And a Happy New Year!
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Jan 02, 2020 at 02:13:12 AM
Welcome Witch Masters!
We hope your holidays and 2019 were wonderful! Did you spend the last evening reviewing your accomplishments in 2019 and planning for new heights in 2020? Or were you out partying with friends and strangers? Perhaps you just had an early night. However you celebrated the change to the New Year, we wish you all every success in 2020!
On to the Demons! Demons are the most powerful creatures on Neemoss, and as cruel, heartless and impulsive as you would imagine. Just as the Witches use the Creatures and Minions for their own ends, Demons freely abuse the Witches. Luckily, there are so few of them on Neemoss that they are not drawn through the Conjunction at random.
Click here for the PDF of the Demon cards.
We have another batch of cards for you to review, or simply admire.
Here’s a pair of images for the Demon ID Cards, front and back as you would expect by now. When we presented the Demon during the KS, they only had one special ability each. You can see that we have added a second one for each of them, so they feel a little beefier in the game.
The Demons come with Demon Control Cards. When the Demons are summoned by the Witches, they are some combination of angry, spiteful and disorientated. As evil creatures, they may align themselves with the Witches, allowing the Witch Master to control their Actions for a Round or two, but they may chew the head off a Witch, to let them know who is boss. Here are a couple of simple cards that you won’t need much help interpreting:
As well as determining who has control of the Demon, the cards allow us to give them different personalities. It’s easy to look at Haborym and think of cards that give him wild attacks. Let us show you cards for Lujuria, the lust Demon, whose abilities are more centered on control than attack.
We’ve shown cards for a while now, but today we have more! Here are our internal rules for the Demons. This is the document that we use for play testing. It’s not the final rules you will see; they will be formatted in a fancy graphical document, and the Core/Stretch Goal content needs to be separated. But unless we find problems in the last part of our play testing, the actual rules here are the final rules. If you want to fully understand the Demons and the little symbols at the bottom of the cards, check out the rules.
Click here for the PDF of the Demon Play Test Rules.
Your feedback has been very useful and we look forward to hearing from you again. Typos and grammar will be fixed immediately and if there are elements that are unclear, we will try rewording cards and rules if we think we can significantly improve the game. However, we will only be making changes from feedback that is e-mailed to support, with “DR Feedback” as the subject.
We have posted many other PDFs of cards, check the last few updates if you missed any.
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Merry Christmas!
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 01:52:35 AM
Hello Heroes!
It’s going to be a busy Christmas for us, but I am sure it will be a merry one too. Whatever you are celebrating this holiday, we wish you peace and good cheer from everyone here in our virtual office.
Work is continuing well. Because so many tasks are 80-95% complete, it’s not surprising that we are finishing a lot of work at the same time. In this update we are presenting a large number of cards for the Witch Master: the Witch ID cards, their Grimoires and the Witchcraft cards, one of the thickest decks in the game.
Click here for the PDF of the Witch ID cards and Grimoires.
Click here for the PDF of the Witchcraft cards.
The Witch ID cards will be familiar to you as they are very similar to the double sided cards we showed in the last update, where we mentioned the Witchcraft deck too. This deck has two very different types of cards, Spell and Summoning cards. The Spells are one-time use cards that give the Witches a far greater library of hexes than just the Combat Magic in their Grimoires. The Summoning Cards are used to pull Creatures through the Conjunction to Earth.
We often talk about trying to provide variety and here you can see two examples of this. The vast majority of Creatures are summoned to Summoning Circles, special locations marked with tokens placed on the modular game board. However, a few select Creatures enter play in different locations, for example Skeetor can appear near Bug Patches and Zombie Walls near Possessed Serfs.
Similarly, the symbiotic Horvath and Dagon are a slightly different type of Witch. Most of the evil characters start off using the weaker side of their ID cards and get stronger when they are flipped. Horvath and Dagon start off strong, as Horvath draws power from the symbiont. The first two wounds kill Dagon, the ID card and Grimoire are flipped and Horvath is left in a weakened form. Using Horvath and Dagon will present the Witch Master with an interesting dilemma. This Witch will be a powerful boost for the Legion of Darkness in the early game, but if the Witch Master uses this boost and puts the Witch on the front line of the action, then Horvath and Dagon may quickly take wounds and become crippled.
Your feedback has been very useful and we look forward to hearing from you again. Typos and grammar will be fixed immediately and if there are elements that are unclear, we will try rewording cards if we think we can significantly improve the game. However, we will only be making changes from feedback that is e-mailed to support, with “DR Feedback” as the subject.
We have posted many other PDFs of cards, check the last few updates if you missed any.
With any luck, we’ll be back before the New Year with our final update of the year, all about Demons.
Pick a side!
My Beauties
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Dec 21, 2019 at 12:15:05 AM
Welcome Witch Masters!
If only we had a flying monkey in the Legion of Darkness. Poor Skeetor will have to do.
We continue to preview game cards, switching to some of the Witch Master’s cards this time. Every Witch Master needs a Dark Legion, so please take a look at the Minion and Creature ID cards. I must say, we are really pleased with them.
Click here for the PDF of the Minion ID cards.
Click here for the PDF of the Creature ID cards.
Here are samples:
As you can see, the Minion and Creature ID cards are very similar, helping you to learn and play the game. I won’t review everything, by now the stats and actions should all be familiar to you. But it’s worth reminding you of some details.
Creatures are slightly stronger than Minions and they are unique, but the big difference is how they are summoned. Witches can summon any Minion they want to, any time the Witch activates. It’s not so easy to summon a Creature. The Witchcraft cards (coming soon!) are a mix of one time use spells and Creature Summoning spells. The Witch Master needs to draw and then play a Creature Summoning card to bring a Creature into this world.
This is the first time we have shown the flip side of the Witch Master’s ID cards. All the ID cards (Minions, Creatures, Witches, and Demons) are double sided and create the Witch Master’s experience mechanic. The Heroes gradually improve their stats by successfully using them, taking many small steps towards their full potential. On the other hand, while the Legion of Darkness works on their demonic rituals, they track their kills by increasing the Aura of Evil. They reach the height of their power when the Aura of Evil track is full and all their ID cards are flipped to the second side.
Your feedback has been very useful and we look forward to hearing from you again. Typos and grammar will be fixed immediately and if there are elements that are unclear, we will try rewording cards if we think we can significantly improve the game. However, we will only be making changes from feedback that is e-mailed to support, with “DR Feedback” as the subject.
If you missed the previous cards, you can find them here:
Click here for the PDF of the Hero cards.
Click here for the PDF of the Item cards.
We are not going to flood you with Neo-Morphosis information, but it’s important to us that you get information before we release it to the general public. We are planning to start the Neo-Morphosis Kickstarter on 9th Jan 2020.
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More Cards
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Dec 06, 2019 at 02:48:14 AM
Hello Heroes!
We are continuing to show you collections of nearly-completed cards. This time it is the Heroes’ Item Deck, cards that come into play when Heroes Search Chests. There is a lot of detail on these cards, which are designed for high resolution printers. They look best if you download the PDF and zoom in.
http://www.darkgategames.com/Dark_Rituals_Item_Cards_1
There are two different types of cards in this deck, Items and Blood Magic.
Items upgrade your weapon or are artifacts like necklaces, brooches or charms. There are limitations on their use, including your total weight limit and proficiency in your four Abilities. Further, you can only have one Attack and one Defense upgrade equipped at one time.
Here is a weapon with both upgrades and an artifact.
If you compare the Item abilities to the Alchemy Spells, you may notice that the Items have slightly lower Stamina costs for use. It’s a little easier to use the Alchemy Spells, as you start with the Spell Book and searching for Botanicals is not hard. We kept the Item use cost down so that by the time you have found the Item, perhaps traded, and leveled up your skills, there is nothing holding you back from using it. We are paying close attention to how much Items and Alchemy are used in the final stage of our testing and we will make sure both play an important role in the game. So far, we are happy with the balance.
The Blood Magic cards are more spells for the Heroes, but slightly different from Alchemy Spells. Generally, these are one time use spells that have quite powerful effects, but the cost is Wounds! Save them for a game changing occasion and use your blood to turn the tide. We built blood and sweat into the game, it’s up to you to supply the tears.
The feedback on the Hero PDF was very useful and we look forward to hearing from you again. Typos and grammar will be fixed immediately and if there are elements that are unclear, we will consider rewording cards if we think we can significantly improve the game. However, we will only be making changes from feedback that is e-mailed to support, with “DR Feedback” as the subject.
If you missed the first set of cards, you can find them here:
http://www.darkgategames.com/Dark_Rituals_Hero_Cards_1.pdf
More news! Neo-Morphosis is coming!
We started this game so long ago that I can’t remember the date. The rulebook and KS Campaign page were ready when we started the Order of Vampire Hunters Kickstarter. It was a toss-up whether we launched OVH or Neo.
Well, soon it will be Neo-Morphosis’ turn to get some love. It’s a co-op game where you’ll be playing the unsuspecting crew of a research station that is suddenly over run with aliens. We’ll be telling you more later, but before you ask, we don’t have a launch date yet.
Pick a side!
Good News and Bad News
over 4 years ago
– Sun, Nov 24, 2019 at 02:44:39 AM
Welcome Witch Masters!
Let’s rip the band-aid off and get right to it. We are late.
There are two main reasons. You deserve a great game that does not include repetition and that increases our workload. There is a great deal of content and we do not want to simply give every Hero abilities like “+1 Attack/ +1 Defense”; we do not want to make endless encounters that are just different Map Tiles where you annihilate your enemy. We want meaningful variation.
We are creating unique and interesting characters (Heroes, Witches, Creatures, Minions and Demons) for you to play. Creating many clear and effective powers, tied to the nature of the character, is a large job in itself, but also creates a lot of play testing and balancing.
We are not just developing different encounters, we want them to tell an interesting story. We hope previous backers saw that emphasis on the narrative in the Order of Vampire Hunters.
Anyway, we are victims of our own success and ambition, and there is simply a lot to do.
Second, we want to book a production window and meet that date with no slippage. So far, we have an excellent relationship with our manufacturer and we do not want to sour it. It will definitely affect us if we miss our production date.
We will not be giving you estimated dates and slipping them, either. We will announce a firm date when we finalize booking the production window. Let’s be honest, we gave out dates for OVH and then missed them. We are going to do what we are good at, making games, and we are not going to work on publicly managing a schedule.
However, we will try to give you a good sense of where we are:
- All minis are sculpted and we are creating the production molds.
- All art has been prepared.
- All cards exist in a playable form; we think most of them are final.
- We think the rules are final and the rules are written. The rule book is not in its final form, it needs to be reorganized, proofed, and laid out.
- We are happy with about half the encounters we need.
Things that we say are final or near final are complete to the best of our current understanding. Play testing and extra proofing may give us reason to edit them, but we are well past changing and tweaking elements of the game just for the sake of it. Really, we want to finish this as much as you.
Talk is cheap, so here is some good news. We are now beginning to roll out cards. In this PDF, we are showing the Hero ID Sheets, Alchemy Sheets and Weapons. This is not a print and play, the cards in the PDF are at a size that lets you read them easily.
Download the Hero ID Sheets, Alchemy Cards and Weapons.
We invite you to take a look. Please just browse and see how the Heroes are different from each other, start picking a favorite, or look in more detail and send us feedback. Typos and grammar will be fixed immediately. If there are elements that are unclear, we will consider rewording cards if we think we can significantly improve the game. However, we will only making changes from feedback that is e-mailed to support, with “DR Feedback” as the subject. Please be quick if you are reviewing the material, as we are trying to move this along; if you complete this in the next two weeks it would be very helpful.
We’ll be back with more cards soon.
Pick a side!
