Materia Spotlight- Mephistopheles Gift

“Mephistopheles is a demon- a worker of Satan- who grants corrupted men with a gift. Mephistopheles is known from his deal with Johann Georg Faust in which he exchanges his soul for unlimited knowledge and other pleasures. In the Afterlife, Mephistopheles grants the Student a more physical gift with a very powerful flame. This flame allows the Student to cast physical, magical and astral cards at a reduced cost but will get hit rather hard if they are attacked.”

Welcome back Students! In this Spotlight we will be looking at another Construct but on the Dark side known as Mephistopheles’ Gift! As you read above, this fire Homunculus takes the idea of trading something valuable for something just as valuable. Like Faust, you’re receiving immediate gratification for your body which may not affect you right away. This was another card where the name came first and the Ability came second.

Mephistopheles’ Gift specifically states that your cards cost 1 less to play. Attacks made against you gain 1A (This includes Magical and Astral attacks). This passive is extremely powerful and has a lot of utility. It is easy for new players to pick up and play multiple cards without worrying about dice fluxing too much. It is difficult to master however because that additional dice hitting you can add up really fast. When designing this card we thought about how powerful it was to be able to cast cards with less dice for ALL pools. So we initially had the enemy roll two dice instead of one. If you didn’t already guess, this overwhelmed your Homunculus and made games extremely one sided so that was changed after quite a few paper prototyping sessions.  

Thanks for reading and if you didn’t know, Visions of Zosimos was Greenlit! This means we will be working extra hard with check out our new Patreon too! We will be offering exclusive content and discounts for donators. We are also working on a physical board game which we will have more details on that soon!

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

https://www.patreon.com/ForeverInteractive

Materia Spotlight- Behemoth

“The great beast Behemoth was described by Job as a great, powerful and gentle beast. His bones are as strong as pieces of brass and are like bars of iron. The Light Realm took the opportunity and retrieved the fallen beasts’ bones and have being using it as Construct Materials.  The Behemoth lives on in the form of the Homunculus and it shows in the way it acts in the battlefield. It’s strong legs propel the Behemoth and the added momentum pushes back any creature that gets in its way.”

Welcome back students! In this Spotlight we are going to look at the Materia Card, Behemoth. If you didn’t know, Construct’s are what determine your Homunculus Movement Speed and Attack Range. This Construct, specifically, is all about moving around the board because of its passive ability. It is similar to Charge in the sense that as you move you gain power but it is unique in the sense that for every two movement, instead of Attack Dice you gain a point of Knockback. So as the Behemoth moves it builds momentum and with a total movement of four it can knock enemies back up to two tiles.

In the last post, we talked about what came first, the Name or the Ability and with the Behemoth I cannot rightfully say what did. However, I do know it’s ability was based on its art and model. Materia Cards did not start with abilities. They only determined the amount of dice your homunculus starts with. With that said, we had the model made and the rhinoceros horn really stood out to us. We wanted to feel like it was creating a stampede or a rabid animal chasing you down. We didn’t want to straight out give it charge (Which may not have existed at the time!) This is why we gave it this knockback ability that is based off movement.

The Behemoth is by far the most offensive Light Earth Construct and Materia overall. It is strange to think of Light Earth as this offensive force but they can pull it off very well and even if you don’t want to get up close and personal you can use this knockback as a way to control the board. The knockback the Behemoth has is based on the direction you are facing making it easy force minions into Glyph radii, Ambush trigger radii and into allied minions, walls or choke points. There is a lot you can do with a direct knockback!

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key!

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

Boss Spotlight - Bog Slave

“The forest is a realm of reflection and pain - those unable or unwilling to learn from their mistakes are cast down and punished for their defiance, and all are treated according to their station.

The souls of Men are chained beneath the bog, their shackles tied to the Fall of Man - a great monolith, a mockery of hope, having sunk beneath the rot and fen of the forest. Being dead, the souls choke and drown for eternity - unable to succumb to the bog. Unable to die.

Over the aeons, the dark energy of the Forest of Decay has corrupted these souls, mutating them into feral and savage parodies of men. And as the living realm of man grows weaker and more decadent, so, too, does the Fall of Man grow weaker. Its stone chipping. Its foundation breaking. The slaves of the bog inching closer to freedom, longing to breathe air once more.

But the Forest does not forget. The Forest does not forgive. And for those cast down here for punishment, the Forest will find new ways to castigate. Starting as water-bound larvae, the bog-leeches infest the husks of these fallen souls, growing larger and stronger as their hosts struggle against their crumbling anchor. By the time the punished manage to work a chunk of stone free, the bog-leech has already assumed full control - the body controlled by the Bog-leech, the soul, a prisoner in its own mind.

Man, god, angel or demon - we, all of us, have our keepers.”

Welcome Back Students! In this post we will be talking about the first boss in the game, the Bog Slave. For the Alpha Players, this name should be familiar because you more than likely slain this beast. As you read above, the Bog Slave was once a man like you or I but his soul was corrupted and chained to the statues in the Blighted Mire. If that wasn’t enough these souls are toyed with the chances of freedom only to be a slave to the Bog Parasites surrounding the Fall of Man statues.

Before we get down to what the Bog Slaves does I want to reiterate the fact that may have become apparent already. Visions of Zosimos is not going to be a video game that hand feeds you the story. There will be ambiguity to the Afterlife that only those who seek it will find. There will be characters guiding you through the Afterlife and what the Program was meant to do and how you will play a part in repairing it but a lot of the storytelling will be through the environment, cards, books, NPC’s, etc.

Anyway, the Bog Slave is a pretty standard boss. It’s big, beefy and packs a punch. It’s soul purpose is to kill the homunculus and will strike down your minions if you try to block him out. With 7 Attack Dice, it will kill most low cost minions and if that wasn’t enough, it will take its spot with once it kills said minion. The Bog Slaves 3 Movement can become four if you aren’t careful. The Bog Slave also has 8 defense dice and 16 life points and don’t let the mind of a Bog Parasite fool you. The Bog Slave will defend the first attack with 5 dice so if you think you can lure it to defend with all of its dice think again! It will take two attacks to remove all of its dice for the turn so plan your strategy around that.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key! Don’t forget our IndieGoGo campaign and that we are on Steam Greenlight! So if you like what you are seeing and want VoZ on Steam, vote yes in the link below!

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/visions-of-zosimos/x/11444741#/

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=509966714

What Came First? The Name or the Ability?

Welcome back students! In this post we will be discussing one of the processes in creating cards. If the title of the blog didn’t give it away we will be discussing what came first? The name of the card or the ability it was given.

I bring this up because during a design meeting, one of our content designers asked a very similar question about our card Moth Flame. He asked, did the name of the card come first or the ability? For those who don’t know, Moth Flame grants the player Strike 2 and reduces their defense dice by 2. The question was brought up because he was going to write lore for this card and the ability did not make a whole lot of sense to him at the time with the ability in place.

The answer to his question was that the name indeed came first, but the ability was not always Strike 2 reduce defensive dice by 2. I don’t rightly recall what the card did before (sorry) but I have reason to believe it fit the title and quite possibly the card art! Moth Flame is an old card with old art but the ability is new because our cards went through a revamp. This means that we changed the abilities of already made cards to better suit the game.

For Magical and Astral Cards, most of the cards are made with the ability first and then the names come second. This is because when we look at a Realm and an Element we lay out what that set is supposed to “feel” like. For example, Dark Fire is offensive and destructive where Light Earth is defensive and regenerative. Knowing this we create abilities and cards around these various ideas to create a set. Then we can put names into them as well as Flavor Text.

For Physical and Materia Cards, it tends to be the opposite. It can be difficult to find the right Memories and Essences to fit each Realm as well as the right minions that will fit the Realm and Element. When we do, we can look at the name and see what made these real/mythical people or creatures unique and base their abilities, strengths and weaknesses off of that. I great example is Vlad the Impaler. The ability we have designed for him is that he can sacrifice a minion and turn it into a glyph that states "Any Enemy Minion within radius 1 reduces their damage by 2." Vlad was known for intimidating his enemies by impaling his own people and so his ability does just that.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key! We are also currently running our IndieGoGo campaign and we are on Steam Greenlight! So if you like what you are seeing and want VoZ on Steam, vote yes in the link below!

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/visions-of-zosimos/x/11444741#/

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=509966714

Minion Spotlight - Golem

“If it wasn’t for the teachings of Judah Loew ben Bezalel, there would be no knowledge of the Golem which we have today. The Light Realm alchemists were able to decipher the Maharal in which the legend of the Golem was foretold and create their own Golem from the Earth. The Alchemists have been able to perfect the formulae and create one of the most powerful minions in the afterlife. The Golem can take a beating on the battlefield as well as move surrounding terrain and glyphs grafted into the earth.”

The Golem is one of Light Earth’s strongest cards. When designing the Golem, we wanted it to feel like a tank. It would be able to brush off damage easily and hit hard when it actually gets into attacking range. This beast has 5 HP and 5 Defense Dice already making it one of the beefiest creatures in the game. It also has Protection 2 giving it extra resilience.

With only 2 Attack Dice and 2 movement, the Golem is not much of a threat. In fact it is more of an obstacle at this point which is not necessarily bad, but if you recall, we wanted it to be able to hit hard. That's where Inertia comes in! This allows the Golem to deal the damage we want and add to its tank like qualities.

Finally, the Golem has an ability called Unearth 2. This allows the Golem to move any Astral cards within radius X up to X spaces. In the Golem’s case, 2. We felt like this ability would work great with the Golem seeing as how it is the Earth itself. Since this is the case, why not have it be able to manipulate the Earth too? Now this slow moving tank can slowly move Ambushes, Terrain, and Glyph Cards with it. This forces the opponent to rethink their strategy of keeping this beast alive by running away from it. It’s very easy to avoid the Golem but something this dangerous might need to be dealt with quickly.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key! We are also currently running our IndieGoGo campaign and we are on Steam Greenlight! So if you like what you are seeing and want VoZ on Steam, vote yes in the link below!

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/visions-of-zosimos/x/11444741#/

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=509966714

The Inception of Inertia

Welcome back Students! In this post we are going to take a look at one of Light Earth’s most powerful Abilities, Inertia. For those that don’t know, Inertia grants a minion one temporary Attack Dice whenever a card is cast from the Mind Pool and one temporary Defense Dice whenever a card is cast from the Soul Pool. Inertia not only allows the Earth cards to survive against the aggressive Dark Fire Cards but it also gives them a chance to kill them, even when the Light Earth appear to be so weak on the surface. The ability also forces players to play various cards, even if they may not be useful at the moment as it still enhances your minion.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about what I really wanted to talk about. How did Inertia get created? To answer this, let’s go back to an earlier iteration of VoZ and look at a some of its abilities. First, we have Camaraderie, which for a number n creatures you control on the board which have Camaraderie, each will have an extra (n-1)A/(n-1)D dice. These are normal dice, not bonus dice, but they are gained or lost accordingly as Comrades are added or removed from the board to always match to total number of Comrades. Second we have Momentum, which upon casting Earth spells or enchantments, this creature gains a 1A bonus. Bonus dice are lost once used, and are used first before normal dice. Finally we have Hulking, which upon casting Earth spells or enchantments, this creature gains a 1D bonus. Bonus dice are lost once used, and are used first before normal dice. I think it is easy to understand that Inertia is a combination of Momentum and Hulking. Plain and simple right? So why did I bring up Camaraderie? Why combine the two in the first place?

As we playtested with Light Earth we found Camaraderie to be the most favored Ability in minions and decks were built specifically around that ability. It was to get three plus minions with this ability with one of them being the Paladin! We also had cards that enhanced the effects of Camaraderie making it the most overpowered ability in the game. The idea was to replace it with something powerful but harder to manipulate. We found Momentum and Hulking to be great abilities that provided fun combinations with Mind and Soul cards but they weren’t potent enough by themselves. Combining them into one ability added that sense of power Camaraderie had and the combinations of other card types Momentum and Hulking provided. And that is how Inertia was made!

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key! We are also currently running our IndieGoGo campaign and we are on Steam Greenlight! So if you like what you are seeing and want VoZ on Steam, vote yes in the link below!

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/visions-of-zosimos/x/11444741#/

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=509966714

Rules of Rarity

Welcome back Students! In this blog we will be discussing a topic which should be familiar to most collectible card game players; the rarity of cards. In Visions of Zosimos, we have four rarity types which ascend from least rare to most. There are Standard cards, Special cards, Exceptional cards, and Epic cards. Rarity determines more than just the probability of finding one in a booster pack but the quality of the card as well.

When playing any type of CCG, you generally find that the rarest cards are the most powerful cards. In VoZ, the same can be said… for the most part. When determining rarity, there are usually two key components that determine how rare a card is. Those two factors are Power Rating (as we discussed in an earlier post) and uniqueness. It is easy to determine the Epic cards because their Power Rating tends to be the highest in their respective category of card type. Standard cards are also relatively easy because of how low their Power Rating is. Special and Exceptionals tend to be a little trickier. We can look at Power Rating for the most part but the uniqueness of the card can change a Special to an Exceptional or even make take away the Epic to an Exceptional. Let’s look at an example shall we?

In Light Earth, we have two Epic Ambushes that have high Power Ratings but they aren’t the highest. Bottomless Pit has our highest Power of Rating and is listed as an Exceptional. The two cards that have lower Power Ratings but are Epic are Earthquake and Forbidden Fruit. The reason they are listed as epic comes to the uniqueness and versatility of the cards. Bottomless Pit is a very powerful card. It stops the minion from moving for the rest of the game and makes that minion very hard to kill creating an obstacle. Earthquake, however, is the only card in Earth that can wipe out the board of minions and Forbidden Fruit can remove minions from play immediately. There are many cards that stop movement in Earth so that immediately took Bottomless Pit’s unique value away and the fact that the minion can still attack and use abilities still make it a viable threat to the player.

I think it is important to note that Rarity does not affect Card Cost. Doing so would break our Power Curve because we determine Rarity after Card Cost. We also didn’t do it because it doesn’t make sense. Rarity has rules but they are not quantifiable like Power Rating. If we made rarer cards cost less, than they would be overpowered and vice versa.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key! We are also currently running our IndieGoGo campaign and we are on Steam Greenlight! So if you like what you are seeing and want VoZ on Steam, vote yes in the link below!

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/visions-of-zosimos/x/11444741#/

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=509966714

Lore Delving - Shrines

“After my explorations in the afterlife, I realized that there was no practical way for others to go in physically, as we programmers had. I had lost two so far; one to the madness. I couldn’t risk the students in that way, and I had been racking my brain to find a solution. I realized that the morning sun was streaming in my office window and I stretched, rising from my chair and grabbed my keys from the desk. 

Once outside I noticed it was Sunday, there were people filing in and out of a church down the street.‘When was the last time I’d been to church?’ I pondered, and I found myself drawn across the street and into the building with a group of others. I sat, as if compelled, and realized I didn’t understand the language that was being spoken. However, I did recognize some of the saints around the nave, sitting on their pedestals with offerings scattered around them. Little altars and shrines to serve as a place for the statues of the saints to reside upon in this place and I looked at one of the shrines, littered with offerings and a photo of a little girl. I knew what I had to do.

I rose and exited the church, heading back to my office. Within a few hours I had one of the artists on the team drawing up concept sketches for the shrines I would implement in the Afterlife. A place where students could project their avatars safely into the Afterlife, while leaving the more dangerous free-roaming projection to the Visions team. “- The Architect

Welcome Students! For all of you IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, and Alpha players, you have probably wondered what exactly are these shrines? If the above blurb didn’t give it away, the Shrines are sacred pedestals for your in-game Student. These Shrines allow the student to safely venture into the monster infested world which is the Afterlife and carefully observe and control their Homunculus.

Now, these shrines are NOT very mobile as one could imagine. Think of this like an astral beacon onto which the student latches on to manifest themselves and their Shrine into the afterlife. until the student projects their unique shrine into the space. These Shrines have symbols representing the elements and the realms in which the Student belongs to and not only acts as a safe haven for the Student, but for their Cards as well.

The implementation of Shrines brings in that sense of customization and allows us to show off the player student and Card sleeves that the player can purchase. Shrines will also be purchasable items as well as some unique Shrines to our Kickstarter and IndieGoGo backers. The Shrines also make sense because the Student would stand no chance in the Afterlife without its safety. If they did, their would be no reason for the Homunculus.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key! If you are curious about the Shrines and other goodies we are offering through IndieGoGo, check out the link below!

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/visions-of-zosimos/x/11444741#/

The Establishment of a Power Curve

Welcome Back Students! We discussed the introduction of a new resource system and some of you might be thinking, how does it feel? Well, it didn’t happen, and that was because of the cost of our cards. The main reason it didn’t work was because the costs were balanced with the old system. That may not be a problem to some of you, but some caught this and realized that the costs of cards didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and the resource system made even less sense. Why did it feel this way? Because we never established a power curve.

Some of you may know what a power curve is, but others may not be familiar with this term. Essentially, the power of card is the sum value of its abilities and stats. Every stat and ability is assigned a value based on how powerful we think that stat is. We looked at the power curve of both fire and earth cards and spaced the power ratings in groups to determine the cost of cards ranging from 2 to 8. This new system can set the standard on all future cards and instead of balancing cards around the values, we can make cards based on the values. Either way, it allows us to keep to the current rules of the game and teaches us what cards will be overpowered and underpowered immediately. More playtesting will determine the success of our power curve, as will the feedback we receive from you!

In the past, we had a similar equation in place to determine card cost; the amount of dice used to play cards, which determined the power and cost. The problem was that we used it as a guideline instead of a rule and changed card cost based on what we felt they should be. Doing this broke the rules of the entire game because we broke the power curve. This may seem strange and still may not make a whole lot of sense, so I am going to give an example that should hopefully clear things up. Let’s take Mario from the original Super Mario Bros. Essentially, Mario can run up to a maximum speed and jump to a maximum height and distance. The faster Mario runs, the longer he can jump, based on how long you hold a button. These values are necessary for designing all future levels, and enemy design and placement within the levels. If you change Mario’s speed and jump to less than what they were before then you may not be able to reach certain places, preventing you from being able to finish levels. If you make them higher than levels, it may be too easy and enemy placement may not be in appropriate locations, breaking the flow of gameplay and potentially making them harder. In short, our power curve is what we need to balance everything else in the game.

As we move further, we will have to reassess the designs of our wandering monsters and bosses. As they currently stand, they are designed around the power of our previous cards and the turns in which you can play cards. From an initial glance, we can assume that the bosses will have to appear later in the game because we have a much more pronounced early, mid, and late game. The Bog Slave, for example, is a boss that appears at turn 3, which was previously our mid game, whereas now that is considered early game. Bumping the turn counter to turn 5 may fix the issue, but we want to still test it.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this year at GenCon 2016 August 4th through the 7th! If you are new and would like to play the game yourself, click the link below and we will send you an Alpha Key! We also have set up a slew of Founder’s Packages that will include a ton of items you won’t get anywhere else in the game as well as booster packs. That link is also below which include details on what you will be getting with each package and upgrade options.

http://visionsofzosimos.net/download.php

http://visionsofzosimos.net/founder.php

P.S.

Check out our IndieGoGo Campaign and consider contributing today!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/visions-of-zosimos