Sean and Alon are joined by Andrew Parnell from Million Dreams to talk about Once Upon A Galaxy, a new mobile card battler. Together, they zoom into space to discuss the game's design philosophies, lessons learned from earlier card games, and the path from accessible information to strategic depth. Support us at: https://www.patreon.com/wideflank Join the Wide Flank Discord!!! https://discord.gg/ACbDjNhMpJ All Wide Flank links: https://linktr.ee/wideflank Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Cold open 00:00:31 - Intro 00:06:37 - Talk start 00:06:53 - How would Andrew describe Once Upon A Galaxy? 00:09:18 - How much of the game's audience comes from a card background as opposed to a video game background? 00:12:24 - How does the team prioritize accessibility in the game? 00:18:45 - What's an autobattler and how did the team decide to make an autobattler? 00:21:10 - How does the team think about the player processing information during the battle phase? 00:29:32 - What is Andrew's role on the game? 00:30:45 - Game flow during the game (continued) 00:31:43 - Learning from players: "there isn't a visceral gut hit between the number 2 and the number 3” 00:33:57 - “Bad” cards 00:36:02 - The Deck / booster packs aren't lootboxes 00:40:57 - How does the team think about the importance of aesthetics in the game? 00:46:20 - Talking about asynchronous play 00:50:29 - Andrew’s path into games 00:54:18 - How does the team think about making a game watchable? 00:57:25 - "Can we be the best 'play again' game on your phone?" + talking mobile games 01:02:16 - What is the creative collaboration process at Million Dreams? 01:04:21 - “Is it fun? 01:07:14 - What's Smee? Who is Smee? (public domain characters) 01:10:53 - Wrapping up Show notes: Download and play Once Upon a Galaxy for free: http://www.galaxy.fun/download Once Upon a Galaxy Discord: https://discord.gg/p7cuZQrmdX Andrew’s Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/parn3y Andrew’s Twitter: https://x.com/Parney_ Mark Rosewater’s Drive To Work podcast – “Bad Cards”: https://youtu.be/gBvOcir_-kw