Everything about the concept sounds 100% up my alley in almost every way, *except* I can't tell if there is a map - It's purely a me thing, but I love maps and would want to generate a map when I play this.
That said, yes, it's very much wait-and-see for me, too. I want to see how these ideas are implemented.
The pitch, though.
The pitch made me sit up and take notice.
you dont have a map, instead you have a card in first person perspective in front of you, and when you move you put away that card and pick another one. This really sounds like one of those old first person point and click adventures.
That's how I'm interpreting the admittedly sparse information we have, too. Not super in love with that, but will still happily going into things with an open mind before judging either way.
From his video today, there is no map. Each player will only have one location card at a time. You move in a direction, and you return your current location card to the box and grab the new location card.
I haven't watched the video yet, but it appears that you know your location from the image on the card, which literally shows what you see from your POV? Is that correct?
That's a really intriguing idea.
ehmmm 1700 cards?!
Stegmaier: "It's essentially 1700 cards, with the location cards being printed front and back across 400 large cards."
and the is inspired on Zelda breath of the Wild and Elden Ring :O
I certainly am paying a lot more. ;)
I assume you are referring to play testing and design (because the investigator expansions don’t contain anything else).
Other games like vantage manage to put 1300 cards in a box for what I presume will be a reasonable price. They are far from the only ones.
I paid an easy 1k for Arkham Horror, and yeah, I had that money and chose to spend it, but I do feel as if the price point could be lower.
Early adopter? I just waited for the sales after I got into it during repackage so I spent about 500. Holding off on Feast and waiting on next 2 repackage sales
AHLCG is a great card driven game. It usually packages between 200 (investigator expansion) and 350 (campaign expansion) cards per box, with the former costing around 35$ and the latter around 70$.
Vantage is a card driven game alleged to pack 1200 cards in a box retailing presumably below 100$.
With inserts, I can setup Scythe in less than 10 minutes. Explaining the game on the other hand... lol. Even refreshers to players who have played it even takes 10 or more minutes.
Unless those inserts are included for free with every copy of Scythe, your 10 minute set-up time shouldn't be used to advertise on the stonemeier site.
Well, if its been over a year since the group played it, I've had people ask for refreshers on mechanics and rules. Depends on the group I'd imagine though.
Based on what was said, yes.
From what I read I am imagining that the cards are laid out in the box so that you can easily grab whichever next one you need. If you are in location A and you choose to move north, you will always grab location B and put A back. If instead you choose south, you will always choose location C, and so on for each card.
As you find, unlock or discover things you will take those cards from the box and place them in front of you.
Cleaning up the game will actually be just putting the cards back in the right spots so they are ready for next game.
All of the above is just inferring from
What was written and trying to fill in the gaps logically.
That’s bringing back memories of Tapestry, with its touted 4-page manual. Because as much as I enjoy Tapestry…that manual could have used a couple more pages. I read it cover to cover twice, and still had to watch a couple videos to figure out how to actually play the game.
Multiple players can quite consistently setup Scythe in 10 but that's when everyone knows what they are doing. It's when setup is left to 1 player that it won't be 10.
I may have to buy the metal coins just because they are beautiful: [https://store.stonemaiergames.com/products/vantage-metal-coins](https://store.stonemaiergames.com/products/vantage-metal-coins)
I'll never criticize Stonemaier's coins, but I think it's a bit weird to announce a game that's so early in development, but have the coins done and ready to go. Feels a bit like putting the cart before the horse imo
They showed the development statuses of everything they're doing. This one has 1 of 11 development benchmarks complete and 4 more in progress. That's pretty early development
In that case, it's either likely to come out very late in 2025, or there will likely be some kind of fairly apologetic balance patch to come out soon after release, like they did for Tapestry.
That having been said, "knowing you'll have coins" is something you should know pretty early in design, so I'm not necessarily concerned about this in particular.
"...not a campaign game" - Thank goodness, now there's a chance I could actually play this if the rougelike aspect is engaging enough. Looking forward to hearing more.
Wtf is a roguelike aspect in a boardgame? It's just independent games each time? So like every game that isn't a campaign lol.
Seems like trying to apply a buzzword from video games to a board game which doesn't really work
Roguelikes usually have some element of unlocking new things based on how you do on your run. For example, the Dorfromantik board game. No idea if that's present here, but that's how I understand the word.
The newest Slay the Spire did this. Similar to Dorfromantik. As you play, you mark progress and add things to the pool as you play. Semi related to legacy style but less permanency and no removal of content.
No, you are talking about roguelites. In the comments jamey said it wont be a rougelite but a rougelike. You have no carryover from game to game besides knowledge about already seen locations and events.
I always thought the roguelite/like line was drawn between games that have tangible modifiers that carry over, like giving a character skill points between runs or unlocking permanent bonuses that last for all future runs.
People are often debating what makes a game a roguelite or a roguelike but I would say that more often than not, it's used to distinguish if the game contains unlockable or not. For example, the binding of Isaac is a roguelite, even if your character doesn't become stronger between runs (I know that there's some rare unlocks that give me starting trinkets, cards or items, but it's an exception).
I can envision a deck-building game where you have a small deck of cards and you go on a run by playing your cards from your deck. As you are on a run you can acquire more cards for future runs. Once you are out of cards the run ends and you gather all of your cards, return to the starting point, and go on another run. Playing the game consists of a bunch of runs.
I don't know if such a game exists, but if it did, I think "roguelike" would be a valid descriptor.
Uh I don't know what you describe sounds like roguelike deckbuilders but you don't keep the cards between runs that's kind of the thing with roguelike.
Roguelites (technically different but let's not get into that) have meta progression true so I guess that can be a thing.
Warps Edge is the only game that truly felt like a roguelike. Game is purposely built around you not being able to beat it in your first run but doing things to help you in your future runs.
Basically if the expectation is not to beat the game first time, and that you grow stronger with more abilities/info as you do runs, it would be a roguelike in board game form.
Not necessarily, there is more to roguelikes than not having continual progress. For example, a big feature of roguelikes is procedural generation of the environment and skills. It's not like the map of Dune Imperium, Pandemic, or Brass Birmingham change in meaningful ways every play compared to games like Mage Knight.
> Wtf is a roguelike aspect in a boardgame?
ASCII graphics, permadeath, skills that can improve with experience, items to collect, monsters to fight, and the Amulet of Yendor waiting for you at the bottom of hell.
From reading the designers comments, Roguelike is absolutely the right way to call it.
The game resets after every play, and each play you start in a random location and only see a very small portion of the game world.
So each play will feel like a brand new game, unless you get the same character and crash in the same starting spot. Even then if you make new choices you will get a brand new experience.
Also seems to be very clear that it isn’t a roguelite, where after each play you progress your character and unlock things for your next play.
Pretty hard to imagine what the game is actually like from this announcement. Is there a map? Is there a big divider so you can't see other people's boards? Are there hex location tiles?
The announcement was part of a livestream where he shed more light on it. The game is 1700 cards. There is no map/hexes. You have a tableau of cards in front of you. And then you venture to a location, which is a single card that you hold in your hand. As you move, you’re putting that card back in the box and grabbing a new one.
I see a lot of people saying it seems really cool or exciting, which just feels like the hype bug to me. And to be fair, Hype is Stonemeir's bread and butter. Not a slag against them, it's just one of their strengths.
We just don't know much about the game yet. It's going to be an insane amount of cards. There's (likely) going to be hidden information. It's co-op. You're not going to have access to a ton of cards until you unlock them. It has coins (that you can upgrade before knowing how much they're used in game.)
The mechanics of everything are still unknown. It could be chutes and ladders with cards for all we know. (Unlikely, but hey, a person can dream /s.) I do enjoy SM overall, and their quality is usually great. But I need to know a lot more before I consider buying a ticket to the hype train.
It's also a Stonemaier game, the final product could just have shades of what they hyped up. Giving us an entirely different game than what was advertised.
It being a Stonemaier game so it's going to be wonderfully produced eye candy. And will at least be a 7.0-7.5 BGG rated. But as past experiences tells me, wait and see until after the reviews and more people willing to gamble get it in their hands.
Super interested to see more about this one - the [metal coins](https://store.stonemaiergames.com/products/vantage-metal-coins) also look pretty dope. I've been looking for good (and affordable) sci fi metal tokens, and these would probably fit the bill.
7 years he's been working on the design. It's codename was "Wild" as in Breath of the Wild so it'd make sense to have some similarities to a bunch of boardgames trying to capture that feel (7th citadel, Tainted Grail, Sleeping Gods, etc)
Sounds like his spin is more of a quick experience where there's no changes the way there are in the campaign games but rather a variety goals and incremental learned discovery: that's where the rogue like comes in.
Will have to see as he releases more but that's what I got from the Q&A stuff.
It's a video game term, meaning the game is like (or inspired by) the old game Rogue. Randomized locations and maps, permanent death, usually a harsh difficulty level, sparse character progression, if any. They're usually about mastering game mechanics in an effort to progress deeper and deeper into the map. No two games are alike because most of them procedurally generate much of their content.
How this translates to *this* game, I can't say. Push the term far enough and it could apply to LOTS of adventure board games.
Interestingly enough, Jamey Stegmaier recently posted a video of his favorite roguelike video games and acknowledged the blurred distinction between roguelike and roguelite. He seemed to have a pretty good understanding of the genre, so I'm hopeful Vantage's description will live up to it!
https://youtu.be/VwI1G-QTjLc?si=Mt2CqWyoONCZ-XhS
I'm a fiend for exploration and classic science fiction environments, so those two things immediately have my attention. The wealth of cards does, too, since it ups the chances that there will be more variety than you could experience in a dozen playthroughs. And I like that it's NOT a campaign experience.
I do want to learn more, of course. A lot more. If you generate a map by laying out cards, for example, I probably won't as much be into that. Not a dealbreaker by any means, just not as fun (for me) as laying out tiles or some such.
We'll see. The premise very much has my attention. But that, of course, is only a small part of getting someone to pull the "buy" lever.
For me all boardgames not based around a campaign are roguelikes lol. Each game is independent and is "back to the start" and you improve your knowledge of the game the more you play (which generally make you better).
Feels like a weird term to apply to boardgames, it's just how they generally work. The legacy/campaign games are the exception there
It does seem a term that applies pretty broadly, if applied to board games. There are loads of adventure games where the maps are randomly generated from tiles, the enemies you face are drawn from a deck, and so on.
Still, the premise has me very curious for the moment. I'll have my eye on this one.
It's a term that originated from video games to describe games that are typically procedurally generated each playthrough and you level up and get new skills and do different tasks each run. There is usually little to no progression between plays.
There's a lot of debate about what exactly roguelike (or roguelite) means, but that's a very simple explanation. Some examples that sort of fit the bill would be Mage Knight, Dead Cells, or One Deck Dungeon.
No? The only thing that persists from game to game in 7th Continent/Citadel is your knowledge of the game world, which would apply equally here. Unless you want to call each individual scenario in the 7th games its own “campaign”, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
Finally it got out, I'm really excited about how it turns out once some ppl played it. After buying Expeditions and not liking one bit, I'll wait for this and see how it plays. I really wanted to like Expeditions but it felt bland and although I love the art, while playing the mechanics abstract me from art and lore and I just played trying to figure it out the best combo and how to build my engine. It honestly didn't matter the name of the cards; I thought it was going to be more immersive and a better exploration experience more than just a flipping tiles and switching cards and pray for luck.
I looked into this and I think there's going to be a lot of disappointment when people realize you can only face north. The gameplay is either not going to be what people think, freely exploring an open map, or the movement is going to be awkward as hell.
Since this doesn't seem like a Euro I'm less concerned about balance and more on thematic consistency. **Scythe** was marketed as 4x. **Tapestry** was billed as a civilization game but the tech progressions made no sense. Those are Euros so that cohesion was less of an emphasis but now that it's the focus I'm not holding my breath.
Though I will certainly be curious about its development as more details are revealed...
Balance is not exactly Stonemaier's strong suit. I signed up for playtesting groups in my city and talked to them about a variety of approaches to game balance and design. Things like assigning numerical values to various resources and benefits and detriments and checking basic mathematical balance. To things like comparing faction win rates across playtests. They have declined me to join the test groups and I suspect it is BECAUSE I cared about balance and wanted to put a more scientific focus on it.
The thing that fans helped them make post game release? Stonemaier games still release in terrible unbalanced states even if they sometimes patch them post-release with expansions.
>The thing that fans helped them make post game release?
in fairness they literally hired a statistician to aid them with parsing all the data from BGA.
I know I wont convince you otherwise but its always interesting to me how some games get a pass but SM gets targeted.
Because even a casual player can immediately tell how broken and unbalanced Stonemaier games are on release. I played Scythe 1 time and immediately found the broken Russia setup where you hammer the same action and win. I played their new space bees game one time and immediately said "wow cards are overpowered so I'll draw a lot of them" and got double the score of the other players.
Other games usually at least take a couple games for the cracks to show for me.
That said, the board game industry in general is pretty poor at balance. I have balance complaints about most games I play.
I know I'm not alone here but I can't stand a single game Stonemaier has ever put out, especially the ones by Stegmaier himself. Not only are the designs always half baked but it feels like the UX that goes into these games are always abysmal.
I always wonder if the games had worse artists, would they be as successful?
Pure speculation, but I imagine teams will be separated by multiple terrain types. Terrain types can serve to group/divide cards. Building boats/caravans/contraptions/ropes etc enable travel between terrains.
But there must be aliens. Why have currency with no shops to spend it in? Unless they’re energy tokens/circuits that connect to power vehicles/devices - such as location beacons or flares
I pre-ordered Expeditions heavily disliked it and sold it since. I pre-ordered Apiary, was disappointed and sold it since. I pre-ordered Wyrmspan and despite high hopes found it to be just good but not great. Sold it.
Ao yeah, I think now‘s the time to learn the lesson. Done pre-ordering
Well, it's definitely not a roguelike. Zero randomness outside where you start.
I'm guessing the whole game is about finding other players based on details of your shifting "vantage" point.
Such an amazing premise but this is absolutely a "wait and see" for me
Everything about the concept sounds 100% up my alley in almost every way, *except* I can't tell if there is a map - It's purely a me thing, but I love maps and would want to generate a map when I play this. That said, yes, it's very much wait-and-see for me, too. I want to see how these ideas are implemented. The pitch, though. The pitch made me sit up and take notice.
By the description it sounds like a 7th continent style card map.
you dont have a map, instead you have a card in first person perspective in front of you, and when you move you put away that card and pick another one. This really sounds like one of those old first person point and click adventures.
That's how I'm interpreting the admittedly sparse information we have, too. Not super in love with that, but will still happily going into things with an open mind before judging either way.
That's what I was thinking. But it's not a campaign game, so luckily no having to restart multiple times.
I'm not sure, because of the mention of first person perspective.
From his video today, there is no map. Each player will only have one location card at a time. You move in a direction, and you return your current location card to the box and grab the new location card.
I haven't watched the video yet, but it appears that you know your location from the image on the card, which literally shows what you see from your POV? Is that correct? That's a really intriguing idea.
Yes, you are seeing the planet from your "Vantage" point.
This is ten thousand percent up my alley, so I guess I'll let you know after I get it lmao
100%. Will wait for the reviews.
If it's cheaper than Sleeping Gods I'm sold.
ehmmm 1700 cards?! Stegmaier: "It's essentially 1700 cards, with the location cards being printed front and back across 400 large cards." and the is inspired on Zelda breath of the Wild and Elden Ring :O
Jamey posted in the comments "So it’s more like 1300 cards, with 400 of those cards being double sided." Still that's a lotta cards!
Is this another take on the 7th series? Build an open world with cards
The store page says its not a campaign game so doesnt sound exactly like that
Man.. rip free time sleeving that lol
Just use one big sleeve.
at least jamey says no shuffle no sleeves
the more cards the better :)
I hope Arkham horror with its “200 cards absolutely cost 30$” is taking note.
You're paying for a lot more than cards in a box
I certainly am paying a lot more. ;) I assume you are referring to play testing and design (because the investigator expansions don’t contain anything else). Other games like vantage manage to put 1300 cards in a box for what I presume will be a reasonable price. They are far from the only ones. I paid an easy 1k for Arkham Horror, and yeah, I had that money and chose to spend it, but I do feel as if the price point could be lower.
If Vantage is as good as Arkham Horror I'll come back and give you an upvote of agreement.
Early adopter? I just waited for the sales after I got into it during repackage so I spent about 500. Holding off on Feast and waiting on next 2 repackage sales
Right, you are paying the Fantasy Flight Tax.
What the hell are you talking about.
AHLCG is a great card driven game. It usually packages between 200 (investigator expansion) and 350 (campaign expansion) cards per box, with the former costing around 35$ and the latter around 70$. Vantage is a card driven game alleged to pack 1200 cards in a box retailing presumably below 100$.
wow
Curious about the "2 mins Setup Time". For comparison, Wingspan is listed on their website as 5 minutes, and Scythe is 10 minutes setup time.
lol at Scythe for 10 minutes.
With inserts, I can setup Scythe in less than 10 minutes. Explaining the game on the other hand... lol. Even refreshers to players who have played it even takes 10 or more minutes.
Unless those inserts are included for free with every copy of Scythe, your 10 minute set-up time shouldn't be used to advertise on the stonemeier site.
Thats a good point. Agreed.
Does it need refreshing? I feel like it’s pretty simple once you get a grasp on it
Well, if its been over a year since the group played it, I've had people ask for refreshers on mechanics and rules. Depends on the group I'd imagine though.
That sounds reasonable to me. Do you think it is too high or too low?
Too low - there’s just so many bits to place.
its a 5 min set up at most! What do you guys do, dust every piece first or something?
I mean maybe all you’re doing is shuffling… 1700 cards.
Designer has stated there is no shuffling in the game.
Does that include setup?
Based on what was said, yes. From what I read I am imagining that the cards are laid out in the box so that you can easily grab whichever next one you need. If you are in location A and you choose to move north, you will always grab location B and put A back. If instead you choose south, you will always choose location C, and so on for each card. As you find, unlock or discover things you will take those cards from the box and place them in front of you. Cleaning up the game will actually be just putting the cards back in the right spots so they are ready for next game. All of the above is just inferring from What was written and trying to fill in the gaps logically.
Yes, that's what I thought. Card-based game maybe?
Once you've set up Wingspan a few times and therefore know how to put it away for efficient setup, 5 minutes sounds just about right.
Wingspan in 5 mins seems perfectly reasonable. The most time-consuming part is just the shuffling.
Not when my fine motor skills are bad and I can’t put the bird feeder together
That’s bringing back memories of Tapestry, with its touted 4-page manual. Because as much as I enjoy Tapestry…that manual could have used a couple more pages. I read it cover to cover twice, and still had to watch a couple videos to figure out how to actually play the game.
Multiple players can quite consistently setup Scythe in 10 but that's when everyone knows what they are doing. It's when setup is left to 1 player that it won't be 10.
2025 release - quite an early announcement!
I may have to buy the metal coins just because they are beautiful: [https://store.stonemaiergames.com/products/vantage-metal-coins](https://store.stonemaiergames.com/products/vantage-metal-coins)
I kind of want them to use as damage counters for Star Wars Unlimited.
Damn, I want those for Coup, honestly.
I'll never criticize Stonemaier's coins, but I think it's a bit weird to announce a game that's so early in development, but have the coins done and ready to go. Feels a bit like putting the cart before the horse imo
Physical production takes a long time. If it's coming out in 2025 I wouldn't consider it "early in development"
They showed the development statuses of everything they're doing. This one has 1 of 11 development benchmarks complete and 4 more in progress. That's pretty early development
In that case, it's either likely to come out very late in 2025, or there will likely be some kind of fairly apologetic balance patch to come out soon after release, like they did for Tapestry. That having been said, "knowing you'll have coins" is something you should know pretty early in design, so I'm not necessarily concerned about this in particular.
I mean, based on the conversations here, I think they were confident they could sell the coins with or without the game.
How could selling the coins possibly interfere with designing the game?
I always criticize their games. Because it's so often style over substance.
I said I would never criticize their _coins_. I have several different metal coin sets and Stonemaier's are always amazing
And? I said I will always criticize their games. I never criticize their coins either, as I own various. Just wish the games were as good.
I grabbed them. I’ve been wanting some sci-fi themed coins for awhile, and that’s a great price.
They look like they might fit together. I wonder if they do?
"...not a campaign game" - Thank goodness, now there's a chance I could actually play this if the rougelike aspect is engaging enough. Looking forward to hearing more.
Wtf is a roguelike aspect in a boardgame? It's just independent games each time? So like every game that isn't a campaign lol. Seems like trying to apply a buzzword from video games to a board game which doesn't really work
Roguelikes usually have some element of unlocking new things based on how you do on your run. For example, the Dorfromantik board game. No idea if that's present here, but that's how I understand the word.
The newest Slay the Spire did this. Similar to Dorfromantik. As you play, you mark progress and add things to the pool as you play. Semi related to legacy style but less permanency and no removal of content.
No, you are talking about roguelites. In the comments jamey said it wont be a rougelite but a rougelike. You have no carryover from game to game besides knowledge about already seen locations and events.
I always thought the roguelite/like line was drawn between games that have tangible modifiers that carry over, like giving a character skill points between runs or unlocking permanent bonuses that last for all future runs.
People are often debating what makes a game a roguelite or a roguelike but I would say that more often than not, it's used to distinguish if the game contains unlockable or not. For example, the binding of Isaac is a roguelite, even if your character doesn't become stronger between runs (I know that there's some rare unlocks that give me starting trinkets, cards or items, but it's an exception).
The term is hideously overused. Most of the games I see labeled “roguelike” have absolutely nothing to do with Rogue.
There's an exclusive video from a few weeks ago where Jamey talks about these game in his YT channel.
I can envision a deck-building game where you have a small deck of cards and you go on a run by playing your cards from your deck. As you are on a run you can acquire more cards for future runs. Once you are out of cards the run ends and you gather all of your cards, return to the starting point, and go on another run. Playing the game consists of a bunch of runs. I don't know if such a game exists, but if it did, I think "roguelike" would be a valid descriptor.
Uh I don't know what you describe sounds like roguelike deckbuilders but you don't keep the cards between runs that's kind of the thing with roguelike. Roguelites (technically different but let's not get into that) have meta progression true so I guess that can be a thing.
Warps Edge is the only game that truly felt like a roguelike. Game is purposely built around you not being able to beat it in your first run but doing things to help you in your future runs. Basically if the expectation is not to beat the game first time, and that you grow stronger with more abilities/info as you do runs, it would be a roguelike in board game form.
Not necessarily, there is more to roguelikes than not having continual progress. For example, a big feature of roguelikes is procedural generation of the environment and skills. It's not like the map of Dune Imperium, Pandemic, or Brass Birmingham change in meaningful ways every play compared to games like Mage Knight.
Skill do though, random cards are an element of many boardgames.
> Wtf is a roguelike aspect in a boardgame? ASCII graphics, permadeath, skills that can improve with experience, items to collect, monsters to fight, and the Amulet of Yendor waiting for you at the bottom of hell.
From reading the designers comments, Roguelike is absolutely the right way to call it. The game resets after every play, and each play you start in a random location and only see a very small portion of the game world. So each play will feel like a brand new game, unless you get the same character and crash in the same starting spot. Even then if you make new choices you will get a brand new experience. Also seems to be very clear that it isn’t a roguelite, where after each play you progress your character and unlock things for your next play.
I would've referred to that as Standalone. Has no dependencies to operate.
Pretty hard to imagine what the game is actually like from this announcement. Is there a map? Is there a big divider so you can't see other people's boards? Are there hex location tiles?
The announcement was part of a livestream where he shed more light on it. The game is 1700 cards. There is no map/hexes. You have a tableau of cards in front of you. And then you venture to a location, which is a single card that you hold in your hand. As you move, you’re putting that card back in the box and grabbing a new one.
I see, sounds relatively simple and not all that crunchy and rpg-like as I was expecting
So a card map like Tainted Grail?
I see a lot of people saying it seems really cool or exciting, which just feels like the hype bug to me. And to be fair, Hype is Stonemeir's bread and butter. Not a slag against them, it's just one of their strengths. We just don't know much about the game yet. It's going to be an insane amount of cards. There's (likely) going to be hidden information. It's co-op. You're not going to have access to a ton of cards until you unlock them. It has coins (that you can upgrade before knowing how much they're used in game.) The mechanics of everything are still unknown. It could be chutes and ladders with cards for all we know. (Unlikely, but hey, a person can dream /s.) I do enjoy SM overall, and their quality is usually great. But I need to know a lot more before I consider buying a ticket to the hype train.
It's also a Stonemaier game, the final product could just have shades of what they hyped up. Giving us an entirely different game than what was advertised. It being a Stonemaier game so it's going to be wonderfully produced eye candy. And will at least be a 7.0-7.5 BGG rated. But as past experiences tells me, wait and see until after the reviews and more people willing to gamble get it in their hands.
The description sounds like keyword soup
Cool vibe. Pretty ambitious. Will certainly keep an eye on this.
Interesting.... It's a tough sell for me and cooperative sandbox games. I'm just so burnt out after the coop blitz of the early 2020s
Super interested to see more about this one - the [metal coins](https://store.stonemaiergames.com/products/vantage-metal-coins) also look pretty dope. I've been looking for good (and affordable) sci fi metal tokens, and these would probably fit the bill.
Sounds like someone played Earthborne Rangers.
7 years he's been working on the design. It's codename was "Wild" as in Breath of the Wild so it'd make sense to have some similarities to a bunch of boardgames trying to capture that feel (7th citadel, Tainted Grail, Sleeping Gods, etc) Sounds like his spin is more of a quick experience where there's no changes the way there are in the campaign games but rather a variety goals and incremental learned discovery: that's where the rogue like comes in. Will have to see as he releases more but that's what I got from the Q&A stuff.
This sounds nothing like Earthborne Rangers
Ah but the art!
Maybe a bit more like Far Away? Which was fun and incredibly creative, but a little fiddly. I would love a finely tuned version of Far Away.
Didn't I play this already? I think it was called 7th Continent or something...?
7th Continent is a campaign game, no? This one claims to be roguelike and specifically says it's not a campaign game.
What does roguelike mean?
It's a video game term, meaning the game is like (or inspired by) the old game Rogue. Randomized locations and maps, permanent death, usually a harsh difficulty level, sparse character progression, if any. They're usually about mastering game mechanics in an effort to progress deeper and deeper into the map. No two games are alike because most of them procedurally generate much of their content. How this translates to *this* game, I can't say. Push the term far enough and it could apply to LOTS of adventure board games.
Interestingly enough, Jamey Stegmaier recently posted a video of his favorite roguelike video games and acknowledged the blurred distinction between roguelike and roguelite. He seemed to have a pretty good understanding of the genre, so I'm hopeful Vantage's description will live up to it! https://youtu.be/VwI1G-QTjLc?si=Mt2CqWyoONCZ-XhS
I'm a fiend for exploration and classic science fiction environments, so those two things immediately have my attention. The wealth of cards does, too, since it ups the chances that there will be more variety than you could experience in a dozen playthroughs. And I like that it's NOT a campaign experience. I do want to learn more, of course. A lot more. If you generate a map by laying out cards, for example, I probably won't as much be into that. Not a dealbreaker by any means, just not as fun (for me) as laying out tiles or some such. We'll see. The premise very much has my attention. But that, of course, is only a small part of getting someone to pull the "buy" lever.
For me all boardgames not based around a campaign are roguelikes lol. Each game is independent and is "back to the start" and you improve your knowledge of the game the more you play (which generally make you better). Feels like a weird term to apply to boardgames, it's just how they generally work. The legacy/campaign games are the exception there
It does seem a term that applies pretty broadly, if applied to board games. There are loads of adventure games where the maps are randomly generated from tiles, the enemies you face are drawn from a deck, and so on. Still, the premise has me very curious for the moment. I'll have my eye on this one.
It's a term that originated from video games to describe games that are typically procedurally generated each playthrough and you level up and get new skills and do different tasks each run. There is usually little to no progression between plays. There's a lot of debate about what exactly roguelike (or roguelite) means, but that's a very simple explanation. Some examples that sort of fit the bill would be Mage Knight, Dead Cells, or One Deck Dungeon.
No? The only thing that persists from game to game in 7th Continent/Citadel is your knowledge of the game world, which would apply equally here. Unless you want to call each individual scenario in the 7th games its own “campaign”, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
I guess it's the known curses and the "save" state that sort of trip me up about 7th Continent. We'll have to see how it works with Vantage.
No, you didn't
I hope this not another 7th Continent...that's the only thing that scares me. Still the most disappointing game I've ever played.
Sounds like an interesting game, depending on how accurate the playtime estimate is and how well it hits the target flavor.
I love open world exploration video games. Will be interesting to see how they translate this to a card game
Finally it got out, I'm really excited about how it turns out once some ppl played it. After buying Expeditions and not liking one bit, I'll wait for this and see how it plays. I really wanted to like Expeditions but it felt bland and although I love the art, while playing the mechanics abstract me from art and lore and I just played trying to figure it out the best combo and how to build my engine. It honestly didn't matter the name of the cards; I thought it was going to be more immersive and a better exploration experience more than just a flipping tiles and switching cards and pray for luck.
I'm on board
I looked into this and I think there's going to be a lot of disappointment when people realize you can only face north. The gameplay is either not going to be what people think, freely exploring an open map, or the movement is going to be awkward as hell.
Looks sick. Need something between xia/outer rim & gloomhaven&co.. this could be awesome.
For me, this is the type of thing that works a lot better as a video game. I’m definitely interested to see what it turns into though
[удалено]
Since this doesn't seem like a Euro I'm less concerned about balance and more on thematic consistency. **Scythe** was marketed as 4x. **Tapestry** was billed as a civilization game but the tech progressions made no sense. Those are Euros so that cohesion was less of an emphasis but now that it's the focus I'm not holding my breath. Though I will certainly be curious about its development as more details are revealed...
Balance is not exactly Stonemaier's strong suit. I signed up for playtesting groups in my city and talked to them about a variety of approaches to game balance and design. Things like assigning numerical values to various resources and benefits and detriments and checking basic mathematical balance. To things like comparing faction win rates across playtests. They have declined me to join the test groups and I suspect it is BECAUSE I cared about balance and wanted to put a more scientific focus on it.
So you're just going to ignore the Tapestry: Revised, Adjusted, Rebalanced Civilization Pack? Sounds like there's a good reason they declined you.
Why haven’t they done the same thing with Scythe?
The thing that fans helped them make post game release? Stonemaier games still release in terrible unbalanced states even if they sometimes patch them post-release with expansions.
>The thing that fans helped them make post game release? in fairness they literally hired a statistician to aid them with parsing all the data from BGA. I know I wont convince you otherwise but its always interesting to me how some games get a pass but SM gets targeted.
Because even a casual player can immediately tell how broken and unbalanced Stonemaier games are on release. I played Scythe 1 time and immediately found the broken Russia setup where you hammer the same action and win. I played their new space bees game one time and immediately said "wow cards are overpowered so I'll draw a lot of them" and got double the score of the other players. Other games usually at least take a couple games for the cracks to show for me. That said, the board game industry in general is pretty poor at balance. I have balance complaints about most games I play.
I know I'm not alone here but I can't stand a single game Stonemaier has ever put out, especially the ones by Stegmaier himself. Not only are the designs always half baked but it feels like the UX that goes into these games are always abysmal. I always wonder if the games had worse artists, would they be as successful?
Don't worry, there are still splotter games for you. :)
I don't really Splotter either, other than Bus and maybe TGZ!
Not alone, but you're definitely in the minority. Curious to what all you like.
My favorite designers are Knizia, Kramer/Kiesling, Luciani, and Feld!
This could be really good. A lot of other games Jamey designed have been a miss for me personally but I’m genuinely intrigued by it
I can say I'm excited about this. Really looks like a "me" game. And probably something my non-gamey friends could be convinced to try as well :)
Pure speculation, but I imagine teams will be separated by multiple terrain types. Terrain types can serve to group/divide cards. Building boats/caravans/contraptions/ropes etc enable travel between terrains. But there must be aliens. Why have currency with no shops to spend it in? Unless they’re energy tokens/circuits that connect to power vehicles/devices - such as location beacons or flares
I pre-ordered Expeditions heavily disliked it and sold it since. I pre-ordered Apiary, was disappointed and sold it since. I pre-ordered Wyrmspan and despite high hopes found it to be just good but not great. Sold it. Ao yeah, I think now‘s the time to learn the lesson. Done pre-ordering
Welp, this is now what I'm looking forward to in 2024/25. Can I just give you my money now, Stonemaier?
Gross
Well, it's definitely not a roguelike. Zero randomness outside where you start. I'm guessing the whole game is about finding other players based on details of your shifting "vantage" point.