The First Draft

Today is a pretty great day, all things considered. Professionally, personally, and Star Frog related. It’s really the trifecta of quite good. A quick update is in order, but since I write this development diary with a heady blend of snark, here are excerpts from the entries from the last month and a half that don’t exist:

…well that didn’t work out as well as I wanted it to. So I made an adjustment to the template and now it no longer looks like ass…

…So I followed the advice of Saint Mark Rosewater, and put together a design skeleton for all of the cards that would wind up in the set, along with what themes I wanted to include. This makes it really nice to design for. I try to design a card, in a color, at a cost, that fits into holes that different archetypes need.

…and that’s when I discovered that it is quite easy to wander Google Images for hours looking for the perfect picture. But then you remember that this is all placeholder art and it doesn’t fuggin matter…

…designed some fun new cards today. I’m pumped because they manage to work in both the Red Blue Paladin Archetype and the Green Red Hunter deck….

Honestly, there wasn’t much of an update since there wasn’t much in the way of problems to gripe theatrically about. It has been pretty smooth sailing once I was able to define certain parameters of the game. I mean, at this point the “engine” for DUngeon QUest: Adventure works great. The core gameplay loop is a delight. It was just the lift of putting together the card file, which isn’t terribly noteworthy.

Now though, we have ourselves an update. As of today, we have a complete card file. I’m talking a full collection of every common, uncommon and rare player card in the game. A wide selection of Relics, Events and Locations, and a full flight of 5 Tiers of Enemies. Some caveats. There is more content inbound. I want more Relics, Events and Locations. Additionally, the “Core” Game is going to have 16 different enemy sets, not 5, with others designed and included if we hit certain benchmarks on Kickstarter launch.

Also, as the title says up top, this is the First Draft so there are no guarantees about balance, and there is a very good chance that the game will wipe the floor with players, or just lie down – it’s hard to tell. I feel like I’ve got the balance pretty good for a shot in the dark, but this is why we playtest.

With that out of the way, this is also a time of celebration. Dungeon Quest: Adventure is something that you can play, right now! In fact, here are the PDF files. Right here! Free even! Go click them!

PLAYER CARD SETENEMIESRELICS & LOCATIONS

Fuller, more complete instructions are incoming, but you can play using the Design Document well enough. I will also have a new update for the TableTopia version of Dungeon Quest: Adventure soon.


Finally, I’ve often made this point, so I’m going to belabour it again – all of the art on the playtest set does not belong to me. It is the sole property of the fine artists that made it in the first place.

Now actual, final art? Well, that’s another post entirely. For now, let’s be excited. Today was a very good day.

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