There were many game demos sprinkled throughout the NYCC show floor. During our time at Comic Con, Eric Snell of the ComicAttack.net team got a chance to sit down with the developers at NEXON Co LTD to discuss their new game in collaboration with Marvel Studios called Marvel Battle Lines.
Marvel Battle Lines takes the principles of Tic Tac Toe and card battle games and blends them together in a really cool and easy to learn way. Players work on a 3×4 grid laying their player cards, complete with battle stats, against their opponents cards. However, when players manage to lay their cards in a three card line (Battle Line) a combo attack is triggered. A Battle Line play amplifies the stats of the associated cards and has the potential
to either solidify a decisive victory or turn the tables in the favor of the losing side! Battle Lines features a variety of play modes including PvP as well a several single player focused modes.
I sat down with Pine Sohn and Karsten Davis, some of the team behind Marvel Battle Lines, for a Q&A and hands on demo:
CA: Battle Lines has a lot of connections to Tic Tac Toe as the Battle Lines are achieved by placing cards three in a row. Why make the field longer by adding a fourth row?
Pine Sohn: The decision to draw the field the way we did goes back to the first game design. The rules back then were a little bit different but what remains the same is that we wanted it to feel like an actual battlefield. You can see that your units are kind of running around the field attacking each other so we thought that 3×3 would be too small to feel like a battlefield and that 4×3 would be optimal for that feeling.
CA: How long was Battle Lines in development?
PS: About two years. The game evolved quite a lot from that time. We originally had the characters attack differently than they do now but we realized that it wasn’t all that intuitive to play. The idea of making lines like in Tic Tac Toe made it much easier to play the game and that was one of the biggest reasons we redesigned the game from where we started.
CA: Why not just a typical card game?
PS: Well, we wanted something fresh. Our studio has experience in making TCG games before and one thing we thought was that a lot of card games have a tight barrier to entry; we wanted to lower that. We thought about Tic Tac Toe, the concept itself is easy to understand and lowers that barrier so we came up with a brand new rule which would be much easier to get into than pre-existing games right now.
CA: I noticed that the game has a base set of characters at launch and you mention that there will be more characters added later? How did you pick and choose which characters would work well with your new story at the start?
PS: Since we had this new campaign story written together with Alex Irvine, we imagined that it would be cool to introduce the characters based on the locations we were using in the first couple of stages. So by then we got some recommendations from Marvel that this set of characters would be really good to start and from those recommendations we expanded the story.
So with the next upcoming updates the story expands into different universes and dimensions the characters associated with those locations will come into the game.
CA: Cool, so you guys had a lot of input from Marvel directly on who would work here or work there?
PS: Yes exactly.
CA: Since you’re working from card deck of heroes to battle with, does the game limit or let you know how many of a certain type of card to have a complete deck?
Karsten Davis: Yes, so if you don’t have enough of a necessary card, say a zero cost card, the game will let you know that “Hey, this isn’t a valid deck because you’re missing a certain type of card”.
CA: I’m really curious about some of the other modes in Battle Lines. Can you tell us about Special Ops mode?
KD: Special Ops is a mode where you can quickly get into some cool battles while also learning about some of the cards in your deck and some of the deeper mechanics of the game. You could consider it an extended tutorial where the challenges are going to get tougher and tougher and almost like a puzzle to solve.
Although we can’t show them just yet we can let your readers know about some of the other modes offered in Battle Lines. We have an arena mode which will let you build a deck and challenge other players, we also have a challenge mode that will offer different daily challenges that will gradually get harder and harder each time you play offering more and better rewards.
CA: Do those rewards include more cards to play with?
KD: Absolutely, more cards and different currencies. We can check out the store real quick. As you play different modes, such as the Special Ops, Simulations and Challenges 
you earn currencies, cards and even additional challenges for the different modes. So you can gain XP and gain rewards and then buy the cards you want in our store. We will also have an extended PvP suite such as quick PvP matches,ranked PvP matches or friendly PvP matches with friends.
CA: Battle Lines already seems like a pretty robust game as it is. Are there plans for future modes or expansions that you can tell us about?
PS: Well we plan on releasing upcoming events as well.
CA: Seasonal or maybe comic tie-ins?
PS: We can definitely think about that yeah. Marvel events outside of the game definitely inspire us as well. Those events could wind up being temporary events or permanent new modes too. We’ll have to wait and see.
Marvel Battle lines aims to appeal to both the hardcore card gamer and casual crowds alike and does a pretty good job making that happen. The game manages to break the skill barrier associated with card games like YuGiOh or Magic The Gathering by working in the Tic Tac Toe aspect of the game which is easily understandable and appealing to more casual players. I brought my 11 year old son along for the hands-on demo and within just a few minutes and a small bit of explanation from the devs we were battling each other as if we’d been playing for days. Battle Lines felt really easy to jump into. Even with the mechanics of working around card stats and deck building (pre-made decks were provided for the demo) I never felt like it was hard to understand or that I was missing something. Placing and moving the cards around on the battlefield felt organic and getting a battle line felt great as the game provided me with some dynamic animation to celebrate my achievement. Of course, the look on my opponents face was great too.
After Comic Con was over I was allowed to try the Beta version of the game at home to get a better grasp on some of the mechanics that I didn’t get to try at the con. Battle Lines is incredibly addictive. Over the course of several days I found myself killing the battery on my iPad as I lost time attempting challenge after challenge in both the Campaign Mode and Special Ops mode, a feature that has quickly become my personal favorite way to unlock new characters to take into battle. As a person who is generally wary of playing mobile games, especially free ones, I was looking very closely for indications that Battle Lines might attempt to push me to buy card packs or spend actual money in some way. I was pleasantly surprised that over my maybe 14 or so hours of play I never once felt compelled to buy anything even though the store was accessible in the beta. I consistently received useful cards after each battle and some of my favorite characters have already been obtained simply by playing. After spending my time with Battle Lines, something that I’m continuing to do even as I write this, I’ve found only one con in the experience; Marvels Battle Lines requires you to have an active connection to the internet. I’m hoping that this is only due to my playing the beta as I would like to be able to play during my daily commute.
MARVEL Battle Lines will be available on October 24 as a free download on the App Store® for iPhone and iPad and on Google Play for Android devices.
To keep up with the latest information on MARVEL Battle Lines, fans can visit the official Twitter and Facebook pages.
Eric Snell
eric@comicattack.net
Twitter: esnelldesign
Images provided by Nexon Co Ltd and Marvel Studios
