Tactical Knight Combat & Dungeon Delving
Of Dragons, Devils and Kings…
A truly tactical dungeon crawler.
A truly co-operative adventure.
A truly narrative-driven board game.
Truly epic!
Kingdoms Forlorn is a solo-operative dungeon delver for 1-4 players with a focus on loot, tactical battles, character building and storytelling. It’s something we’ve been working for more than 2 years now, since before our highly successful Kickstarter campaign for Aeon Trespass: Odyssey. As AT:O nears completion, we thought it high time to reintroduce Kingdoms Forlorn to the wider audience!
In the coming months, I’ll be slowly unveiling the magnificent beast that is Kingdoms Forlorn, and showcasing each and every major theme and concept, as well as highlighting the innovative mechanics we hope will reinvent the somewhat stale genre of ‘dungeon crawler board games’. And of course, along the way, I’ll give you a sneak peek at the exquisite art we’re using to illustrate it: from Monsters, Knights and Kingdoms to Gear, Maps, Saints, UI elements and the next generation of our miniatures!
Renholder, the Mage Knight
“Welcome, Noble Ser!” He greets, smirking behind the grey of his whiskers. “Come to share a hand with an old fool?”
“I’m game if you are, friend.”
The cards are dealt, and a few hands play. Some you win, others you lose, all the while you note the gambler giving you just enough of an incentive to keep playing, just enough of a promise of rewards to entice you. Then, suddenly, your fortunes turn, and every hand seems to be against you. Finally, the last coin vanishes from your pouch, although you are not surprised.
“Oh… hard luck, Noble Ser!” The rat-faced man sneers. “Seems like fortune favours me today!”
“One more hand.” You insist. “Perhaps I can wager… this.” You produce a small trinket, a metallic oval, and roll it over the table. The ‘easter egg’ stops right by the pile of coins.
“That, that is… a valuable prize indeed.” He stammers. “I fear I have nothing I could wager to match such a trinket!”
“Oh, I think there is something you could offer…” You lean forward, eyes glinting like steel. “You could tell me about the Night Trade. The eggs. The missing children.”
Battle Board Prototype
Tactical Knight Combat
From the other Updates you may have guessed we have a love/hate relationship with dungeon crawlers. We love the story-potential, the excitement of venturing Into the Unknown (duh!), the group dynamics and the emergent interactions, we love myths and legends, and roleplaying games and sprawling fantasy sagas.
We don’t like the flat random combat that seems to be a staple of the genre (though there are signs of improvement, thankfully). Chucking dice is fun, but without meaningful decisions, it boils down to luck. It can give you unforgettable moments, but it can also give you 5 turns of not being able to hit that goblin. It can bog the game down, it can feel unfair, it can ruin the best plan and story.
It’s no wonder we used a tactical combat system for Aeon Trespass: Odyssey and that we’re again using one for Kingdoms Forlorn. In fact, the KF system grows from the same Inward Combat Paradigm™ mechanics foundation, though it veers into the exciting and unknown pretty quickly.
Knightscramble…
Complex AI and BP decks for monsters make a return, we also use a variation of the Escalation system, assuring that each Clash is a nail-biting affair right up to the end! Beyond that, terra incognita! You’ll fight a variety of strange monsters and creatures that bend the boundaries of what is possible in board game boss battlers. You’ll tangle with Mobs of enemies that play in an entirely new way, with rules for Initiative, Crowd Control and Active/Reactive elements. You’ll control a unique character that develops over many levels, based on your choices, including a unique double-sided Knight Ability Deck, which gives you even more control over combat and endless customization possibilities.
And that’s just the start!
Dungeon Delver
What we also don’t like is the shallow, uninteresting exploration. Go forward, draw a random tile, setup enemies, rinse and repeat. Or, the ‘exploration’ already happened, because the scenario always has the same layout – enticing once, then, less so with each new play.
That’s why Kingdoms Forlorn is a Dungeon Delver, not Crawler. We’re doing away with all of that with intelligent procedurally-generated Kingdom maps with tailor-made narrative goals. What this means is that no two quests will be the same, even the same Quest attempted by the same Knight will be completely different. The map of each Kingdom (we’ll have more than one) follows its own rules of generation and movement, and has its own quirks (watch out for those Mushroom Inquisition tunnels!), however, it’s the players’ decision where to go and what to look for. Each of them has set goals they need to achieve, ones that will sometimes align and sometimes may be at odds (though I’d like to stress, this is not a semi-cooperative game, in KF everyone can and should win through teamwork!), but will always lead to a meaningful discussion of what to do next.
Principality of Stone Card Sketches
Each Kingdom offers unique dangers and opportunities that will hinder or enhance your traversal and exploration methods. Each Knight can further help his allies with strategic use of Knight Ability cards, the same ones you use during a Clash! Since the Delve can be as lethal as the Boss Clash itself, and it directly influences the difficulty of any Clash that happens throughout your mission, you may be tempted to use everything you’ve got here… but then you’ll be a lot less flexible during the Clashes themselves. There’s a very interesting push-your-luck but conserve resources gameplay here that I think many players will appreciate.
Beyond that? Exploration effects, story encounters that may tie to your personal quest or push forward a metanarrative, hidden numbers and puzzles. There’s really no part of Kingdoms Forlorn that’s rote or that doesn’t offer meaningful decisions or surprises.
Renholder
