From the idea to the game

Hi, my name is Tom and I have the game all around Chibi Developed Army of Doom. I am currently 31 years old and working as a designer. I've been a passionate cosplayer since 2006 and I'm firmly anchored in the anime-manga scene. Mostly I created the cosplays myself. My favorites have always been complicated armor with huge weapons.

In 2014 I came up with the idea to Chibi Army of Doom. It's actually a funny story, because a cosplay weapon I was building at the time left Styrodur leftovers, which I used to represent enemies in ours Pen&Paper Round had used. In a spontaneous inspiration playing cards were added. and Tadaaa, the game was born. In the beginning there were only five characters (mage, warrior, thief, priest and necromancer) each of the characters had a male and a female form to symbolize equality. Since I had no idea about design or anything like that at the time, the cards looked really bad. But that didn't stop us from playing this game.

At first we only played this prototype with friends. And everyone loved it. Then, in the anime and manga scene in my city, more and more people came up to me and wanted to play the game. It was then that I realized I had created something bigger. Even though the game itself was cheaply made, there were no pictures on the cards and the figures were made from scraps, everyone loved it. I had the figures at the time through one Chibi Generator built on the net and then adapted a little to my wishes via Photoshop. Hence the name "Chibi Army“. As for the addition "of Doom' I explain below.

In retrospect, the fact that so many people loved the prototype back then is somehow logical, because the game struck a chord with the target group. It was a mix of everything you've ever known:

It had trading card elements, there were a lot of Magic and Yugioh players at our hangout at the time, and they were targeted with it
The characters were inspired by classic D&D, again there were a lot of people who spent hours in fantasy worlds back then.
Each character's role was inspired by WoW (World of Warcraft). Even if this game is not as popular today as it was 7 years ago, the classic roles of healer, tank and damage dealer are still widespread.
You could play together and against each other. Especially the planning of plots to do one player together was a lot of fun for many, only to stab his partner in the back shortly before the plan was executed.
The super cute figures were of course the magnet in the target group.
Because you could choose to play a male or female role, the game was well received by the then burgeoning trans scene.
But the most important point was that you could play the game anytime and anywhere as long as you had a table (or lawn) available.

The interesting thing is that Chibi Army of Doom was always created as a battle royale game, but the era of battle royale games came 3 years later pubg and Fortnite began.

And today?

Now 7 years later I had to reorient myself due to Corona and now I want to make this game the way it was always in my head. With professional designs, in different languages and above all with a super sweet background story to the actually brutal carnage. Since I can edit great pictures myself, but my drawing skills are rather moderate, this part has to be taken over by someone else. But I can't possibly ask a draftsman to do more than 100 drawings without getting bored. So I looked for 10 artists so each character would be illustrated by a different artist. The trick is that I made sure that every artist comes from a different country to make it clear that it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from or what you look like. It's always about what you can do. And that should Chibi Army of Doom also clarify. Unfortunately, I had to scrap the idea of creating a male and female character for each class, since the characters now have a personality, a name, and a backstory. Doubling all this and making different versions of each drawing is beyond my budget. But every character is individual and everyone should be able to connect personally with a character. In addition, the focus on only male and female is no longer up to date.

How did the "of Doom" come about?

The "of Doom“ At first glance, it doesn’t go with the cute ones Chibi Characters. The origin of this appendix has a long history, because on the one hand the name "Chibi Army' Nice, but the name was a bit off. In 2005 I had one of the first with some friends MMORPG played, Ragnarok On-line. There you could combine items with opponent's cards so that the items received powerful effects. In addition, the name of the item always got an appendix, for example "of kindness“. There was a card you could put in shoes which made sure that you could constantly rain down meteors from the sky. This gives the item the nickname "of Doom" obtain. Then, among friends, the “of Doom’ always an appendage when you have something that is way too strong. After principle: “Everything is better when you of Doom behind.” According to this statement, I believe that the game Chibi Army can only get better if youof Doom' appended at the back. And so is the name "Chibi Army of Doom" was born. Which, by the way, was the name of the game 7 years ago.