How To Design Super Powered Smash Masters – Part 1 of 4

Step 1: Origin Story.

I know what you’re all thinking. It’s something that people keep asking me. It’s usually the first thing people say when they learn about Super Powered Smash Masters. 

Why? Why did you do this?!
Well, this is really supposed to be about how I did it, but here’s a brief answer: One day I decided I wanted to do a card game. There you go. 

See, I figured it would be less expensive than a video game, which is the kind of game I usually design. But I wanted to do a card game because they don’t take as long to finish. That was back in July of 2015 – LOL! 

Now, granted the game’s changed a lot since then, but the bones of it are actually pretty similar to my earliest notes from four years ago. 

It really started with my kids. I was thinking about how I’d like to share my enjoyment of superheroes and comics and gaming with them. But the existing superhero games and related media required like seventy years of background knowledge. Also all the female characters (who my girls might want to identify with) were designed by guys and with a guy’s sensibility. The characters and costumes were not very age appropriate, and basically not the greatest role models for my impressionable girls. Back in 2015, the comics industry was still a boy’s club. 

And I had other more selfish reasons for making the game. My kids were often lobbying me to play games with them, and the kinds of games that were appropriate for them made me want to pull my hair out. And that hurts! So I wanted to make a family game that would preserve my hairline. Something we’d all have fun playing. 

So there you have it. The why.

Come back next week for the next installment of “How to Design Super Powered Smash Masters!”