Recently I’ve been posting quite a bit on Twitter about and reblogging post from a mysterious entity called “Destined Legends.” At this point, I’m sure some of you have noticed, and many of you may have even followed the links and looked into it a bit, that DL is a Trading Card Game. Once you get there though, I’m sure some of you are confused as to why I keep talking about it. I know there is no readily apparently explanation as to what my involvement in it is, so, I thought that now would be as good of a time as any to sit down and explain both what this project is and what it is that I am doing with it.
WHAT IS DESTINED LEGENDS?
As I stated, Destined Legends is a Trading Card Came, a bit like Magic the Gathering but much more like those old school turn based J-RPGs from the 1990 to early 2000s (example include Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, and even Pokemon). As long as I can remember my buddy Ali Showkati (the creator of the game) has always talked about making an RPG. When him and I were in Highschool he often spoke about making a video game with the same title and how he wanted ME to do the art for it. As time passed though, we both moved away for college and started working on different individual projects. I had almost forgotten that he even had this idea in his mind until recently when he re-approached me with the concept; now as a card game that him and his brother had been secretly working on. I was blown away by how far along they had come with the concept already and decided, about a year ago, that I was gonna do my best to help them make this project happen!
In the past year, that I’ve actively been a part of the games development, this game has come a long way. We’ve developed plenty of really unique and fun mechanics that I haven’t seen in card form before. We’ve done everything we could to make sure, though we wanted it to have the same feel, that it was nothing like Magic the Gathering. After month and months of Alpha and now Beta testing, I can say, we have definitely accomplished making something rather unique that I think anyone who was a fan of J-RPGs would appreciate.
When Ali first re-posed this idea to me as a Trading Card Game, one of the first things that he had asked me was if I’d like to do the artwork for it. As much as I would love to be the lead artist on a project such as this, I told him that I honestly did not have the time to draw something sophisticated enough to be able to pull in a good audience. Not to mention, at the time, I was posting L.A.W.L.S., ALT and WOI attempting to kill my brain by over working it. Besides, I felt like there possibly was an artist more suited for such a project; someone who could pull off fantasy art better than myself. As those of you who have followed me for some time now, you know I draw “scene” girls better than anything else; Wouldn’t really work well for a fantasy project. It didn’t take long for us to realize that we have friends who do AMAZING work who we should approach about the project; Cari Corene of Toilet Genie: Story of the Door and Scott Ferguson of Nerf This & Scout Crossing, were the first we asked, and were on board immediately!
At this point I’m not really able to discuss much more about mechanics of the game or reveal much of anything in terms of art, but here are a few sample sketches by Scott:
WHAT DOES CORVINK HAVE TO DO WITH IT?
So that is pretty much the history of the game, but that doesn’t answer the question of what it is that I’m doing as part of this game, really. I hinted at the fact that, yes, I am one of three of the primary game developers along side Ali and his brother Shawn, but haven’t really said much as to what I will be doing long term with this project. Because of the level of work required from me in Graduate School, I won’t be doing much on the visual side of this game (ie. Art). What I will be doing however is continuing to develop and finalize the game mechanics in the next month or so (we are damn close to this already) AND helping them with the behind the scenes business end responsibilities: Marketing, Distribution, and Promotion (namely that of the upcoming Kickstarter campaign which I will have more info on soon because this is going to be one of the most important part of making this game actually happen). Out side of that, I will actually be doing some art! I know I stated that Cari and Scott will be doing the art, and that they are the best suited for the project, but, because of their work loads and such, we discussed and found certain cards that I am very well suited towards doing, and will be doing soon. I will be revealing small elements of what I’m working on here on this page and on my Instagram account.
Hopefully you guys now have a good understanding of what it is that I’ve been doing these past weeks and plan on doing in the months to come! Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that I’m stopping Corvink or any of my other projects by any means! This is just the project that has to be worked on at the moment, not only because I’m passionate about the idea, but because I believe in my friend’s concept and think that you guys will enjoy it! That being said, make sure to follow their Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook accounts to keep updated on their progress!