‘The level 3 zombie looks like Keith Richards’
The all-ages tone doesn’t detract from the gorgeous art. The first 12 monsters available at launch a split into free and purchase tiers: The vampire, ghost, zombie, Frankenstein’s monster, and werewolf are free; the boogeyman, siren, swamp creature, mummy, goblin, witch, and wendigo are in-app purchases. All bear similarities to their iconic counterparts from classic films. So the level 1 vampire looks like he’d belong in Nosferatu more than he would in Twilight.
“One of the principal 2D artists on the team — Mike Bazzell — is an old veteran of Firaxis of many years,” said McDonough. “And I think he lives and breathes all classic monster movies and monster horror culture. His office, his clothing, his car – it’s all just like bedecked. … The other artists on the team mixed it up: The zombie has this sort of skate-punk, ‘Teenage Wasteland’ look about him, and his room is like this rocker room. The level three zombie looks like Keith Richards! We had a lot of fun cherry picking from the artistic archetypes over the years to make all our monsters.”
Their philosophy for designing the creatures is “If everything is overpowered, then nothing is overpowered.” Each monster does at least one specific thing really well, but their powers find counters from the abilities of the others. The werewolf’s fast and heavy attacks are no use against the mummy, who can absorb the damage because of its high amount of hit points. So choosing which set (like choosing a deck of cards) to use before you play is just a matter of what play style you prefer.
Above: Unless you have a powerful creature that can defeat them, it’s better to steer clear of the mob entirely.
With a handful of new monsters as paid content ready to go some time after launch, it sounds like your options will only continue to expand. But to ensure this growth, the team is starting to draw from sources other than film and comic books.
“For the future, we started to look at sort of — a little bit of drifting back to the Civ roots — we started to look at culturally or mythologically significant monsters,” said McDonough. “What if we did a set of monsters based on like Asian mythology, like a dragon or mogwai or something? Or what if we did Arabian Nights and we had like a djinn or an ifrit or something like that? Sort of great monsters from legends across the world.
“And when we started to look in that direction, there are a ton to choose from. We could probably do a year’s worth of content on Greco-Roman [mythology] alone. So that’s where we imagine we could go if there’s enough demand for more monsters.”