Today, we invite you to discover how Seeds of Unity came to life through the collaborative efforts of our Lore, Art, and Game Design teams. Throughout this article, we will look back at the birth of this expansion and how the central theme of meeting and unity guided every stage of its development; from the worldbuilding of the city of Asty to the creation of its gameplay mechanics and visual identity.

More than just a glimpse of the final result, this article invites you behind the scenes of a set's creation, where narrative, visual, and gameplay intentions are woven together to give birth to a coherent and living universe. To present these elements, we’ve called upon our following team members:

Yoshiaki Mimura - Narrative Designer

As a Narrative Designer for Altered and a roleplayer for over 35 years, Yoshi breathes life into the game's universe, drawing inspiration from stories across the globe. He believes that a world's true richness comes from its inhabitants. As such, whether it’s through individual characters or player decisions, he ensures that everything leaves its mark on the story.

Gabriel Amalric - Art Director

As one of our Art Directors working with our team of illustrators, Gabriel ensures that every piece of art is vibrant, emotionally resonant, and clear. For Seeds of Unity, his goal was to capture the wonder of discovering a new civilization, ensuring that the characters truly feel like the authentic inhabitants and citizens of the city.

Léa Roulée - Game Designer

As a Game Designer, Léa pushes the innovative mechanics of our game (such as the Reserve, Adventure cards, or Heroes) to their full potential to create a gameplay experience unique to Altered. For Seeds of Unity, she focused on bridging the gap between the central themes of sharing and meeting directly within the gameplay. As a result, the mechanics reflect the cultural exchange at the heart of this expansion’s story.

Every new Altered set begins long before the first card is ever drawn. Around a table, the Lore, Art, and Game Design departments gather to define the shared vision that will guide the entire development process. These creative committees are pivotal moments where everyone contributes their ideas, constraints, and intuitions to sketch out the broad strokes of the upcoming universe: the tone, themes, heroes, major mechanics, and the overall narrative direction.

This work is, above all, collaborative and iterative. Nothing is set in stone; certain gameplay ideas might influence the story, while others might prompt a revision of a lore element or a visual concept. The goal remains constant: to maintain total harmony between every aspect of the game, story, art direction, and player experience.

Each week, new proposals emerge, transform, or are replaced. Mechanics are tested and evolve alongside the development of the story and the visual atmosphere. Gradually, the set takes shape: the cards, locations, and characters are refined together to tell a unified story through gameplay.

Once the narrative and artistic framework is firmly established, we begin what we call internally the "Lore and Art Briefs." These define what will be depicted on each card based on its effect and type. These briefs, written over several weeks by the Lore team, are then reviewed in meetings. Every card is collectively validated to guarantee consistency before being handed over to the artists. The artists can then make these concepts their own, infusing them with their unique sensibility to breathe life into the illustrations you discover in the game.

This process relies on a balance between methodology and creativity. Shared production tools such as bibles, briefs, and weekly trackers allow each team to move in the same direction while still leaving room for experimentation and spontaneous ideas.

It is this collective dynamic, blending rigor and imagination, that gives every Altered set its coherence, its richness, and its uniqueness.

As early as Trial by Frost, we began planting the seeds of another civilization; one that many believed to be extinct. The narrative arc of Whispers from the Maze concluded with a signal sent from afar, and Skybound Odyssey told the story of the Expeditionary Corps' journey toward the source of that transmission.

Since each year constitutes a narrative arc, Seeds of Unity, the second chapter of our second year, revolves around the encounter with the people who sent that signal. From the very start of the project, we wanted to highlight the meeting of different peoples. It was important to us to explore themes of social difference and otherness, the process of learning to live together, and the experience of discovering unfamiliar cultures. These themes raise questions about differing worldviews and the difficulties that arise, despite the best intentions, when trying to build a shared future.

The joy of reunion, curiosity, wonder, sharing, and exchange, but also suspicion, rivalry, disenchantment, and power struggles. There was a lot to condense within a single set. This is why each faction represents a specific facet of this encounter, allowing us to provide as comprehensive a panorama as possible of who the Reka are and how they live within the floating city of Asty.

The city of Asty itself was drafted with Sap in mind. Its verticality was born from the idea of trickle-down, a thinly veiled metaphor for what that term evokes within our own society. The Sap flows downward, but those at the top benefit far more than those at the bottom.

However, we did not want to portray the Reka in a purely negative light; hence key concepts such as the fact that gardeners and farmers hold the most respected roles in their society. The Reka have learned from their past mistakes and have changed the way they harvest natural resources. Yet, the tension of progress remains underlying, especially in the context of an enclave where everyone has had to learn to live in close proximity to one another. Thus, understanding the others, beyond preconceptions and prejudice, is a central theme of this expansion.

For every new Altered set, we develop its specific universe based on an internal graphic bible. This invaluable document allows our illustrators to immerse themselves in the Art Direction’s vision through detailed descriptions and visual references. Later, when assigning briefs, we invite each artist to build upon this world through the lens of their own creative sensibility. This is how Altered truly becomes a collective creative project.

With Seeds of Unity, we wanted to further refine our art direction and materialize the aesthetic contrast between the Asgarthans and the Reka. To achieve this, we worked ahead of production with an illustrator you’ve come to know well: Taras Susak. His aesthetic sense and conceptual approach laid a solid foundation for the depiction of the Reka and their City.

With a gigantic magical tree at its center, the city of Asty is naturally inspired by the plant kingdom. However, we wanted to avoid traditional heroic fantasy tropes and instead emphasize the modern concepts unique to Altered’s identity. To this end, Taras proposed a futuristic architecture that, once blended with the Altered aesthetic, resulted in the city we are so eager for you to discover!

Progressively, two very distinct districts of the city emerged from our collaborative work with Taras:

• The Upper City: Slender buildings sculpted from marble and streaked with gold leaf inspired by Kintsugi; the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. On their facades, massive amber-colored stained glass windows in the Art Nouveau style illuminate the interiors. These visual choices directly reflect the overwhelming power of the elites and their artistic refinement.

The Lower City: Angular structures with an austere appearance, brightened by acidic neons and murals painted by the inhabitants. Life here is more challenging, but also less conformist, mirrored by the chaotic and colorful architecture of the buildings.

Regardless of the perspective, the Naos appears in the background of the illustrated cards, whether through its roots, branches, or foliage, to help better contextualize this set’s cards within the broader Altered collection.

Parallel to the architectural development of Asty, other visual hallmarks began to emerge. With its golden, syrupy appearance, the Sap of the Naos is found everywhere: in its fruit, in machinery, in Reka clothing and makeup. Even the citizens' eyes are tinted from consuming it, a striking visual marker freely inspired by the Fremen of the Dune universe.

These physical traits make it possible to distinguish the Reka from the Asgarthans across the set’s various cards, further refining the coherence of our universe. In shaping Asty, our goal was to give substance to a place that feels alive, vibrant with stories and contrasts, a reflection of the world of Altered itself, ever-moving and ever-evolving.

For Seeds of Unity, we chose a top-down design approach; meaning we started with the lore and the theme to imagine the gameplay mechanics. Even before creating the cards, the Game Design, Lore, and Art teams met to identify the core ideas of the set: the encounter, exchange, and cohabitation within a closed space. From there, we sought to translate these concepts into concrete game mechanics.

Using this foundation, we explored several directions. One of the initial paths relied on bartering mechanics: I give you this; if you accept, I get that. These versions proved difficult to balance, sometimes too obvious when players had no reason to refuse, and sometimes too complex, slowing down the pace of the game, especially for new players. Consequently, we kept what best embodied the cooperation and benevolence we wanted to express: the Gift keyword. It is simple, expressive, and perfectly suited to the spirit of the Muna faction and the overall atmosphere of the expansion.

The other major mechanic, In Contact, was born from long iterations on Adventure cards, a unique and differentiating design space in our game. It aims to give concrete meaning to the physical meeting between peoples while reinforcing the tactical importance of positioning on the central map.

Finally, Mana Seeds played an essential role in the set’s coherence. They translate the themes of sharing and abundance while introducing a new gameplay tool. They allow players to prepare for a turn, react to the unexpected, or offer a useful resource to an ally, naturally fueling the Gift keyword. These mechanics become even more compelling in the 2v2 multiplayer mode.

Seeds of Unity thus follows in the footsteps of Skybound Odyssey and previous sets by supporting existing archetypes. You will find Sol utilizing her Rush keyword, Della making great use of older Axiom Permanents, and Turuun offering a dedicated strategy for Gift cards from Beyond the Gates (such as Daughter of Yggdrasil, Kitsune, etc).

With Seeds of Unity, we started with the theme to build the mechanics and visuals; however, sometimes it is a mechanic that paves the way for new artistic ideas or stories to tell. Each team—Lore, Art, and Game Design—influences the others, adjusting, refining, and occasionally revisiting its own ideas to achieve a shared coherence. It is from this constant collaboration that the universe of Altered is born and sustained, a world shaped by many voices, where every card carries the mark of this creative synergy.

We hope you enjoyed this deeper look into the development process, and we can’t wait to reveal even more about Seeds of Unity! You can follow all the upcoming card reveals on our Discord server and our various social media channels!