First off: welcome to all our new crewmates! We started our marketing campaign last month, and it’s great to see so many new people coming aboard the Pandora.
Lots to talk about this month as we run up to the UK Games Expo. And that’s probably where I should start. The UKGE is on May 31st - 2nd June. We will be there once again, in the same hall as last year, but with a bigger stand.
COME CHECK US OUT IN HALL 2 STAND 381
We’d love to meet you
If we have the numbers, we plan to press the Launch button 1 week after UKGE So we'll be:
On Monday June 10th
Please put the date in your diary and plan to back us early. The sooner we fund, the more Big Nasties and other extras we can add as Stretch Goals.
If you do back us in the first 48 hours of the campaign, we have a fantastic present to say ‘thank you for supporting us’…
Meet the ShapeShifter. This is a mini-expansion with a deck of up to 12 Tarot cards that contain a shape-shifting nanovirus which is trying to infest the Ship.
The cards are currently WIP on a temporary background, but I thought you’d like to see what we are working on. Each Crewmember is dealt 2 of these at the start of the game.
Any time the Crew find themselves alone in a room with a Nasty or a fellow Crewmember, they must exchange one of the cards in their hand. 1 card in the deck is the Carrier Card: the Carrier is trying to pass this onto someone else, to infest them and turn them into a ShapeShifter. But they need to be sure that their Victim won’t play one of the Resist cards seeded into the deck, which will attack the ShapeShifter and force it to reveal itself. If the ShapeShifters infest the entire Crew, they have Fulfilled their Agenda – but the last uninfested Crewmember on board Ship automatically Resists.
(If any of you know Binary Code, see what James our artist has written into the code of the viral cell ;0)
This expansion will come absolutely free to anyone who backs us in the first 48 hours of the campaign. Though later backers will still be able to buy it as an add-on.
We’re doing this because we really want to fund early. The sooner we fund, the more we can add extra Big Nasties and other cards as Stretch Goals, which we can’t include in the base price as it would make it prohibitively expensive. So please don’t sit on the fence – the sooner you back us, the better the final game will be.
The other big thing we’ve been working on recently is the back of the Ship – the Stern - which forms part of our Deluxe Game offering. This is our work in progress: it’s not quite complete yet but you’ll get the idea ;0)
The Stern is divided into 2 sections: the Cargo Bays and Engineering. The Cargo Bays each have a Cargo Card allocated to them, which contain good stuff like extra weapons or the Widget you need to get off the ship, but also bad stuff like Carnivorous Plants and other Nastiness specific to the Cargo.
Engineering is (obviously) where the ship’s engines are, and there will be additional Agendas and Protocols that feature the engines.
Interspersed around these are the Tools and additional Nasties in the Stern Deck. This is the ShipDeck for the Stern, and contains things like a Cargo Rig, Slime and a Swarm of ScuttleBugs. It also has a Junction Box, which lets you turn on the lights in the Cargo corridors – otherwise you are forced to discard a card every turn as you stumble around in the dark.
That’s it for today. We have a bunch of other stuff that I’m dying to show you – like the 2 extra Crew in our Deluxe Game, or the Big Nasties we’re planning for our first Stretch Goal – but I’ll leave that for another time.
As we run up to UKGE and the Launch that follows it, I’ll be posting more frequent updates on Gamefound. So please do follow us there if you want to see what we have in store for you in the Crowdfunding Campaign.
We are also going to be at the Hereford Games Convention next weekend. So do come say ‘hi’ if you're there.
Until then, stay frosty in those dark corners ;0)
M€