Return to Dark Tower

Knockout Punch
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 01:02:22 AM

As we move closer to print lockdown, Lindsay has put the finishing touches on the punchboards, so I thought that would be a fun thing to show you. We've ended up with three very large (303 x 333 mm) punchboards in the box.

It's hard to overstate the tremendous work that goes into laying out a punchboard. It's equal parts origami, sudoku, Adobe Illustrator, use-case testing, voodoo, artistry, and caffeine. By way of example, Lindsay literally iterated dozens and dozens of foe tokens to come up with just the right design so they are legible and visible on the board.

Some of these tokens you've seen before, some you haven't. Some minor tweaks and some meatier ones. You've now got a look at all of the acquirable virtues, the six types of dungeons, the objective markers, and the quest-specific tokens: rivers of fire, caravans, spores, and siege trees.

One last little bit of technical insight: Those light blue lines are called "die lines". Every punchboard has a unique "die", which is basically a big metal "cookie cutter" that pre-cuts the board, so they're easy to punch out when you open the game. You'll see how the art goes beyond the die line. That's called "bleed" and is used to make sure that the art extends to the edge of the tokens when they're punched. So keep that in mind as you're visualizing what the tokens will look like on the table.

Not Throwing Away Our Shot!
over 3 years ago – Mon, Oct 05, 2020 at 01:03:29 AM

In the last update, we got a chance to see the "tools" -- the steel molds they use to manufacture the plastic bits, notably the Tower. Well, today, we're going to take a look at the "first shot". This is literally the first piece of plastic run through those tools.

A few important caveats. This is very much not what the final Tower will look like. For starters, this is made using a cheaper, generic plastic. It's a step up from 3D printing, but it's still a half-step below where the final materials will be. You'll notice surface imperfections, dimples, and the like. Those are perfectly normal at this stage and won't appear on the final Tower. Second, it's not the right color. We've picked out some amazing colors for the Tower that really give it some menace. These are not those colors. Third, there are noticeable imperfections in the pieces. Indeed, that's the whole point of the first shot, seeing where there are problems, where we need to make adjustments, etc. I'm even going to point out some of those below so you can get a better idea of how the process works for a piece as complex as the Tower that will end up in your game.

First up, the exterior:

As I mentioned, the main purpose of this process is to make adjustments in the engineering. So our crack team of engineers -- Tim, Charlie, and Andrew -- are hard at work identifying and fixing issues as we move into actual production. A lot of these are minor imperfections, such as scratch marks in the mold, sink marks, and visible sprue removal points. But some are more technical that will require tweaks to the tool or schematics to resolve.

Here's a shot of the gearbox:

Tim noted that there's a potential for contact between the middle gear and outer gear axle. So that will be adjusted to eliminate that possibility.

Here's a shot of one of the Tower drums:

You can see a slight gap between the drum and the gears. The tools will need to be updated so they sit flush.

Here's some of the wiring:

Not all of the wires are sitting flush, so we'll add another clip to make sure they're held securely in place.

And there are another couple dozen items like this that will be addressed. I hope this update gives you an idea of just how much more complex this project is than a typical board game. This Tower is truly something special.

In other news, we are in the final stages of print lock down. In the next update, I'll probably have a bunch of cards and tokens to show. The rulebook actually gets a couple extra weeks for layout and editing, but we'll share that as soon as it's done. In the meantime, here's a little taste of something we haven't shown before:

This is the front and back of one of the heroic test cards from the competitive game. I'll talk a bit more about the competitive game when we post the final rule book, but I thought you might like to see a glimpse of what's in store.

Nothing But Photos of Steel
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 19, 2020 at 02:41:15 AM

Bigger update coming next week. We'll get you caught up on how all the different facets of the game are coming along. In the meantime, I thought you all might find this pretty cool. The mold used to make plastic components are called a "tool". As you might imagine, for minis games, the tools are pretty modestly sized, usually holding around 6 standard-sized figures. That doesn't work for the Tower, of course. The manufacturer sent us some photos of the Tower tools, so here's a look at about a ton of steel they're using to make just one part of this game.

Gear Up!
over 3 years ago – Thu, Sep 03, 2020 at 01:39:15 AM

Nothing exciting to report as the engineers on two continents continue their work. In the meantime, the game design team is busy locking down text, and the graphic design team are busy making it look pretty. So, for today's update, I thought I'd show you the six gear cards in the game. Enjoy the pretty art, and then we'll take a look the mechanics:

You'll see the graphical treatment for items that grant advantages. That's a big part of the game, and players will get lots of advantages from various items and virtues, so we want to make it easy for them to identify and tally them.

Trusted maps modify your base move. There are a few other effects that can modify your base move, so we've streamlined those rules as well. Importantly, you can modify your move until you start moving, but once you start moving you can't adjust it further. If you're in a bazaar at the start of your turn and get trusted maps, you can move 4 (or double to 8). If you move 1 space into the bazaar and get them, your movement has already been set for the turn, so you can only move 2 additional spaces.

The biggest change is to blessed scepters. It used to let you remove skulls before you reinforced, but that was back when skulls made you pay additional spirit to do so. We eliminated the "skull tax" for reinforcing. So now we can change the skull removal to after reinforcement. Not a big deal here, but, importantly, it let us move all effects to trigger after you acquire them. So, for items and virtues that give you bonuses when you reinforce, they don't trigger for the reinforcement in which you acquire them. Subtle change, but it really cleans things up and avoids some quirky timing issues.

One of the other big changes we made to the gear cards over the course of playtesting isn't on the cards themselves: Heroes cannot gain more than one of each type. This helps us balance the dungeons and foes without players stacking up massive advantages.

One final note, I'll mention the stellar art was done by James Bousema, except for the longswords piece, which was done by Garrett Kaida.

Brutal Warlord Gets a Glow-Up
over 3 years ago – Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 09:38:47 PM

Apologies for the delay in updating. I got back from the RV trip in one piece and had a big backlog of stuff to get through. At the same time, this project is very much in the "messy middle" -- lots of work, not a lot of shiny stuff to show off.

On the production side, the Tower is proving to be very much the nasty beast we all thought it was. Tim, Charlie, and Andrew are working closely with the manufacturer to make all the final refinements. We expect to get an actual Tower off the line to test (and show off!) in the next couple of months.

Meanwhile, Rob, Noah, Brian, and myself are doing a final pass on the print materials before that gets locked down. This is all the exciting design work like "Should 'Battle' capitalized?" and "Do we need a period for the advantage effects?" On the plus side, this means that design is basically done, and that's a big milestone. We're working on final editing and layout on the rulebook, and I'll post a pdf when that's done (with just enough time to squash any last-minute typos you all happen to find for us).

I did want to show off something since it's been a bit. Jason just finished the hero boards. When I went hunting for the new image to show you, I stumbled on the hero boards we did for a very early prototype. Thought it might be fun to take a look at how much work has gone into designing and refining the game.

So, to start things off, here's a Brutal Warlord hero board from the prototype from almost exactly two years ago:

You'll note this was back when we were still using gold as a resource. Shortly after that we added in spirit and eventually dropped gold altogether. That corruption track eventually morphed into the corruption deck, making it more variable in its effect. Most notably, you'll see the list of actions. This early iteration had a major engine-building component, hence the "Gather" and "Build" actions. In short order, we realized it was detracting from the adventuring aspect of the game, and we automated those effects into the Banner and Reinforce actions.

Let's see how things look today:

Astute observers will note some subtle refinements even from the version we showed during the campaign, including:

• We normalized the starting resources for all the heroes -- 7 warriors, 1 spirit. The Banner actions basically start the game with the point of difference, so there's not point in exacerbating that with asymmetrical setup.
• The starting unique Battle advantage is now a virtue ("Baleful" here). Putting them in a different place on the board caused some folks to forget about them. An easy fix.
• The Quest action, you'll note, now expressly identifies it's used to explore dungeons.
• Citadel and Sanctuary Reinforce effects have been changed.
• Added a reminder for the end-of-turn skull drop.
• Corruptions are now cards instead of tokens. Makes them easier to shuffle. Makes it easier for us to add more in future expansions.
• Slots for treasure cards to remind folks of the carry limit.
• Basically a lot sexier and easier to parse. Thanks, Jason!

We'll start showing off some more final print materials, the app, and even the Tower over the next few months.