Robot Raiders is the product of Matthew Bell’s game design perspectives after spending almost ten years as the product manager for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. The creative direction has been lead by April Hooley, leveraging their own character designs and art and collaborating with outside artists. It is a one to three versus one a symmetrical PVP game that also allows for solo play. The experience can be modified with over 5000 different combinations of upgrades, loot and augments to be able to create a challenge.
Creative Direction
(Click image for full resolution)
The original vision of Robot Raiders started out as a video game but progressed to a print product. We wanted an all in the box experience, but it had to feel like a premium Trading Card Game.
The first design of Robot Raiders was the mage robot, the high mage hat on a mechanical man was to set the tone for the rest of our ethos. Never sci-fi, always fantasy. Matt’s original vision was to follow a Magic the Gathering style of artwork that was darker and more artistic (which we used for alternate art cards exclusive to backers):
For this we used ArtStation as a jumping off point to research artists who could match the vision. We found an artist who could match our original vision, but the artwork took a long time and we were concerned with freelance artists we would be at the mercy of their schedule rather than our own. Our policy was and still is strictly no-AI generated content used within the product, so we started searching for art studios that we could contract.
We found Little Devil Company by leaning into the knowledge that we found through the discovery of a huge talent base in Brazil. They are cost effective, which is a big selling point for an indie studio with limited funds, but their artwork changed the direction of our original vision. The character designs were loosely based on my original character designs, and they produced a comic book style over fine art. We drew parallels to Meda-Bots and other 90s TV anime.
With the change to this new comic book style we were able to work closely with the studio and volunteers to create lore and a style guide that ensures that artwork would build the world. This tested well with players and would get them excited to play the game. After a short in person advertising campaign, we released an animated launch trailer with Little Devil Studio, and composer Joshua Ginsberg:
Advertising
With assets now available from Little Devil Company I spent time looking at other meta advertisements and their success. We wanted as low a cost per click as possible, so we A/B tested with a few different creatives. We found that showing cards was a better fit for board games and card games demographics, but we also hit a great audience with Dungeons and Dragons players simple by showing creatives. Overall we saw an average of 15% conversion rate, but of those who clicked over 50% signed up to the mailing list and 18% further interacted by joining the discord community.
| Ad Name | CPL | Click Count | Landing Page Conversion Rate (%) |
| Meta_Ad_1_C Total | £3.09 | 95 | 27.69% |
| Fire Rain ad 1 Total | £3.24 | 40 | 25.00% |
| Podcast #1 Total | £5.58 | 148 | 23.17% |
| Room_4 Total | £2.42 | 172 | 21.50% |
| Meta_Ad_4 Total | £4.24 | 46 | 19.23% |
| Mage Total | £3.31 | 111 | 18.97% |
| Meta Ad 4 – Kickstarter launch Total | £3.28 | 44 | 18.72% |
| Meta Ad 1 – Kickstarter launch Total | £1.87 | 59 | 18.55% |
| BoxRobotPromo Total | £5.54 | 143 | 17.09% |
| DoronSpideings Total | £4.22 | 39 | 16.67% |
| Room_1 Total | £4.55 | 30 | 15.15% |
| Demo Ad Total | £3.48 | 214 | 14.75% |
| DoranHand Total | £4.25 | 59 | 13.79% |
| Meta_Ad_2 Total | £2.89 | 990 | 13.58% |
| Doran Total | £2.98 | 99 | 13.57% |
| Room_3 Total | £2.90 | 574 | 13.03% |
| Room_2 Total | £3.51 | 908 | 10.47% |
| Meta Ad 3 – Kickstarter launch Total | £3.36 | 53 | 9.45% |
| Ranger Total | £4.58 | 97 | 9.38% |
| Paladin Total | £11.87 | 94 | 8.25% |
| Vindra Total | £18.80 | 41 | 3.23% |
| Totals/Average | £4.76 | 4056 | 15.77% |
Content Creation and Physical Media
I designed physical banners to be able to show off the striking visuals of the game and draw people in. We used these primarily during the ‘Northern Tour’ where we went to several different stores around the north of the UK. This was chronicled by myself and Matt in a tiktok video showcasing people playing the game whilst also attempting to humanise the people behind the game. https://www.tiktok.com/@nearlynotquite/video/7400312172418567457
We also used these banners are backdrops for our in studio content, filmed and edited by me:
I also created all layouts and thumbnails for our Live Streams, an example of which can be found here:
Artwork
There are many cards that I digitally painted for the final version, as well as designing the Mattorigus Studios logo, you can find these below:
Kickstarter Page
I designed the Kickstarter Page for the crowdfunding. Initially we designed a slightly different showcase using digital games as reference to create character splash arts as below:
This was replaced during the campaign with card image and a full how to play section. You can view the Kickstarter page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattorigusstudios/robot-raiders-a-1-4-player-epic-card-game-battle-experience/description
The Kickstarter was successful, however the tariffs imposed on the US at the time meant that we would have to pass on more cost to our customers. We did not want to do this, so cancelled the original crowdfund in order to reduce the cost of manufacture (and in turn, the imposed tariff amount). We will be relaunching in late 2025.
