We are going to examine in detail a case study from my personal work experience at Another Place Productions. At a certain point during the development of our latest game, Battlehand Heroes, we had to address an unexpected problem. The combat system that was good enough for the first title of the Battlehand IP was proving problematic in the new game.
Battlehand: Heroes is a turn-based RPG in which the player builds his team of heroes, each with a unique deck of cards to battle. The combat system that worked quite well in the first game, Battlehand, was lacking the depth to engage a new generation of players. The first game was released in 2015, and player's tastes and expectations for games always evolve, so games need to also. The players struggled to understand why they should play one card instead of another, how to choose their strategy, and how to correctly react to the enemy's moves.