Scientist believe a galaxy holds, on average, 100 million stars. Some easily seen with the naked eye while others can go undetected even with a telescope. The fascination with galaxies is new discoveries are found everyday. Even when you thought you knew all the stars to be found, a cosmos full of ghostly stars stay hidden even to the most sensitive of detectors.

Today, Ghost Galaxy is excited to shed light on the newest ghost star to join the team. Join us in welcoming Luke Olson as a game developer with Ghost Galaxy. Luke may be familiar to some in the KeyForge community, as the one developing and assisting a number of tools used by many Archons. However, we sat down with Luke for a Q&A to share a bit more about himself and what he hopes to bring to fans of KeyForge.

Q & A With Luke Olson

Jeremy: Welcome to the team Luke! Can you introduce yourself to the Ghost Galaxy & KeyForge communities?

Luke: Hello everyone! My name is Luke Olson. I am more commonly known in the community as SkyJedi.

Jeremy: Of course, as you said, for a lot of people in the KeyForge community, you are known, but there’s also a lot of people who don’t know a lot about you as you are new to the team. So let’s start with what got you into KeyForge?

Luke: When I first learned about KeyForge, I was watching the in-flight report for whatever Gen Con that was. I had recently tried to get back into Magic the Gathering and was just very much overwhelmed. All of a sudden they talked about this game [KeyForge] that involved no deck building. Instantly I was very, very interested in it. Basically from that point on, I’ve just been obsessed with it.

Jeremy: I think that makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. That’s why, of course, a lot of people joined KeyForge. For you, what is your favorite thing about KeyForge?

Luke: My favorite thing about KeyForge is the data and the algorithm behind it. It’s a marvelous, fun little puzzle that we figured out. We looked at the data and all the data is available for the decks. It’s very fun to look at it and find very interesting decks that exist in the world.

On top of that, the game is actually pretty fun. I am no good at it, but it is very fun.

Jeremy: Well that’s of course part of the aspect. If you’re having fun, that’s all that matters. You don’t need to be great at it to have fun. As you know, and you all in the community know, there’s a lot of houses in KeyForge. So what’s your favorite house?

Luke: My favorite house would be Logos. Purely because I hate the situation of getting a 2-2-2 hand. This is where you have two different cards of three different houses. It’s a pain, but with Logos, you are never just drawing six cards. You are drawing seven, eight, nine cards at a time. You don’t have to worry about 2-2-2s!

Jeremy: That’s a good way to solve that problem! So over the number of sets, there’s been a lot of cards added to the game and cards returning for multiple sets. So do you have a specific card that you love?

Luke: My absolute favorite card, and again going back to Logos, is Eureka! It is possibly the best first turn card. Eureka! is play it, you gain three Æmber, and you can archive two cards. The best part about that card is the art. It is a duck floating in a tank and a Logos scientist saying Eureka! The flavor text is perfect. It’s “15 years, 40 million UX credits, and a 3% improvement on the real duck.”

Jeremy: I love it. So with you being new to the team, you haven’t worked on the cards our fans are going to be playing with, just yet at least. You will at some point. But looking back on it, are there any cards you wish you had been able to design?

Luke: The cards I really like the design behind it are the Seven Deadly Sins. It uses the algorithm in a very unique way. Those are the only cards that function the way they do within the algorithm. The cards themselves then function off each other and synergize with each other.

The greatest part about them is if you get a sins deck, it’s not just a sins deck. It’s, which sins do you have? How many sins do you have? What can you do with those sins? It creates amazing decision points in a game. They’re very fun and a really love that.

Jeremy: And we love making decision points here in KeyForge. So for yourself, as you know in the midst of a game, some cards need to be purged. You want to remove them from the game. So when you look to purge a card, what do you choose?

Luke: It would be Infurnace every single time. I can purge cards, but you can’t. So that would be my goal. If I have Infurnace and you have Infurnace, I’m going after your Infurnace pretty much right away. I have a game plan and I don’t want you to mess it up.

Jeremy: That makes a lot of sense. So, of course, you want to make an impact here at Ghost Galaxy and in KeyForge as well as any of our future games we may be bringing to the table. What do you hope you can bring to the game as well as other Ghost Galaxy games?

Luke: What I hope to bring to the game is I love the fact that there are so many decision points within the game itself. I love the fact that in each deck, you are given all these tools and you have to find the best way to use the tools that are given to you.

There are several points in the game where you are presented with several different decisions. Each one may be optimal in a very specific situation. You then decide in the moment which way to go with that. I absolutely love that and I’d love to bring that and continue with that tradition.

I love the fact there is so much discovery within KeyForge. Every single deck you open, you’re discovering something new. You’re discovering either the synergy that is well known in the community that is very powerful and very much fun to do or your discovering a synergy that maybe hasn’t existed before. Like these specific cards can do this thing and you have a moment of clarity like, I can do this with this deck. This is going to be fun! I love that excitement and I hope to continue bringing that.

Jeremy: We hope you continue to have that excitement Luke and we hope the KeyForge community welcomes that excitement! Is there anything else you’d like to say to the new fans of you?

Luke: I hope I can bring the fans everything they want in this game. There’s a lot of space for a lot of different types of players. I hope we can make every type of player at least somewhat happy with the game!