The Monsters of Curse of the Cards

One of my favourite parts of working on Curse of the Cards has been watching its monsters come to life. The game is a roguelike card game, and the monsters are the heart of it — each one has its own look, personality, and a little gameplay twist that makes it fun (and sometimes annoying) to deal with.

For a good chunk of this work I teamed up with Mehul Sharma, who animated most of these creatures. All of the monster animations below are his work. I have collected a bunch of them here in one place.

Here is one of the very first monsters you interact with in the game. It goes by Gook.

And this little Rodent is the first monster you actually encounter when you start out.

Around this time I also posted one of the newer monsters and asked people what we should name it. Suggestions were very welcome.

This one is called Egye — because it is a flying bat egg eye? It was the first flying type in the game, with a sneaky ability to switch places with the adjacent cards.

Meet Frobb. He is always hungry, so when spellbound, he will actually eat up nearby monsters — healing himself instead of taking damage from them.

This one looks a lot like Venonat from Pokémon. When it is killed by another monster, it adds curse equal to twice its health.

Doad hates flies, salt, and opposable thumbs.

Here is the complete animation of Barriken, attack included.

Grump uses his own weight to his advantage. Mehul took a Warioland-style suggestion for this one and tried to keep him nice and impact-y.

Wooga's HP goes up by one every time you drink a potion. I would be terrified.

I do not have a name for this toothy fellow, but those teeth must hurt after that collision.

Beware of this one — do not attack it with a weapon, because it will just absorb it.

Doof sets its HP according to the number of cards of its own kind on the screen. The more of them around, the tougher each one gets.

And finally, Stomp, who has one of the most unique abilities in the game — it must be killed before you can proceed to the next floor or dungeon.

That is a good look at the cast so far. Huge thanks again to Mehul Sharma for all the animation work — the monsters have so much more character because of it.

More on Curse of the Cards soon.