Enormity Design Diary #3: Crossing the Rubicon, a Spacer and their Suit

In Enormity, you play the role of a NASF astronaut on the mission to the derelict ship, The Shepherd, lost to the void of space some years ago, now miraculously returned. Whether you’re a leader, scientist, engineer, agent, soldier, or one of the myriad other professionals enlisted on the NASF Coventry, you’re a specialist in your field, hand-picked to be part of this momentous event in human history. And yet, you are woefully unprepared for what awaits you…

Characters are at the center of Enormity, and Enormity is all about player choice, blurring the line between board games and TTRPGs. Consequently, you’ll be able to play as one of the pre-generated Spacers – like Isaac Bohm here – or create your own.

Whether you’re playing a named character or creating a fresh one, you’ll get one of these Character cards. This is who you are. Once chosen, you will rarely, if ever, change your Character. 

The front of the card shows the most important aspects of your Spacer, like their class, skills, abilities and Rubicon bonuses. Class determines your profession and how susceptible to stress and pressure you are, and gives you access to a unique progression tree, class-restricted gear and team-wide class Stratagems. Skills are used in various combat and non-combat tests, like noticing something, hacking a terminal or keeping your balance. Abilities are invaluable during your extraction runs and will either help you in combat or exploration. And finally, the Rubicon bonuses, the heart of our hard co-op mechanics… we’ll discuss them in a bit!

The back of the card contains story information, as well as the progression tree and Action cards your Character contributes to your hand. Action cards are what allows you to perform all major gameplay actions, like moving, shooting, scouting or scavenging – we’ll discuss these another time!

The progression tree is what determines your character's development and character development in Enormity is rich and multilayered, touching on various game systems – your personal career and growth as a person, gear, suits, antinomies and more. The build variety is endless. Most importantly, you may progress your character regardless of playing the game as a campaign or as one-shots; persistency of the world and your characters is present in both, much like the tabletop RPGs and extraction shooters.

Space is cold and unforgiving, and no human can survive in it for long without an EVA suit. Appropriately, you will always have a Suit card in addition to the Character card. Suits are less permanent than Characters though: you will change them periodically, as you find or craft new ones.

In many ways, the Suit card compliments your character. The front shows additional Rubicon bonuses, and abilities, as well as Specs: Support Slots (for Support Gear), Backpack Slots (for hauling your loot!) and your default Lightsource – for traversing all the dark and dangerous places of the Shepherd and for scouting out the Intruders before they scout you! 

The Suit card’s back shows a larger illustration of the suit, and its lore, as well as provides you with additional Action cards.

Now, let’s get back to those mysterious Rubicon bonuses. To understand them, you need to understand how the Character and Suit cards come together. It’s quite simple – you join them with a triple-layered cardboard connector (called the Rubicon), to create your player board.

The Rubicon is used to track the three most important Spacer statistics, which represent your physical and mental wellbeing, as well as combat readiness, as measured by your EVA suit’s internal monitors.

Unlike typical stats, these three are in flux, and comprise the living, beating heart of our Inverted Combat Paradigm™ - the mechanic that will make you stronger the closer you are to death and at the same time keep you on your toes until the very last game turn! 

Adrenaline and Stress will go up as a result of attacking, using abilities, making re-rolls and being exposed to intense fear, while Vitals will go down as the result of getting physically hurt. You will mark these changes with special plastic indicators, so there’s no need for cumbersome tokens.

Hard Co-op

Enormity is a cooperative game about a band of unlikely survivors facing an unknown world of unimaginable horror. Co-op is a big focus, and the hard co-op mechanics take it to the next level. Basically, when you perform most actions, you are also creating opportunities and openings for other players, either directly, or by leaving special tokens into one of the Spacer Pool’s wells, a place for shared resources that enhance your abilities and attacks, and allow you to trigger special unique effects and stratagems. This is what those Rubicon bonuses are – cooperative tokens you leave for others while performing Adrenaline actions or by using abilities, that will allow them to re-roll their dice, achieve their full potential, use more demanding abilities, scavenge and use various other Location effects, as well as activate global Stratagems.

If you want to survive, you will need all of these, and more. The Intruders are not playing fair. You’ll learn that in the next dev diary.

Frequently Asked Questions 

Q: So is this a campaign game or not? Does it use scenarios or missions? Or is it all free-flowing sandbox gameplay?

A: YES (in my best Vorlon voice). Enormity is a guided sandbox experience, as it bridges the divide between boardgames and TTRPGs. The ship is enormous, its map is interconnected and continuous, and you can go anywhere, anytime. The only thing stopping you are the hordes of Intruders on your way… 

You may play it as one-off expeditions into the ship, to kill some Intruders and gain loot, or you may play one of our hand-crafted campaigns, or create your own. There are no obligatory scenarios, save the tutorial one, Dark Side of the Sun. There are objectives you may want to pursue, side missions, and other secrets. Even if you play the game as one-offs, you will explore and expand the ship, and develop your character, the game world is persistent.  

Q: What do you mean by “interconnected” and “continuous map”?

A: The game comes with two Location books, and some additional tiles, which you use alternately to create a continuous map of the Shepherd. How far you go on a run depends on you, because you decide when to extract. And when you extract, you go to one of your unlocked safehouse locations, which is also a map in the book. When you’re ready to head out again, you will use the ship’s tram system, and later other means of travel, to transport you to any of your unlocked entrances – there is no need to backtrack (unless for that sweet, still unfound loot!).

Q: Is this game replayable? How big is the map?

A: Heck yeah! Enormity is the most replayable and modular Into the Unknown game yet. The map is big; dozens upon dozens of interconnected sections. You won’t see them all in a single campaign, you won’t even see half. You won’t face all the enemies, find all the loot and secrets, you won’t uncover all of the Shepherd’s many mysteries. The game is built for endless replayability. 

Q: Are there boss battles too?

A: Of course. Like with this guy.

Enormity is coming to crowdfunding this Winter. This is the third issue of an ongoing series of designer’s insights. Before the game lands, you will be invited into the dangerous, oppressive world of the Outer Dark, learn about all the new and unique gameplay mechanics that will shake the dungeon crawler format, discover the new ICP, see the fantastic art from some of the best artists in the business, like Lius Lasahido, Abrar Khan or Igor Kieryluk (yes, we’re doubling-down on hand-crafted art!), marvel at the miniatures, watch a trailer, read the rules and possibly play the Dark Side of the Sun Demo yourselves! Stay tuned for more soon.

Thank you for supporting our art, and dreams, over the years,

Marcin Wełnicki, Head of Into the Unknown 

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