Unmatched Adventures: Tales To Amaze

The Adventure Ahead: The Plan for the Pledge Manager, Production, and Fulfillment
about 1 year ago – Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 04:11:11 PM

In a word, you all are AMAZING! 8,999 backers and $481,102 is an amazing accomplishment for a campaign with only one item and no stretch goals. It speaks to the strength of the game and the community that supports it -- that's you!

Production of the game is already underway. We expect production to be completed sometime in June. Then, of course, the game will get on a boat and make it's way to Savannah, Georgia. Fortunately, sea freight has stabilized significantly from where it was last year, and we have not been seeing the delays we were seeing before. From there, it will hop a truck to the PSI warehouse in Suwanee to begin fulfillment. We are still on pace for fulfillment to start sometime in August. Of course, we will continue to update you throughout the process. For now, remember, no news is good news.

In the meantime, we are currently working on setting up the pledge manager in BackerKit. We expect to have it open next week. In the pledge manager, you will be able to upgrade your pledge if you backed at the "This Just In!" level and add copies of the game, the promo pack, other Unmatched titles, and some other games from our catalog. If you missed the campaign, you will be able to late pledge as well, which will qualify you as a backer and give you the free promo pack. We have not settled yet on when we will be closing the pledge manager, but we'll let you know when we come to a decision on that.

As for our international fans, we do not have final information to report yet as to countries, languages, and dates. But I do know that IELLO continues to work extremely hard with our publishing partners to make sure the game and the promos will be as widely available as possible. They've already received the production files and placed their order for the plastic components. I know there is some skepticism about the process, but rest assured that we are all working to earn your trust in us. We will report any updates as soon as we get them.

Until next time, stay AMAZING!

Design Diary #4 - "Heroes and Villains"
about 1 year ago – Thu, Apr 06, 2023 at 10:25:58 AM

This update is sponsored by the number four and the letter O, M, and G.

Before we jump to the latest designer diary installment, let's just mention $400,000! Wow! I didn't know exactly what to expect when we launched, but I know we beat it pretty soundly. Thank you all for the support.

For those who missed it, I did a playthrough with the Dice Tower, and you can check out the video here:  https://www.youtube.com/live/0o2ht3mMNkA?feature=share&t=61. I guess it went well, because 3 of the 4 contributors chose it as their "pick of the week" on their most recent Crowdsurfing episode.

So let's check back in with Darren and Jason on which heroes and villains they chose and who did and didn't make the final cut.

What heroes were considered for the set?

Darren: We actually went through a lot of heroes. Initially we were going to make the set Folklore vs Cryptids so we had a whole lineup of folk heroes to include: Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, John Henry, Annie Christmas, and [REDACTED]. Later in development we started looking at some real life legends to include. The Wright Brothers, Jim Thorpe, and Nikola Tesla came into the fold at that time. (Muhammed Ali vs Jim Thorpe set when???)

After Restoration decided to pick up the system we had a character pitch meeting with them. It was decided that two of our heroes would be included and two heroes from the Restoration team. Annie and Tesla made the cut. 

One really great thing about Tales to Amaze is that the set itself is a high enough profile that lesser known heroes can be included. For example, Tesla could headline a box, he has that pop culture clout. But could Annie Christmas or Dr. Jill Trent? Tales to Amaze really let us slip in some great characters that could have been passed over in a traditional four hero set.

Jason: I was not expecting that we’d get a chance to pitch heroes at all for the set. So when we had that meeting put on our calendars with that topic, I was tickled pink at the opportunity.  We went in with a slide deck with a kind of “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” vibe. They pitched us what they were thinking, Golden Bat, Jill Trent, and two others with a pulpy feel. A decision was made in the meeting – split the groups and mash’em up – we had the roster.

Why Annie Christmas?

Darren: I learned about Annie Christmas through Jason. I was playing around with making John Henry a fighter and Jason shared just the tiniest screenshot from some obscure source that mentioned a woman named Annie Christmas was sometimes associated with John Henry. That put me down the rabbit hole of learning more about this somewhat unknown tall tale from Louisiana. I did the google search thing. Found what I could on YouTube. Listened to a really helpful podcast. Eventually ordered a couple of dusty source books from the reference section of the public library. Then I bought those books so I could reference them whenever I needed to.

With each new source I learned a little more about Annie and really fell in love with the character. This larger than life woman doing larger than life things during a time in the world where just doing day to day things would be challenging. Her very existence was bucking the status quo. There was an action in the story with Annie stringing her pearl necklace a little longer with every bully she thumped. There was romance with Annie having eyes for only Charlie. And there was Charlie being a good guy but needing to be bailed out sometimes by Annie because he ran in shady circles. If this was an 8-part HBO mini-series I would watch it.

Annie became my personal passion project to get into Unmatched. She was initially submitted to the Fan Deck Design contest. But honestly, that deck was rejected for all the right reasons. In hindsight it was not very good. Annie continued to evolve with the system. She went through a lot of iterations. We leaned hard into her being a team leader, being good in crowds, and good with other friendly fighters. Her playstyle often had her in a “dance” with Charlie as they traded enemy accessible positions back and forth depending on the opponents health. Her last iteration was the “+2 against higher health opponents”, that really made her deck sing, and it was the perfect thematic fit for a woman that refused to be bullied. Now when Annie is low in health she actually chases the opponent down!

Mechanically Annie sits at a great intersection of simple to understand and providing meaningful decisions each turn. In PvP, her character ability is super interesting. She has a fun feature of defense through deterrence. When the health values are tight the opponent has to make the decision of whether to risk their attack succeeding against Annie. If Annie’s health drops to one less than the opponents, the opponent needs to be ready to deal with a possible 7-value attack coming their way. If they aren’t ready to deal with that, they may want to back away. If they back away they run the risk of Charlie getting them with a high value ranged attack. She stands a puncher's chance against most fighters in the system but it will really come down to the skill of the person playing her.

Jason: I’m super happy with how the Annie deck developed. “Striking Beauty” is probably my favorite card name in the set. I think “Longshot” is my favorite card mechanically. Her deck is everything I love about Unmatched. And, she was such a blast to playtest. Having her punch T-Rex in the face is a delight, highly recommend. Also the Restoration dev team added some great pieces to her kit, like her staple effect on “Mississippi Queen.” It really holds things together. I’m especially happy for Darren, who waved Annie’s banner for more than a year.

Also, fun fact: Charlie’s “Bottom Dealing” card originated from an unsuccessful fan-deck for the Tall Tale gunslinger Pecos Bill. My hook for Bill was a lot of “bottom card” effects like this. And when they happened during a game, I’d hold Bill’s deck like a wild-west six-shooter, flip it over in a quick motion, pointing at the opponent to reveal the bottom card, and say “pew pew.” And now I still do that with Charlie.

Why Nikola Tesla?

Jason: The spark for Tesla wasn’t as clear as Annie’s.  It really started with our unsuccessful John Henry fan-deck. We then iterated and played a lot of John and found a great mechanical hook for him that focused on a kind of “crimped garden hose” play pattern. You’d take a turn off occasionally, and then have a super turn, repeat. We grew to love it.

Then, when we were working with an iteration of the co-op system and deciding how Villains and Minions should handle turns where targets were out of range, we instituted a “charge” system for them. The next turn for that enemy would be a super turn. The system doesn't do that anymore, but stick with me. 

In that moment, we were trying to figure out how to help players understand and remember that mechanism, of a future threat being “charged.” So we gave it to one of the player characters to reinforce the idea, as a memory aid. We had already discussed Tesla as a theme option. So, we combined him with that play pattern from John, and off we went.

Our initial pitch of Tesla was way more complex than it needed to be. To the credit of the Restoration development team, they fixed him. The original version had two differently named coils, and depending on which basic Unmatched action you didn’t do on your turn (Maneuver or Attack), you’d charge that corresponding coil. Then later, you could do that action better than normal - super Maneuver or super Attack. Even though the puzzle was cute, the play pattern was too kitey, kinda unfun with bad incentives, and had more schemes than Sherlock.

The “crimped garden hose” play pattern is still present in the final Tesla, but the way you interact with it is slick and very user friendly. Development is so valuable!

Why did you pick cryptids for the villains?

Jason: Well, we wanted to start with writing what we knew. I was born in New Jersey but raised in Appalachia (West Virginia), so I’ve seen Mothman stuff my whole life. I've spent a fair amount of time in Point Pleasant and explored the old abandoned TNT silos that Mothman haunts (allegedly). Darren and I both hail from Ohio now, and Darren lives 10 minutes from the Loveland Frogman (allegedly).

We also dipped into some territory that wasn’t appropriate from a cultural standpoint to fill out our cryptid roster, figures and legends that were too close to contemporary cultural belief systems. While other games have used those characters, Restoration rightly made the change away from those by pairing the system with the pulp theme. Great choice, Restoration!

Darren: I’ve cycled next to the Loveland Frogman’s stomping river my entire adult life. You can find Frogman merch in the area. There is a Loveland Frogman Triathlon every year. Somewhere in the world is a recording for a tiny Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway performance of a show called “Hot Damn! It’s the Loveland Frog!” (My new life goal is to find this recording) If cryptids were involved, I had to get Frogman into the game.

Cryptids in general are a really interesting topic. Any large body of water in the United States (actually most of the world) has a mysterious creature associated with it. Large patches of forests or caves also tend to have monster sightings. Cryptid sightings stir up public interest or in some cases a localized social panic. And a bit like tall tales, each sighting adds to the creature's lore. If someone claims that they saw Kentucky Cave Goblin dragging some camper’s cooler into a cave entrance, that becomes part of the creature's lore. Forevermore people will be warning their kids to secure their camping cooler lest a cave goblin steals it.

Any other fun facts about the Villain designs?

Jason: The Aliens were originally the Pascagoula River Aliens and Skunk Ape's sidekick. They were just another minion. When we changed the co-op structure to highlight one big bad and several helper minions, the Aliens shifted to the more mainstream B-movie threat. We will miss those weird-looking river aliens, but these little green guys are an amazing upgrade.

Skunk Ape was always our simple bruiser minion. We wanted her to mirror Bigfoot wherever possible- simple, big numbers, and care about being alone. We replaced Savagery with Stink and gave her a 6-value attack called “Bonk”. Those cards didn’t survive development, but Skunk Ape being a heavy hitter did.

Darren: Jersey Devil (J.D.) came along later in the development. The Devil was initially a retheme of another minion but he changed significantly from its original power set. We found it to be a really great platform for a minion whose effectiveness wasn’t explicitly based on combat values. J.D. seems really innocuous and just an annoyance, until suddenly he isn’t any more. You check in on the game state mid way and discover the Jersey Devil has essentially been cutting you off at the ankles quietly for the entire game.

That’s really the spot we want all the minions to be at. They are annoying to deal with and you could ignore them to focus on the main villain. Then suddenly they are a big big deal, and you really should have dealt with them 3 turns ago.

Cutting room floor? Any random anecdotes or roads not traveled you want to share to close out the design diaries?

Map tests of the system on existing maps. Result: Secret passages… Not great! But at least we tried it.

Map tests of the system with maximum congestion. 9 enemies and 17 good guys. Result: Needed a bigger map and/or fewer enemies!

More logs of our excitement.

Parting thoughts

Jason: Wow, thank you for reading this far! And thanks to Restoration Games for letting us play in their sandbox. [in my best zeroskatr12 voice] You folks are truly… Unmatched! 

Also a special thanks to the Restoration Games Discord community. I highly recommend joining. 

Lastly, thanks Darren. Good job! Let’s make some more games. 

Until next time, stay amazing!

Two New Competitive Sets for 2023! Adventures Stream Tomorrow!
about 1 year ago – Mon, Apr 03, 2023 at 08:19:59 AM

Two big announcements for today, so no time to waste.

We are excited to announce the last two Unmatched sets planned for release this year.

The fifth and final Marvel set. Brains and Brawn features some of Marvel's hottest heroes: Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, and She-Hulk. Spidey swings around the battlefield, using his spider-sense to keep him safe. Dr. Strange has, well, the best card names in the game: Behold the Seven Suns of Cinnibus! And She-Hulk won't think twice about throwing the book -- or whatever heavy happens to be nearby -- at you. As Stan the Man might say, Brains and Brawn features an amazing array of astounding artists. Cover and She-Hulk illustration by comics veteran Joshua "Sway" Swaby. Dr. Strange illustration by The Brave Union. And Spider-Man is brought to life by Unmatched favorite, Oliver Barrett. Brains and Brawn will be available in Q3 of this year. 

Rounding out the year is Sun's Origin, spotlighting two heroes from the rich history of Japan. Oda Nobunaga was the daimyo of the Oda clan, renowned for unifying feudal Japan. He is a master tactician, making his honor guard even more dangerous (and just so happens to be a powerhouse in Tales To Amaze). Tomoe Gozen was a legendary onna-musha of the Minamoto clan. She strikes hard and fast, relentlessly pursuing her enemy across the battlefield. The set features stunning artwork by Yuta Onoda, with cultural consultation by Saigo. Sun's Origin will be available in Q4 of this year.  

Meanwhile, this campaign keeps rolling along like an out-of-control skunk ape, and we've got some fun lined up for tomorrow! I'll be heading down the Sawgrass Expressway to Dice Tower HQ for a live playthrough of Unmatched Adventures: Tales To Amaze with Zee Garcia and Roy Cannaday. Be sure to tune into the Dice Tower YouTube channel, tomorrow, April 4, at 10:00 AM ET to check it out and ask questions in chat.

Until then, stay amazing!

Design Diary #3 - "Systems and Touchpoints"
about 1 year ago – Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 08:45:25 AM

The campaign is steadily growing as we move through the traditional mid-campaign slowness. In case you missed it - The Brothers Murph did a full playthrough against the Martian Invaders and you can watch the video-on-demand. And we have another playthrough with The Dice Tower coming up April 4. 

And stay tuned... we might have some news about Unmatched to share soon. 

Now let's get to the good stuff - our latest designer diary from Jason and Darren...

Design Diary #1 - Going Remote

Design Diary #2 - A Pitch To Amaze

How did the system for Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze begin?

Darren: I remember the first time we entertained the idea of a system controlling the enemies. We took a normal hero deck and just walked through the combat interactions of a “dumb” deck as though we were playing against it, flipping over cards randomly and seeing what happened. This obviously didn’t work at all, but it helped us to start identifying the interactions we were going to need to design around.

Jason: Quick aside, I want to take a moment to say that Unmatched is such a cool core system. While it’s a game about comparing combat cards and dealing combat damage, it’s also special with how the roster of available characters interacts with the game system in so many different ways. Just look at the original Battle of Legends: Volume 1 set. It’s full of superb character choices to show off a great general design.

• Alice highlights versatility and variable character powers
• Medusa highlights attrition and ranged combat
• Sinbad highlights deck composition and battlefield movement
• King Arthur highlights aggression and boosting
   

I think it's an A+ first installment of a game system. Those heroes hook into all of the major aspects of Unmatched!

So there’s the rub. In order for our new mode to play nice with existing designs, we needed to either abstract or simulate each of those major touchpoints along the way.

When you simulate, you go literal, trying to match the exact inputs and outputs provided during a normal game of Unmatched. Give the Villain a hand of cards? Give the Villain scheme cards? Maybe, maybe not.

When you abstract, you ask, “what role does that play in the core Unmatched experience, and could this new framework provide something that matches that purpose but in another way (and also not wreck things).” An indirect translation, getting the gist.

We started each major design hurdle with a “simulate first” mindset. When we’d come to an impasse we’d try to solve it by “abstracting it away.” If that still didn’t work, we’d ask, “can we ignore this entirely?” Then we’d step back and check if the experience still felt like Unmatched. If the answer was “yes,” we’d lean that direction. If the answer was “no,” we’d reroute, iterate, and run it back.

Here’s a great example: Enemy Combat Cards

Darren: We knew early that Villain combat cards would need to pull double duty. They would need to handle offense and defense, and be more than just regular versatile cards. We played some games against all versatiles. Super bland. We needed solutions to make combat interactions feel different - either offensive, defensive, or tricky.

Jason: The simplest solution to execute and remember was to let the baddie flip a card in every combat and have those cards mean different things depending on the context. The way we originally did it was by hiding the defense value of a given card in the Boost value. This wasn’t ideal (for a number of reasons) but it got the point across that these cards could and should be modal. Having the same card play differently in different circumstances felt right.

Darren: One level deeper, we found that the combat experience was generally much better if we increased the variance of the defense values. Having a deck of 1 and 5-value defenses was much more engaging than a deck full of 3-value defense cards. The game needed high highs and low lows. Just as satisfying as it felt to land an occasional Gaze of Stone, it was equally great to have your Beastform spoiled like they knew it was coming. (Jason: Mothman knew.)

Darren: Lastly, we wanted to mimic having the occasional defenseless opponent. Some aggressive fighters rely on catching an opponent defenseless. That needed to be in the game but not always be predictable. Otherwise the game would be played solely around the moment of catching a villain defenseless.

Darren: We tried the occasional zero-value block. That worked pretty well. Then we wanted to lean toward a teamwork mechanic where nearby teammates could cancel that Villain’s defense value with a matching Boost. This was fun but complex and confusing. Ultimately, the Restoration development team solved it with the Deception cards. The system already needed a way to remind you to reshuffle Villain and Minion decks, so pushing both of those needs onto the same card was a win-win.

Jason: And we kind of continued this way throughout the system. We answered questions like:

• What do discard and hand effects do?
• How should fatigue or the end-game work?
• What about opponent choice effects?
• Who would the Villain/Minions target first?
• What path around the map would they take?
• Would Villains/Minions occasionally run away or take a breather?
• and many more…

Darren: Ultimately, we also needed a lightweight system that could get out of its own way and let Unmatched happen. The card and hero ability interactions already added a decent amount of rules weight to the game. If the system wasn’t smooth to play, the game would not be enjoyable to play.

What were some big turning points in the system?

Darren: Early builds of the game didn’t have Villains+Minions. We had Villains+sidekicks pairings. All the Villains were equal in standing and they each had a sidekick running around the board. Which was just bonkers to play at high player counts. Each round could have 5 Villain moves+attacks to resolve, followed by 5 enemy sidekick move+attacks/effects to resolve. It was a beautiful chaos, but not something that would work in reality. We had to get more gameplay out of fewer Villain actions. That was part of the first round of Restoration feedback.

That feedback led to the Villain+Minion model that we have today. The Villain became objective based and their objectives tied to the board. The minions became interchangeable and tied to the player count.

Jason: We had this one Villain that was very different mechanically and narratively because it had a weird side objective. Every game where they made an appearance gave us a story to tell afterward. We liked it so much that we eventually shifted everything to be like that. If one big bad doing a specific thing could do everything we wanted, we were on the right track.

Darren: Another big turning point was adding the “player 5” space. We needed somewhere for the, now singular, Villain to start. We were using the edges of the board, but now that it was only 1 big bad, the center made the most sense. We used a star at first, until we realized we could just increment a starting space to 5. Making a fifth starting space also gave us some inspiration to include enemy combat effects that cared about the starting spaces. Instead of several sentences telling players to move a Villain to a zone they aren’t already in, and how to avoid heroes when doing the move, we could just say “Move to the nearest available starting space”.

How is playing against the Adventures system different from playing against a human opponent?

Darren: There’s a great saying “If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough”, that should really be the motto for the Villains and Minions in Adventures. Developing them as super clever decision makers would have been possible, but it also would leave the players to work through a large flowchart of “If/Then” statements every turn. We simplified the Villain turn a lot during development, and Restoration simplified one step further in final development. If the Villain's turn didn’t flow as smoothly as it does now I don't think the game would have made it to release.

Something for the players to remember is that the AI isn’t as smart as you, but they have some nasty tools at their disposal. They don’t get tired. They don’t retreat. They don’t step back to regroup. They are a Terminator focused on taking you down. I saw in early testing with players deep into the competitive scene, they were often playing “not to lose”. When things got hairy they would take a double maneuver turn and back off. That almost always ended up in loss for the players. The Villains would swoop in next turn, beat the defense cards out their hand and win the game shortly after. My advice to players in their first games of UMA: Tales to Amaze is “Play desperately to win.”

Jason: To prepare for the design, I became pretty active in the online competitive scene to understand the game better. I learned that Unmatched is a game with incredible depth for player-vs-player tactical skill, matchup preparation, and system mastery. But, the game at the highest level also often revolves around exhaustion strategies (what happens when you run out of cards at the end of the game). To that end, one of the best tools to forestall exhaustion and dictate who is forced to engage with whom are scheme cards that don’t draw you cards or gain you actions. The community calls those “passes,” and they are celebrated for doing less. With the co-op experience, we wanted to avoid that play pattern as much as possible. We wanted the way you win the co-op system to be closer to the most fun way you win regular Unmatched games – with the flip of a card in combat. It should still pay to be careful, but the system should dissuade you from playing keep away. I’m a very passive competitive player, and we felt like the system should punish the way I played. It does.

OK, Last topic. Theme! How did you settle on the Hero or Villains for the game?

Tune in next Designer Diaries to find out! Until then, stay amazing!

Brothers Murph Livestream TONIGHT
about 1 year ago – Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 02:25:56 PM

Quick update today to let you all know that I messed up the date in my update yesterday.  The Brothers Murph are live streaming the game TONIGHT, March 28, starting at 9:00 PM ET / 6:00 PM ET over on their twitch channel. Sorry for the confusion. We hope you can stop by, check out the game, and ask us questions in the chat.