Thanks!
over 5 years ago – Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 11:57:46 PM

Thanks to our backers, this has been our best game Kickstarter ever! 

We'll have several posts over the coming months to keep you abreast of new art, new bosses, new heroes, and all of the other new stuff. The artist for the base game is out until January, but that won't stop us from creating the content.

While putting together the Kickstarter was super-hard work, that was nothing compared to the job we have getting everything ready to ship to the printer in Feb/Mar so that you get your game next August. It sounds like a long time away, but there's a lot to do.

I'm getting the Tower Laboratory artist Vincent Joubert moving on the rest of the art right away. And Christophe Liebert is still busily working on the Cursed Library art. 

Essen Spiel will take the bulk of my time for the next two weeks. If you'll be at the show, then please stop by our booth 5C117 and try The Stygian Society, or our last project, Rice Dice which we'll have for sale (and KS pick-up) in very limited supply at the show.

I'm going to try hard to get The Stygian Society pledge manager out before I leave next Monday. We'll see how well that goes.

Petrichor: Honeybees

Before I sign off, I wanted to tell you that our publishing partner Mighty Boards launched their Honeybees expansion for Petrichor on Kickstarter just a couple of hours ago! We co-publish Petrichor and will have the Honeybee expansion when it's available in retail. 

One more thing -

Go Astros!

The Cursed Library Available
over 5 years ago – Sat, Oct 13, 2018 at 11:07:23 PM

I'm happy to announce the Cursed Library expansion as part of a new UNFLINCHING HERO pledge level. 

Classic authors Mary Shelley, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and Jane Austen have been appointed by the Stygian Society to fight a unique threat. Villains from classic literature have come to life and are threatening to leave the tower library and terrorize the countryside! 

The Cursed Library expansion is also available as an add-on for backers that with to keep their existing pledge levels. 

The Tower Laboratory Mad Scientist Villain

We had fun with the mad scientist villain from the cover of the Tower Laboratory expansion by turning his liquid-cooled brain jar into an aquarium and adding a piranha. Which do you prefer?

2-Player Rules and Bosses
over 5 years ago – Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 06:24:03 AM

I'm going to do a longer post tonight to talk about a couple of things that turn out to be related. First, I have been working on a post about mid-bosses and wizards. Second, I want to talk about our two-player games this weekend, and our experience with the mid-boss we encountered.

Bosses and Wizards

You probably already know that instead of drawing a floor for the third level players instead draw a random mid-boss. A mid-boss looks a lot like a floor card, in that it contains a number of enemy peril cubes to drop, effects of cubes in the field, and peril effects. 

Here, there's just a single effect - if peril ever reaches 10, the party's over and players lose!

Patchwork Adams is accompanied on the floor by four lightning flies.

These guys are unusual in that they don't trigger when there are a certain number of yellow cubes in the field. Instead, they damage the party whenever the players perform a melee attack. Additionally, Patchwork Adams has an effect where fireflies cause the party double damage when there are four black cubes in the field. 

And Adams does 10 damage to the party when there are five red cubes in the field!!

Assuming the party manages to defeat Patchwork (he has 30 health!), the mid-boss card is turned over, and the players resolve the effect.

Patchwork Adams steals some of the hero cubes, and these are not available for the rest of the game!

The top-level wizard (or boss, for the expansions) work the same way, except they don't have a reverse side - the players win if they can defeat the wizard!

2-Player Rules

We played two 2-player games this weekend to experiment with using one hero apiece. (Currently, the rules call for two heroes apiece for a 2-player game.)

Trial 1
We played with the knight and the burglar. The knight is good for dealing big damage to a single target in the front rank, and the burglar is good for manipulating the game.

We did fine for the first two levels, although as we were to find out, we hadn't done a great job keeping our party's wound count under control.

Knight Skills at 3rd Floor:
Steel Fist (default): Melee attack. Drop blue cubes and pull blue cubes from the field to damage one enemy in the front rank.

Grandfather's Blessing: Drop white cubes and remove white cubes from the field to gain luck.

Healing Touch: As a passive action, remove white cubes from the field to heal the party.

Burglar Skills at 3rd Floor:
Burglary (default): Drop an extra cube of any color when dropping cubes.

Lightning Quick: Exhaust skill to gain 1 luck point and not drop any enemy cubes that turn.

Taunting Words: Move an enemy from the rear rank to the front rank and gain 1 luck.

We drew Patchwork Adams as the mid-boss. Our first piece of business was to eliminate the lightning bugs in the front rank so that yellow cubes didn't accumulate in the field and do massive damage each time we did melee damage. 

The burglar spent a lot of her actions using the Help generic action to feed blue cubes to the knight for his Steel Fist. We quickly eliminated two lightning flies, and the burglar used her Taunting Words to move the other two flies to the front rank, so the knight could clean them up.

A worthy strategy, but we'd come into the level halfway beat-up already. We were at 12 wounds out of a total of 25 before entering the level, and we took 4-5 more damage just killing the flies. We used the knight's Healing Touch to eliminate a few of those wounds, but in the end, Adam's massive crushing blow took us out with a single blow, as we didn't have a way to clear red cubes. We didn't stand a chance.

Trial 2
Since our goal was to make the game playable and fun using just a single hero per player, we tried again with the same heroes, same rooms, and same mid-boss. We made the following  change:

• Instead of randomly drawing a single level 1 skill to start the game, each hero selected two first level skills.

So, by the time we got to the third floor, the heroes had

Knight Skills
Steel Fist: As above

Meat Shield: Party's max wounds increased by 2, ignore first wound done to hero each turn.

Healing Touch: As above

Grandfather's Protection: Party heals 1 wound each time luck is gained.

Burglar Skills
Burglary: As above

Lightning Quick: As above

Taunting Words: As above

Smoke Bombs: Exhaust skill to remove all red, yellow and black cubes from the field (not crypt)

This time we better-managed the party's wounds so that by the time we got to Patchwork Adams we were at only 6-7 total wounds. Even though it was a use-once skill, the burglar's Smoke Bombs were instrumental in making sure we didn't get any red cubes that Adams could use to do 10 damage at once.

Even more important was the burglar's ability to gain luck with Taunting Words and Lightning Quick, and the knight's ability to heal with Grandfather's Protection and Healing Touch. While the knight's healing skills are nothing compared to the doctor's skills, they were more than enough to take us through the level. We got through level 4 before we ran out of time, but I felt good about our chance.

It's possible (probable) that we overcompensated by letting each hero select two first-level skills. I think maybe just one would be sufficient - at least for experienced players. We will play more before deciding on a rule, though. Essen Spiel is coming up and we'll have a LOT more time to test the game.

Kickstarter Live Tomorrow

We hope that you join us tomorrow evening at 7:30 central on the Kickstarter project page as we play through a couple of Stygian Society levels, including a boss!

Day 7 Update - Designer Post: Tiny Little Stories
over 5 years ago – Mon, Oct 08, 2018 at 07:51:47 PM

Today's post is written by designer Kevin Wilson and details The Stygian Society room cards.

One of the things I wanted to do with Stygian Society was to make every room that the players enter into a set piece or a micro-story. Sometimes this is done through a progression of events, other times it’s through an implied background, but it always centers around the room cards.  

Each room has a sheet that lists all of its relevant information for the players. As an example, let’s look at the room sheet that Rahdo used in his video – Run and Gun. 

This is one of the ‘lower floor’ rooms that the players will encounter on floors 1-2 (floor 3 is the mini-boss), so it’s easier than the upper floor rooms. Upper floor rooms are encountered on floors 4-5 (and finally, of course, the wizard is on floor 6).  

Firstly, the sheet shows which monsters are in the room, as well as which rank (front or back) each monster is in. This room contains 3 slashers in the front rank protecting a cannoneer in the back rank. 

 The rear rank is somewhat protected from the more damaging attacks that the heroes can unleash, while the cannoneer itself is normally quite resistant to melee damage. As for the slashers, they’re not too tough, but they can shred the heroes badly if allowed to attack in larger groups.  

Next up is the peril cube section of the room card. This section basically tells the players which “enemy” cubes are dropped into the tower each turn, and it also says what to do with the cubes in the event that there’s a color of an enemy cube that doesn’t have a monster type there to use it. Usually, as on the Run and Gun card, cubes not usable by the monsters wind up increasing the peril instead.  

After that is what I consider to be the most important part of the room card, as this is where I was able to tell stories and adjust things on the fly – the peril events. Peril represents the passage of time in the room, and the longer the heroes take to defeat the room, the worse things get for them. If they take too long, every room has a loss condition (usually at 20 peril). So, have a look at the peril events for Run and Gun and see the story I’m telling there.  

The cannoneer has been hurt badly recently (0 peril), presumably by a previous group that met their end here, but while it is temporarily vulnerable to melee attacks, the cannoneer is shielded by the slashers as its wound begins to quickly heal (4 and 12 peril), and more slashers will soon arrive (8 peril) to reinforce the room. In the meantime, it sits in the back row, charging up its cannon blast (which is extremely likely to fire off at 16 peril if the cannoneer hasn’t been defeated by then). And woe betides the heroes if they’re still fighting when the peril reaches 20, as that results in an automatic loss as the denizens of the room overwhelm them.  

So, the heroes can focus on the cannoneer right away, hoping to kill it before it heals, or they can quickly reduce the number of slashers first, hoping to avoid an early painful attack from them while the cannoneer slowly charges its attack. They can try to move the cannoneer to the front rank (if they have a skill that does so) so that all of the heroes can focus on it, they can let the ranged heroes in the group attack it while the melee heroes deal with the slashers, or they can all work to defeat the slashers, after which the cannoneer will naturally “fall forward” into the front rank. A lot will depend on which skills they have at their disposal and which (if any) magic items they’ve acquired so far.  

Lastly, should the heroes defeat the room, it shows that there is a treasure chest for them to loot if they dare. However, the higher the peril has reached, the more dangerous it is to open chests, as the tower’s defenses grow stronger the longer the heroes linger in one place, and a deadly trap could be lurking.  

So as you can see, with this structure and a decent selection of different monsters, it’s possible to create a wide variety of challenges for the players and tell a lot of unique micro-stories for them to experience.

Let us know in the comment section if this is the kind of post you like. We have other ideas, like a breakdown of hero skills.

Day 8 Update - Hero Skills (Burglar)
over 5 years ago – Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 07:12:23 PM

I talk about Hero Skills in the main project text, so i won't repeat what I've said about them. I'd like to use this update to drill a little more deeply into skills and highlight what I consider to be the most utilitarian of the heroes - the burglar!

First, every hero mat comes with a level 0 skill built in. Every hero starts the game with this skill, plus one randomly-drawn level 1 skill. (Note that the graphic design for this mat is not final.)

The burglar's level 0 skill lets her drop an extra cube of any hero color whenever she drops cubes. This may not sound like a lot, but one extra cube that extra cube equates to 25%-50% increase! And we've had her ability to lower peril save our bacon more than once from a nasty chest trap.

Each hero's skill deck starts with 15 skill cards - six first level, five second level, and four third level.

The burglar doesn't have a lot of attack skills. In fact, she only has one at each level. At first level, that skill is Hurl Knives, a projectile attack.

When combined with her passive Burglary skill, she can drop a green cube plus two cubes of any hero color (one gray cube for the Hurl Knives skill and one gray cube for Burglary equals two wilds).

Heroes gain experience when defeating enemies. If they gain enough experience to level up, they can either select a skill of a level they already have OR randomly draw a skill of the next higher level. So, when leveling the first time during the game, the burglar can select any remaining first level skill or draw a random second level skill.

Heroes must select a skill and a target enemy before dropping cubes. She can only power that skill if the proper number of cubes ends up in the field and/or crypt after she drops them. A conservative strategy is to select skills that already have enough (or nearly enough) cubes in the field. Otherwise, the burglar might drop in white or blue cubes for her Hurl Knives skill, so that she can help prime the field for other heroes that can use those colors.

Now might be a good time to talk about general skills on the status mat.

The status board contains actions that can be used by any hero on their turn instead of the skills that they've drawn.

If there are a lot of blue cubes in the field, then perhaps the Burglar may choose the generic Attack instead of Hurl Knives. Of if she wants to fuel the spellsling's magic skills, she could just do a Help and drop in four white cubes (plus one for her Burglary skill).

The Regroup generic skill is incredibly useful if things go very badly, but it should be used sparingly since adding four peril can be pretty damaging.

I talked about the various skill types (passive, support, active, reaction) in the main project description, but some skill cards also have icons that have other effects. These include shield and exhaust.

The party takes one fewer damage during that hero's turn for each shield skill that the player has. Skills with the exhaust are turned sideways after using them and they are not restored until after the party levels up (not when they complete the floor).