The making of a Hearthstone card in 2022
Eight years is a long period of time, and Hearthstone hasn’t stopped increasing its decks in that span. With over 20 expansions and adventures released since its 2014 launch, there is no shortage of cards to parse through and experiment with. But when these additions arrive with over a hundred cards in the existing mix, iterating and balancing this ever-increasing pool becomes a tricky process.
Game Developer sat down to talk to game designer Leo Robles Gonzalez and lead VFX artist Dominic Camuglia at Blizzard about what comes into the creation of a card, how much iteration and theming can define the final deck that players get in their hands, and the philosophy around adding a second resource to Hearthstone with the March of the Lich King expansion.
Once the teams decide on the theme of an expansion, the exploration period begins. This includes design for mechanics, testing ideas that work as well as some that don’t, and fine-tuning the ones that make the cut. After that phase, the focus shifts to individual cards and classes.
“That’s when we start saying alright, Shamans, we’re giving them shadow spells, because they’re evil and part of the Scourge now,” says Gonzalez. With that theming in mind, the development team starts to delve into what that will mean for the cards, and how they’re going to behave. “That phase of just individual card design and iterating on the identity of the classes and the balance—how much mana should this cost, how much damage should it do—that takes a while.”
It’s around halfway through the main design process when other teams start getting looped in. The first half encompasses aspects like the first art wave where the devs write card descriptions and then send them out to artists. The second
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