Inside the Magic: Behind the Development of Teamfight Tactics’ New Update 'Magic n’ Mayhem
TFT devs: Matt Dunn and Dan Townsend
Most significant challenges to magic n mayhem:
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Had to figure out what each charm does
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What player’s see after purchasing a charm
How did the team decide on the theme and design elements for Magic n’ Mayhem?
“Usually when we're deciding on a theme, we start with understanding the tone that we want to convey.”
For magic and mayhem they wanted the tone to have a lighter more playful tone since the set preceding it was more serious.
“When planning our sets, we often start with a high-level genre.”
They decided magic and mayhem fit within the fantasy genre.
They did a lot of play testing during early development to make sure the set felt cohesive.
What was the process of selecting which champions and traits to include in this set?
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Made a big list of champions / skins / traits and set mechanics that would fit the theme
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Then develop example traits and wrote brief explanations about how they fit into the overall theme
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Art team then gathers references and creates concepts to develop narrative
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Goes through multiple stages of feedback and iterations to really nail down the theme
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Swapped around various champs, traits and skins
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Design team fits the available pieces into a trade web
How do you ensure that both new and veteran players can enjoy and master the new mechanics introduced in Magic n’ Mayhem?
“For example, with Charms, we limited our tooltip length to just what would fit on the shop card itself.” “If the tooltip was too long to fit on the shop card, it was also probably too long for the player to process quickly enough to make interesting decisions around what the Charm did.”
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Tooltip length shouldn’t be bigger than the shop box
“There are other tricks we used to help make things easier to comprehend quickly.”
Using naming conventions
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i.e. minor and major to indicate stronger and weaker versions of a similar ability
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i.e. Keywords like phantom – letting players understand the behaviour of that word then being to apply that to multiple objects
How do you balance creativity with gameplay functionality when designing new sets?
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Game design team will flesh out the initial version of what the sets look like (traits / champs / mechanics etc) - extensive iteration and exploration to find the fun and excitement and develop an initial prototype
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Finalization team who helps to figure out how to turn the prototype into a functioning set – tuning the gameplay balance and figuring out optimal way for players to use features (key: making sure nothing feels counter-intuitive or unfun to play)
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Two teams find middle ground between exploring new ideas vs maintaining consistency with things we know work well
How do you test new features to maintain a fair and competitive game environment?
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Finalization team consists of former professional and high-ranked players
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Fairly long finalization process
IT, John Popko I. write I. rap I. run That’s pretty much. 2024. ‘Inside the Magic: Behind the Development of Teamfight Tactics’ New Update 'Magic n’ Mayhem’. InvenGlobal [online]. Available at: https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/18910/inside-the-magic-behind-the-development-of-teamfight-tactics-new-update-magic-n-mayhem [accessed 30 Oct 2025].