Slightly more than a week has passed since the release of *Hearthstone: Across The Timeways*. Blizzard introduced some bold new mechanics into the latest expansion for its long-running digital card game, with one of the biggest innovations being the introduction of Fabled cards. These cards bring three cards with special synergies into a player’s deck for every class. Unlike the typical Legendary cards Hearthstone players might expect, Fabled cards feature a unique design that reflects their special nature.
While every class received three Fabled keyword cards, there was one notable exception: the Warlock. The Warlock was given a special Fabled+ card inspired by Hearthstone’s most recognizable villain, Rafaam. The 10-Cost Timethief Rafaam introduces 10 extra cards into a player’s deck and stands out as one of the most unique ideas to come to Hearthstone in quite some time. This innovation was a point of pride for developers like Senior Game Designer Stephen Chang and UI/UX Designer Sola Chang.
“I think Rafaam didn’t change that much from initial conception,” Stephen Chang told Shacknews. “We had the idea of doing Rafaam fairly early on, and we knew we wanted Rafaam to be Fabled+. Most of the changes we did during final design were modifying some of the specific Rafaams to be a bit more playable, a bit stronger. Because the deck is growing to a size of 40, we needed to ensure that you had enough strong plays to get you to the end game. So we juiced up some of the Rafaams along the way, but holistically, I think most of the designs stayed the same.”
Each of the ten Rafaams has a different power level, but their Cost, Attack, and Health stats are equal. This allowed the design team to experiment with a variety of unique effects, which led to some minor adjustments.
“A few of them, we modified slightly to be a bit more generically playable,” Chang added. “I think one of the Discover ones we modified, and then we gave [Mindflayer R’faam], that summons a copy, Taunt to give it more board presence. But overall, it’s kind of a testament to the initial design team. A lot of the designs went through the whole process and were not that modified, which was really cool. It’s not common that that happens, but we had a lot of good initial ideas of the types of mechanics that we wanted to have to highlight these characters. And a lot of the essence of those designs stayed true throughout the whole set.”
Playing all of the Rafaams leads to one final Battlecry from the 10-Cost Timethief Rafaam, which destroys the enemy hero and ends the game in most cases. While Rafaam’s game-ending effect feels truly special, there was a time when he wasn’t the only one considered for such a powerful ability. The Rogue class came close to receiving a similar effect with the 4-Cost Garona Halforcen.
“Garona used to also destroy the hero, but we didn’t like that the damage that [the Rogue player] dealt throughout the game wasn’t going to have as much of an impact,” Stephen Chang explained. “So we wanted it to be a bit more impactful, so that as you were dealing damage throughout the game, you could still get that bonus effect on top of it. So a few of the outputs did change, but for Rafaam itself, [the effect] was always to destroy the enemy hero.”
The Hearthstone player base is currently in the process of sorting out the game’s latest meta. Blizzard also offered a sneak peek at the new Rewind mechanic, which allows for second-chance effects on specific cards. While the mechanic fits well with the heroic Keeper of Time Chromie, its visual flair did extend turn times more than expected—something Blizzard was conscious of prior to the expansion’s release.
“The reason why we’re doing [the Rewind animation] is not only to tie it to a part of the fantasy, but because there’s some technical implementation that requires us to cover the screen as we reset the board to undo the actions if you Rewind,” explained UI/UX Designer Sola Chang. “So when we worked on that, there was a lot of work and time spent into making that as efficient as we can. We read and heard a lot of comments from the community and the players, so the engineering team and a lot of game devs came together to really do their best to make that a faster experience. We definitely have some updates coming out very soon to make that time a bit faster, so we’re super excited for that update to come out and I’m hoping the players will enjoy that new experience with that Rewind animation.”
With these exciting new mechanics and careful adjustments based on player feedback, *Hearthstone: Across The Timeways* continues to evolve the game’s rich and engaging card play experience.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146793/hearthstone-across-the-timeways-developer-interview