Phoenix Arena

Overview

Phoenix Arena is an autobattling RPG card game developed on the Cardano blockchain. Players choose one of three NFT Characters, equip them with stat-boosting Gear, select skills for their hero, and craft strategies to defeat opponents.

  • Deterministic Combat: Every match outcome is fully deterministic, removing randomness entirely. Once both players lock in their heroes and skills, the game automatically resolves combat until one hero reaches 0 HP.

  • Strategic Gameplay: The core challenge was designing engaging and tactical gameplay without relying on luck, requiring players to analyze opponents and optimize hero builds.

  • Progression Systems: Heroes, Gear, Skills, and even player accounts are fully upgradeable. The core loop encourages play → earn loot → upgrade, creating a rewarding and strategic growth system.

Design Impact: Phoenix Arena combines deep strategic decision-making with transparent mechanics, appealing to players who value skill, foresight, and planning over chance..

My Role

As part of a small nine-member studio, I wore multiple hats beyond my official title of Game Designer, contributing to core systems, narrative, audio, marketing, QA, and UI/UX design. My key responsibilities included:

  • Core Game Loop Design: Designed and iterated on the primary gameplay loop, ensuring strategic depth and player engagement.

  • Design Documentation: Created and maintained detailed, easy-to-navigate technical and systems design documents.

  • Gameplay System Updates: Refined and balanced pre-existing mechanics for deterministic combat and progression.

  • Narrative & Flavor Text: Drafted engaging and comedic flavor text to expand the in-game world.

  • Sound Design: Generated all in-game sound effects for the base game.

  • UI/UX Development: Designed multiple mockups for screens, menus, and interactive features.

  • Quality Assurance: Performed bug testing, regression testing, and validation of gameplay systems.

  • Marketing & Community Outreach: Drafted and published multiple campaigns across Twitter (X) and Discord.

Impact: Wearing multiple hats allowed me to integrate gameplay, narrative, audio, and interface design, ensuring a cohesive player experience while supporting small-team efficiency.

Key Takeaways

As Phoenix Arena was both my first professional game design experience and the studio’s first foray into game development, I had to rely heavily on instinct, adaptability, and best practices. The amount I learned throughout this process has been astronomical, and many of these lessons will shape how I approach projects moving forward.

Know Your Audience

Phoenix Arena was developed for the Web3 & Blockchain space. While I focused on designing systems and mechanics that supported our gameplay pillars, I didn’t fully anticipate the tangible incentives our initial clientele expected. This taught me the importance of balancing strong design with a deep understanding of player motivations—especially in emerging markets like Web3.

Project Management is Essential

A dedicated project manager is invaluable. Having someone to organize teams, coordinate communication, and track deliverables would have greatly improved development efficiency. I learned how critical this role is to ensure forward momentum and clarity across a project.

Organization Builds Efficiency

Even in a remote environment, taking time each day to clean up files and maintain documentation paid dividends. Consistent organization allowed for smoother collaboration and prevented costly slowdowns. I now view documentation and workspace management as essential—not optional—parts of game development.

The Art of Compromise

Compromise can both elevate and dilute a project. While some middle-ground solutions made Phoenix Arena stronger, I also learned the importance of knowing when to push back. Preserving the integrity of core systems is better than allowing them to be implemented in a half-baked way.

Shipping Games is Hard

Bringing a game across the finish line is a monumental challenge. While I was aware of this in theory, the reality of preparing for launch underscored just how underestimated this process can be. Releasing a game requires careful planning, rigorous QA, and team-wide alignment.

In reflection, many of these takeaways confirmed lessons I had studied in college but hadn’t fully experienced until now. The practical realities of professional game development—managing expectations, ensuring alignment, maintaining structure, and protecting the integrity of a vision—were invaluable lessons that I will carry into every future project.

Improving Skills

Once the skill resolution system was established, I tackled design limitations to expand creative possibilities and strategic depth.

Energy Cost System Overhaul

Skills originally could only have Energy Costs of 2, 4, or 6, constraining hero builds and design space. We then allowed any Energy Cost above 2, and shifted hero builds to 7 skills per hero, from which players select 4 for battle. This removed arbitrary restrictions, expanded design space, and maintained balance by deriving hero subclasses from the most-represented skill types.

Dynamic Rounds

We removed the rigid 10-second round system, enabling a staggered skill resolution flow. This resulted in more dynamic and unpredictable gameplay, allowing strategic counterplay across multiple rounds.

Leveraging Status Effects

We categorized skills into three core actions:

  • Deal Damage

  • Apply stat increases or reductions

  • Apply buffs/debuffs (status effects)

With a focus on status effects as a versatile tool for persistent mechanics, it enabled complex skill interactions without disrupting the deterministic framework. For example; the skill Polymorph evolved from a simple single effect to a multi-layered mechanic utilizing buffs/debuffs, demonstrating the potential of super-type effects to create richer strategic outcomes.

Class & Subclass Archetypes

Classes and subclasses were always core to Phoenix Arena’s vision, but early designs left them feeling homogenous and mechanically similar. My goal was to emphasize meaningful player choices by giving each class and subclass a distinct mechanical identity.

Design Approach

I took a top-down design process, inspired by traditional fantasy archetypes. This aligned skill mechanics with thematic fantasy flavor, ensuring that each name and effect reinforced its role. Through iterations on each class and subclass design, each iteration introduced new mechanics and richer identities.

Class & Subclass Passives

With only 3 classes and 6 subclasses, creating unique playstyles was difficult. We then introduced class and subclass passives to give each archetype a core strategic direction. This allowed for Classes to define broad archetypal strategies. Subclasses that refine those strategies into complementary, unique playstyles, and further ensured that all class skills remained usable across both child subclasses to maintain flexibility and uphold the “meaningful choices” pillar.

Fig 3. Visual breakdown of the “Polymorph” skill & accompanying animation in Phoenix Arena

Fig 7. Visual breakdown of the “Unholy Power” skill in Phoenix Arena

Rogue Class

The Rogue was one of the clearest archetypes to define. Drawing from the traditional fantasy identity of stealth, precision, and opportunistic strikes, I built the class around the Vulnerable condition already present in Phoenix Arena’s design. Heroes automatically enter a Vulnerable state during cooldown, and I saw an opportunity to turn this into a defining pillar of Rogue gameplay. This evolved into the Exploit keyword, which triggered bonus effects when a skill’s active state resolved against a Vulnerable enemy.

At the class level, Rogues gained a flat 10% damage bonus against Vulnerable foes, immediately reinforcing their role as precision executioners. From there, I shaped the two subclasses—Assassin and Hunter—around different interpretations of exploiting weaknesses. The Assassin leaned into burst damage, using the new Rapid Strike mechanic that allowed basic attacks against Vulnerable targets to hit twice. By contrast, the Hunter embodied patience and attrition. Their basic attacks against Vulnerable targets reduced stamina, a limited resource required to use skills. When stamina ran out, enemies were forced into cooldown—creating a feedback loop that left them exposed to further punishment.

Together, these mechanics made the Rogue class a sharp contrast to the resilience of Warriors or the raw power of Mages. The Assassin delivered immediate, high-stakes payoffs, while the Hunter specialized in dismantling opponents over time. Both approaches reinforced the fantasy of a cunning, opportunistic fighter who thrives when an enemy is at their weakest. In the end, the Rogue, Assassin, and Hunter not only captured the fantasy of the archetypal rogue but also provided some of the most strategically satisfying ways to exploit the game’s timing-based systems.

Fig 8. Mechanical outline of the “Slice & Dice” skill in Phoenix Arena

Basic Attacks

Originally, Phoenix Arena’s design treated skills as the only way to deal damage, leaving little room for basic attacks. Early iterations referred to them in passing, but they were never meaningfully integrated into gameplay. As the scope of passive abilities expanded, however, we discovered new design space to fully explore basic attacks as a core mechanic.

Basic attacks functioned as 1-second, low physical damage skills that could be augmented in multiple ways. For example, the Rapid Strike keyword was a status effect that exclusively enhanced basic attacks, causing them to strike twice instead of once. By interweaving these attacks between skill selections, they became an ever-present part of a hero’s kit rather than an afterthought.

Integrating basic attacks required some adjustments to underlying mechanics (See Fig. 9), but these changes opened the door to a renaissance of new abilities and design possibilities. Their fast resolution time also allowed us to experiment with embedding basic attacks into skill resolutions themselves. This created hybrid effects that blended the reliability of basic attacks with the power of specialized skills, significantly enriching combat variety.

In practice, basic attacks became a universal foundation for nearly every class and subclass. Whether empowering rogues with Rapid Strike, enabling hunters to drain stamina, or giving mages an elemental scaling option, basic attacks evolved from a scrapped idea into an essential part of the game’s strategic depth (See Fig. 10).

Fig 4. Stun behaviors during different states in Phoenix Arena

Fig 1. Initial Game Loop developed for Phoenix Arena (04 / 17 / 2023) (Not NDA)

The Design

Phoenix Arena’s design presented a unique challenge: creating an engaging, strategic experience without direct player actions during combat. Unlike traditional TCGs/CCGs that emphasize resource management, adaptability, and decision-making, Phoenix Arena’s auto-battling format removes moment-to-moment agency.

This forced us to innovate within constraints, effectively designing a card game that could “play itself” while still offering deep strategy and compelling outcomes.

Skill Design

When I joined the team, skills existed only in early draft form, with:

  • Names, art, and subclass affiliations

  • Placeholder mechanics (e.g., “Moderate Damage”) without defined values

  • Energy Costs of 2, 4, or 6, determining both how many skills could be equipped (10 total) and how long they took to resolve

  • Fatigue Costs that added strain to heroes when skills were used

I expanded this foundation into a comprehensive, functional system, introducing key mechanics and states:

  • Skill Resolution States:

    • Charging → Hero gathers energy; vulnerable to disruption effects

    • Active → Hero executes the skill; multi-step skills repeat per active phase

    • Cooldown → Hero recovers, becoming vulnerable and taking increased damage

  • Timeline System: Energy Costs translated directly into time durations on a 10-second combat timeline, allowing players to strategize around sequencing and timing.

  • Skill Archetypes & Status Effects:

    • Classified skills into distinct archetypes for clarity and balance.

    • Designed status effects as a persistent layer independent of skill resolution, ensuring effects like buffs/debuffs had ongoing impact even outside of active states.

These systems transformed raw concepts into a strategically rich, deterministic combat framework. By layering skill states, timing mechanics, and status effects, I enabled gameplay that felt predictable yet dynamic, rewarding foresight and planning over chance.

The Disruption Problem

Phoenix Arena’s timeline-based skill resolution required careful design for interactions between simultaneous skills, particularly when applying disruptive effects like stuns. I developed systematic rules and visual charts to ensure fairness while maintaining strategic impact:

  • Charge State: Stunning cancels the skill entirely.

  • Active State: Stunning cancels skill duration equal to the Stun effect.

  • Cooldown State: Stunning has limited impact, clipped to the remaining skill duration or Stun duration, whichever is shorter.

Insights from Testing:

  • Stuns and similar disruptive effects proved overpowered in an auto-battler with no counterplay.

  • Alternative mechanics were explored to retain tactical depth without breaking balance..

The Delay Mechanic

To create a less punishing, yet strategically meaningful disruption, I developed the Delay mechanic:

  • Charge State: Delays the skill start, effectively restarting it.

  • Active/Cooldown States: Pushes back the resolution of remaining effects without canceling the skill.

This mechanic preserved strategic timing and player engagement while avoiding the frustration caused by outright skill cancellation. By leveraging the framework developed for Stun, Delay provided a balanced middle-ground, allowing disruption effects to exist in the game while maintaining fairness.

Impact: The Delay mechanic demonstrates my ability to analyze unintended gameplay consequences, iterate on core systems, and implement strategically meaningful solutions that enhance player experience while maintaining balance.

Fig 4. Stun behaviors with variable durations in Phoenix Arena

Fig 5. Delay behaviors when applied in different states in Phoenix Arena

Fig 2. Skill Card archetypes for Phoenix Arena

Warrior Class

The Warrior began as a straightforward bruiser archetype—high HP, strong attack, and solid defenses—but evolved into one of the most mechanically intricate classes in Phoenix Arena. Early designs emphasized only proactive mechanics, leaving little space for defensive strategies. To solve this, I introduced the Fury mechanic, a stacking buff gained whenever a Warrior takes damage. Fury served as both a thematic and mechanical driver, unlocking effects for skills when above certain thresholds and enabling Warriors to self-heal below 30% HP. This gave the class a dynamic rhythm that rewarded both durability and aggression.

From this foundation, I differentiated the two subclasses: Paladin and Barbarian. The Paladin embodied divine patience and explosive retaliation. Each stack of Fury granted armor and elemental resistance, and upon reaching a threshold, their next strike became a devastating Smite that consumed all Fury. This loop captured the fantasy of an immovable defender unleashing righteous power, balancing tank-like resilience with punishing bursts of offense.

The Barbarian, in contrast, leaned fully into relentless aggression. Fury stacks decayed over time, forcing players into a constant push to attack and be attacked in order to maintain momentum. Each basic attack built Fury, and when combined with high-risk, high-reward skills, Barbarians became unstoppable forces of chaos. Though challenging to implement, the result was one of the most mechanically unique subclasses in the game, rewarding reckless momentum with unmatched destructive power.

Together, the Warrior, Paladin, and Barbarian demonstrated how a single mechanic—Fury—could be interpreted in entirely different ways to create diverse playstyles. This system not only deepened class identity but also delivered some of the most engaging and memorable gameplay in Phoenix Arena.

Mage Class

The Mage was one of the most challenging archetypes to define. Unlike the Warrior and Rogue, which naturally fell into established fantasy tropes, the Mage’s two subclasses—Wizard and Warlock—were broad and open to interpretation. While their reliance on elemental damage already distinguished them from the physical fighters, I felt this alone wasn’t enough. To truly fulfill the design pillar of “meaningful choices,” the Mage needed an identity that expanded the game’s strategic depth rather than duplicating existing mechanics.

The breakthrough came with the idea of Hexes. Hexes acted as a unifying mechanic across the class, applied whenever a Mage inflicted a debuff status effect. For example, casting Polymorph would also apply one Hex. This provided a flexible framework for skills that manipulated status effects in diverse ways, from extending their duration to amplifying their damage. To balance their reliance on effects, Mages also gained scaling damage on basic attacks tied to their elemental attribute, ensuring they remained viable even outside heavy status-effect builds.

From there, I defined the two subclasses. The Wizard embodied the “red mage” archetype—explosive, high-damage, and relentless. Their power scaled with the number of Hexes on an opponent, amplifying both direct spell damage and status effects. This created a subclass that punished players who neglected elemental resistance and made Wizards a consistent offensive threat. By contrast, the Warlock embraced a darker fantasy: a selfish caster who thrived on prolonging opponents’ suffering. Warlocks extended the duration of debuffs based on Hex count, turning minor effects into oppressive lockdown tools. Crucially, this extension also applied to buffs, allowing Warlocks to scale their own power dangerously if left unchecked.

Together, the Mage, Wizard, and Warlock carved out a niche centered on manipulating the flow of battle through Hexes and status effects. While less mechanically divergent than Warriors, their subclasses still offered distinct strategies: the Wizard overwhelming foes with raw power, and the Warlock grinding them down with attrition. The result was a class that not only reinforced the fantasy of arcane mastery but also deepened the game’s systemic interplay.

Programs: Unity, Audacity, GitHub, Asana, Google Suite

Fig 9. How basic attacks interact with stuns/disruptions in Phoenix Arena

Fig 10. How basic attacks are implemented in other skills Phoenix Arena