Inside the Game: Quarter Past with Alex Uboldi

The design process for Queen by Midnight: Quarter Past was our chance to explore new design space for the princesses and the central bazaar cards everyone has access to. It was also a chance to look back at the base game and reflect on what played well, what fans enjoyed, and what mechanics to avoid moving forward. Our goal was to make all of the new princesses feel very distinct and unique, and I’m excited for players to see how we expanded the game in different ways.

Kyle Shire, the game’s creator and designer, created a base set of cards that laid out each princess’s vibes and special features. Then, the development team evaluated all the cards from the base game and the new set to holistically develop the cards to play well with each other. We valued that each card felt different and exciting, so we sought to preserve that while making each card easier to parse and understand. 

When designing the core six princesses, our philosophy was to combine “flavor with function”, so the princess would communicate their personality through card play. We’ve carried that design philosophy through to the expansion. For example, with the character of Elise LeKraken, her lore tells the story of how she hoards treasures and relics that she has collected over the years and sunk at the bottom of the ocean. We designed many of her cards to interact with her own personal banish pile to represent her hoard called the Grotto. Many of her powers involve filling the Grotto with many powerful cards and then using those cards to charge her ultimate and give her more options on every turn. No other princess plays around with banishing cards en masse, so Elise gets to dabble in this unique mechanical space that makes her feel like a true collector. 

We are excited to see what fantastic combinations players find and how they use the standalone game to become the new Midnight Queen.