There are strong signs Aussie web3 game studio Illuvium will make a trading card game (TCG).
Despite a lack of public timeline and no official word the project is being scoped, co-founder Kieren Warwick said his brother Aaron, also a co-founder and Illuvium’s game designer, had “already thought out the design” of a TCG.
The back-end of the Illuvium ecosystem has been built in a way that would “facilitate a TCG” and the game has a provisional name: Illuvium Outerworlds.
“We are literally discussing [the TCG] right now,” Warwick told a town hall meeting of the game’s community on Friday.
“But again I don’t even think I have spoken about this with the council, so all of these things would need to be approved. If they believe this is a good idea – and I think it’s a pretty obvious one – then that will be what we’d go to market with.”
Busy pipeline
Illuvium already has three games mid-development: Arena, an autobattler; Overworld, a Pokemon-style open world, and Zero, a mobile and desktop resource-focussed city builder. The games share blockchain elements, and Arena and Overworld are graphically high-quality.
Any TCG would be built around avatars of “illuvitars”, which are graphical representations of an illuvial, the pokemon-like creatures that inhabit the Illuvium gameworld. Separating the illuvial from its skin allows the developers to make the collecting and trading of illuvitars distinct.
An illuvitar card game has the potential to drive NFT sales and thereby increase revenue share for (game-token) ILV holders.
Check out the in-depth Polemos interview with Aaron Warwick on his game philosophy and experience.
Earlier this month, Aaron Warwick said illuvitars could be used as profile pictures, but that wasn’t their main focus.
“They are avatars for your illuvials that you can customize and put into collections to compete against others. And if you guys let us make a card game, you’ll be able to use them,” he wrote in the Illuvium community Discord on January 21.
And in response to a Discord question about what Illuvium’s next game would be, Aaron Warwick favoured the TCG.
No official game list
He said there was no official list of games they would like to make given they needed council approval.
“But having said that, we’re keen to build a card game using illuvitars. Since those are a bit quicker and work better with existing systems that might be the first proposal [for our next game],”
“As for how the game works, [I am not sure]. We have ideas but they need to be approved [by the council].”
“I’d like to make a less serious card game. Something more like Unstable Unicorns,” said Aaron Warwick.
“But it depends on the community and the team.”
Another change on the horizon for Illuvium is a big shift in its DAO governance structure. Currently there is a 5-member council. The proposal is to expand this to 15 members, at a reduced pay rate.
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