This was first reaction when I saw Walnut Sprite: “He looks like someone hit him upside the head.”
That got a laugh from Ben Brode, the game director of Hearthstone, the biggest digital card game in the market. Granted, it’s not all that hard to get a chuckle from the affable Brode. Walnut Sprite is a 3 attack, 3 health neutral minion with Echo (which means it’s a card that you can play again and again in one turn as long as you have enough mana to do so). I wanted to know more about this one, and it turns out that his exchange led to him showing how his design team set the tone for The Witchwood, the upcoming Hearthstone expansion that launches April 12.
“This is one of the first creatures that we concepted for The Witchwood. One of our supertalented artists, Jerry Mascho, was doing some concept art, and he wanted to come up with something that was … when you’re in the forest, the glowing eyes in the brush. What are these glowing eyes? It’s the Walnut Sprite, peeking out at you from under the rock,” Brode said. “He’s a pretty cute type of creature.”
Even if he looks like he had too much tea at the Mad Hatter’s party.
