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Most readers have probably heard of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft by now. The game has been out for over a year, with two expansions released, and before that it had a yearlong beta that was covered extensively by most of the prominent online personalities in the space.
Hearthstone was an experiment for Blizzard Entertainment. Similar to what large companies like Google have done, Blizzard let employees develop side projects on their own time, and this resulted in the 14-person team that originally built the game. It was also the first free-to-play, microtransaction-based game the company made – though microtransactions had appeared before in World of Warcraft and, to some extent, Diablo 3.
As a small, almost indie side project, Hearthstone was revealed not at Blizzcon but at PAX 2013. Initial reactions weren’t enthusiastic, but as the closed beta began and footage flooded YouTube, it became clear that Blizzard had done it again – taking familiar gameplay elements and polishing them until they shine.
Hearthstone offers several unique takes on traditional collectible card games. Unlike Magic: the Gathering, players don’t need to collect mana separately. Each turn you get one mana crystal, up to a maximum of ten. This makes it harder to get stuck without mana cards (“land starved”) or to have nothing but mana and no playable options.
The game is designed to keep matches short – a Hearthstone game rarely takes more than 20 minutes. Each player has a limited time to complete their turn. Toward the end, a fuse appears on screen and starts burning. If it reaches the “End Turn” button before you act, the turn ends automatically. On your next turn, the fuse appears from the start rather than giving you the normal 90 seconds. This punishes stalling and helps deal with AFK players.
Decks are capped at 30 cards, with a maximum of two copies of any single card. Once a player has drawn their entire deck, they start taking fatigue damage – one point for each card they’re supposed to draw but can’t, increasing by one each time. This forces a conclusion if the game drags on. Eventually one player will lose by running out of deck.
Another anti-abuse element is the communication system: instead of open text chat, players can only send one of six preset emotes. You can also mute your opponent entirely.
Several mechanics are simplified versions of ideas from other card games. A Taunt card, for example, forces the enemy to attack it first – a streamlined take on Magic’s blocking system. Unlike Magic, all card effects in Hearthstone are automated. Aside from choosing targets, you don’t need to manually trigger abilities.
This is the main advantage of a digital-first design. Mechanics that would be impractical at a physical table are trivial to implement in software. Take the Mad Bomber: “Deal 3 damage randomly split between all other characters.” As a mental exercise, think about how you’d run that at a card table.
Cross-platform play between PC and mobile was one of the team’s stated goals, and they nailed it. The control scheme is so simple – single clicks and click-and-drag – that it works just as naturally on a touchscreen as with a mouse. Think about how many mobile games handle this badly, either with clumsy virtual gamepads or PC ports that feel like an afterthought. Hearthstone has none of those problems. It’s one of the cleaner examples of a game designed for both from the ground up.
There’s something about Hearthstone I still can’t fully explain: even when I lose three games out of four, I’m still having a good time. Over 100 games in, I don’t remember getting frustrated with it. Sometimes I lost and knew exactly why. Sometimes it was the luck of the draw, which felt fair. And sometimes the match itself was so ridiculous that the result didn’t matter – I was just enjoying the chaos.
The random bonuses, the hero levelling, the small details – they all add up. It’s designed to reward you for showing up, regardless of how the game goes. That’s harder to pull off than it looks.