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During early development of Summoners Fate, we reached out to players to discuss what makes turn-based tactics gameplay so compelling. In contrast to card battlers, a tactical grid provides the dimensions of terrain and position. Obstacles must overcome, hazards avoided, cover from enemy fire taken. There is an innate satisfaction in the realism and creative solutions that the battlefield environment can bring to gameplay. A compelling turn-based tactics game has meaningful environment.

Terrain in Summoners Fate is destructible and persistent. In this example, a fireball destroys a patch of the earth, flings goblins across the map, and detonates spore pods, poisoning the Orc chief.


To make a meaningful environment, three key pieces are needed:

1. Tactical Significance
   
2. Interactivity
   
3. Persistence
   

[h2]Tactical Significance[/h2]
Terrain in Summoners Fate has tactical significance. Large rocks, trees and other structures block movement and line of sight. Hazardous terrain such as lava and spikes cause damage. Furniture such as weapon racks, armor stands and spell tombs can be looted for cards.

Trees block Goblin's line of sight to Barbarian

While the Skeleton Captain's shield protects it from frontal damage, the Barbarian's knockback attack pushes it into the spike traps to a poof-filled demise.

Tactical significance is what drives compelling decision making: Do I take cover in these trees to avoid enemy fire? Do I go for the weapons rack or spell tomb to acquire an advantage?

[h2]Interactivity[/h2]
With spells, you can interact with the environment to turn the tide of battle in your favor. Create walls of fire to stop the enemy advance. Open chasms and watch enemies plummet to their doom. Transform the environment into living creatures such as Treants and elementals.

Environment can be destroyed or transformed into powerful allies.

[h2]Persistence[/h2]
Decisions are more meaningful when they have permanent consequences. The battlefield in Summoners Fate changes, for better or for worse, in response to player decisions. Fire spells can burn down the forest, exposing covered enemies - but likewise, potential cover you may taken advantage of later is now gone. Scorch marks from your incursions will also linger in the world, providing a lasting marker of the destruction left in your wake.

Pyromancer casts Conflagration to burn down the forest. The burnt trees still block movement, but no longer block line of sight, leaving the insectoids exposed to enemy fire.

By creating meaningful environment, each battlefield in Summoners Fate offers unique challenges and possibilities for players to win in creative and satisfying ways.


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Hey everyone,

Welcome to Part 5 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Today, we’ll be discussing our fourth and final core gameplay mechanic: Team and Deck Building.

The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:

1. Exploration
2. Strategic Resource Management
3. Tactical Turn Based Combat
4. Team and Deck Building

Summoners Fate is a game about mastering creative strategies to achieve the most satisfying victories. To make introducing new mechanics easy and fun, all characters, spells and equipment are represented as cards. With your cards, you can build a team consisting of a Summoner, two heroic companions called Guardians, and a deck of 20 cards. With over 400 distinct cards including 200 diverse characters, players have near limitless freedom to unleash their imagination.

[h2]Card Collecting[/h2]
Throughout your adventures, you collect cards. Cards expand your available strategies so you can tackle challenges with new and exciting solutions. While your collection resets with each new adventure, you’ll have some agency to choose from cards previously discovered to populate your starting deck. Successfully completing an adventure also permanently unlocks cards for Battle mode where you can construct custom decks and play head-to-head against the AI or other players in real-time and asynchronous multiplayer modes.

From the mightiest dragon to the lowliest squirrel, every card in Summoners Fate provides a distinct tactical value. Curious when you might choose a squirrel over a dragon? Continue reading to learn how squirrels can synergize with other cards.

We describe the cards in Summoners Fate as being “strategically diverse” rather than “common”, “uncommon” or “rare” as this best represents the spirit of our card collection mechanic. Other games may require the player to “dust” hundreds of powerless common cards to evolve them into a desired rare card. But in Summoners Fate, there is no grinding, no dusting, no card fusion: each card is distinct, balanced, and tactically useful in the right deck build. Instead of grinding to attain the highest power value, our card-driven system fosters a desire to experiment with new and creative ways to win.

[h2]Balance[/h2]
One of the questions we are asked most often is “How do you balance a game with so many distinct cards and characters?” Imagine a game of rock-paper-scissors and take that to a grand scale. The key is to provide a natural counter for each card. There should never be a silver bullet set of cards or strategies that reigns as most powerful. Rather, choosing the right card, the right strategy at the right timing to counter your opponent’s tactics leads to a victory filled with surprise and excitement.

To satisfy our high quality standard for balance and engaging gameplay, every card and character in Summoners Fate must adhere to three core design principles:

1. Provide a distinct tactical value
   
2. Feel awesome and fun to play (either on its own or in synergy with other cards)
   
3. Have another card that counters it
   

How do we know whether or not a card meets these standards? We bring it to our player community. If a card isn’t balanced or fun, it becomes obvious through player feedback and how often a card gets used or not used. We discuss the design in collaboration with our players and adapt the design as needed.

[h2]Managing Your Team[/h2]
During adventure mode, you can customize your team while resting at camp. Interact with characters to manage your party. Interact with the Cosmic Tortoise to manage your deck.

Hint: If a character is sitting by the campfire and holding a marshmallow stick, they’re in your party. If a character is off to the side without a marshmallow, they’re in your reserve. Interact with characters to manage your team.

The Cosmic Tortoise carries the burden of your card collection. Interact with the tortoise to view your cards. Customize your deck by dragging cards from your collection (bottom) to your deck (top). In Battle Mode, switch tabs to choose your Summoner and Guardians.

[h2]Synergy[/h2]
Characters are carefully designed to not only look unique and distinctive, but to play strategically different. Characters have natural strengths and weaknesses that complement each other to create strategies where the sum is greater than the whole. For example, the presence of a Skeleton Captain on the board enhances the power of all ally skeletons. Build a team of all animals, and you can guarantee that all of your characters are going to benefit from spells like Animal Growth and Breed.

You hurl a squirrel at an Orc. With a satisfying thud, it donks the orc and jumps to the ground. What do you do next? A) Mutate it into the Super Human Hulk Squirrel B) Turn it into a furry suicide bomber C) Breed it into an army of ankle biter rodents

[h2]Factions[/h2]
There are multitudes of factions: Orcs, Skeletons, Dreadnoughts, Ironclads, Animals, Insects, Dragons, Demons, etc. Additionally, you’ve got schools of magic and card types to consider. Build a deck of all Arcane spells and enjoy cost discounts and continuous draw combos with everything in your deck using an Arch Mage as your Summoner. Build a deck of Chaos spells and receive a damage bonus to your cards with the Pyromancer. (Note: We'll dive more into the different kinds of magic in the coming weeks).

[h2]No Right or Wrong Way To Build a Deck[/h2]
The moment you boot up, you’ll be having fun blasting away enemies with all kinds of spells. As you advance to harder levels, the game will present challenges that require you to build strategically focused teams. There’s no right or wrong strategy. Some players like the raw power of destruction spells and blowing things up. Some like to swarm the board with hordes of squirrels. Others still like the cunning approach of holding back and manipulating your opponent to the brink of madness. If we haven’t added enough choices to build your dream strategy, we will listen to you and make it happen.


With over 400 cards including 200 diverse playable characters, Summoners Fate allows you to unleash your creativity, build your dream team and achieve the most satisfying victories. With our four core gameplay mechanics now covered, we’re ready to deep-dive further into the gameplay itself. Coming up next, we’ll discuss how we’ve made the environment meaningful in Summoners Fate.


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Hey everyone,

Thanks for following Summoners Fate and welcome to Part 4 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Today, we talk about our Turn-Based Tactical Combat system and some of the ways we've made the turn-based genre more fast, fun and accessible without sacrificing deep strategy.

The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:

1. Exploration
2. Strategic Resource Management
3. Tactical Turn Based Tactics
4. Team and Deck Building

On your turn, you are able to issue one command to each of your characters on the board and play as many cards as you have available. Each of these actions can be performed in any order that you wish.

Cora the Ice Queen freezes an enemy.


We believe the appeal of turn-based tactics games are deep mechanics that enable a wide array of creative strategies and solutions to achieve victory. But, what good is depth if the game is too complex and overwhelming to learn? To solve this, we took the tried-and-tested combat system of our first game, Hero Mages, and worked collaboratively with our players to evolve it. Through player driven development, we designed intuitive mechanics that make combat easy to pick-up and play without sacrificing the desired deep strategy.

[h2]Single Gesture Commands[/h2]
To accelerate the pace of combat and make commanding characters intuitive and fun, each character’s movement and action are combined into a single gesture. At the start of your turn, each of your characters looks up at you (literally!) indicating they are ready for your orders.

To issue a command, drag a path from your character to your target. As soon as the dragging starts, all possible targets for the character are highlighted on screen. When you release, your command is executed and your character moves and attacks.

Command your units to move and attack with a single gesture.

The single gesture mechanic replaces the traditional “two action point” system used in most turn based games. It also seamlessly merges a third action step of choosing your character's facing, as the directional aspect of the gesture automatically assigns the facing of your character to align with its movement path.

Now, this may sound like we’ve lost some depth by condensing choices into a single command. However, in practice, and verified over the past few years of playtesting with turn-based fans, we’ve discovered that this actually enhances gameplay by empowering a natural flow of command and eliminating cognitive overload. For many players, the vastly higher number of permutations presented in the two-step action system creates an “analysis paralysis” effect where you’re often second guessing yourself over insubstational gains in the consideration of move move attack, or attack move attack type assessments. The end result of this? The game pace is dramatical slower. We’ve observed play patterns where players would stare for 45+ seconds before even attempting a move. This behavior fatigues the brain and denies time that could otherwise be spent enjoying the outcome of your creative strategies.

By contrast, the one-gesture mechanic system, working in tandem with our other accessible mechanics, results in a state of “flow” where your strategy is driven intuitively. Your time spent in the game is laser-focused to satisfying moments of your carefully planned positioning and combos paying off in a glorious spectacle of sequential animations.

[h2]Fluid Response (No Waiting for Animations)[/h2]
Further contributing to the flow-state of our one gesture commands is our fluid response mechanic. In some games, you’re forced to wait for the character’s animation to resolve before you can issue a new command. This delay builds friction that slows the pace of gameplay and prevents you from playing as fast as your mind is thinking.

In Summoners Fate, we’ve taught our animation system to prioritize player response over animations. Not only can you rapidly command a series of units in parallel (and observe their simultaneous moves and attacks) you can intuitively skip ahead by issuing the next order. For example, you can chain together multiple unit orders or drag and drop cards in succession without having to wait for the first card to resolve. As needed, the game will detect dependent animations and skip ahead to catch up. Likewise, the AI will do the same - detecting dependencies where needed to show you important event chains (like a surprise effect being triggered) and running non-dependent animations (like a series of moves and attacks) in parallel. You also have the freedom to skip enemy turn animations all together.

Summoners Fate is responsive to your commands. Unleash your ankle-biter squirrels on the skeletal legion!

[h2]Undo and Tactile Learning[/h2]
For those who’ve played games with intricate stack chains (like Magic the Gathering) where a series of effects can trigger a complex series of additional effects, you can recognize when your opponent has got something sneaky planned when they start asking to look at all of your cards on the table and read their abilities aloud. Indeed, a lot of the fun of deep strategy games comes from cascade effects creating a surprising outcome. But, it’s not very fun to brain-crunch your way through all the variables when all you really want to know is “Will playing this card give the result I intended?”

Summoners Fate provides the “Undo” button as a way to learn through tactile response. Not sure exactly how a gravity blast is going to affect all the units on the board? Drop the card down and find out. Don’t like the results? Want to try a different target? Undo and try again. All that mental energy spent calculating is handled by the game, and what’s left is the pure joy of your action yielding your intended response.

[h2]No Submenus - Actions are Context Based[/h2]
There are no submenus or ability buttons in Summoners Fate. Instead, characters automatically perform the appropriate action for the target you select. For example, Paladins have a melee attack and a healing ability. If you want to attack, drag to an enemy unit. If you want to heal, drag to an injured ally.

Cleric can attack the Skeleton Breaker or heal the injured Fighter Mage. She heals her injured ally.

[h2]Intuitive Casting: Drag and Drop[/h2]
Casting spells, equipping items, and summoning characters are also intuitive: just take the card you want to play and drag it from your hand onto the battlefield.

Want to blast enemies with a fireball? Just drag and drop your card onto the battlefield.

Cards follow a few rules:

1. You need mana to play a card equal to the number shown on the card.
   
2. Cards range in cost from 0-5 mana.
   
3. You generate 3 mana each turn and can store up to 5 mana.
   
4. If you are awarded first turn, you generate 2 mana on your first turn instead of 3.
   
5. You hold three cards in your hand and draw new cards at the end of your turn until you have three cards.
   

Today, we covered the basics of how turn-based combat works in Summoners Fate and outlined how we bring accessibility to the genre without sacrificing deep strategy. We have much more tactics to share: combos, backstabbing, blocking and more! We'll cover these in the future, but for next time, we'll conclude our discussion of the core gameplay mechanics with Team and Deckbuilding.


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Hey everyone,

Welcome to Part 3 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Last time, we discussed our exploration mechanics including the mist of mayhem, lore and our unique fate encounters system. Today, we’ll examine the second key gameplay mechanic of our adventures mode: Strategic Resource Management.

The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:

1. Exploration
2. Strategic Resource Management
3. Tactical Turn Based Combat
4. Team and Deck Building

Your survival in Summoners Fate depends heavily on your ability to carefully manage the resources of your expeditions. These resources include your Summoner, your hero companions, your deck of cards, lives, gold, dice, and… marshmallows? Oh yes! Marshmallows. What bonfire at the camp would be complete without them? Let’s explore each resource and how it connects to the meta strategy layer.

[h2]Summoners[/h2]
Your Summoner is your primary character and conduit to the game world. If your Summoner dies, your entire party is defeated and you’ll need to spend one of your lives to continue. The number of lives you have is determined by the difficulty you chose for your adventure. If you’re playing on hardcore, for instance, it’s game over if your summoner is killed. But, assuming you have lives left, you’ll have the option to retry and continue your game. When you retry, you’ll return to your last auto-save point (typically, right before you entered the mist that started a battle or right before the encounter feature you interacted with). You’ll also regain some health and cards to help give you a fighting chance.

[h2]Cards[/h2]
Your deck of cards represents magical spells, enchantments, weapons, equipment and characters that you can call into battle.

Explore creative strategies with over 400 unique cards to choose from.

On your first adventure, your initial deck is randomly selected from a set of signature spells matching the primary color of your chosen Summoner. You begin the game with 3 cards. Your first goal is to first build up your deck to 20 cards. Next, you’ll aim to optimize your deck for your desired strategy by selectively replacing cards within the 20-card max while resting at campsites.

In the first chapter of your adventure, you can quickly build up your deck by defeating enemies and destroying crates and barrels to find cards. Defeating elites (enemy Summoners) will frequently yield an option to choose one of three possible cards to further hone your deck in the direction you want to take it. As you progress through chapters, card drops will become more scarce, so you’ll need to acquire gold to buy cards from shopkeepers.

[h2]Shops[/h2]
Each world is populated with a number of shops that range from mercenaries to merchants. The nice thing about merchants is that they have a wide selection of inventory, as well as a set of cards exclusively found in shops.

Sides' Roadside Shop is one of many merchants you'll encounter in the game. Tip: Shopkeepers prefer to setup near roads so they can sell to as many travelers as possible. Consider following the path if you're in the market for buying some new cards.

[h2]Gold[/h2]
Gold can be found in crates and barrels as well as dropped by enemies. As you progress through chapters and face harder enemies, the frequency and amount of gold dropped will also increase. The primary source of gold in Summoners Fate, however, is treasure chests. Each world has a number of hidden treasure rooms filled with chests of gold. You may have to get past some tough enemies to find them or navigate a safe route around them.

Oooooh! Shiny! (Goblins love gold)

[h2]Dice[/h2]
Dice are an essential resource that provide you with some agency during fate encounters. Recall in our talk about Exploration that Fate Encounters are story driven scenarios where the outcome is a combination of your decision and the roll of dice. You can spend this resource to roll additional dice during these encounters and increase your chance of a desired outcome.

Want to impress a fairy with your smooching skills? Spend some dice.

Like other resources, dice can be found in objects and dropped by enemies. The best source of dice are elites and bosses who will typically drop a set of 3 or more dice.

[h2]Retreat[/h2]
In addition to being useful for fate encounters, dice can also help you avoid an undesirable defeat in combat by bolstering your chance of a successful retreat. You can scout and retreat from most areas in the world without consequence using the retreat command. However, if you decide to engage in battle, your units will become locked into the fray. You can still command them to retreat, but now it will require a roll of the dice. Be sure to have dice on hand if you decide to take on a battle you might not survive.

[h2]Campsites[/h2]
Campsites can be used to rest and recover your party’s health and reshuffle discarded cards back into your deck. When you set up camp, the cosmic tortoise and additional party members you’ve recruited will join you at the campsite. The cosmic tortoise carries all of the cards in your collection. You can interact with the tortoise to customize your deck by adding and removing cards you’ve found.

Warmed by the fire and satiated by the taste of roasted marshmallows, your battle weary heroes rest and recover their strength.

Each world has a limited number of campsites available. Since campsites are depleted of their supplies after use, it is very important to consider when to rest and when to conserve this invaluable resource.

[h2]Guardians[/h2]
During your adventures, you’ll have opportunities to recruit permanent team members known as Guardians. Guardians will always match one of the magic types your Summoner can cast, so you’ll always find different characters depending on which Summoner you choose to play. Guardians will follow your Summoner as you explore the world and, unlike the creatures you summon in battle from your deck, will remain with you after combat is over. You can have up to two Guardians in your party at the same time. Additionally, any character that can serve as a guardian can also be placed in your deck and summoned during battle instead.

You can customize your party while resting at camp or whenever you recruit a new character. Defeated guardians will also rejoin your party at camp.

[h2]Loyal Units[/h2]
In addition to guardians, you may also encounter loyal units. Like Guardians, they will follow you and stay in your party after battle. However, they cannot be removed from your party and are not recovered at camp if they are defeated in battle. Effectively, these are “extra” characters that can bolster your team with added numbers for the limited time they manage to survive. So, consider carefully how you protect these characters, as it may be desirable to bring them into battle with you when fighting challenging enemies like a boss.

[h2]Marshmallows[/h2]
No campsite is complete without marshmallows to toast on the fire. Not only are marshmallows a favored treat to the characters of Summoners Fate, they are an essential resource that allow you to restock used campsites. If you find a stocked campsite but don’t need to rest, you can take the supplies to restock a campsite later in your adventure. Later in your adventures, enemies may also drop small quantities of marshmallows.


Your resources, your cards and the health of your heroes are limited and carry over with you in each new area of the world you explore. This adds a strategic layer to Summoners Fate where you must carefully consider how you approach surviving the dungeon.

Do you blast the mob of goblins with a fireball or save this spell for the boss fight and attack them directly with your warriors instead? This may cost you health instead of cards. What if you lose your Cleric in the fight? You may be in trouble if you encounter poisonous snakes in the next room. Should you use your dice to free the bear, or save them to impress a fairy wish giver with a satisfying kiss?

Summoners Fate challenges you to contemplate your high-level strategy as you engage in turn-based tactical battles, which we shall cover next time in the Guide to Summoners Fate.

[h2]Enjoying our content?[/h2]
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We're excited to announce that Summoners Fate has been featured in the Dreamhack Beyond Event on Steam that runs from Saturday July 24th-July 31st.

To celebrate, we're offering a free demo of Summoners Fate on our store page that will be available during the Dreamhack Event. The demo features the Prelude chapter that will introduce you to combat and exploration and challenges you to fight one of the many powerful bosses at the end, should you dare...

We'll also be streaming our full adventures mode and battle mode throughout this week so you can get a sneak peak of the gameplay in store for you in the upcoming full version. I'll be live tonight broadcasting here on Steam between 7PM-1AM MT. Be sure to check it out and share your questions and comments in the chat.

We look forward to seeing you there!

~Ross