Most are familiar with digital collectible card cards, or CCGs, such as Hearthstone, The Elder Scrolls: Legends, and Gwent. Some probably wish that they could create their own cards within those respective CCGs. With the upcoming game from Odious Studios, Collective sets out to make those wishes come true.
Collective is a digital CCG that is built around community contributions. Any single player can freely create their own cards and make them whatever they want to be. Players can add a mana cost, attack/health values, text, and even their own artwork to create a unique card. If you feel like your card is worthy and balanced enough to be put into the game, you can submit your card idea over at the Collective subreddit. After each week, 10 cards are officially chosen to be put into the game, so anyone can have their card used by potentially every player.
Collective is heavily influenced by its community, and as a result, the game is shaped and formed based on the feedback of its players. In addition to creating over 400 unique cards, the players have also made suggestions that the developers took to heart to radically alter the base game rules and voting system, created articles that go deep into the meta and tier list of cards, have found the most optimal time for posting cards on the subreddit, and have even created specific player groups. One such group, known as the “Collective Spider Enthusiasts” have made it their goal to vote on cards that have spiders in them as to increase the “representation of spiders”. Here are some examples of the community’s added cards:
In terms of gameplay, there is currently a multiplayer mode and a singleplayer rogue-lite mode for players to participate in. There are also multiple heroes to unlock, and each can level up during the course of a game. When heroes level up, they will be able to gain access to mid-game rewards, such as specific cards or special effects. In addition, they will be able to draft new cards mid game, and those cards are added to the player’s hand and deck for the rest of the game. As a result, players are continually building their decks throughout a single game.
To make things even better, Collective will be free-to-play, and it will not have any lootboxes or a pay-per-pack business model. Instead, players will use in-game currency to unlock things, but players can also use real world currency to unlock things such as new heroes.
Collective is currently in a closed Alpha state at the moment, but those who are interested can sign up for the beta waitlist on the official Collective website. The beta is expected to arrive in Q4 of 2018 for iOS and Android smartphones.