Update - 20/12/2021

Hey, how's everyone doing? I hope everyone had a nice weekend, before the holidays madness begins next weekend. I just spent the weekend home working, and watching the new The Witcher season. It's better than the first one, so far! I must admit I never read the books or played the games so I have no reference, but the tone is all over the place in both seasons, which makes me think the books are like that as well. One second you're watching some cool grim dark fantasy show, the next one is the Beauty and the Beast. I think I'm just watching it because I like the characters, I'm not fan of the world. It's the exact opposite with The Wheel of Time TV show, I despise the characters, enjoy the worldbuilding. In any case, it's a luxury to have decent fantasy shows on TV, for sure!

So this has been a great week for Across a Thousand Dead Worlds. Although I have been completely unable to continue working on the Karum Station chapter, it's been mostly because I have been fixing the game thanks to the fantastic feedback I'm getting from the playtest. Almost every aspect of the game has been touched and improved on, and I think it's shaping up very nicely. It's a bit overwhelming at times because I fix one thing and then 10 more pop up, but such is the nature of playtesting, and it's better to have it done now before the game's released than after release (looking at you, Seekers Beyond the Shroud...).

The playtest has also brought a lot of new faces to the Blackoath server, which is great. It seems word is spreading and people seem to be having fun playing the game, although I don't think anyone has played a complete game  yet (Karum Station-Site-Karum Station). People seem to be testing isolated things, trying things out. It's fine for now, because all the different aspects need testing, but once things calm down I hope I can try a whole mission from start to finish by myself, to see how it feels.

A big change I'm implementing thanks to feedback is adding zone-based combat. As you might know already, in its first iteration ATDW had purely TotM-style of combat. Then I added in optional tactical combat, but finally realized that due to the game's combat mechanics it actually felt better to play it exclusively as a tactical game (during combat, that is). I don't regret the idea, but it makes it tricky to play online without a VTT, and some folks hate minis and battlemaps, so I wasn't sure what to do. Thankfully, our very own Order member RsMonpas suggested the use of zones for combat, and it is a great match to the game. There's no need to change any of the existing systems, so it's the perfect alternative to playing with minis.

I've also gone ahead and started setting up the Kickstarter page. Phil and Leo are helping me with it, so I hope we'll have the "notify me" page up and running soon! I can't believe we're almost there!

So that's it, it might not seem like much but this week has been very hectic, and has seen a lot of work done. I expect this starting week to be similar, at least until the weekend... I hope that all of you who are planning on celebrating the holidays with family have a fantastic evening!