Hello there!

I thought to give an update of where I am with Behemoth as of now.

I must say, as a first time game designer it is being quite a journey!

I have started designing it on Jan 2021. On average I reckon I have dedicated between 15h to 20h a week to it - that's already a whopping 970 hours, or 40d if I were not to eat, drink or use the loos 😃

So where has this gotten me?

🎉 At present, I believe to have solid foundations in place, and to have completed the system design part of the process.

⏳ What's still needed, it's some system development, and lot of components design and development.

👩‍🔧I have done, undone and redone a huge number of changes during this time, including a full-fledged deck-building version of the game featuring more than 30 unique cards.

(I will definitely do a more in-depth lookback at all the changes I have gone through at some point, as I am recording every week work in a weekly diary)

What's in place

• A beautiful story set in a fantastic future, where humans and animals live together and try to reclaim the lands from an ancient goddess of Shadow
• Game map and players characters
• Main game play, including rounds structure

A futuristic steampunk setting

The game is set in a fantastic future - in year 2065, Nyx awoke out of nowhere. We are now in year 2265, and we believe her to be an ancient goddess of Shadow.

Since her rise, Nyx has been corrupting Earth...turning life and the very elements that constitute it, into shadow. Human civilization as we know it, has been wiped out.

Surviving humans live on the Behemoth, a mastodontical magical rhyno, in close relationship with magical beasts.

A small group of people and beasts plays a crucial role in ensuring the survival of life, and constitute the last bit of hope.

Those are the rangers and their companion beasts, that wander through the corrupted land to fight the shadow, rescue other beasts and protect the journey of the Behemoth.

Who are the players?

Players are rangers, who travel the land together with their companion beast.

How do you win?

Two win conditions need to be satisfied:

1. Rangers need to ensure the Behemoth reaches Zenith, its last step
2. Rangers have to rescue all the wild beasts before Behemoth is able to enter Zenith

Gameplay

At present, the game consists of 11 rounds. During each round, there are 3 phases:

1. Behemoth moves 1 step ahead
2. Rangers do their turn
3. Nyx does her turn

Rangers turn

During their turn, rangers can do a number of actions, such as moving through the map, climbing Behemoth and clearing Shadow.

They can also instruct some helpers to carry out some actions on Behemoth (worker placement)

Nyx turn

During her turn, Nyx updates her strength based on actions taken by players.

She then spreads more Shadow on the board and takes actions depending on her skills in that game and level of those in that specific moment.

What's next

The game is currently playable end to end, and it plays quite well!

I haven't play tested it extensively in its current shape, but I have seen excitement, fear, a sense of empowerment, surprise and above all...fun!

On the down side, I reckon it still doesn't hit all the chords I'd like for it to hit - which calls for more work.

Specifically, I'd like to enable different strategies to be viable each game. Ideally, I'd like that:

• depending on Nyx's actions, some strategies might be more or less suitable
• the specific implementation (i.e. tactics and steps to take) for a given strategy is different from game to game

At the same time, I'd like to keep the high level gameplay simple, and setup time and takedown to be fast.

This sounds nice, right? 🐶

One thing I realized in the last year is that it's very easy to set up goals when designing a game. The hard part is implementing it! 🦧

So let's see what happens.

I'll keep posting updates here, ideally on a monthly basis for the foreseeable future.

At present, I see the intended campaign launch date of Sep 2022 as potentially at risk - I want to have the gameplay 99% tuned before launching, and some art developed as well. I will re-assess the situation in a couple of months, and share the latest here.

If there's anything you'd like to know more about or perhaps things you are liking from the current preview of Behemoth, I'm keen to hear 🙃

Wishing you happy gaming!

Andrea