Hello Duelists! I wanted to make a small blog post about the design of the Museum Arc. This is a look into choices made during the Yugioh Scrolls and Kingdom Duels development for those that want to check these things out.

The Storytelling

• Ep 41: I wanted to expand on some potential Duelist Kingdom duels that we missed. I think the idea of recapping/revisiting a previous arc was nice, and probably something to explore in the future.
• Ep 42: To me it was important to flesh out Kaiba’s conflict with the Big Five, but didn’t wanted to have Yugi and the group here with the whole “Legendary Heroes” arc as it was going to feel a bit repetitive with the upcoming Virtual World, so I focused more on Kaiba and Mokuba to deal with this treat.
• Ep 43: Not much changed here from the original show, but a few links to the Museum are established.
• Ep 44-45: As the focus is on Kingdom Duels, i wanted to adapt Dungeon Dice Monsters to it while keeping the idea as close as possible. The duel itself ended up really similar, so that was great.
• Ep 46: I needed the group to meet Shizuka early so this was a good chance for it, as they all visit the museum together for the Egyptian Exhibition and problems start to come up.
• Ep 47-52: Now that we had Otogi and Shizuka in the group, it was time to introduce the Virtual World subplot. I kept it mostly the same but with some changes to the duels and contained to one duel per episode. The structure is roughly the same, but the power level was toned down. I took the opportunity to give side-characters a few more interesting game decisions.
• Ep 53-57: The second half of this subarc is a bit different, as it is more focused and involves a huge multi-duel that gives the side-character once again a time to shine. It was also more focused on Kaiba taking down both Noah and Gozaburo, so Yugi didn’t had the same pivotal role as he did in the anime, which i think was better because this was mostly Kaiba’s subplot.
• Ep 58-59: I wanted to include Shadi’s action from the manga/toei series here, and it lined up pretty well with the rest of the plot. His actions against the curator, professor and yugi’s friend make him a more complex pseudo-antagonist that what he was in the show. We had a brief introduction of a character that will be important later on.
• Ep 60-61: Now the plot starts to connect to the egyptian mythos and the upcoming Battle City arc thanks to the involvement of Ishizu and Marik in these two episodes.
• Ep 62-63: I wanted to keep Anzu’s date with the Other Yugi, but making the small chance of having her fight Johnny Steps which i think works a bit better. I then took the opportunity of have the Other Yugi have a longer encounter with Ishizu, even dueling a bit in their minds as a sort of test, which goes in line with every Millennium Item user we had.
• Ep 64-65: Obelisk had to be kept a secret so i think not revealing his abilities works better when Kaiba duels the computer. The tournament is announced, which is the main link to the next arc, but then we follow Bakura go into the museum. While this was barely seen in the anime, in here i gave it a lot more of an importance as I feel an encounter with Ishizu, Bakura and Shadi could have been really interesting to see at this point. Revealing more of Shadi’s backstory while showcasing Bakura’s power was also the idea to make him a bit more threatening.

Game Design Thoughts (by Set Release)

Loose Ends

I started things off with this very first set. It was the first time of me designing cards like these, essentially leaving the comfort of keeping anime mechanics 1-to-1 and exploring new design spaces. I liked this set, even though it wasn’t as flashy as the others that we had later in this arc, it established a good foundation and gave support to things that could have happened in Duelist Kingdom.

Dungeon of Luck

This was an insane set to design. Rewriting the Dungeon Dice Monsters rules into this game was a monumental task, specially on the tracking aspect of the duel (every move, every combat, every effect, every positional change, how they shape their dice, etc.). Really fun though, and it gave me the chance to consolidate the Labyrinth mechanic from the original arc even further, creating the whole concept of Tilemaps and Tiles using the artwork of the card, which i really liked.

Virtual Nightmare, Body Snatchers and Facing the Past

I have to put these three sets together in this section because they share the narrative and the spotlight in a condensed way. The main focus here was obviously the Deckmaster system. It was challenging to design because it was super weird and it really tested the basic rules.

I wanted to stay true to the idea that the mechanics have to adapt to our game and not fundamentally change it. The easy route would have been to add a special “Deckmaster” slot and card type but i refused to change the original gameboard by adding a new zone. So i had to find a different way.

I thought about an Extra Deck Summoning mechanic for Deckmasters, but given that the whole idea was about using “any” monster as a Deckmaster, and the story already included Alters and Fusions as Deckmasters, the idea of a new summoning mechanic wouldn’t have been a true “unique” summoning mechanic. It would also end up confined to only these 3 sets because we never saw the Deckmaster concept ever again.

That’s why i used Rule Cards instead, which ended up working pretty well and have an inherent protection that is useful here. I had the opportunity to play a bit with the Erosion mechanic, which is meant to remain different to the Banish in Yugioh and i totally intend for it to stay that way. Luckily the whole thing ended up working pretty well.

That said, a different problem arose in this arc: As the Virtual World originally aired between the two Battle City halfs, it had a lot of cards that in the anime debuted during Battle City (like Dark Magician Girl or Gearfried). I felt that introducing those cards here would lessen the impact they had in their very first duels in the Battle City Arc, so I ended up making quite a lot of changes in the duels trying to keep the “new” cards like those to the minimum. It wasn’t always possible to do (like with Jinzo) but i think overall it worked out.

Speaking of, it was here in these three sets that we started seeing the importance of the Ritual Summoning mechanic going forward as the main replacement of the Tribute Summons. Given that we won’t have the Regular / Battle City Rules we had to pivot to the Ritual mechanic for the big and gamechanging monsters.

A final note is that this virtual sub-arc gave me the chance to play and design a lot with Terrains too, so it was a more natural progression between the heavy Terrain-focus of Duelist Kingdom and the more urban environment of dueling in Battle City.

Millennium Legacy and Spirit of the Puzzle

These were super cool sets to work on because they have a ton of cards and mechanics completely new that i had to create mostly from scratch. Thematically we are really focusing now in the museum itself. Having Ishizu, Marik, Shadi and Bakura all linked together in these two sets was really important going forward, as focusing on the millennium item wielders was what i wanted the most for this arc.

Mechanically, the idea of Subduels was really fitting for Shadi’s mind manipulations given that we never saw him duel in the original show. As someone who always loved the idea of those video game yugioh puzzles of “win in 1 turn” i was quite pleased with bringing that idea into the game itself.

The Diaha rule mechanic was also a tricky one to design because it requires to plan ahead and to leave a lot of design space open, as it will be relevant in 3 arcs from here and that’s a long time. I’m not sure what’s the game and the story is going to look at that point, but i hope this works well.

I wanted to respect the idea of the cards coming from egyptian stone tablets, while also tying it a bit more to the Ritual Mechanic, which i think feels natural as the replacement for the Tribute Mechanic in this game. Having Rituals take the spotlight like this is, in my mind, also fitting for this DM era as the core Extra Deck mechanic of the time (just as Fusions for GX, Synchros for 5Ds, etc.)

Shortcomings

There were few specific areas that I didn’t like during design. One of them is that I felt that we had a lot of filler cards in the form of an ever expanding list of Duelist Setup cards. I feel that having so many of them dilutes (a bit) the cool factor of the Rule cards themselves.

The decision of how we release the Duelist Setup cards is what causes this, as they themselves are a list of what cards each duelist played in each duel, so its a design choice to have them be like this, and they will grow a lot in the future. Personally i dont like that it ends up resulting in so many similar cards that see little play at all. They are a bit confusing too, for example if one would want to make a Yugi deck, which duelist setup should he choose? there are 20 of them to pick, and they are mostly similar. Does it matter? Should you pick any of them?

Another problem i saw was… dividing the sets into 7 ended up making the whole process too slow in my opinion. It took around 7 months to release sets #8 to #14, and at that pace we are looking to complete Duel Monsters at a total of 35 sets in around 2 years, which to me feels too far-away. This is on me, I need to do better.

Final Words

In the end, i really enjoyed working on the Museum Arc. It gave me the opportunity of adapting interesting mechanics and fleshing out what the Kingdom Duels rulebook is capable of. There were a lot of challenging decisions and interactions that i had to figure it out, while also trying to not go overboard with the changes to both the story and the duels.

The storyline of the arc itself could have been a bit more related to the “Museum” itself but that was going to be difficult because its trying to do a bit too many things and stretching over a bunch of different plot points. It’s a bit weird to call it “Museum Arc” when so many different things happen, but i’m okay with that and i tried to relate the major stuff to the Museum whenever i had the chance (including the virtual sub-arc).

While i took the time for experimenting and adapting weird ideas, i look ahead and see in Battle City the opportunity to return to the core of the project and expand the main mechanics, focusing more on the base experience which will be good for everyone i hope.

So, that’s it for me! Thank you for reading this far, and into Battle City we go!