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Game Update - Sometimes You Need to Stir Things Up to Get Results

3/27/2018

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Airship passenger controller room.
Since the last blog post we made, we’ve made huge changes to the PvE systems in the game. You can learn more about that here but I know that some of you don’t care about that and would instead like to learn about something even cooler, a specialty class reveal! This specialty has got to be my second favorite specialty, although I’m probably very biased as, like the Farmer, I designed it. As for the Artist and Explorer specialty leaks, those two are going to be Jerome’s problem (since he designed those specialties), unless he wants me to do them, which he probably will. Anyway, this specialty is called the Chemist, from, of course, the Scientist profession.
Dark Picture of a torn up sci fi town.
 It’s no wonder I like the Chemist so much, a bunch of math that we cleverly disguise as “puzzles”, and I love math, I mean puzzles. The Chemist can gain three different types of resources: Plant Herbs, Stone, and Monster Parts. Some Chemist cards will allow you to gain these resources, while others will allow you to use them. Some unique card types the Chemist has are: Resourcers (Summons that grant resources each turn), Materializers (Items that can change or grant resources), Constructs (Summons that can only be summoned by spending resources) and Formulas (Items that can spend resources for certain effects to happen). A chemist can also tap their character to either spend 2 energy to get a random resource or spend 3 energy to get a resource of their choice.
Sci-fi secret agent art.
Artist Garrett Kaida
    Since the Chemist is going to go through plenty of card changes, I can’t show any card and how they can be used, so I will instead say… um… er… well… the Chemist everybody! This should be a more unique class when compared to the Farmer. I hope you like it! We want this to be a game built for the and by the community. What do you think about these updates and the project in general? 
- Simon Labelle
Check out Terria 2K.
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Game Update on Terria 2K - Specialty Leak: Farmer

3/17/2018

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We’ve been working hard on Terria 2K, mostly on the PvE aspects of the game. In the final game, you can select one of four professions (Keeper, Artist, Explorer, and Scientist), then select the specialty that goes along with it. In the base game, there will only be one specialty for each profession, but trust me when I say more are coming soon, some being developed right now! But for now, I, the one and only Simon, would like to take the time to write about what might be my favorite of the specialties we have created: The Farmer, from the Keeper profession.​

The Farmer, along with the Artist base game specialty, will most likely be in the prototype of the game. It is a summon-based specialty that relies on beasts and beast buffing. This class has quite a lot of beasts, each with their own special passives and abilities, but the Farmer also has Chickens (which count as beasts) which can sometimes buff each other. You can also summon Frogs, which buff both Chickens and other Frogs. However, since Chickens are at war with Frogs (It’s a long story), to summon a Frog, you must place it atop a Chicken. When the Frog is defeated, the Chicken is revealed.
With so much more space left I need to fill for my quota, I guess I’ll talk about one of the cards already done and explain how it could be used. For example, Snappy the Gator. Snappy doesn’t only deal Piercing damage, allowing it to bypass Guard, Block, and Reflect, it also deals a large amount of bonus damage to tired summons, meaning, in PvP, your opponent will have to think before using any of their summons. If a powerful summon is used, Snappy could easily defeat it, so it threatens your opponent and punishes them for using all of their summons when they can.
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Well, that’s all I have to say about the Farmer! More specialty leaks could come up in the future if requested. The Farmer is probably the most basic and generic of all the specialties in the base game, and even in specialties planned for the future, so you can look forward to learning more about the game’s specialties. When me and Jerome were thinking of specialties for the game, we wanted to give each of them some unique mechanic to play with, such as traps and, uh oh, I already spoiled something! Most card games, in my opinion, had too many generic classes, even ones that had the same mechanics for different classes, like weapons and secrets that only implemented on the most obvious class to have trap abilities in the most recent expansion (You know which game I’m talking about). I hope you found The Farmer interesting!

Written by Simon Labelle

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Tips on How to Make a Fun Cooperative Board Game

3/3/2018

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Screenshot From a Rhett and Link Video
By fun in this article I mean is engaging, fast paced and chaotic. Elements which are usually traits of a Party Game but whether your game is a party game or not you may find these tips helpful for you board game anyways. Here is a list of the things you should be considering when designing a co-op board game for choatic fun. 

1.  IS IT MY TURN YET....

It is NOT FUN to wait for someone else to make a decision or wait for someone else to role dice. Consider carefully how long player turns will take. In fact you can remove player turns altogether and create a democratic system for making decisions. If you have a coop game do not just make a single player game that you play with friends make it a TEAM experience. 
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2.  FIGHT TOGETHER, FIGHT EACH OTHER?!
Members of the group should feel essential to the group but also they should not feel that they always need to follow the group. Conflict between group members create unpredictable outcomes which creates chaos and fun even if it means that sometimes a group member does not get what they want. 

3.  THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME?!

Consider adding a timer to an aspect of the game. This adds a totally different dynamic and creates agency to the player experience. If you want to create instant chaos combine a difficult and dividing decision that needs to be made as a group and add a short timer that forces the group to make a decision quickly. If an experience is not engaging players the way you want them to be engaged a timer might wake them up. 
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​4.  Randomness but not too much...

Either use dice or cards to create randomness. Combining both is usually to much. Try to create Controlled Chaos! The player should feel that their choices matter but sometimes the outcome does not work out the way they wanted it to.
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- Jerome Labelle

Check out the board game I am working on!

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