Dev Log: FissureVerse #36 - Frenzies

First, the obvious: The Vortex has been renamed to FissureVerse.  I did it for a few reasons.  Firstly, "The Vortex" is a pretty generic name (since it's a just a single real word), and I wanted something more unique.  Secondly, the Vortex in the game has lost much of its prominence as I've worked on the game, so I wanted to rename the game something that was more in line with the current story.  A fissure meaning both a tear in the universe (which is what the Vortex was), and also meaning a divisive fissure between groups of people.

Anyway, onto the Frenzies:

Click to see them, of course.

It took me ages to find good placeholder art for the Frenzies; I wanted them to have a coherent theme, but some of the terms are very abstract concepts like "Offended", so finding art that works well with each cards and works well as a group was challenging.

The art for Research reminds me of that scene from Independence Day.

I considered abstracting them out and having pictures of weapons or other objects, so a card like Tyranny might have a whip as its picture, but that led nowhere.

I decided to go without flavor text on these, to let the art speak for itself.

Finally, I started browsing some of my bookmarked DeviantArtists, to see what I could possibly come up with.

Most Frenzy cards are pretty simple rules-wise, but should be pretty powerful.

I initially liked Adam Howie's mannequin-style art (one of which I used in the Tithe Rogation), and thought it might do well for Frenzies, since Frenzies could be abstracted into what a Zealot thinks himself to look like.  And I like the idea enough that I'm definitely saving it for future use.

And of course even when they're not powerful, a hidden Frenzy is still a wild card.

But for now, I'm going with Mostafa Nassar's work, which has a really dark, gritty, insane look to it.  I think that Frenzies work great together by having as few artists as possible used for the placeholder art, so they can keep a consistent style.

The less powerful cards are more evenly balanced; the more powerful ones are a much bigger risk.

As far as the Devotees go (which I think I'll rename to the more generic Crusader term), they will take far longer than the Frenzies to find good placeholder art for.  Although they are creatures, and so require very little abstraction, I want to do all four colors together so the style is consistent between all four of them.

I got nothin' else to say here. Just look!