With members from Ukraine and the Czech Republic, Vectormonk is one of the most international teams that have taken part in the F2P Campus. Dungeon Card Hero may be one of their first games as a team, but Anna Onyshchenko (analytics and QA), Danylo Syrotynskyi (programmer), Vitaliy Onyshchenko (game designer and producer) and Mike (artist) have extensive experience in the videogame industry.
With successes like Tap The Frog, which got over 15 million downloads, behind them, and awards such as Best Mobile Game at Dev Gum 2018 in Ukraine, the expectations for their new project couldn’t be higher.
But since there are still several months to go until its launch, the best we can do is to whet your appetite with an aperitif in the form of an interview.
F2P Campus (F): How did the idea of Dungeon Card Hero come up?
Vectormonk (V): We had just finished our previous game and we needed to decide what to do next. We had some prototypes and this card puzzle game was the chosen one. The official development started last summer, in August 2017.
F: What’s the game about?
V: This game is about dungeons, monsters, cards, heroes, magic… It’s a mobile game for fantasy lovers who play games like Diablo or World of Warcraft. We wanted to create an experience like that for mobile. There are not a lot of games in this genre on mobile so we decided to fill that gap.
F: What makes it special?
V: Our game mixes mechanics and genres like 2048, mathematical puzzles, and turn-based strategy. All of it really simplified. The core mechanic is very, very simple. It can be played by casual gamers but the gameplay can become really hot and exciting.
F: What’s inspired you?
V: There are a lot of mobile card games in the stores, from the classic solitaire to collecting card games like Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering… We played a lot of them to find what could make this game unique. We picked a mix of mechanics from different games for that.
F: Why did you choose free-to-play as a business model?
V: Because it works and we believe it’s good for players. Everyone can play it, everyone can try it and if they like it they can pay what they want, and if they don’t, they don’t waste their money.
We thought about making our game paid but we decided to make it free-to-play because it would reach a bigger audience.
F: What did you expect from the campus?
V: We came for inspiration, to learn from the experience of mentors like Nacho Pintos who opened our eyes in a few segments and decisions of our game. It has helped us to make a good game become a great game.
The campus office has become a really creative space with all the teams working on their projects, and that has inspired us a lot.
F: What are you most proud of?
V: We’ve already won several awards at Dev Gum, a game development conference in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. We won the Best Mobile Game award in 2018 and we were also nominated for the Best Indie Game. It makes us really happy that people appreciate our work.
F: What has been the biggest challenge so far?
V: We had to re-develop the core mechanics, like, five times until we got it right. We had to trash a lot of work that didn’t pass our tests. Even so, we don’t think of it as wasted time.
F: How would you define the Vectormonk team in one word?
V: Insistent.
If you don’t want to miss any news about Vectormonk and Dungeon Card Hero, take a look at their website.