Yes, it's true. Our finest cat tinkerers have been hard at work, and now our site has a blog system! We'll be using it to post all sorts of things, such as development diaries, deck profiles, articles, short stories, and more.
It's been a long time since the Animal Kingdom project began. Originally conceived all the way back in the decade before this one (which is an eternity ago), it started life as something more akin to a board game. It still had the same theme of mayors building cities and hampering others' attempts to do the same, with assistant mayors determining the game plan. They were picked randomly at the start of the game back then. The game even had the same setting, although the world and the stories contained within it were just seeds of ideas comparative to what they've now bloomed into.
Over many years of ideas and playtesting, Animal Kingdom morphed into what we know it as today. Even after it became a card game, it took a lot of iteration to get to its current state. Can you believe there was a phase where the game didn't have quests or adventurers? It wasn't very interactive, but we liked certain elements of how the game did work, which lead to the creation of adventurers and the quest system to complement those functioning elements. In turn, that also added new, interesting elements to the setting. The game mechanics and the lore have been partners that grow with one another, in that sense.
There's a lot to look forward to as we move into the next phase of the project, and the entire team is ecstatic to share it with everyone. This card game, this world, these characters — they're all labours of love, and maybe we say this a lot, but we really do thank everyone in our wonderful community (and everyone who will, in the future, be part of said community) from the bottom of our hearts for being along for the ride.
2024 is going to be big for Animal Kingdom. We hope you're looking forward to it as much as we are.
Til next time, mayors!