NEW SOLO GAME!!!!!
That’s right, I have been working on a new solo game. The game for the time being is called “Escape from Mars”. Again this is only a working title and theme.
Mars has finally had the feet of humanity touch its surface. After months of exploring and research, the team discovered multiple lost martian artifacts. Two Circular stones were located via satellite. reconnaissance and 4 giant monoliths. The team seems to think that the stones are some sort of portal that may be powered from the monoliths.
The storms on mars are even worse than first depicted and have created havoc on the team. All of the team’s resources were destroyed in a massive storm, the team now stranded on mars have decided that the only way to get off the planet and survive is to try and activate the portals. They think that they are powered from a crystal that was discovered in mining operations.
Can their Oxegen last till then can get off of mars.
The goal of Escape Mars is to power up the monolith cards to 6 Crystalls and then discover the portal within the sands of Mars. If the 2 monoliths are powered and the team lands on the portal before their oxygen runs out, they win. If at any point the oxygen or health of the team reaches 0, they die and you lose.
So how are we going to do this? I went through many concepts how how this would work throughout a night and finally landed on a grid. I found myself a standard poker deck and layed it out in a grid. I decided after trial and error that a grid of 7×4 cards would be the best way forward.
So as you see in the image above, I decided that 4 monoliths would be the total that the player needs to get to and power up for the portal to activate. At first we had two red and two black monoliths. This was due to using two joker as the portals. Ill get to them in a second. In the centre i removed the two cards and placed a single random card as a base. The thinking here was that this could act as a safe zone for the player and a way for them to get from one side to the other a little quicker.
Next was where where the portals going to go. This actually happened pretty quick. I borrowed from many games with the split the deck into multiple pile and shuffle the portals into the bottom one. That way the player gets normal cards for a while until the potential of the portal appearing.
Then it was time to come to actions. What can the player do? Well this also ties in with what does every card do?
Cards
I split the cards into the suits and decided that each suite would be a different card. Hearts would help you by giving you health, oxygen and gear. Dimonds would be your crystals, Spades clubs would be hazards.
In the hazards i took the 2-5 and made them oxygen hazard, where the player needs to role higher than the number or reduce their oxygen by 1. then 6-9 would be an alien which you roll against and need to roll higher. then finally the 10-K would be terrain that you cannot move through.
Now that they are sorted it was time to come up with actions.
Move – i mean you need to get around the board. I played with amount you get for 1 action and came to 3. This was due to the size of the board.
Scan – This was a way to reveal the cards. i decided that a scane would reveal all the adjacent cards, making them activate if they are bad.
Mine – so mining if getting the Crystals, this was done by rolling a card for each crystal on the card on a 4-6 you get the crystal.
supplys – i wanted these to be a yes you get them. But also have a feeling of, aliens have taken it alread. So i made it a roll on a 1 you dont get it.
blast – i needed a way to get rid of the terrain cards. So now if you use this action you roll a D3 and destroy that many from adjacent to the team.
Now the Portals where suffled into the last 13 cards and they where revealed. When a player placed 6 cyrstals on each of the same colours. Meaning if you only had the two red monoliths powered you could only win by finding and landing on the red portal.
THIS WAS TO EASY.
So I decided to try to just fill all four monoliths to open the portal. This workded super well. But then the issue of this was where does the portal come up. This took me so long to try and figure out. But we got there in the end. I placed a number 1-24 oneach card twice and now when you fill all 4 portals you simply flip a card and place the portal on the location that the number says.
The other thing I introduced where sands of time . These cards come out when the deck runs out. They are simply cost two MP to move through. There job is to block the play area up.
More on this one to follow.
Monsters At War
Remember that Monsters at War is out now. If you would like a copy send us an email at franticnerdcast@gmail.com or hit us ion our socials.
Rift Chaos
Not much work has been happing on Rift Chaos unfortunately. Characters have been rebalanced and are awaiting playtesting. See not much news, sorry.
