New deck-building game has players battle through the story of Avatar: The Last Airbender
Avatar: The Last Airbender – Aang’s Destiny, the latest title from The Op Games, isn’t just a collaborative deck-building game. The way designer Pat Marino tells it, it’s a concerted effort to adapt Aang’s full adventures, from iceberg to Fire Lord, for the table.
Two to four players will “take on the heroic role of Aang and his allies and play cooperatively,” says The Op Games’ official description, “to defeat adversaries, complete objectives, and make their way through the Four Nations to restore balance to the world and fulfill Aang’s destiny as the Avatar.”
Polygon got an early look at a few cards from the game, featuring new custom art in the Avatar style, and got to pepper Marino with questions about what players can expect from Aang’s Destiny, whether they’re new to deck-building board games or not.
As in most games in the genre, Aang’s Destiny players will each begin with a small deck of cards and limited abilities but, over the course of play, will get various chances to add new cards to those decks, widening and customizing their options for each turn and ensuring that each game session plays out slightly differently.
“What sets this game apart from other deck building games,” says Marino, “is that it has seven boxes of unlockable content. The first box starts the story and introduces players to the core mechanisms of the game. Each time the players win the game they can unlock the next box, adding new rules, as well as additional content. This allows the story to unfold while also gradually leveling players up from a introductory deck building game to a fairly complex strategy game by the time they reach box seven.”
As a cooperative deck builder, Aang’s Destiny has players work together toward a single goal — that of the heroes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. And according to Marino, figuring out how to bake the familiar evolution of Aang, Katara, Sokka, and the rest into a progressive deck-building game was high on his list of design priorities.
“I
Read more on polygon.com
