What’s Up Wednesday: Blessed Nightmares

Hello followers of Kane!

This week you join us on a relatively quiet week for Solomon. He has taken to his tavern bedroom, and through the door, all you can hear is the sound of a blade being sharpened. I guess even Solomon Kane needs a day off to sort out his traveling gear. Hmmm, I wonder how many hats he owns? One for each Virtue perhaps?

Garden of Forking Paths

With this update, we would just like to touch base with a host of differing aspects of development. First up, we have Guillem Pongiluppi who is refining all of the art on the tiles so you can be sure that they are not only consistent with the rest of the art for Solomon Kane but expertly drawn too. In the coming weeks we can show you how he has been getting on, so stay tuned for that.

Doom’s Right Hand

Next up, myself and the rest of the UK development team have been playing the Right Hand of Doom in the office. We completed the entire act and it was a surprisingly loud and rambunctious time. You see, here at Mythic Games UK we have rather high ceilings which creates a fantastic echo chamber for when the action gets heated. This time even the Reichbuster’s team had to tell us to quiet down (which is unusual as we are usually the ones asking those busters the same thing).

Of course, Solomon Kane lives the life of a serious-minded Puritan. In the game though, we have a laugh, and as you would imagine with a cooperative game, there is loads of table talk. We also had fun with virtue sound effects from Babis (doing a great job of making his voice echo), popping sounds (“popping” is our in-office slang for when a Shadow engages Solomon Kane), and even just reading the flavour text on the cards out loud.

However, for players seeking a darker and more treacherous experience, there is Nightmare mode. This is our increased difficulty mode that is designed to scupper us in many dark and devious ways.

Having a Nightmare

At the start of each chapter, players can decide to replace X amount of Darkness cards with the same amount of Nightmare cards. Nightmare cards buff the AI of the game (how aggressively Hunters attack, how mobile shadows are, how many shadows are placed onto the board, and so on). In some instances, these cards are so unpleasant that they have to give players a small bonus to offset the pain (such as a Mercy cube). Of course, choosing to include Nightmare cards into your Darkness deck is not the only way the game will use these cards. Certain nemesis abilities, the actual Darkness player, and bad iterations of chapter cards may force you to include or swap Darkness cards for their more evil brethren.

If this sounds too much for you, then do not fear. We also include a more forgiving mode in the game (currently called Blessed mode) in which players can decide to take one or more blessing tokens at the start of the game. Each blessing token offers a choice of one-use benefits that add interesting and helpful options.

Both Nightmare and Blessed modes can be combined. This gives players the freedom to tailor the difficulty level of their game. Some players really enjoy all of the challenges we have set up and think about the game as a tactical puzzle to solve. Others simply want to experience the narrative and enjoy the story. Of course, now that these cards and tokens are in place, we have also used them in various other situations, like the monk who blesses Solomon Kane in the Haunted Mountain Adventure.

So what do you all think? Will you be having a Nightmare? Will you be mixing and matching with Blessed mode? Or will you simply play the Puritan’s way with neither spike nor boon?

Until next time, sweet dreams.

Dale