Welcome to the first official devlog for 

Ninja Vs Samurai Card Chronicles: 死神の刃 (Blades of the Shinigami)

In this devlog we’ll briefly go over the overall game design, the visual and art style of the game, & some of the script & tools that were created  to speedup workflow and quickly add new features such as characters, enemies, cards, quest, & single player story campaigns to the game.  

Game Design   

Ninja vs Samurai Card Chronicles is a single & player vs player digital card battler & collection rouge-lite, but unlike many of the other games in this genre, much like a fighting game, Ninja vs Samurai uses a class & faction based system, assuring that no matter your play style, you’ll find characters & cards that works best for your style of play. Additionally, unlike most card battlers, the fast pace & responsive combat system of the combat, gives this game a truly unique look & feel.

Ninja vs Samurai Card Chronicles consist of 4 factions each with their own unique set of cards, skills, & characters.

1st The Hachiman-Jin Samurai - This deck consists of strong attack & defensive cards. In conjunction with counter attack & perries, these skill swordsmen effortlessly  negate or deflect any damage that may come their way.

2st The Shinigami Ninjas - As masters of shadows & stealth, the Ninjas deck relies on subterfuge. With their unique ability to poison, immobilize, & weaken their opponents attack & defenses, they can easily deal with even the strongest of swordsmen.

3rd The Ronin - These samurai who answer only to themselves, are enemies to bothe Hachiman-Jin & Shinigami alike. As such, in their travels they’ll face both samurai & ninjas. However, with their origin as Samurai, they have access to the samurai deck as well as their own unique cards which can take advantage of many of the ninjas techniques as well.

4th the Rogue Ninja - These ninja hold allegiance to no clan,  and consider both Samurai & ninja as enemies. Like the Ronin, their original teachings give them access to the ninja deck as well as their own unique deck & cards.    

Lastly, there are special guest characters. These characters were created from direct inspiration from popular anime, shows, & games, with cards, moves, & fighting styles that will directly represent their inspiration.

Visual style

 the art style, characters, & visuals have completely been overhauled since the game originally debut at the end of 2021. This was done in order to better take advantage of the improvements made in Unity's 2021 universal render pipeline as well as the high dynamic range pipeline. Additionally, this was also done to better reflect the more serious tone of the game’s story elements.  

That said, all the code, shaders, particle effects, along with every character, prop, environment, & environmental elements, such as foliage, trees, bushes, & grass, was created completely from scratch. 

Each asset is not only highly optimized, but also created to be used in Vr, 3rd, & first person perspectives without pixelation or a loss visual quality. & while seemingly a grueling task, this allows for any & all assets to be made available for free in upcoming tutorials, as well as on the assets store & market place.

Development Tools & Code

While there were many tools that were developed & will be demonstrated & explained in future updates &, for this video we’ll focus on the card creator. 

It was decided early on, instead of using hundreds of scriptable objects, each card is created dynamically in game, allowing for it to only need 2 prefabs, one 2d & one 3d, which accounts for any & all cards in the game.  By using the card manager tool, you can create new cards by simply inserting a card image, setting the card type, & the card strength.  The description text & mana cost are generated dynamically based on the attributes chosen, although it, & other aspects can be customized, which overrides any or all of the automatic set values. 

This tool allows for cards to be generated in seconds, with each new card being available in any or all faction decks, as a prize after a round, &/or through the in-game shop. 

Roadmap - Road to Steam

 Ninja vs Samurai Card Chronicles still has quite a ways to go until the game is fully feature complete, however the steam page days away from going live as of April 2022, Ninja vs Samurai Card Chronicles: Blades of the Shinigami is set to be released in early access on steam in the coming months. In the meantime, we’ll only once again be releasing weekly content & videos on our Game developers Republic youtube channel, as well as many of the games custom assets, shaders, tools, & code, available for free through tutorials, & through the asset store & marketplace.