

I’m nervous because at long last, we’re taking the key step that will begin the transformation of Prismata from a small, niche game into a massive online experience of epic proportions. There’s no limit to how big this thing can get.

 

Your help matters now. More than you think it does.

This is the part where I’m going to ask all of you for help.

What you may not realize is that by helping us early, on the very first day, you can amplify the effects of your efforts by tenfold or more. If we get a massive surge of funding on Day 1, it can lead to increased organic traffic on Kickstarter itself, increased media attention, and even result in us getting featured on Kickstarter’s front page. If that happens, it’s possible for our campaign to snowball like crazy. It’s happened before with other games. Let’s make it happen with Prismata.

To help convince you, we’ll have some amazing early-bird deals for early project backers, so be sure to get them while you still can! Backer rewards will include things like immediate game access, unlimited arena access, in-game avatars, unit skins, legendary emotes, bonus mission packs, puzzle packs, multi-tabling, and more.

Of course, you can lower or cancel your pledge at any time, and you won’t pay a cent unless the goal is met.

There is a second way you can help us, which in many cases can be even more beneficial than supporting us directly: HELP SPREAD THE WORD! We’ll be sharing a link to our Kickstarter around noon tomorrow on facebook, and many times throughout the next month. Facebook responds really positively to people liking, commenting, and sharing our posts, causing them to be exposed to even more people. Helping us go viral on Facebook will make a huge difference!

 

It’s happening!

The next month is going to be insane. Throughout the campaign (and beyond), we’ll work to bring you updates almost every day, as well as amazing events like our Pro Alpha Tourney (with Reynad, Kripp, Trump and more). We’ll also be sharing some exciting new unit skins. Here’s a preview:

sdg

Want to spice up your Drones and Tarsiers? We have tons of skins in development – get early access through Kickstarter!

Our launch video is looking really awesome. Here are a couple of preview shots. It goes live tomorrow as well!

dgs

Some images from the filming of the kickstarter video.

If you believe in our vision for Prismata, please check out the Kickstarter campaign tomorrow!

The Prismata Alpha Tourney, this Thursday, Nov 20th: Pros and streamers face off in a contest of pure skill 2

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Reynad, Kripparrian, Trump, Kolento, TidesofTime and SjoW have all been confirmed for the Prismata Alpha Tourney November 20th.

Reynad, Kripparrian, Trump, Kolento, TidesofTime and SjoW will be competing in the first ever Prismata tournament, held this Thursday, November 20th.

We’ve seen these players compete at high levels in games like Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, and WoW. Now, they’ve been invited to compete in the first ever pro invitational Prismata tournament. Sparks will fly as these talented players square off in Prismata—a fast-paced card game with no decks and no RNG. Only the skilled will survive.

Event: The Prismata Alpha Tourney

 

Date: Thursday, November 20th

Time: 6:30pm EST

 

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Coding huge multiplayer tournaments in 30 hours: the Prismata hackathon 12

This entry was posted in Banter Game Features News and tagged hackathon tournament tournaments on by

Edit: stream and publicly viewable docs are up, and we’ve blown up over at /r/gamedev.

This is a post about a game development hackathon that we’ll be live-streaming for much of the next two days. But this is no ordinary hackathon. We’re upping the ante by setting a hard deadline that could result in extreme embarrassment if things go horribly wrong. Allow me to explain.

Organized tournaments are a favourite aspect of many of the games we know and love, and Prismata is no different, being an excellent candidate for compelling and competitive tourneys. After the success of events like Alex’s Prismata Cup Hearthstone tournament, our fans have been begging us to host an actual Prismata tournament. So, at long last, we’re doing it. The first ever Prismata Open Tourney will happen tomorrow, Thursday October 16th, at 7pm Eastern time. We’ve recruited a slew of Hearthstone and poker pros to participate, including millionaire poker superstar Mike ‘Timex’ McDonald and Hearthstone number one Americas legend Jeffrey ‘Tarei’ Liu. The tournament is going to be epic.

There is just one problem.

Prismata currently doesn’t support tournaments. At all. There is literally no tournament feature in Prismata, and we’ve never worked on one before.

That’s why we’re adding tournaments, today. We’ll be designing, coding, and refining Prismata’s tournament features in a 30-hour hackathon that starts 1pm EST Wednesday and ends at 7pm Thursday—when the first Prismata tournament will begin.

Oops. We just did.

 

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2 New Units, 1 New Mechanic: Let’s see how you like the red dot! 2

This entry was posted in Game Features News and tagged new units snipe sniping on by

making prismata ma

 

You’re 10 turns into a game of Prismata. Both you and your opponent are pumping out attackers as fast as you can, but nothing seems to be enough to penetrate their Defense Grid. They buy a Wall, you buy a Wall. Tit for tat.

What’s the best move in this type of situation? To stop buying defense in favour of burst attackers? Risky! Switch your tech to a more offensive play? Inefficient! Wait for them to run out of defensive unit seeds? There isn’t a clear answer in situations like this, especially for new players who aren’t sure how risky each option truly is.

Until now.

 

Let’s talk about our latest two units, and the new game mechanic that’s going to change everything about turtle defense builds in Prismata.

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Introducing a new feature in Prismata: the Grandmaster Set 5

This entry was posted in Game Features News and tagged Design features Gamedev grandmaster sets units on by

If there’s one feature that sets Prismata apart from other games, it’s the diversity of units available. Most games of Prismata use a “base set” of units, plus some advanced units that are randomly generated. But unlike in deckbuilding games where you might need to spend $3,000 or more to get all the good cards, players in Prismata are evenly matched because:

  • All units are available to EVERYONE from the beginning
  • Both players in a 1v1 match have the same units available in each game

 

Vel'kar

Until now, static unit sets have only been available when playing Vel’kar. Players have never been able to refine strategies on a static set for competitive play.

When players begin the automatching process (or choose to fight against an AI), they choose a subset of the hundreds of unit combinations to play with. The current options are:

  • Beginner Set: This set doesn’t use any of the green resource in its 10 units. Instead, it focuses on introducing the Prompt, Stamina and Lifespan unit abilities.
  • Base + 5: A set that includes the base set and 5 additional, randomly generated, units.
  • Base + 8: A set that includes the base set and 8 additional, randomly generated, units.

These options provide virtually endless unit and strategy combinations, as well as opportunities for new players to learn basic game mechanics. The only thing lacking is an opportunity to sink your teeth into a static and intricate set of units that can be played again and again as you refine a specific strategy. Until now.

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Prismata at Boston FIG! (#EVENMOREHYPE)

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Showcasing Prismata at Fan Expo was a wonderful experience, despite all of the small hiccups we encountered along the way. It was exciting to see so many people take such a deep interest in our game, especially coming from an audience that we didn’t expect at all! Anyway, I bet you thought we were done talking about conventions once we posted up our full Fan Expo post-mortem account, huh? Well … you thought wrong!

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