Dev Diary: City of Heroes' Mutant Pack

Josh Augustine at




David: Hey, folks. Today we’d like to share a little behind-the-scenes information on how the latest City of Heroes Super Booster came together. The Mutant pack is the latest in our series of ‘Origin’-themed Boosters, and like all the previous entries, it includes new costume sets, new emotes and a unique power.

Floyd: Hi, I’m Floyd "Castle" Grubb, Lead Powers Designer at Paragon Studios. I worked with David to design a power to fit with the new theme.

David: So our first problem was simply picking aesthetic themes for something as open-ended and broadly-defined as ‘mutation.’  Because the word ‘mutant’ can refer to literally ANY deviation from the norm, every fan’s probably got a different idea of what belongs in a set like this. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least 20 distinct aesthetic directions that fit the parameters of 'mutant,' and to truly cover the entire spectrum, we would need multiple Super Boosters.

Nonetheless, having done packs inspired by all the other origins previously, it made sense to continue the tradition, finish the series, and do a mutant-themed pack.  We weren’t trying to cover every single flavor of mutation in this one set alone of course, but we did come up with two really cool, distinctive flavors for our players that haven’t been available in City of Heroes previously.  Here’s the lowdown:

  • BIOLUMINESCENT represents the change-from-within concept of post-humanity: with these parts, your hero or villain is clearly changing at a genetic level and doing so in style--with tintable glows that really pop in dark environments.  Given the new glow tech, we immediately looked to actual examples from nature for inspiration and got the set’s name along the way.  Production art from James Cameron’s The Abyss also came in handy.  The patterns themselves were designed to fit several different character types at once, and we tried to avoid anything too tech-y or too tribal.

Bioluminescent concept art

Bioluminescent concept art by William Balzar

Bioluminescent costume set by Jay Doherty


Organic Concept Art

Organic Armor concept art by David Nakayama

Organic in-game

Organic Armor costume set by Jay Doherty





David: For me, as a player, the release of every new Super Booster feels like someone just dropped a bunch of newness in the COH toy chest, and I can’t wait to try ‘em all out.  As an artist, the part I look forward to the most in our Booster Packs is seeing what our players do with them. They always come up with creative and unexpected new costume combinations that we never even imagined, and that’s very gratifying. I hope you’ll be just as excited as I am when you get to play with Super Booster V: Mutant.
