Final Fantasy : The Crystal Card Game

Please note that the following article deals with the coverage of a fan-made product that isn't licensed by Square-Enix. "While great games are forged by great minds, I strongly believe it is the privilege of lesser men to honor a franchise, because individuals do not suffer from financial expectations while paying respects to their beloved games, and thus are free to give in to their truest imagination."

- Joffrey Lannoy

Final Fantasy : The Crystal Card Game is a fan-made living card game developed by Joffrey Lannoy, a french fan and designer. The project evolved considerably throughout its 16 years of development only to attain its definitive version in 2021. The card game covers the entire Final Fantasy franchise and uses upgraded in-game content from almost every game and through almost every remake. It is intended to be presented to Square-Enix once its physical copy is made available.

The card game comes with a story arc that takes its origins in Final Fantasy VII, but mixes all the different universes in a coherent multiverse. Due to the strange marketing policy of Squaresoft back then (concerning titles like Final Fantasy Adventure and the Final Fantasy Legend trilogy), parallel franchises like the Sa.Ga franchise are to be added to the card game in order to respect the fact they once bear the Final Fantasy title.

The very first physical tests of the project have started in late 2021. The game features a variety of 12 different types of playable cards, each bearing a single color for the players to easily identify the content of their deck. Joffrey Lannoy wanted his game to be challenging and to emphasize on both strategy and stress along the game, in order to provide new sensations while playing, but also to remain accessible to every player and Final Fantasy fan.

Gameplay
 Main article : Final Fantasy : The Cystal Card Game gameplay 

Players are using cards to duel one another. The purpose of the game is to reduce the enemy crystal's HP to zero - thus destroying said crystal and winning the game. To achieve victory, players can use a variety of 12 playable cards, 3 player cards as well as 2 different gameplays.

The playable cards are easily recognizable by the use of a single colored theme. They can also be divided in three categories :


 * All Cards.jpgMonster cards are black
 * Trinity cards are yellow
 * Soul Eater cards are blue
 * Unlimited cards are white


 * Hero cards are red
 * Role cards are pink
 * Eidolon cards are purple
 * Familiar cards are orange


 * Crystal cards are turquoise
 * Dominion cards are green
 * Item cards are gray
 * Xtra cards come with a bicolor (gold and silver) shaped X

It is crucial for the players to understand that the back of their cards is of the same color, which implies their opponent will be able to know what kind of cards they are holding ... and vice versa. It is a specific aspect of the game Joffrey Lannoy wanted to implement, to increase the notions of strategy and stress to each player.

In addition to these, players can use three specific player cards : a Player Crystal card, as well as two unique features called The End and All or Nothing. While players can freely enjoy their games without any use of a specific strategy, two different gameplays have been created for people who would like to excel in a particular aspect of their deck. The first one features elements with the addition of five Crystal Principle cards, allowing players to embed their entire playmat with a specific element, strengthening element-related cards as well as weakening opposed ones. Also, a zodiac-based gameplay has been added and covers 12 of the 13 starsigns. It works the same way as the elemental gameplay, empowering and reducing cards related to one zodiac starsign or its opposite.

The playmat is of simple design, allowing each player to summon up to seven cards, as well as using four Xtra cards at the same time. Spaces for the player's crystal and gameplay card are shown to be located in the middle. There is also a space for the player's deck as well as a graveyard called the Rift, where beaten and sacrificed cards end up, much like in traditional trading card games like Yu-Gi-Oh, for example. Players need to choose an elemental crystal in order to start a game. That crystal, to be chosen between fire, water, earth, wind and darkness, represents their HP. When said crystal's HP are reduced to zero, the game is over and the player loses. Each player crystal has the power to embed one card space of the playmat with the corresponding element for the rest of the game. Players who want to take advantage of this elemental asset will trigger a " Crystal Link " phase at every end of their turn, forcing their crystal to drain 10% of the maximum HP of every summoned unit on that particular space. Should the player activate a Crystal Principal card, embedding their whole playmat with an element will trigger the Crystal Link phase on all their spaces. This feature can be as much of an asset as a curse, depending on how the player handles this automatic HP drain.

Players are using a regular six-sided die (which is included in each starter pack) to determine how many moves they benefit every turn. This phase is called "Action Dice Turn", and introduces the notion of luck to the game, a very important aspect of the card game to its creator.

It is impossible to deal direct damage to the enemy crystal - except if a card says so. To actually reduce the enemy crystal's HP, players need to destroy the enemy units. While units have HP of their own, dealing damage works the same way as in Final Fantasy games, reducing the unit's HP. However, should the damage taken overwhelm the unit's current HP, then the strike is considered an "Overkill" and any extra damage is reduced from the crystal instead. This works for both physical and magical attacks.

While players can choose to use a monster-based strategy (using only black, yellow, blue and white cards), or a hero-based strategy (using only red, pink, purple and orange cards), they are free to mix all of the cards to their heart's content. The limit for a player's deck is set to 99 cards.

Setting
''In a different and far away universe, a malevolent being summoned a supernova, trying to achieve his dark designs. In the monumental clash that followed, the collapsing of entire planets combined with the negative energy of the meteor resulted in a fracture in time and space. While all universes are said to remain balanced in harmony thanks to the blessing of five legendary star crystals scattered accross dimensions, the shockwave caused by the planets' destruction wronged this balance and the walls of reality started to break.''

''Unable to sustain such dark energy, the star crystals began to shatter one by one, weakening the seals of ancient cursed souls trapped for ages unknown. Now free to wander from one reality to another, these evil spirits seem to converge on the last remaining star crystal, located on a planet called Verdito. To prevent the imminent doom, the elemental crystals of Verdito used their combined powers to call upon heroes and creatures from accross dimensions, bringing their souls and powers through the cracks in the fabric of reality, in the form of magic cards.''

They entrusted a few chosen ones with the powers of these cards in order to protect the last star crystal from being destroyed, threatening to release the terrible truth hidden within ...

Characters
While the Crystal Card Game does not come with any other media than the cards themselves (and audio chronicles on Youtube), a storyline has been prepared in order to assure a coherent universe arount the project, and thus features characters who are related to the plot. However, artworks are yet to be designed.


 *  Caspir Desmerta  - Chosen by the Fire Crystal, her master card is Phoenix. Born April 16th, she bears the Aries starsign. Stubborn, ill-tempered and totally reckless, Caspir has a strong character and knows it very well. She's blindly focused on her task to the point of ignoring everything around her as long as she can achieve her goal. She's as much of a sharpshooter as a fearsome adversary when she decides to use her rapier instead of her gun. Straight to the point, ofently rude and with little concern for others, she usually prefers to act alone but despite her radical behavior, she swore an oath to her crystal, one she intends to keep.


 *  Orga Da'Saxelia  - informations not available yet.


 *  Icarnas Bellangaros  - informations not available yet.


 *  Jerizel Dio Calathras  - informations not available yet.


 *  Arzaeo Valierta  - Chosen by the Dark Crystal, his master card is Diabolos. Born May 23rd, he bears the Gemini starsign. While legends say the Dark Crystal bears some kind of strange will compared to its elemental counterparts, Arzaeo seems to be totally blinded by his personal quest of a lost love. Nobody knows for how long he has served under the dark powers of his crystal, to the point that there are rumors saying he's immortal. Dedicated only to his cause, he cares not about the impending doom that's about to jeopardize the entire planet, despite possessing overwhelming powers himself. Some even say he wants to challenge the Goddess herself, to best her in battle and take her place in the mythology of Verdito.

Side characters :


 *  Valerama As'Vercir  - While there has been many rivalries between him and Caspir, Valerama usually considers her as a friend, although the opposite doesn't seem to apply. A young swordsman who seriously lacks confidence, he is a talented warrior but does not want to hurt people that easily. He believes this to be a weakness, and also the reason why the Fire Crystal chose his friend over him, but has never felt any regret about this as he prefers to assist her than bear the burden of the task.


 *  Ferra Varte Della Lorza  - A former highborne sharing a tiny fraction of her mother's seeress powers, she chose the path of the Vestals, the songstresses of the Crystals. Utterly convinced that the darkness to come, of which she had dreamt about, could not be countered by the power of light only, she dedicated her duty as Vestal to the Dark Crystal, trying to reach its echoes and find an answer to her fears. Unfortunately, her resolve backfired as she slowly but surely lost her mind and sanity, as the more she kept dreaming of the end to come, the more insane she became. When she accidentally stumbled upon Arzaeo Valierta, she instantly fell in love with him and his brutal ominous ways. Now totally obsessed with that dark knight she witnessed committing atrocities, she decided to leave the temple of the Dark Crystal and her Vestal duty behind, while taking up arms in order to find Arzaeo again and do ... god knows what ...


 *  Berano Amazerda  - An infamous astrologer known accross every dimension. Legend says he was a star stealer. Very few informations are known about him, and most pretend his very existence is just a myth.

In Novissim Diebus
In order to strengthen the lore of the Crystal Card Game, Joffrey Lannoy decided to create in July 2021 a series of audio chronicles, following the protagonists during the last days of planet Verdito. These audio chronicles, called "In Novissim Diebus" (aka The Last Days) are available to listen on the Youtube channel of the project. They are made possible through the use of existing dialogues throughout the series.

The first entry has been released in August 2021 and focuses on the Fire Crystal's chosen one, Caspir Desmerta and her friend Valemara As'Vercir as they attempt to infiltrate the highly guarded perimeter of the capital's cathedral, where a monster has been sighted stealing the souls of the inhabitants. It also sees the appearance of minor characters who have yet to be properly introduced (bearing the voice actors of Tidus from Final Fantasy X and Baralai from Final Fantasy X-2) and what appears to be the main antagonist (bearing the voice actor of Bhunivelze in Final Fantasy XIII : Lightning Returns).

The second audio chronicle is still in progress.

List of known characters :


 * Gwendoline Yeo (Paine, from Final Fantasy X-2) : Caspir Desmerta
 * Vincent Martella (Hope, from the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy) : Valerama As'Vercir
 * Tara Strong (Rikku, from Final Fantasy X and X-2) : Ferra Varte Della Lorza
 * Liam O'Brien (Caius, from Final Fantasy XIII and Lightning Returns) : Arzaeo Valierta
 * Laura Bailey (Cloud of Darkness, from the Dissidia franchise) : The Goddess

List of yet to be discovered characters :


 * James Arnold Taylor (Tidus and Shyuin from Final Fantasy X and X-2) : unknown character
 * Josh Gomez (Baralai, from Final Fantasy X-2) : unknown character
 * Daniel Riordan (Bhunivelze, from Final Fantasy XIII : Lightning Returns) : mysterious entity

Early development
The game officially started in 2004. Joffrey Lannoy had previously been very impressed when discovering Final Fantasy VIII 's Triple Triad and Final Fantasy IX 's Tetra Master. The earliest stage of the project was to initially expand the Triple Triad with some new cards from the Super Nintendo episodes. While being at first a simple copy of the original Triple Triad, the need of a bigger project was soon to be felt and the creator quickly realized a mere copy could not fill his expectations. While he never played it, he grew very fond of the Yu-Gi-Oh duel system after watching the series. Thus, during the following years (2004-2007) he began using existing card templates (from both Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic the Gathering) to learn how to use his newest design software he recently acquired. Prior to this project, Joffrey Lannoy never used such a software and was completely unaware of its possibilties.

In 2008, he got his very first job in a casino, at the age of 22. He was working as dealer, mainly for Blackjack and Roulette tables. While this sudden professional activity drastically reduced the time he could allow himself to work on his project, it also became a very important part of the coming Crystal Card Game. The constant manipulation of playing cards reinforced his idea of a living card game. The games that ran in the casino helped him fully understand notions like contest, bluff, victory, defeat, gamble, stress and fun.

The spark of the cards
While coping with his personal and professional lives, Joffrey Lannoy started to master his software in 2010. It was one year later, in 2011, that the very first version of his card game came out. Back then, the project was still more a hommage than an actual living card game, and had yet to receive a background as well as a true identity in the Final Fantasy universe.

The project was first called Unlimited Spark, in reference to the special attack Mega Spark from Tri-Point, in Final Fantasy VIII. While the card game was only starting to be created, Joffrey Lannoy rapidly began to heighten his expectations concerning both design and gameplay. The first version (V1) was supposed to be playable with a device that could scan the cards, a sort of mix between Yugi's duel disk and Duke Devlin's computer database in Yu-Gi-Oh. The cards were created with barcodes that could initiate a computer search in a planned database that never saw release in the end, due to a lack of compatibility between the barcodes reader and the cards themselves.

Two years later, in 2013, Joffrey Lannoy tried to adapt his failing barcode gameplay with digital codes instead, but with little success. He decided to undergo some design changes and it was that year that both second and third versions (V2 & V3) came to life. On the other hand, heavy physical injuries kept him from advancing on the project for the next two years.

Focusing on a much simpler gameplay using regular text lines on the cards, it was in 2015 that the project saw its new design change with a fourth version (V4) and later then in 2016 with a fifth one (V5) which would later become the most solid base for the actual design of the game. The cards began to emphasize on a much simpler unique color theme and were starting to match the overall idea of the concept.

A tale of crystals
The year 2018 saw the release of the sixth version (V6) which established even more upcoming standards of what the final project would look like three years later. More than a newer version of the design, most of the cards were mainly improved. The project stopped being called Unlimited Spark and gained its final title : The Crystal Card Game. However, the idea of a background story remained absent. More cards were coming up with each new design (up until then, only half of the final roster had been created). The constant addition of new details, borders, frames and textures ended in May 2021 with the final version (V7.5) and a total of 12 playable cards, and 4 totally new player cards.

The gameplay elements were finalized during the last two years of development. It focused less on the initial plan of a tactical genre, and more on a traditional card game. While a first logo for the game was created in 2018, it was soon replaced with its final version in 2021. While the intend of showing the project to Square-Enix has been assumed quite early in the production, the addition of a real commercial dimension to the game has been decided during the final year of development.

Two different gameplays, one focusing on elemental strategies and the other on zodiac starsigns strategies, came up in 2021. Joffrey Lannoy began to grow concern about the different types of players all over the world and decided to add these specific gameplays to allow players to customize their decks and play as freely as possible.

Trivia

 * Cards references use a five-digits number to classify the collection. The number is set to a maximum of 99999 per category, referring to the maximum damage the player can inflict with normal attacks in various Final Fantasy games when breaking the damage limit.
 * Players can summon a total of 7 units on their playmat. This number refers to Final Fantasy VII, where the story arc takes its origin.
 * Each playmat comes with a total of 15 card zones. This number refers to Final Fantasy XV, more specifically to Final Fantasy Versus XIII, before it was renamed, as it was the game Joffrey Lannoy anticipated the most throughout the entire series.
 * Audio chronicles from the "In Novissim Diebus" project all bear the sentence : "this is a reality based on fantasy", a mirrored statement from Final Fantasy Versus XIII which used the phrase "this is a fantasy based on reality", once again a hommage to the most anticipated game of the franchise for the creator of the card game.
 * To cover non english translated games or poorly translated ones (like Mystic Quest, Bahamut Lagoon or the Final Fantasy Legend trilogy), Joffrey Lannoy had to re-translate most of the games' content by working on the original japanese names and searching for the best corellations or already existing examples of official translated names throughout the series. This step considerably slowed down the production of the cards at the time, despite the images already being ready.
 * Much like Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy V, where the player obtains more jobs with each saved crystal, the appereance of new cards kept going with each new graphic version of the cards. Their design, however, remained quite chaotic as the ideas sometimes just didn't come as Joffrey Lannoy expected. This is particularly true for the Familiar (orange), Crystal (turquoise) and Role (pink) cards, which have been invented in the earliest designs (nearly ten years ago) but were completely left aside until their completion in 2021.
 * The final cards to be designed were created in only 9 days, from April 30th to May 8th, 2021. A fun fact is at that time, Joffrey Lannoy suffered from depression and kind of locked himself working on and on, creating some of the cards he never had any idea about in a manner of days - if not hours - only.
 * While he grew very fond of both Final Fantasy and Yu-Gi-Oh, Joffrey Lannoy admitted he never wanted people to fight one another in his game. Instead, he decided to represent players - and their HP - by a crystal so they wouldn't feel like they're hurting each other.