The 3 Vision Pillars for Project Legends

In the ever-evolving world of gaming, Azra Games stands at the forefront, crafting experiences that resonate. Our VP of Production, Neel Upadhye, recently unveiled Azra's foundational pillars for our highly-anticipated 'Project Legends' to our dedicated community on Discord. Let's dive into these three pillars that promise to shape the future of our gaming odyssey:

The 3 pillars for Project Legends:

⚔️ Fight As One in Combat

Power Through Collection

️ A World Worth Saving

These are the guidelines we use in coming up with any feature, to ensure everything we do stays on target.

1. Fight As One in Combat: Strategic, real-time combat encourages synergistic party builds, and rotating through your characters for maximum impact.

Our game is a Hero Collector ARPG game where you collect powerful Legends and lead them into combat as a party of four.

There are 3 layers to combat:

• moment-to-moment
• tactical
• strategic

Unlike most party-based games, in Project Legends you will have moment-to-moment control of just a single character in real-time combat. Your Legends are powerful - stay on the offense! Then comes the tactical layer. You'll seamlessly switch between your four party members mid-combat in a kinetic and satisfying way that maintains the momentum of combat. Synergies between different characters' special and ultimate abilities motivates tactically swapping between units in battle to deal maximum damage. Lastly, there's the strategic layer. Wisely choosing which four characters to bring into your party, based on enemy weaknesses, individual characters' upgrades, and other factors is vital to your success.

The result is a kinetic Action-RPG that rewards skill, but remains largely a strategic game where victory lies in your party build.

Fight as One Combat

2. Power Through Collection: Every activity facilitates expanding or upgrading your collection of characters and equipment to become more powerful.

Our game is built on a simple and enduring core loop Mark Otero, Azra CEO, has perfected over his 8 games in the Hero Collector RPG genre. Project Legends will be the ninth. Let's get into this core loop.

• The game presents the player with a set of activities, such as combat, exploration and quests.
• Each of those activities must provide the player rewards, be they access to new content, XP, or crafting materials.
• The player then applies those rewards to their collection in the form of new characters, new gear, and upgrades to become more powerful. How does the player know they're more powerful? Because they test their collection once more in the game's activities and feel the difference.

And so the wheel keeps turning!

Where many games go sideways is introducing activities that don't ladder up into the central source of power - your collection! (We affectionately call these distracting features "cow bell"). It's fun to accumulate power! This is the lens we use to ensure that everything we design, even outside of combat, delivers a satisfying power fantasy to the player. More power. No cow bell.

There is so much room for innovation in just that first bucket, "activities." For instance, compare something like Pokemon to RAID: Shadow Legends. Change the combat system, depth of progression, tone or art style and you've got a completely different experience! This is why our other pillars are so important in creating a unique blockbuster.

Core loop - Hero Collector RPG

It's time to bring it home with our last pillar.

3. A World Worth Saving: A mysterious, dark fantasy world motivates you to engage with its story to unravel its secrets.

Our story takes place in a world called Akkad during its dark ages. Enter the Legends: warriors with powers similar to the X-Men, in a time of swords and shields.

We are a PvE focused RPG, with quests as the spine of our experience. You, as the player, are not a single main character. Rather, you are playing as your collection of Legends. To the people of Akkad, the return of Legends is akin to myths coming to life and walking among men. They told stories about these heroes and remembered them as constellations in the sky, and now they're back. When Legends speak with NPCs, they may be met with awe, reverence, or even incredulity, but rarely indifference. As the game continues and rumors spread that the Legends have returned, some NPCs may be waiting in anticipation for the player to visit. Each Legend will shine and must be desirable to collect, not just for their combat utility, but also for their story.

We portray a world where the threat of danger is pervasive. Landscapes, whether it's a decaying village, a buried ruin, or verdant forest, are dark, jagged and evoke a sense of foreboding beauty. Occasionally, the world may even feel bleak and oppressive. Wielding magic-like power in our world is viewed as mysterious, dangerous, and capable of unintended consequences.

We'll have much more to say on the story as the game develops. We don't want to spoil anything too soon. For now, I'll leave you with this short summary:

Thousands of years ago, the Legends of Akkad sacrificed their lives to imprison the Titans who had destroyed their world. Now, millennia later, the Titans have returned, and a Legend must rise again…

As you've journeyed to the end of this post, it's clear you share our passion for gaming. Dive deeper into the universe of Azra Games by connecting with our dynamic community on Discord. Neel and our dedicated team regularly unveil behind-the-scenes insights on our game design adventures. Together, let's redefine the horizons of gaming, one epic quest after another. Don't forget to follow us right here on Medium for more insights and updates.

Game on, and see you on the other side!

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