War of Omens
Trading card game
War of Omens is a digital CCG/TCG game developed and published by San Francisco based startup Fifth Column Games. The game was originally an internal hobby project made by one of the team, but became so popular round the office that the decision was made to develop it into a fully playable TCG experience on the web.
Lead engineer Ben Oster recalls the moment development began on the public version of the game:
The game originally started as a very basic 2D prototype. When the team officially began development on it, the desire to bring it from a 2D to a 3D experience was unanimous. We researched several development platforms and technologies, and determined that Away3D was the best fit due to its’ intuitive interface, open source nature, active community, and excellent documentation. The API allowed us to quickly add objects to a scene, and we had cards flying around in a fairly short amount of time.
Additionally, War of Omens required a very polished visual effects system. After researching various options, the team settled on the Away3D-based Sparticle effects tool from Effecthub, with which they were able to quickly generate many high quality effects that were simple to integrate into the game.
Currently Fifth Column Games are working on bringing the game to mobile platforms, a conversion made possible by the integration of Away3D with Adobe AIR. In the meantime, play the browser version by going to play.warofomens.com, or watch the trailer / gameplay videos below.
