Infinity Wars - Animated Trading Card Game News

Welcome everyone to the newest patch for Infinity Wars Classic, Pre-Alpha version 0.31. This also comes with some news on our focus being renewed from community feedback, and the end result of that feedback already coming through.

So, let's dive right into what's new!



We've been working on the Infinity Card Engine to support new and old gameplay options while also creating a new set of cards in Intrigue, giving fans a huge chunk of nostalgia, while also giving them something new and exciting. However, our approach to designing this new set was a little experimental, as the strength of a digital, in-production product is we can make changes, and nothing is set in stone. However, many of our active players have been clear that they're much more excited for old content returning, and the game having increased functionality. So, we're making some changes.

Going forward, you should be seeing somewhat less brand new content in the game, and more old content imported and remastered. And, as a way to speak with our actions over our words, a lot of focus has been placed on the Wish system the past month, which was required for a number of cards to be imported into IWC. The result? Over 50 IW1 cards are making it into the game this week!




[h2]Major Features:[/h2]
Wish Card System
We have expanded the Infinity Heroes Upgrade system to support a far far larger range of cards that require multiple choices or modes. This means we can begin adding activated abilities with multiple modes, Wish cards, and much much more. We are really excited about how many cards this now allows us to impliment as well as new design place in the future.
While only a handful of cards use the system in this update, many more are on the way.

More Battlefields
28 IWC Battlefields Are Now Available by Default for all players.
The following are not included, either due to their assets requiring further cleanup or us wanting to make them available on a more limited scale:

• Practice Fortress (IW1 Alpha)
  
• Dragon Factory (IW1 Beta)
  
• Corrupted Forest
  
• Dimensional Rift
  
• Hellmouth
  

All location cards available will change your selected battlefield ingame as well to copy their original Infinity Wars behaviour.

[h2]Minor Features:[/h2]

• Lots of new trigger types and modifications to the resolution window.
  

[h2]Balance Changes:[/h2]

• Reverted Bombard's change now that the engine allows original functionality.
  

[h2]New IWC Cards:[/h2]

[h3]Merlin, Master Tactician[/h3]

Cost: 3 Morale: 8 (Factionless)
Unique Character - Human
When you deploy Merlin, Master Tactician, choose a faction in your deck's purity or factionless and gain that effect.
6/6

The rest of the effects do get a little complicated, and it's too much to fit on the text of the card, but here's what each of those choices does.

FD: +2/+0 and is moved to the assault zone.
DoD: +0/+4 and is moved to the defense zone.
GI: Merlin becomes Artificial and gives another target Artificial Character +3/+3
SoA: Merlin or target Undead Character you control gains infect.
OoS: Merlin gains flying. Restore 6 HP to your fortress.
CoV: Deal 4 damage to target deployed Character.
Ex: Target Character gets -2/-2.
WP: Merlin becomes a Beast and gives all Beasts you control +1/+1.
Factionless: Shuffle the left-most card in your hand into your deck, draw a card.

Or click here to see the image version in full.


[h2]IWC Cards:[/h2]

• Aberion's Banner
  
• Agent Coyle, Alpha One
  
• Ancient Aether
  
• Ancient Aggression Emblem
  
• Apparition
  
• Azael
  
• Best Fiends
  
• Bloodbath
  
• Bombard
  
• Brimstone
  
• Call the Warpath
  
• Cheryl, The Forward Scout
  
• Dead Feaster
  
• Decrepit Crystal
  
• Defender of the Realm
  
• Engine of Reincarnation
  
• Fiery Wish
  
• Flame Dawn Fanatic
  
• Heaven's Assistance
  
• Heavenly Wish
  
• Honor Hill
  
• Infected Drone
  
• Infectious Zombie
  
• Infested Scavenger
  
• Jialan, Guardian of Life
  
• Ju-Lin, Who Rewrites History
  
• Kyrallic, Origin Of The Virus
  
• Luftkrieg Xi, Anti-Air Array
  
• Mark Of The Demon
  
• One of Many Exhumed
  
• Overclock
  
• Overload
  
• Placebotron
  
• Primal Rage
  
• Protector of the Dead
  
• Radariah, The Untouchable
  
• Reckless Zealot
  
• Shifting Stone
  
• Sleeper of Avarrach
  
• Soldier of the Wall
  
• Sol, Champion of Vengeance
  
• Splatterer
  
• Survival Swarmer
  
• The Strength of Unity
  
• Tusked Behemoth, Exhumed
  
• Undead Corruption
  
• Undistrubed Necropolis
  
• Unfazed
  
• Verorian Hydra
  
• Yobo, Who Nobody Likes
  

[h2]New Restricted Intrigue cards:[/h2]

• Battlefield Shade
  
• Ao Shun, incognito
  
• Umbral Warden
  
• Mutating Dead
  
• Augmented Ninja
  
• Extirpate
  
• United Front
  
• Covert Battlesuit
  
• Cathleen
  
• Sol, Tyrant of Solace
  

These cards are locked behind a dev only token, and you can play with them by tuning into a livestream and challenging one of our devs to a game and getting permissions sorted. These are cards currently still having their designs finalised, so their effects stats ect. may change completely.

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• IH - Heroes can now use use their abilities without throwing a nullRef error.
  
• Tech Knight's spritesheet is now fixed.
  
• Avatar of Lingbao and Spirit of the Serpent no longer deals morale damage at incorrect timing.
  
• Tygris no longer causes infinite attack and health loop. External passive not setup correcty.
  
• Targeting a card with an ability then, undoing then trying to target the same card no longer throws an assertion error, the card becomes unable to be targeted by that ability card.
  
• Re-targeting or undoing a targeted On-Field ablity no longer seems to break the game.
  
• Transforming functionality now performs properly if it has modifiers on it that are controlled by an external passive.
  
• Fixed Disarm targeting effect and incorrect purity labels.
  

[h2]Other News: Card Design Competition[/h2]

in April, we held a Card Design Competition on our Discord server, and it received a lot of attention, with over 90 entries! And while a lot of designs definitely have sparked our curiosity for the future, only one had the honor of being selected as the winner. So, congratulations to Xeyron, for their suggested design of Duct-Tape Enthusiast. The card will be making it's way into the game in the coming months, once we have the art created.

Going from this, we also get to announce that the new card design competition is now live! The premise is a little more restrictive, as you're given design limitations to work within. You need to make a non-unique Flamedawn unit. Cost, style, effects and such are completely up to you, but that's the core idea. So, get in there and good luck!

Thanks for reading, and as always you can join us on Discord to be a part of the conversation, or sign up on Patreon to get into the game and support Infinity Wars coming back in a big way!

Discord: discord.gg/y8KGxk4
Patreon: patreon.com/lightmarestudios

Welcome everyone to the newest patch for Infinity Wars Classic, Pre-Alpha version 0.29. We're announcing our tournament, as well as full patch notes for everything new to IWC, including our new group select feature, a much requested feature from the original game finally seeing the light of day!

So, let's just jump into things.


As a part of our commitment to making competitive Infinity Wars Classic rewarding and fun, we're having our monthly tournament this weekend, marking half a year of tournaments with cash prizes in Infinity Wars Classic!

These are completely free to join for our existing Patreon supporters, and prizing is set to scale with our patreon campaign and player turnout, with 10% of our Patreon funds going directly back into the game's competitive scene with direct prizing. So, if we see an influx of players before this weekend, prizing amounts may increase beyond their currently published level.

WHEN: 24th of April, 11AM (AEST / GMT+10)
WHERE: Discord, sign-ups already open, with check-ins half an hour before the event.
PRIZEPOOL:
4+ Players - $30 First place.
8+ Players - $35 First Place, $10 Second Place.
16+ Players - $40 First place, $10 Second place, $5 Third place


You can find all the information, including rules, countdown timers and signing up to compete either on Discord, or in the post below.

Info Here




[h3]Multi Selection and Dragging
[/h3]
Holding Shift will now allow you to box select cards, moving them much faster.
Hold Shift and drag selected cards to move them about as a group.
Hold Shift and single click to add to remove cards from the selection.
This works with our new sliding zone system to make it as easy as possible to move the cards you want and rearrange them for the perfect resolution step.
We'd love to hear your feedback on this new feature we are very excited about.



[h3]Double XP![/h3]

We've set up our system to handle double exp limited time modes, and our first one will be happening this weekend during the IWC Summit! More events like this are slated to happen at some point in the future, and being active on Discord is the best way to hear more.

[h3]New IH Hero: Hinekri, the Chaotic
[/h3]
An additional update to Infinity Heroes, send the battlefield and your opponent into ruin with this unpredictable exiles deck.
Will you risk everything on the chance to gamble, or will you bend luck to your will?




[h3]Locations & Artifacts reworked[/h3]
The original system from 0.01 of IWC allowed for a singular artifact OR location to be deployed, and playing another simply destroyed the previous, which isn't how it worked in IW1. We've now got it set up correctly to allow a singular location, and as many artifacts as you can handle, replicating the IW1 gameplay style.

[h3]Decking Out[/h3]
We've changed decking out to work similarly to how it did in IWC, with each card drawn after reaching zero in deck resulting in 10 morale damage to the player.

• You can no longer use targetting animations to gain contextual clues about what is in the enemy hand
  
• Using Agent Coyle's hero power in the mirror match no longer causes an error
  
• Fixed issue where Rita sometimes didn't draw the correct number of cards
  
• AI is now smarter with draft choices and trading post use
  
• Gao Han no longer vanishes from the game and then causes errors
  
• Omnitron now correctly applies shield
  
• Omnitrons discount now applies correctly
  
• Rock chucker now throws the correct amount of rocks
  
• IH AI Battle now shows the AI name on the result screen
  
• Untapped Wilderness now reduces ability costs as intended
  
• Tithe Collector and Genesis Researcher no longer can cause you to lose resources if you use the undo in a specific order
  
• Fortress now correctly receiving events
  
• Gaining control of a unit now correctly adds it to the player's card list, then returns it if they die or are removed from game.
  
• Fixed Two-Face freezing the game if reanimated due to trying to belong to both players at once
  
• Hehkeem no longer stalls the game after being deploying in some situations
  
• Xi, Who honors the Many's activated ability now works correctly
  
• Fixed some misc tags and sprite sheet errors
  

• We'll be trialling double XP during livestreams for the coming future.
  
• Our "Battlepass" system is currently being reworded, as it doesn't accurately describe what the system does. Further news will be coming in the future weeks.
  
• Discord now has an announcements tab that allows you to subscribe to our announcements on your personal Discord channels.
  

Thanks for reading, and as always you can join us on Discord to be a part of the conversation, or sign up on Patreon to get into the game and support Infinity Wars coming back in a big way!

Discord: discord.gg/y8KGxk4
Patreon: patreon.com/lightmarestudios

[h3]New Zone Movement System
[/h3]
Infinity Wars unlike many other TCGs often involves large scale battles with a lot of tokens and cards. To help the play experience in these situations we have totally reworked the way to move cards around the battlefield, using a smooth sliding system rather than the old slot based system that was built for Infinity Heroes' limited cards per zone.

We have further improvements to this system in the works as well, including RTS style "box select" to allow you to easily move multiple cards at once.



[h3]Framerate cap[/h3]
Added a framerate cap to help with the stability of menus. This should help players who were having difficulty loading into the game on lower end PC's, and is the precursor to even further optimisation improvements to come.

[h3]Improved AI[/h3]
AI improvements, the AI will be a little bit smarter in targeting positive or negative effects on the right targets. Hopefully no more death raying their own Aleta just because they feel like it.

[h3]Loading screen changes[/h3]
Multiplayer loading screen, when a player connects to you on queue and each player is transferring room data, there is now a loading screen rather than just freezing. This should especially help the UX for those with slower internet connections.



Medi, Herald of the Unknown's stats changed from 8cost 31/13 -> 7cost 15/15

Medi's 31 damage attack, and his immortal nature meant he was super threatening as an aggressive lategame threat. Medi's design was never meant to have an attack value higher than any other base stats of a creature, and his strength and play opportunities should primarily come from his drafting potential. Now, to make sure he's not bordering on unplayable as a core card, he has had his cost reduced by 1 in the meantime.

Rhaziel, the Solitary now gains +2/+2 (from +3/+3) when attacking alone

Due to the champion mechanic being changed Rhazial no longer had a drawback that justified the pace at which he grew. This minor change keeps the design but just tones down the numbers, making him require more support.

Tygris, Politically Inclined stats changed from 1/6 -> 1/10

The statline for this card were simply just too low to justify the very narrow but potentially powerful anthem effect. This new statline helps diversify some of the options for Genesis at this resource cost as well, while showcasing his supporting flavor.

• Carlota, Queen of Solace
  
• Kali, Reluctant Leader
  
• Tygris, Politically Inclined
  

• Fixed exhaust preventing attacking and blocking when moved from the support zone in the same turn
  
• Granthar, the Elder Ape: If him kill effect misses due to the target dying before Granthar's kill effect can resolve he now correctly enrages.
  
• Growth now only destroys artifacts
  
• IH roguelike mode no longer locks up the game after fighting the final boss
  
• IH roguelike mode no longer disables some menu options after completing or pausing a run.
  
• Aberion, Fallen from Grace now keeps buffs and debuffs when transforming
  
• Fixed Alpha Demon's wording
  
• Fixed a number of graveyard issues when reviving multiple characters at once
  
• Fixed Runis of Veroria not killing
  
• Fixed Breeding Grounds does not giving a 6/6 Beast when activated within its conditions.
  
• Fixed chaos in the ranks causing the game to sometimes crash
  
• Fixed Omnitron miscalculating its cost reduction
  
• Fixed Champion's Companion not giving haste to cards in your hand, only to cards already in play
  
• Fixed Bug where activating two abilities that added cards to the top of the deck, would do so in an unintentional way
  
• Fixed multiple spritesheets that were either shaky or played in the wrong order
  

• IWC's First free weekend was super popular, and coming into the next patch, a new default deck will be added celebrating one of the favourite decks of our returning players.
  
• April Tournament will be between the 23rd and 25th of April, stay tuned for exact times and dates to vote on over on Patreon.
  
• The Design a Card competition has closed, with over 90 entries received, and one being chosen to become an actual card in Infinity Wars Classic
  
• Another Design a Card competition will be posted imminently over on Discord, so join today
  
• Lightmare's Partner Program has just soft-launched, so if you're interested in content creation for IWC, this is a good thing to check out.
  

Thanks for reading, and as always you can join us on Discord to be a part of the conversation, or sign up on Patreon to get into the game and support Infinity Wars coming back in a big way!

Discord: discord.gg/y8KGxk4
Patreon: patreon.com/lightmarestudios

Hello Rift Runners! Here's your 0.26 patch notes for Infinity Wars Classic, as well as an ending bit of info on the Free Weekend we're hosting soon!

[h2]Major Changes[/h2]
[h3]Battlepass[/h3]
We have a brand new Battlepass progression system, level up and gain rewards for both Infinity Wars Classic and Infinity Heroes
You can find the Battlepass on the Profile tab in the main menu and scroll through the first 32 levels we have implimented with 100 levels planned in total.
Players who are high level will be re-imburshed items they have mixed in the next day or two.

[h3]Health and Morale UI[/h3]
We have a new Health and Morale UI that also showcases your player profile and titles to showcase to others.
Be sure to set your profile pictures and other cosmetics in the Profile tab on the main menu

[h3]Tokens[/h3]
Token cards now correctly showing their supertype.

[h3]Spritesheet Fixes[/h3]
We have reordered over a dozen spritesheets that had errors in their order or how they looped.
There are several others that didn't quite get added in time for this week, so expect more in the coming weeks

[h3]Card Changes[/h3]

• Time for Fun is now unlimited
  
• Marina the Selfless now only costs 3 but cannot steal enemy characters
  

[h2]New Cards:[/h2]
[h3]New IWC Cards:[/h3]

• Marina the Selfless
  
• The Strength of Unity
  
• Nova, Mind Reader
  
• Rita, Unshackled
  
• Scarab Spybug
  

[h3]New Cards But Restricted to Devs only for testing[/h3]

• Carlota, Queen of Solace
  
• Kali, Reluctant Leader
  
• Tygris, Politically Inclined
  

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Sacrifice effects no longer trigger death effects and morale loss
  
• Avarach has Risen and other mass reanimation effects no longer cause desyncs
  
• Remove from game effects no longer trigger morale loss
  
• Fixed Desyncs caused by mass reanimation, as it was reviving cards in different order for each player
  
• Cards in the graveyard that are currently dissolving no longer get stuck, causing the game to freeze.
  
• Protector of Dawn no longer reveals all cards in hand when effect is resolving
  
• Xi, Ascended now correctly costs resources on the activated ability
  
• Flag Bearer now targets the correct unit
  
• Lumbering Goliath and Force Against the Law no longer have their spritesheets swapped
  
• Humble now removes tags
  
• Humble now removes external passive abilities such as "Anthem" effects like Beastmaster
  
• Infested Abomination now no longer deals damage to yourself
  
• EMP Grenade now deals 8 dmg to secondary targets correctly
  
• Shrapnel Launcher can now target the correct zones
  
• Genesis Researcher and other cost reduction cards can no longer create infinite resources
  
• Consecration no longer able to target locations in hand
  
• Passing gift now gives resources for the correct amount of time
  
• Infected Pack Leader now buffs as intended
  
• Deckbuilder no longer always shows 1 morale
  
• Infinity Heros Awaken was broken by a change in our reanimation system
  
• Fixed Fight spells calculating damage based on the damage the units have already taken, rather than their power etc.
  
• Tibat, the Mad Monk and Spontaneous Combustion no longer overkill unless there are no more valid targets
  
• Multi life reworked to get closer to it's original use.
  
• Nova on field ability cost is now correct
  
• Rock Chucker now throws rocks at the correct time
  
• Agent Coyle, Soulseller can now die as intended, please go kill him.
• Other misc. bugfixes
  

[h2]Free Weekend![/h2]
As a mini announcement to celebrate the holidays and long weekend next week, we will be having a Free Weekend / Free Week* starting next week!

* = there is a condition, but you can play IWC all week if you meet it.

Full details will be posted up on Sunday on our Discord, and we'll likely be making a follow-up post about it here on Steam too. If you're not part of the Discord server, you should fix that.

https://discord.gg/y8KGxk4

See you all on the Battlefield in the coming days, Rift Runners!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmprmcq_4eY

When the original development team set out to create a fun proof of concept card game to pitch to publishers and investors back in 2012, I don’t think anyone would have predicted the journey that would follow. The brightest of highs, the darkest of lows, Wealthy Noble… It’s been one heck of a journey, and after being quiet for a while… I think it’s time we let you in on where we’re at.

We launched our Infinity Wars Classic version 0.01 on the first week of October, and with it, the Lightmare Studios Patreon page. Since then, the number of cards has grown from less than 100 to over 200, with countless bug fixes, quality of life changes, a new deck builder, animated endgame screens (which are also now being used in Infinity Heroes) and more. The original launch was deliberately quiet, but we’ve slowly been getting louder and louder as Infinity Wars Classic reached a position where we were happy with it, and we now want to offer it to everyone here on Steam!

Do keep in mind that version 0.10 is still a pre-alpha product, and while we’re pushing to get into a competitive spirit around the game even now, there are bugs and glitches from time to time as you’d expect in any pre-alpha. However, the progress and updates we’ve seen in just the last two months have been very promising, and going into the Alpha in Q1 of 2021, we’re bringing our trusted Council members to lead the charge when it comes to card balancing and redesign, to make the game as balanced and fun as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1_ZzG2VCfU

[h2]==Why the Silence?==
[/h2]
Infinity Wars is such an important part of so many players’ journeys into TCGs, digital and physical. When we have positive things to share, there’s a large chunk of vocal support that we get, but we can also get the opposite side of the same coin just as loudly. Players upset that their favorite game is offline, that it got to this state as a spaghetti code project in the first place, and facing these voices is daunting and intimidating. We’re doing our absolute best, and there will always be those that don’t accept it as good enough, and we can’t fault them for that at all. That doesn’t make it easier to do.

So, for those of you who were encouraging, understanding, or even just patient to see what happens next, thankyou. I hope what we’re putting out is enough to fill you with determination and resolve. For those that aren’t happy, just know that we will be working our hardest to make something you really can enjoy, whether you think we can or not. I just look forward to seeing you on the other side of this journey.

[h2]==What about IW2?==
[/h2]
Infinity Wars 2 is a much bigger project than Infinity Wars Classic. IW Classic allows us to work on refining our core systems and engine in the Infinity Card Engine, which will immediately see benefits in IW Classic, and in Infinity Heroes in the short term, eventually making IW2 easier when we inevitably tackle that project. It will also act as a great litmus test for all the new and revised systems for IW2. Also helping this is that while people were keen to see what we as a studio could do next, there was a very loud and clear demand for us to revisit and rework what we’ve already done in Infinity Wars, so IW2 being a low priority for now makes a lot of sense overall.

[h2]==What about IH?==
[/h2]
Infinity Heroes has had some minor fixes and additions as a result of improvements made to the Infinity Card Engine, and we also have a new hero that launched today, with two more on the horizon for next month before the christmas break. We have more in the pipeline like progression and unique rewards that will help both games, as well as some minor Infinity Heroes features like an interactive tutorial coming. Once we get through some bug fixing and balance passes, we’ll be looking to release as our free to play open beta on Steam, as well as getting our mobile version ready to release as well. We made a promise to our IH backers that we have full intention of fulfilling, however the majority of them are very happy to see us moving to revisit and work on Infinity Wars Classic again, which is really supportive.

[h2]==And our inventories from IW?==
[/h2]
Player collections are still saved and ready to be accessed, and we are currently investigating how to convert old data into something that’ll work better with our current systems but they will be making a return as soon as we reasonably can. We have also been researching a missing collections bug reported by some players, and while evidence is slim and documentation is nonexistent, our current working theory is that a player found an exploit in the old inventory system to send someone a trade request they could control, and then force a player to give them their entire collection of tradable cards without the original player even logging in. Due to the outdated broken systems, there’s no trade log or data, but we did find some login data that rules out accounts being compromised, as players wouldn’t even log in and the trade would be completed. Combine that with two accounts suddenly having hundreds, even thousands of tradable copies of every card, as well as very large numbers of gold, foil and plat rarities, a lot of coincidences are beginning to add up.

We’re still technically investigating, but with evidence essentially dried up, and all leads exhausted, we don’t really have many other places to look. That’s part of why we’re addressing this, as we want to let you know where we’re at currently, and if you happen to have any information that might help us out, that would be greatly appreciated. It’s an issue that moving to our new systems is going to solve, but if there’s a specific mistake that was made in the past, it’s crucial we know what it is so we can learn from it.

As for those that had their collections affected in some way, we will be doing what we can to make sure you have a more than fair compensation based off of things like play time, spending data, any information you have on your old collections, and anything else that’s relevant. What this system will look like is unclear as it’s too early on to focus so hard on solving an issue that a very small percentage of players encountered. In the currently live IWC Patreon, inventories are just plainly not available as you have access to full playsets of every single card we code in as we do for testing purposes. Just know, you are on our mind, and we’ll be working with you on a solution when accounts get transferred that will have you more than satisfied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogX-3rcJ314

[h2]==Cool, where do I go then?==
[/h2]
For those interested in checking out Infinity Wars Classic, the best way of doing that is via our Patreon link below, which will give you not only access to the entire game, but a lot of other cool patreon perks including access to the Patreon only discord area, unique (eventually tradeable) aesthetic content that won’t be available to anyone else (at least until way down the line, if ever), and early teases and releases of cards, artwork, videos and more.

For more, visit infinitywarsclassic.com

We’re incredibly thankful to our Patreon backers who’ve already been supporting us this last while, you’re our inspiration and we welcome your ideas for features you’d like to see and suggestions for balance and new cards.

Well, that’s a lot of information to take in, but if you’re keen on getting more, check out the Infinity Wars Classic playlist on our Youtube page for all of our official IWC related video projects, including gameplay reveals, patch updates info, and some fun competitive games that we played internally.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfl3bFv3CAqmWw0v7IH11nDhdPmM8-4CA

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you on Discord everyone!

~Jason Thomas
Community & Media Manager, Lightmare Studios