[Devblog] Bonta's Boufbowlers Info - 2018-03-12 16:00

Hi, everyone!

As promised, today we're going to discuss how the five other Krosmaster profiles available in the Boufbowl box were created.

So, we had the Brakmar team (see this article), and we needed a Bonta team.

We wanted a team dynamic that was radically different from the Brakmar team so that each would have their own distinctive feel. Another reason for this choice was the lack of design space to make five more profiles around the Gobbowl ball.

After eliminating several ideas, we decided to focus on one of the aspects of Bonta that differentiates it from Brakmar: unity, teamwork, and the idea that the whole is greater than individual characteristics.

In particular, we worked a lot on the Bontarian captain. We wanted him to reward team cohesion by promoting a particular strategy.

 

Motivating Haka

The spell Motivating Haka was settled on for this character very early on. It did what we wanted it to:

• Offer a spell to emphasize the positioning of your own team.
• For the spell to give the player a reward in proportion to the limitations they've respected. The more you position allies correctly, the better you're rewarded.

The rest was built around that, for example with initiative and power. We wanted Amalius to reward anticipation. So we raised his initiative to 10, and then we decided to give him a power that would reward the effective use of Motivating Haka.

His spell set benefits well from AP gains, particularly by increasing the chance to do damage on a turn. To limit overuse on a single target, we limited all his damage spells in purple.

 

One for All, and All for One

 

The rest of the team was designed with Amalius in mind, so that he could boost his allies to improve himself and his allies could gain AP.

We knew that with the inclusion of two effective level 3 placers in Wild Realms (Grougalorasalar and Mint King) and the disappearance of Yugo and Anna Tommy, many people would fall back on these two profiles for positioning.

Instead of aiming for attrition, we wanted to provide another alternate for a level 3 placer.

This placer had to be distinct from the other two, so we went with one that would charge in much more.

To reinforce this state of mind, we worked on the profile so that Marty Nee wouldn't deal as much damage if he didn't have many different targets in range, encouraging him to be the one to charge at the opposing team to maximize his spell Frantic Rhythm.

He benefits well from Amalius's AP and MP, offering him an extra Frantic Rhythm to cast, which can really hurt, with the MP helping him find another target.

It seemed difficult to boost the whole team with Amalius, so we needed a character that would benefit from Amalius's Motivating Haka even if they weren't the target. That's where Jerry Savage's power came about!

One of the challenges was to make the character playable without Amalius. I think we succeeded: he does need a placer, but once on the opposite end of the field, he can neutralize an enemy character, which forces the opposing player to pay attention to him and opens up space for the other characters.

 

Level 1 and AP Increase

Now we're at the level 1s. Historically, these had 5 AP and a spell that could be cast for 5 AP. There were exceptions, of course, but that was the basic construction: sensitivity to AP reduction, one attack per turn, and so on – nothing that would seem to mesh properly with Amalius's AP increase.

We decided to keep one of the two limitations for Laika Ledoop – sensitivity to AP reduction – and made her lousy at picking up kamas while we were at it (compensated by her Crafter).

Arno Kelse, for his part, only really benefits from MP (except to buy in addition to his attack). He fulfills the need to anticipate Phaerys's exit from the format by providing level 1 profiles that will get in the opposing team's way.

I've always liked Shak Shaka's power, but it wasn't really able to excel at level 5 in Season 1. I wanted to give this power another chance, and we found ourselves with Arno Kelse again.

 

See you in two weeks for more Boufbowl content!