One week to Launch Peeps! Are you excited yet?
I must admit I’m both eager and terrified in equal measure.
Your responses to the backer poll have been incredibly heartening and give us a really good chance of getting funded, but until we hit that magic number I won’t relax.
Some great reviews are starting to come in. Here’s one on Instagram by Bo of Punchablegames, which very pointedly compares us extremely favourably to the Big Beasty in this gamespace 😈 Thank you for those kind words Bo. Please check it out here and give him some love: https://www.instagram.com/p/C87F2I7NlGE/?img_index=1
So in this last big update before we Launch, I thought you might like a sneak peek at what we have to offer if we do get funded. As you know, in order to keep the price of the game at manageable levels, we decided to limit our core offering to 6 Crew & 3 Big Nasties, adding more as Stretch Goals once we have ensured that the game will get made. So once we’re funded, we’ll start a series of votes on which new Big Nasty or Crewmember should get added to the game.
The first big beasty out of the gate is the SHAPESHIFTER
This isn’t really a Stretch Goal, it’s an optional Add-On, but we are giving it away FREE TO ALL WHO BACK US IN THE FIRST 48 HOURS of the campaign.
I've told you about the ShapeShifter before, so I won't waste your time by going through all that again. Suffice to say that this is a mini game-within-a-game of bluff and counter-bluff, where the Carrier must try to tease out the Resist cards from its potential victims in an attempt to pass on the virus. As one of our players put it: ‘It adds another frisson of terror when people are alone together.’
The first of our true Stretch Goal Nasties is the TIME JUMPER. In the picture, you can see it Doppler Shifting through time to get to you.
As a designer, this is one of my favourites, because it was a challenge to create a creature that could dial back time and change events without bogging down the game. In the end, I opted for the simple route of giving it prescience. So whenever you draw a Nasty Action Card involving the Time Jumper, you draw 2 and take the one that gives the worst result (for you).
This makes it very hard to kill, but if you do manage to kill it while wounded yourself, its blood infects yours and gives you the Time Jumping ability. This enables you to look at the top card of any one Deck once per turn, before you make any decisions, imbuing you with a limited prescience of what is going to happen and allowing you to do something different if the result would not go in your favour.
Up against this in the first vote is the GARR’GOYLE
On the face of it, it looks quite weak because it only has 2 Hits; but this demonic creature has stoneskin. Any time it is threatened, its skin freezes to stone, rendering it invulnerable: so it only ever takes 1 damage regardless of the strength of your attack and you cannot push your luck against it. It also means that the maximum damage it will take each Cycle is 1.
However, the downside of this defence mechanism is that you can freeze the Garr’Goyle in place by placing a card bearing a Fist Action into your Active Defence area. As long as at least 1 Crew has a Fist Defence active in the same Room, the Garr’Goyle cannot move during the Nasty Action Round. So don’t flinch. If you flinch, you die!
This is because its attack is particularly Nasty. Instead of drawing a combat card, the Garr’Goyle automatically drains the top card of your Deck and takes it as an extra Hit rather than placing it on your Wound Tracker! So you cannot Heal the Wound back until you’ve killed the Garr’Goyle – which now has an extra Hit.
Next up we have SCIENCE OFFICER KENI
Now I’ll be honest: Keni started as a joke.
When we decided to create a Learning Campaign, the introductory Prologue has you racing to the Sick Bay where you find Science Officer Keni sprawled dead across the entrance to the Iso-Ward with weird Bug Pods growing out of her. “Oh my God…!” you cry, looking at what they’ve done to Keni. See wot I did there? 😂
But as the game has progressed, I’ve developed such a soft spot for Keni that I would love her to be a Crew-member. So I created Keni in that image. She’s an enabler. Her Special Cards allow her to dole out Happi Pills that let you draw any card from your Deck; and Analyse the weak points of the Nasties, letting you do +1 dmg.
And like her inspiration, Keni always bounces back. She has Scientific Immunity, which gives her the one-off ability to come back from the dead – as long as it’s in her Active Defence when she’s killed. I used this once to everyone’s amusement as detailed by my gaming buddy Darryl in his report on the game here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3322611/what-movie-are-we-in-again
If we ever get this far, I’d love to introduce the ULAR
Far back in the mists of time, this warrior race developed an invulnerable suit of armour in which they encased their bodies – and it drove them mad. Now, the last of the Ular strides through the Ship on its Tripod, still trying to ‘Eliminate’ all before it. At Range 1 it deploys its DeathRay, which does an impressive 4 dmg. If you’re in the same Room, it uses the BuzzSaw that inflicts 3 dmg through armour. And if you’re out of Line of Sight, it fires a HuntaSeeka that does 3 dmg -1 for every corner it has to turn to get to you.
And as if that’s not bad enough, it is completely invulnerable to physical damage! The only way to kill it is to find a MediKit or Combat SurgiKit and use it to spray the ‘Flu vaccine into its vents. This then does 1 dmg per turn/per Heal Charge applied until the Ular dies of the Flu. And the Ular has 1 Hit +1 per player in the game!
And finally, for the moment, let me introduce the MARFFYN
This manically depressed little critter is ‘Wonewy, so wonewy!' All it wants is a kind word and company.
So in the Nasty Action Round it Moves 1 towards the First Target, seeking comfort in the noise of companionship.
It too is completely invulnerable. BUT… if you don’t comfort it by discarding an Action Card to talk to it at some point during the Round, its tear glands swell up doing 1 dmg to it until it explodes, completely destroying the Room it’s in and creating a Hull Breach in all adjacent Rooms. It has 7 Hits -1 per player in the game. So in a 6-player game, someone always has to keep it happy to prevent a massive meltdown.
That’s it for the moment. I’d love to tell you about the Cyber-Slavers, who want to turn you all into cyborgs; the Body Snatchers in the Cargo Bays; the Bleeder which eats through the Hull every time it takes damage; Gover the Whinger; Marina the Space Marine; the Flurry of Fluffies; or the Voracious MimicBeast of Hyke – a creature so stupid that it believes if you don’t move, it can’t move either…
If you have any ideas you’d like to throw my way, feel free to hop onto Facebook or our Discord Server and pitch them to me there.
Until then, watch out for those dark corners, and remember…
WE LAUNCH ON TUESDAY 9TH JULY AT 0800 EST/1300 UKT
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