Today marks the first instance of a playable and (relatively) presentable prototype of the first game in a new trilogy of tabletop games. These games are being designed with a few core player experiences in mind:
– Isekai Fantasy: The player takes the role of an “overpowered anime protagonist” in a fantasy setting. You don’t get a backstory, your only tie to the world is your unfair abilities and a responsibility to use them to avert the coming calamity. You don’t fear death, only not succeeding in time.
– Legacy Mechanics: Winning and losing games set special conditions in the other games within the trilogy. Failure in Rise isn’t death, it’s just the start of the storyline for Wrath. Failure in Wrath is the start of Reign. You have only truly lost if you are defeated in Reign, and only truly won if you’ve beaten Rise.
– Digital enhancement. QR codes located on certain cards offer more expansive encounters than what a single card can do. The “Tournament Arc” event card is just a series of increasingly difficult fights, but scanning the QR code plays background music and opens a more in depth version of the event with more branching options. A digital version of the game with those enhanced events built in is planned.
– Each turn is an entire Season. A player should feel at the end of their turn like they have been through more than just a simple choice or two. They should have traveled a long distance, had an adventure, and maybe made a few new allies or picked up some sweet loot along the way.
Prototype for Rise, made using a combination of 3rd party mapgen tools and Krita and displayed in Tabletop Simulator.