New Games in the Works

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Don't worry, everything is alive and well in the Kingdoms of Immacus, but I have started work on a new card drafting game to fill the line up a little bit. As I was working on some web development, I found it pretty difficult to build the rich website I want to build with only one game under my belt. Now don't get me wrong, the content and look I have planned for Atomic Automaton will make the website nice and sparkly, but I really wanted to drive home the reality that there is more than Kingdoms of Immacus being worked on. This includes Spirit Strikers, a 1-player campaign dungeon crawler and Trolltem Poles, a 6-player card drafting game about building totems and building or destroying relationships with other troll clans.

Where to start

Spirit Strikers was going to be the next game on the agenda, but it quickly became unruly. It's a big game. Not Kingdoms big, but big enough where I can't make meaningful progress on it while working on Kingdoms. Thus Spirit Strikers is shelved until Kingdoms is on the last stages of testing. That brings me to Trolltem Poles. I have been finding it difficult to get my hands on larger player count games that I find both visually and thematically engaging to me. Not that there aren't any great games on he market for higher player counts, it's just I would like something that scratches my fantasy itch that doesn't look old. I also didn't want something too simple/party-game-esque.

Thinky Party Game Anyone?

This dilemma led me to making a card drafting game with some minor take that, a little bit of luck, and some strategy all mix in. I will go more into detail about Trolltem Poles in a formal announcement blog post once I come up with the logo, but here is what I can say about my game... Trolltem Poles is about 6 troll clans all vying to earn or destroy their reputations with one another. This is done by building relationships through trading, or destroying them with displays of strength. All while this is happening, players are trying to collect cards to empower ancestor totems that will gain them points and affect those clan relationships further. Trolltem Poles is all about how your choices affect other players. Every interaction affects your reputation with each clan, and the driving force of the game (the totems) has immense consequences when played.

Chain Reactions of Fun

When a totem is played, all the components that went into making that totem have an affect on players based off of their alignment. Not only do personal abilities build up, but reputation goes up or down as well. A player's action will always affect other players. This is more true with more players as all the clans get represented. Therefore, abilities get triggered, which affects the gamestate in fun ways and reputation moves, which drives the game to a conclusion. Finally, the amount of luck is only in what is drawn. How the gamestate is affected is only done by the players. A player has full control over what abilities from opponents they want to trigger or avoid. This makes it fun to try to avoid triggering abilities that harm you, while triggering abilities that may harm a player that you are not in good standing with. I'm excited to get to work on this, and I look forward to sharing it with you all.