Where we are, and where we are going! Dates, art, game design
17 days ago
– Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 02:08:59 PM
Hey friends, I'm sorry it's been a while since we updated, it has been an eventful couple months both in the real world, and in the game world. Before I get into specifics, which I will below, I'm going to share the date news - we're not ready for print yet, and my estimate is that we'll go to print (meaning everything is approved/we press "print button" at factory) in late June.
This is obviously not where I planned to be! We wanted to go to print in December, to be ready for a summer 2025 release. Here's where we're at with parts of the game:
Art
Art is going very well! Almost all illustration for the game is complete, and what's left is iconography updates and small pictures for the Relics cards. Here's three more baddies that'll be standing in the way of your dungeon crawling adventures:
We've also got many more new unseen foes + perils, but we'll leave some of them to your future imagination and discovery. Overall, we're super excited about how all the art came out! Relics of the Forge is going to be a very cool looking set. The bosses in particular are fantastic.
Game Design
So here's where the trouble comes in, and sadly, this falls squarely upon me (Chris). We've now tested Relics at Gen Con, a lot of in person and streamed games, and at PAX Unplugged. It works okay, but it's not as good as it could be, and we're over our complexity budget for first plays. I took a few weeks after PAX U to digest how demos there had gone - PAX has many more casual gamers + demo-seekers than we saw at Gen Con, and it became very clear to me that we need a better onboarding system/set of mechanics for Relics of the Forge both as an expansion, and as a stand-alone product. Simply put, new players were going to have trouble.
This does not mean that we're going to strip down the fun complexities that make using relics interesting. Instead, what I've been working on for the past month+, and what I'm hoping will be ready to show in a couple weeks, is a two-tier system for Relics and for the Forge. The large Forge card will be double-sided, and the relic you choose will dictate which side of the Forge you use (in a 2P game - you'll need to pick relics for the same side). The version of the Forge you've all seen in demos and streams will be the "advanced" (it won't be called that) side, and the other side will be more streamlined, with less bookkeeping and upfront rules complexity.
The goal of the two-tier system is to get new players on the ground rolling (dice) as quickly as possible, while preserving the wild relics fun that we built last year. I'm pretty confident in the solution I've got cooking, and hope to show it to you all in a stream in a couple weeks!
I was hoping to have the system ready to show before making this update, but enough time has passed that I just needed to share where're at now. Again, sorry for the slowness, and I'm very sorry the game isn't ready when I wanted it to be, and when you all wanted it to be. It's been a pretty garbage time to get creative work done, but I'm pushing through as best i can. I thank all of you for your patience - and if this timeline isn't something you're interested in waiting for, we always give full refunds to anyone who asks. Just send an email to [email protected] and we'll process it promptly.
Tarriffs
We'll deal with whatever chaos comes as it comes. It's a shameful situation that we've all been put in, and that's really all there is to say.
Production
We've got good quotes for production, and anticipate no issues with getting the game made once we have files ready.
This is obviously not where I planned to be! We wanted to go to print in December, to be ready for a summer 2025 release. Here's where we're at with parts of the game:
Art
Art is going very well! Almost all illustration for the game is complete, and what's left is iconography updates and small pictures for the Relics cards. Here's three more baddies that'll be standing in the way of your dungeon crawling adventures:
We've also got many more new unseen foes + perils, but we'll leave some of them to your future imagination and discovery. Overall, we're super excited about how all the art came out! Relics of the Forge is going to be a very cool looking set. The bosses in particular are fantastic.
Game Design
So here's where the trouble comes in, and sadly, this falls squarely upon me (Chris). We've now tested Relics at Gen Con, a lot of in person and streamed games, and at PAX Unplugged. It works okay, but it's not as good as it could be, and we're over our complexity budget for first plays. I took a few weeks after PAX U to digest how demos there had gone - PAX has many more casual gamers + demo-seekers than we saw at Gen Con, and it became very clear to me that we need a better onboarding system/set of mechanics for Relics of the Forge both as an expansion, and as a stand-alone product. Simply put, new players were going to have trouble.
This does not mean that we're going to strip down the fun complexities that make using relics interesting. Instead, what I've been working on for the past month+, and what I'm hoping will be ready to show in a couple weeks, is a two-tier system for Relics and for the Forge. The large Forge card will be double-sided, and the relic you choose will dictate which side of the Forge you use (in a 2P game - you'll need to pick relics for the same side). The version of the Forge you've all seen in demos and streams will be the "advanced" (it won't be called that) side, and the other side will be more streamlined, with less bookkeeping and upfront rules complexity.
The goal of the two-tier system is to get new players on the ground rolling (dice) as quickly as possible, while preserving the wild relics fun that we built last year. I'm pretty confident in the solution I've got cooking, and hope to show it to you all in a stream in a couple weeks!
I was hoping to have the system ready to show before making this update, but enough time has passed that I just needed to share where're at now. Again, sorry for the slowness, and I'm very sorry the game isn't ready when I wanted it to be, and when you all wanted it to be. It's been a pretty garbage time to get creative work done, but I'm pushing through as best i can. I thank all of you for your patience - and if this timeline isn't something you're interested in waiting for, we always give full refunds to anyone who asks. Just send an email to [email protected] and we'll process it promptly.
Tarriffs
We'll deal with whatever chaos comes as it comes. It's a shameful situation that we've all been put in, and that's really all there is to say.
Production
We've got good quotes for production, and anticipate no issues with getting the game made once we have files ready.
