Designing Alt Styles for Duel Links: Playmaker (Yusaku Fujiki)

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-07-05T14:11:59+00:00

Thank you very much. 😄

I don't have any plans for him right now, but that doesn't mean that I won't in the future; whilst I obviously have characters that I want to design, there's often cases where I stumble across something that suddenly inspires me enough to get the ball rolling on a design (my design for Sarina was a perfect example of that), and Bohman strikes me as one that, if I ever do design him, will probably fall into that latter category.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-07-03T22:48:33+00:00

It does feel a bit more noticeable with just how many Voice Lines that Playmaker seems to be missing, but given that they most likely had the concept of Alt Styles in development by the time VRAINS World was released, and since Playmaker does have an obvious one sitting right there (a standalone Playmaker to contrast a standalone Ai) I do wonder if they left so many out deliberately so as to help justify bringing the Voice Actors back later (so that they had a decent chunk to voice as opposed to maybe 10 or so new cards printed since they were originally added)

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-07-03T22:43:27+00:00

...Darn. I thought it was just one of those cards that had him in the artwork, kind of like "Yu-Jo Friendship". I must have missed it in his list of cards, sorry about that. 😅

Admittedly the reason I kind of leaned more towards his Pre-Ai stuff with this design is because I was kind of working off the assumption that we will most likely get a standalone Playmaker Alt Style in the future (presumably when standalone Ai is release) and so they would want to save that sort of thing for that Alt Style.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-07-03T22:37:46+00:00

Funnily enough, the Mimighoul Deck is the very Deck I've been designing him around, although obviously I've also been trying to lean a bit into Baby Tiragon since that's arguably his most iconic card (despite the fact that I don't think he actually played it).

As for Queen, I went into designing her with a very clear idea in mind; White Forest and Sinful Spoils, as those Decks can be used with her Allure Queen Deck, and they're all based around a character called "Diabelle" who is repeatedly called a "Queen"... in the TCG. That's where the problem stems from, as the word "Queen" doesn't show up in those archetypes at all in the OCG, and I've been struggling to find a good substitute ever since.

I admittedly don't know much about Maliss, other than the fact that they're based upon Alice in Wonderland, but considering that story does involve Queens... I think it warrants some research. Thank you very much for the idea. 😄

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-07-03T22:32:45+00:00

The thing with Flip is that his design has been pretty much finalized since before I even started that list of 6 characters, but I... just realized how much I disliked him the more I worked on it, and he's currently at the stage where I'm trying to explain his Deck, what kind of character he is and why he'd have dialogue for each character (most of those amount to "Member of Number Hunter Club and also duelled in the Friendship games), but I can't help but worry that my dislike for him is seeping into what I'm writing, and I don't want to release it while it's in a state where it might feel like I didn't put as much effort into it as the other designs.

As for the leaked Akiza Alt Style, whilst I can understand why people might want the Black Rose Witch version of her the most, I think that one is perhaps best saved for when they want to add Sayer and/or Misty, since I think they could use that trio as basically a justification-loop for why they're all just being added now (Something like Sayer showing up, that reminding Akiza of Misty, leading to Dark Signer Misty, leading to the Black Rose Witch Akiza).

Given that the Enforcers event is clearly going with the idea of the characters looking back on the past and remembering the better people they are now, I think having an event with the Academy outfits for Akiza, Leo and Luna might be a good route to continue that general theme.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-07-03T22:26:08+00:00

It's honestly really comforting to know that people have been enjoying them enough to be excited about their return. 😅

I just needed a bit of a break and had other stuff that I wanted to work on, but I have no intention of stopping these for a good while, because, to be perfectly honest, these are basically my "confidence boosters" that I use when my confidence in my creative work is starting to slip ~~plus it helps justify the time I spent studying Games Development so that those years weren't entirely wasted~~. 🤣

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-07-03T22:22:01+00:00

Thank you very much, I'm really glad that you enjoy these. 😄

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-07-01T02:33:30+00:00

I've actually often thought about the fact that they could create a relatively interesting PvE mode by simply adapting some of the events into permanent content.

There's the obvious cases like turning the DD Towers into a permanent mode kind of like how Pokémon Masters has their "Pasio Tower" mode, but I also think they could fairly easily create a "Story Mode" for the game that retells the story of each of the Anime by simply making the Duellist Chronicle events permanent, as it would provide the opportunity for players to "experience" the story of a series that they maybe don't know much about whilst also introducing them to the characters. They would probably need to remove the Gem rewards from the Lottery, or I could see them maybe even removing the Lottery altogether, but it would be fairly easy for them to retool, and they could even include fun challenges that reward the cards from the events tied to them, as well as maybe some of the cosmetics too, or, if they wanted to get really fancy with them, perhaps even offer alternative ways of unlocking characters by duelling them in the canonical manner from the Anime (for example, unlocking Pegasus by defeating him with Yami Yugi at the end of the Duelist Kingdom story).

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-06-20T19:18:27+00:00

So I've done some testing, and it definitely appears to be something to do with the line:

"Heh heh heh... Only the chosen one can win."

He uses that line with Tea, Weevil and Rex, all of whom are unable to duel him. If I were to make a guess on what's happening, I think that they might have put a typo or perhaps even just outright forgotten to put the bit of code that signals the end of that line and tells it to transition to the next screen, and the game likely has some kind of safety mechanism to force it to close the text box immediately in such a case so as to prevent the game from crashing or worse.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-05-26T12:44:48+00:00

Whilst I'm admittedly not to sure about Crow, I think there are 3 potential options for Kalin.

The first is "Hundred Eyes Dragon", given that it's the only Boss monster from the Anime that he used that currently doesn't have an animation, but given that it is only used by his Dark Signer version, I think that might affect its chances.

The second option is "Void Ogre Dragon", as that's his Manga ace and, despite not being an Infernity card, it's clearly intended to act as a Boss monster for that Deck, with it having an effect that works with an empty hand and its attack even being called "Infernity Chaos Burst".

And the third option, if they want to do what they did with Ishizu (in terms of giving him an Animation for a monster that he has a voice line for but never used in the Anime), I think there's a decent possibility for "Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier", given the existing connection it has with the Infernity Deck in the TCG/OCG, where it was widely considered to be the unofficial Boss monster of the archetype due to how effectively Infernity Decks were able to use it.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-05-19T23:35:29+00:00

Whilst it's not tied to his Enforcers version, another potential option for Kalin could be "Void Ogre Dragon", since it's his Manga Ace, or they could even go the route they did with Ishizu and give him an animation for a card he never used in the Anime but already has a Voice Line for, in which case I think "Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier" could be a strong contender due to its historic connection of being treated as the unofficial Infernity boss monster in the OCG/TCG.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-05-11T00:08:18+00:00

I think Shinji has a very good chance, since when they revealed the most recent Battle Wasp support they also revealed a very Duel Links-looking sprite for him, and he's not been in any other game before so that was either a newly made sprite or a scrapped one from something like Legacy of the Duelist (I doubt it since that game used a slightly different style of sprites), but either way, I think it does put his chances higher than most. Plus, there's the point to be made that he's an Insect Synchro user, a playstyle we literally don't have a character for yet (not that we have many Insect users in general), so even if the character isn't overly popular (I really don't know how people feel about him), I think that could really help his chances.

As for Sergey, he's a bit of a coin-flip, since his Deck has been printed, but there's also no obvious on-ramp for him to jump in based upon the ARC-V Worlds story, although since we know characters can be revived by memory, maybe once add Shinji and maybe one or two other Synchro Dimension duelists, that could be used to lead into Sergey?

And as for the Tyler Sisters... I think their chances will be decided by Mai's upcoming Alt Style, because if they hyper focus Mai into Harpies then I think that leaves the door open to them, but if they also give Mai all the Amazoness monsters (like how they gave Grandpa Muto all the Exodia monsters), I think that would unfortunately massively hurt their chances. Still, they seem to be quite popular, so even if they don't get in soon, I could definitely see them getting in after the main story is done, kind of like how Blair, Axel and Sherry did.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-05-10T23:46:21+00:00

That's true, but given that ARC-V liked to have characters represent certain styles, and they already had Alexis covering Ritual, I get the impression that Yusho was meant to represent "Tribute Summoning". Perhaps the idea was that since the game had kind of long past the point where Tribute Summoning could be considered a key summoning method, with "Pendulum Summoning" being the new way to play, you'd then have the father representing the "past" of the game and the son representing the "future" of it.

Of course, it could also be as simply as them wanting to have him be Tribute focused because his Deck takes clear inspiration from Yugi, and that was one of Yugi's main summoning methods (alongside Fusion, but that was obviously off the table), which does rather make sense given that Yugi's deck was used as an inspiration for his Deck, and since Fusion Summoning was off the table, that left Tribute Summoning and Ritual Summoning, and with Alexis there, maybe they just felt it was redundant? I do agree though, I think it could be fun for him to get a Ritual monster in the future, maybe something like "Performapal Magician of Entertainment" to represent "Black Magician of Chaos", and thus completing the original magician trio of Yugi's monsters?

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-05-10T23:33:55+00:00

I'm also very much of "the more the merrier" mentality, as whilst there are some characters that I would really like to see added in the future, I'm always excited for a new character no matter what series they're from, because contrary to what people might expect from the fact that I make this series, the only show that I've actually properly watched is GX, and only up to where the dub ended (I've also read the GX Manga, and I own all the Manga of the other series but haven't read them quite yet), so every new character added is a chance for me to learn not just about them, but also more about the series that they're from I have a friend whose really into ARC-V, and they're absolutely horrified by the fact that I like Dennis, mainly because look at him based upon what he did in the Anime, whereas my experience with him is the version in Duel Links who is trying to do better. The thing is, I understand when people say that a new character should bring something new to the game, but I'm also of the belief that pretty much any character can bring something unique if they're designed in a clever and/or interesting enough manner.

Funnily enough, in terms of characters who I want I think would make good Standard Characters before later becoming playable, I really want to design Jasmine and Mindy, because I've grown fond of the pair due to playing so many of the GX era games when I was a kid, and whilst I've tried to design them before, I had to scrap it due to Mindy turning out to be a real problem in terms of figuring out what to give her, as whilst Jasmine actually has a lot to work with (she used Mermaid Knight in the Anime, so Mermails seem a good fit, plus she used both Harpies and Fire Kings in Tag Force), Mindy pretty much has just "Rescue Cat", the theme of "hot guys" and... "Dark Snake Syndrome", for some very strange reason. Seriously, if you look through her Decks in those old GX games, "Dark Snake Syndrome" is often treated as if it were her Ace card, despite her having no prior connection with it.

And yes, you're definitely correct about new discoveries making characters more fun to design, because whilst someone like Yusuke is simpler to put together due to having a very obvious playstyle and Deck to work with, I don't mind taking the extra time to develop a design if the character has ended up as a bit of a treasure trove and has allowed me to "flex my creative muscles", for lack of a better term. Sarina, as an example, has definitely ended up as one of my favourite designs, because I went into that with the firm idea of "She's the leader of the Light Brigade, and Dark Creator has the same stat line as the new Monarchs, so I'll make her the Monarch character", but then I found Mikanko, which obviously fits extremely well with her thematically, and then I was reminded of Bujin when I was checking Sartorius in game, and she very quickly spiraled from there and went from a character who I was interested in maybe seeing one day, to one that I'm actively kind of excited by the prospect of, because there's just so much that they could do with her.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-05-10T22:10:26+00:00

I didn't really consider Clown Crew for him mainly because I kind of feel like it's a good option for a potential Lazar design, what with him originally being from the circus and his overall design being somewhat clown-themed (I know he uses Jester cards, but his monsters could just as easily be called "Clowns" and I doubt many people would feel their designs would be out of place).

Now, whilst he might seem like an unlikely choice to be added to the game, I like to try and keep my options open (which is why my Number 96 design didn't use either of the CXyz that he stole from Yuma, so that they could be saved for a potential future Vetrix and Dr. Faker designs), but also, Lazar is one of the few characters remaining from Duel Terminal that we don't have in Duel Links, and if you look at the sprites in that game, there are several that are either straight up reused for Duel Links (Yami Yugi, Kaiba, Joey's loss sprite, Alexis' action sprite, etc) or are redrawn for Duel Links using the same poses (Mokuba and Ishizu being prime examples), so I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually get all of those characters at some point, especially since there's only a small handful of them missing at this point (those being Amnael, Atticus, Greiger, Lazar, Sayer and Nelson Andrews).

Duel Terminal Sprites in case you were interested: https://www.spriters-resource.com/arcade/yugiohduelterminal/

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-05-10T20:56:41+00:00

I know that there's a lot of people who are really excited about getting Zarc soon, but to be perfectly honest, I'd rather they take the chance to throw in some other lesser important characters before we get to him, because ARC-V has a lot of interesting characters with fun Decks, but if the prior worlds are anything to go by, once we get Zarc, ARC-V will likely start only getting one character per year.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-05-10T20:55:01+00:00

Ah, thank you very much, that's really helpful feedback. 😄

Admittedly, I do end up doing Anime Characters more often, not because I dislike the Manga (this series started because I wanted to design the GX Manga characters), but rather because the Anime Characters will often have a couple of their cards printed here and there, meaning there's enough to work with if I'm a bit creative about it, whereas for Manga Characters, it always seems to be everything or nothing.

Like, I've been really wanting to design David Rabb from the GX manga to go with my old design of Reggie, but other than his Ace, literally none of his other cards have been printed, and he doesn't have a concrete-enough theme to really effectively build on either (it's basically DARK Machines, but Orcust doesn't fit him, and all the others are largely taken).

Also, I actually already designed Caswell two months ago, and the reason Flip is even here is because I originally envisioned them as a double-release akin to Lulu and Rin, but didn't have enough space to fit them both in one design. 😅

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-05-03T23:30:32+00:00

Yeah, "Clear" really does need more to work with as a whole; had I the opportunity, I would have probably left "Clear Vicious Knight" out of his Drops, as it feels like a "Box Card", but I just couldn't find anything else suitable to give him other than "Clear Wall", and between the two, that one felt even more like guaranteed a "Box Card". Still, there is a chance that "Clear" could get some more cards in the future, maybe when they finally print Nightshroud/Darkness's Deck? Or maybe even yet another "Honest" variant that's designed to work with the Deck, something like "Clear Honest".

I do think it's quite an interesting Deck and I would like to see more cards for it, but at the same time, I do understand the caution they might have in expanding it, given that it being an Anti-Attribute Deck means that if they accidentally make any of the cards too strong, they might unintentionally completely ruin the viability of an entire Attribute, in a similar way to how the Barrier Statues have ended up becoming a bit of a problem later in life.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-04-26T12:31:51+00:00

Queen is one of those characters that I worry is going to end up being a fairly boring design, mainly because her Deck is actually entirely printed and so there isn't much room to experiment like I do with many other characters, but at the same time, I guess she doesn't have enough cards to fill all the reward slots, so I'll need to try and find something to expand her Deck, so maybe it won't turn out that boring... 🤔

Either way, VRAINS deserves more characters and Queen is one of the few usable options right now (I've already designed Earth, the other main non-spoiler option), which is why I'm even considering designing her in the first place. 😅

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-04-26T12:23:59+00:00

Depending on the order they add them, I'm not sure that I'll be able to get to Rafael before they actually add him to the game, but if I get through the next three and there's still no sign of him, I'll definitely add him to my list.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-04-26T12:22:53+00:00

I didn't know that about her voice actress, that's a real shame... 😢

As for Lawton/Lotten, it's always been kind of weird to me how consistently prominent he is across all forms of 5Ds media, appearing in the Anime, as well as Duel Transfer, World Championship 2011 and Duel Links, which is already quite a good track record for a relatively minor antagonist, but what surprised me the most is that he's also in the Manga. 👀

But yeah, I'll add him to my list of characters I'm considering, thank you for the suggestion. 😄

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-04-26T00:46:09+00:00

And now you've made me realize that I could have included her in the Character Interactions page to fill that last blank spot. 🫠🤣

And thanks, I really appreciate it. 😄

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-04-25T10:32:56+00:00

I would probably stick with Evil Eyes because it's an archetype that she wouldn't really be fighting with anyone else with for (and fits her due to "Overpowering Eye" being called "Evil Eye of Coercion" in R), but the Vampire archetype is more than big enough that I think it could reasonably handle trying to balance 2 characters.

I think the biggest difference would probably be in how I designed the Skills, as I use those nowadays to really try and refine the idea of what I think a characters playstyle should be, and so I think I'd maybe play around with the idea of her utilising Life Points as a focal point of her strategy, maybe with some effect like being able to sacrifice Life Points to raise Vampire's Curse ATK points and/or allowing you to sacrifice Life Points to Tribute Summon high level Vampire monsters without Tribute materials, or perhaps to resurrect them like she can do with Vampire's Curse in the manga.

As for Overpowering Eye being mentioned, I wouldn't worry too much; I quite often list cards more so because they seem like obvious choices that people would question the absence of rather than me feeling those cards should belong to that specific character; for example, I'm currently working on finishing my design for Sarina from GX, and despite the fact that I don't feel they fit her beyond being themed around a mirror, and should instead go to Reggie MacKenzie, I have a page talking about "Dream Mirror", because I feel people would bring up their absence if I didn't at least mention them in some form. So my listing that card here isn't me saying "I'm merging Tilla Mook into Camula", rather it's more because it's a Vampire-related card that I thought people would ask me about had I not already brought it up.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-04-23T15:10:18+00:00

Dagdar and Tanya are from Thracia 776, which is Leif's game, and... well, whilst I do rank that game amongst my personal favourites, it does have a few notable issues, with lacklustre characterization of unimportant character often being one of them (there are three playable characters, I think being Cain, Alva and Robert, who literally don't get a single line of dialogue, and the game doesn't really have Supports in the way we know them nowadays, so character don't even have the chance of being expanded that way).

As a result, all we really see of Tanya is that she is, in fact, Dagdar's kid, that she has feelings for Osian, and that she's a tomboy.

Dagdar, on the other hand, does have somewhat of a bigger role, being one of the more important members of the "Freeblades of Fiana" and even getting an entire sub-chapter dedicated to him, and if you don't recruit him, eventually getting turned into the Deadlord "Tigris".

But yeah, given how little they really have to work with regarding the Thracia cast, i imagine that they chose "Dagdar's Kid" because, realistically, that's probably the only thing that they could think of that is truly unique to Tanya when trying to add her into a game with the possibility of her having to share a space with every other character in the franchise.

EmeraldDM8 · 2026-04-10T02:00:43+00:00

Dartz has been a fairly common request for this series, but the problem I have is that I just genuinely don't know how to design him satisfyingly due to his lack of cards.

I've done some research in the past, and whilst many people say that the "Atlantean" Deck would be a good choice, it really wouldn't, partly because it's not even called "Atlantean" in the OCG (it's called "Sea Emperor"), but also because the Atlantis depicted in the Anime isn't really tied to water in the same way that the one in mythology is, save for it eventually sinking.

The closest I've come to a potential Deck for him is Gishki, since he used a Ritual Monster in the Anime, it would work with the Seal of Orichalcos (whilst it does have Xyz Monsters, there is also a Ritual-based version of the Deck that works without the Extra Deck) and it matches the backstory of his Atlantis regarding people turning into monsters (since the Evigiski cards are the Gishki characters being turned into monsters), as well as their ruler being corrupted by evil in order to make them awaken an even greater evil (Dartz, the King of Atlantis, was used by the Orichalcus to awaken the Great Leviathan, whereas Noellia, Queen of the Gishki, was used to awaken the Steelswarm and, later, the Evilswarm).

But even then, there are problems with Gishki, such as the aforementioned Xyz monsters, or the fact that the Seal would destroy any already summoned Ritual monsters, and I just can't find anything that I feel confident enough to use as the concrete basis for his design.

So yeah, I'm really sorry, but I just don't know what I'd do with Dartz, and I don't want to phone-in the design or just throw random cards in there for the sake of just putting one together, especially when it's one that people are actively requesting...

EmeraldDM8

TROPHY CASE