The Making of the Mobius Arena

Here is an inside look into the making of the Mobius Arena, and some things that didn't quite make it until the final version of the game.

The final Mobius Arena logo as it appears in the game.

Here was an alternate logo treatment for the Mobius Arena.

We went back and forth on several different damage patterns for the Unknown Katra, but none of them were working. Finally the artist hit on the idea of a tar-like face emerging on the player's card. Here is the original sketch that sold the concept.

Here is the Unknown Katra damage pattern in three different stages as it appears in the game.

Here are some images for Mobius Arena cards that were rejected for various reasons. We were concerned during the construction of the first set of 40 cards that the images were too scary for young kids.

We went back and forth on the designs for the original five arenas. Here was an initial direction for the Space Station Arena. In the end, we went in a different direction.

When I first pitched the game to Richard Rosenblatt (he was CEO of Superdudes at the time) he liked the basic concept but felt that something was missing. He wanted people to have some sort of permanent reminder or trophy when they won a game. This mockup (with captured opponent head in a glass bell jar) sold the game, and gave birth to the Head Shed.

An early mockup of the UI had the cards animating into the game in 3D, rotating into position. Due to limitations in Flash, this technique was rejected.

Another mockup of the Mobius Arena UI, this one inspired by The Matrix. Although the detail work was good, it lacked a sense of "place" and looked a bit too sterile.

I really wanted the latest captured head to show up on the main page of the game. The artist misunderstood, and in this comp showed the entire captured card in an energy net. Note the original working title for the game, Superdudes Shadow Dojo.

This is one of the first conceptual sketches I did for the game. I determined early on that the positioning of the players on the outskirts of the playing area and the battle cards next to them on the inside was the right way to go.

Wireframe of Mobius Arena card layout I gave to the artist who designed the cards.

In order to test out the game mechanics, I created a prototype deck of cards. The core concepts stayed in the game, but several features seen here (the Reflex pool, attacks that drain the opponent and add to the attacker) never made it in.

One of the key mechanics in Mobius Arena is that defensive cards do damage. A previous incarnation of the game made the mistake of blocks doing no damage, which meant a smart player would do nothing but attack all the time. The idea for defense cards that also do damage came from the classic TSR game Gammarauders.

The original idea for the game mechanics behind Mobius Arena came to me in college when I was working on a game system I called VR Combat. I wanted to bring the action and excitement of Mortal Kombat to a card game system like Magic: The Gathering. To that end, I created this "bio monitor" to keep track of player life points out of an old Domino's pizza box and some construction paper.