Rampage Evolution Card
A level-up card system for a mobile roguelite: three ability choices every time XP fills, with a rarity ladder and a holographic Evolution tier that make one card feel worth more than the other two.
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Overview
Every time a Rampage run fills its XP bar, the game pauses and offers three ability cards to build a run around. The screen had to do two jobs at once: read instantly mid-combat, and make a Legendary or Evolution pull feel like a genuinely different event from pulling a Common.
Scope
- 01Card rarity system
- 02Level-up flow
- 03Ability iconography
- 04Evolution card treatment
- 05Reroll & recover mechanics
- 06Wireframes
- 07Interface design
- 08Motion direction
- 09Prototyping
- 10Design QA
Challenge
Three cards, no precedent for what any of them should weigh.
Rampage didn't have a level-up screen before this — every run paused on XP-fill with nothing built yet to fill that pause. Three ability cards had to sit on one shell and each read instantly mid-combat: a run-defining Legendary and a minor stat tweak couldn't just differ in copy, because a player has maybe two seconds to weigh them before the run keeps going underneath the pause.
Re-roll and Recover HP needed a place on that same screen, and giving them anywhere near the same visual weight as the cards would turn one choice into four competing ones.
Approach
Rarity has to read before the label does.
I built a five-tier ladder — Common, Rare, Epic, Legendary and Evolution — where the border, corner cut and background foil change with the tier, not just the pill text underneath it. A Legendary card's gold foil and an Evolution card's shifting holographic gradient are readable from across the screen, before a player's eyes ever land on the word.
Evolution cards get their own treatment on top of that ladder: an animated holo-foil background and a beveled edge that mimics a physical trading-card pull, because an Evolution merges an ability the player already owns into something stronger — it has to feel rarer than a Legendary pull, not just differently colored.
Re-roll and Recover HP moved to two flat hex badges anchored to the screen's bottom corners, out of the card row entirely, so the three cards stay the only thing competing for the choice itself.
Screens
Results
Deliverables
