Welcome to the first of our “Card Hunter versus” series in which we hoodwink noteworthy games’ industry folk into playing Card Hunter. First up, Ben Lee, Blue Manchu’s Art Director. Ben is highly noteworthy.

That’s right, you can create your own maps and play them against other folks on-line or against Gary (if you’ve joined our Card Hunter Club)! Players have already begun creating custom scenarios to battle with their fellow adventurers and we’d like to highlight a few of them.

First up, our very own Farbs created one he likes to call Zombie Wave Attack, based on a suggestion from another user, Hessian. As Farbs likes to describe it:

Pit your mp party against five waves of terrifying zombies.
Waves approach from two directions. There is no escape!
Hardcore players can attempt this with a single character.

Next we have Lance and his Treasure Island map. Unlike Zombie, whose success depends solely on surviving the onslaught, Lance introduces a grouping of four Victory Squares that must be occupied in order to win the map. They’re clustered here in the middle with room enough for each side (which is a ship, how cool!) to regroup if needed. That little island certainly looks too small to share!

Neofalcon also creates a scenario, The Forgotten Hoard, with a cluster of victory squares in the middle, but with different tactics in mind:

My goal was to make a map with multiple VPs where you could easily utilize character placement to make it difficult for your opponent to move characters onto VPs, with the tradeoff that holding the VPs leaves your characters very vulnerable to ranged attacks.

And last but not least is Jayce with The Unspeakable Forest Dungeon (gotta love these names!). This one is unique in that it splits up the Victory Squares into three locations: one on either side in addition to one in the middle, giving everyone a different mix of defensive and offensive options!

Your motivation is something about a dungeon carved into cave, in a forest, and there’s treasure involved somehow…fight the other player for it….or something.

As you can see, the combinations are endless and players can create incredibly different scenarios with each with a unique atmosphere. So what are you waiting for? Get cracking and let’s see what your imagination can dish out! And don’t forget to share them on our forums.

If you don’t happen to live in East coast Australia (AEST), here are some other times around the world for the reset:

• US East coast (EST): Mon 29 April, 19:00
• US CST: Mon 29 April, 18:00
• US West coast (PST): Mon 29 April, 16:00
• UK: Tue 30 April, 00:00

If you’re not in one of those time zones, I’m sure Google can help you!

To reiterate, here’s what’s going to happen:

• All existing Beta accounts will be reset to their starting values. 
• From now on, in-game pizza purchases (in-game currency) will cost real money (via PayPal).
• Any pizza purchased from this date will be re-credited to you when we launch and reset again, as well as after any other database resets that happen during Beta.
• We will start to invite a lot more people into the Beta.

Again, the last blog post covered this in a lot more detail with questions and answers. If you still have questions, post on the forums!

Note: we pushed the date back 24 hours.

We’ve been working hard on the closed Beta: fixing bugs, finishing features and preparing the game for more players. It’s taken longer that we had hoped but we’re ready to start scaling it up. Good news everyone! This means that if you’re still waiting on the Beta list, you are much more likely to get in soon!

So this is a heads up. In the very near future, we plan to:

• reset existing Beta accounts back to their fresh, starting state
• allow existing Beta testers to buy pizza
• begin offering special closed-Beta only deals with exclusive figures.

I know you all are filled with all sorts of burning questions so let me try and answer what I believe are the big ones:

I signed up for the Beta but I’m not in yet. When will I get in?

After this database reset we plan to start inviting a LOT more players.  We can’t guarantee an entry date, but we’ll be doing our best to get as many people in as fast as possible. As always, your best bet is to make sure you are on the Beta application list by signing up. It only counts once so doing it again won’t hurt.

What exactly is an account reset?

An account reset returns all existing accounts to the state of a new player. Items, characters, multiplayer stats and adventure progress are wiped. Your account name and password will remain the same though.

Why are we resetting accounts now? 

Beta is still a testing phase of the game and we need to periodically reset the database to clear out old, bad data. For example, we’ve just removed a bunch of old items from the game and we need to clear these out of people’s item collections.

Accounts will be reset at least one more time before the game is released and possibly more. That’s the beauty of Beta testing!

When exactly will the upcoming account reset happen?

Very soon! We will definitely let everyone know at least one week before it actually happens.

What is Pizza anyway?

Besides being the greatest food known to humankind, Pizza in Card Hunter is a kind of currency. In return for delicious, delicious pizza your GM will give you:

• Gold – an in-game currency generally earned by selling items you find in game
• Treasure Hunts – extra adventures not on the main campaign path
• Figures – new skins for your characters (these do not affect gameplay, but they look fantastic!)
• Starter Packs – sets of multiplayer-ready characters with pre-equipped items
• Treasure Chests – random sets of items
• and possibly some other new things we’re still working on…

Every item in Card Hunter can be obtained by playing the game for free! Pizza can only accelerate your game progress, unlock new adventures, or affect cosmetic changes.

Pizza will cost money now – what happens to my pizza when the game resets again?

Any pizza that you buy for actual money will be re-credited to your account each time the database is reset. You can buy pizza confident that you’ll be able to use it when the game finally goes live, as well as during Beta.

How do I get the exclusive Beta figures and what are they?

The exclusive figures are a human warrior and human priest. You can see them lingering around this blog post. You can get the warrior by purchasing a $20 or more in pizza and the priest by purchasing $50 or more.

What happens to the exclusive Beta figures I get after an account reset?

These figures will stay in your collection.

Do these figures affect gameplay? Will I be disadvantaged if I don’t buy them?

Nope, they’re just awesome looking.

Do I have to buy pizza during the Beta?

No, the game can always be played for free!

Will Pizza prices or in-game prices change during Beta?

It’s possible that we’ll adjust the prices of things during (or after) Beta. However, we’ll try to minimise these changes.

I signed up for the Beta but I’m not in yet. Will I get a chance to buy the exclusive Beta figures?

Yes! We will get a key to you before the Beta ends, so you will get a chance to buy the exclusive Beta figures.

If you have any questions not answered here, please ask on our forums – they’re the best place to find out more about the game!

This time we will be giving out 50 keys our forums and 50 keys on our Facebook page. The contest starts now and will run until midnight this Friday (March 8th) EST. And, as an added bonus, we’ll be distributing an additional 100 keys to those beta list sign-ups as well!

To enter, post in our forum or post on our Facebook page!

So the question is, what is one of your favorite rp gaming moments? It doesn’t have to be about a character death or a miraculous triumph (though it could be), just a moment where everyone was having an absolute blast!

Just jot down a short paragraph and post your response on our forums or on our Facebook page and by midnight, Thursday (Sydney time, GMT+10) and we’ll pick 20 of our favorites for a Beta Key! DON’T POST YOUR RESPONSE IN THE COMMENTS TO THIS POST – use the forums or Facebook please.

Remember, just a paragraph will do as I’m sure we’ll have *plenty* to go through. Now get crackin’!

We’re kicking off Beta this week with a few invites. As I said in my last post, we’ll be ramping up slowly so don’t worry if you didn’t get an invite yet – your turn will come.

If you are lucky enough to get in, I’ve set up some new forums to discuss your thoughts and report bugs. As an early tester, you’re likely to run into a few rough edges and problems – feel free to let us know about them!

See you in the game and happy Beta testing!

Well, we’re getting close. Here’s what we’ve been working on recently:

• Playing through the first 18 levels of the game that are going to be in the Beta and making sure that they work and are balanced and fun.
• Collating the huge set of items that are obtainable in these levels (around 1000!).
• Finishing up the final cards that are needed for these items.
• Play-testing the multi-player game using this item pool and trying to do some initial balancing so that all the classes and races are all competitive.
• Working on how to load test the game so we can handle an influx of real players.
• Fixing the worst bugs that would stop you from delivering useful feedback when you do get in.
• Creating a figure store where you can buy new skins for your characters.
• Implementing starter parties that you can buy to launch into multi-player without playing the single player adventures (if, for some reason, you don’t want to).
• Setting up “metrics” so that we can gather real data to figure out what parts of the game are broken or require re-balancing.
• Drinking lots of coffee.

Whew! Most or all of that stuff is done now, so you can see that we’re getting very close.

So, how are we going to run the Beta when we do launch? We’ll start small – inviting a few people in every few days or every week so that we can make sure that the game scales properly. We may have to pause that invitation process if we run into scalability issues or serious bugs. Once we’re really confident, we’ll pull in a lot more people and, eventually, we’ll open the Beta up and wait for the hordes to (hopefully) arrive!

If you are selected by our carefully engineered random Beta algorithm, you’ll receive an email with a Beta key that you can use to create an account. Once in, you’ll be able to start playing through the 18 levels of the single-player campaign and playing a whole lot of competitive multi-player.

You’ll find that there’s a great deal of the game still to come – many more levels above 18 and a whole bunch of powerful cards that aren’t available yet. You can also look forward to us adding a lot more story stuff – we have some really cool stuff up our sleeves that we haven’t put in yet. Yes, 2013 is going to be a great year for Card Hunting!

Until then, happy holidays and we’ll see you in game in the new year!