The Spring Update (Files sent to the Printer!!!)
28 days ago – Mon, Apr 15, 2024 at 12:40:45 PM

More like "Spring UpdLate"

Time continues moving forward, and so does the progress on everyone's favorite combining robot game. Sorry or the long gap here, I got caught in the "Well, it's so close to done, if I finish the game and send it to the printer by tomorrow, that's time well spent instead of writing the update" mentality, except "tomorrow" repeated about 50 days in a row, whoops. 

However, the fact this update's now out means we finished and sent off a huge chunk of files to the printer(!!!!) 

And then, this coming week, I'll put the final spiffs on AEGIS1 Reprint's files, and everything will be in Longpack's hands. The game will be "done."

And thus begins the process of passing them back and forth with China to weed out any remaining errors, followed by printing and shipping (!!!) 

The Final Checklist

• AEGIS: Second Ignition: All Files Delivered!
• AEGIS2 Kaiju Command Expansion: All Files Delivered
• AEGIS2 Scenario Book: Delivered
• 6-Player Mat: Delivered
• 2018 Upgrade Pack: Ready for the delivery
• AEGIS1 Reprint: Update rulebook and paper insert (both built from A2's)
• AEGIS1 Scenario Book: Spruce up some typos and rules wording
• Solo Expansion: Layout the box; punchboard
• Kickstarter Promo Pack: Put the dice icons on the template

This has been taking forever because I am the game's graphic designer, on top of most everything else, and as seen in previous updates, this game across all its items has around 800 files to assemble and proof. Game big. And my daily life for the last few months has revolved around this game and its myriad rectangles and text boxes. 

But now it's basically done-zo! Finished! And it is beautiful.

(Click to check out the rulebook, leave a hot take!)

The cards were in the last update, but we've since run through and fixed a few things.

Remember, you can check all this out on Tabletop Sim!!

DEV BLOG: Building the Scenario Book

(AKA the update I was writing in early March and never finished.)

Since the January update, I've been building out one of the biggest, most complex, and final parts of the game: AEGIS2's Art & Scenario Book. 
 

"Yeah that'll take about two weeks", I say, twelve (sixteen) weeks later.

But it's now done! 54 pages, 20 gameplay scenarios, and many pages of lore, production notes, concept art, illustrations, and more. Honestly, there are enough materials from this game's long development that this book could've been 100 pages.

So let's talk about the journey of building this book out.

Scenario Book? What is that? Why?

AEGIS's Scenario books are designed to be the #1 companion to each ultra-dense AEGIS box. They:

• Fit inside the box!
• Give you directed prompts to learn explore AEGIS's many robots and game modes!
• Contain quick setups for many player counts! 
• Elaborate on AEGIS's world and cast, which we're very proud of!
• Show the work and thought processes behind making such a content-rich game!

Really, AEGIS is more like several games condensed into one box, and it would have made a lot of sense for each AEGIS game to be three or four separate expansions. 

BUT! That's dumb. 

We just want to shower you in delights for <20% the cost of other skirmish/big box Kickstarter games, and the scenario books are our main tool to guide you through and appreciate those delights, piece-by-piece.

AEGIS1's Scenario Book came out ~6 months after we delivered the game, with physical copies only going to select backers. This time, we're printing it all at the same time, for everyone, so it pushed the whole project back a bit. Sorry! But the book is cool!!!

AEGIS2 Book Goals

So what's going on in the new book? These were the main goals:

• 10-Chapter, 2-Player Campaign: One of the requests after making book 1 was to have it be more like a sequential campaign. So we've implemented this and it's pretty neat.
• Solo Content!! A lot people also requested this in AEGIS1, so we're going in on it. On top of AEGIS2 itself having a Solo Boss Battle mode, this book has a couple Solo scenarios that put some cool twists on it, one of them is even a Co-Op Scenario!
• Show off the production art! Unlike AEGIS1 where I did a lot of the art, this game had 7 artists doing concepts, robots, characters, and backgrounds. Most of the artbook side's content is unseen production artwork and uncropped character/robot art, as opposed to simply showing off high-res versions of the game's illustrations. (We'll probably do a giant "Look At These Pretty Illustrations" book in the future.)

Designing an AEGIS Scenario

Each AEGIS2 Scenario looks like this:

It has:

• L o r e: A look into what the characters are doing in the story, which also ties into the gameplay and which robots you'll be using.
• Objective: A quick overview of what is happening in the scenario. 
• Parameters:  Player count, game mode.
• Special Rules: The spicy part - how this game will differ from a normal AEGIS game. 
• Combatants: You use these teams. Most chapters are designed so that you could use custom teams! But if you play by-the-book, you'll get exposed to every robot in the box at least once.
• Campaign Rules: These appear only in chapters 1-10, and showcase which robots you'll draft before the game begins.

Step 1: The Premise. 

The overarching goal of this book was to show off each playable Commanders, default team, and boss at least once. 

We knew the first 10 scenarios would use the first handful of prebuilt teams and walk through the "Tournament Arc" storyline, so these were relatively straightforward. 

Chapters 11-20 had to incorporate the various new Backer commanders and side characters, as well as show off non-2player modes, so mapping these out was more complex.

• "We have 8 new characters. What role do they play, what chapters will they be playable?"
• "Quintus and Uptinea are both tied together by their time travel sub-plot, so we can group them together. We wanted to do a 'player controls the boss' chapter, so maybe that can be for them somehow."
• "Herobreaker hates everyone and vice-versa. We could do a chapter where a player controls nothing but Commanders and fights him. Actually, let's have it be a 4-player one-vs-many."

Each Scenario was a balance of finding some novel gameplay premise that could also match our narrative. We got pretty weird with some of these new chapters, as opposed to AEGIS1 where many scenarios were simpler, but played around with different custom board setups.

Step 2: Test and Develop

It was relatively easy to think up "wild, but feasible" new rules, but then they turned out to just be the "wild" part. Let's look over how a scenario evolved over time.

Chapter 16: BRING IT

• The Initial Pitch/Premise: A solo chapter where you fought Ryos from AEGIS1 as a Solo Boss, and its Solo Boss card was printed in the book itself. UNFEASIBLE for graphic design reasons, and because we remembered that designing an entire solo boss is really time consuming.
• The New Design: A solo chapter where you control one robot and fight against a horde of robots (no boss) and go for a high score. FLAWED because the amount of minion bots our solo mode makes is non-variable, and you can only attack so many times anyway, since you have one robot.
• Development Changes: Summon enemy minions every single turn. You can spend your limited resources to summon and combine into enemies you've previously destroyed. Lower enemy HP to 1 or 2 so you can defeat more enemies. Instead of looking for a high score, you must defeat at least X enemies to win, and also not lose your main robot, adding tension with each decision. You may spend your resources to activate your main bot multiple times per round.

Each change came from playtesting a bunch, and a simple premise turned out to need a bunch of new rules and caveats to work, which also needed to not be overbearing or forgettable. The end result is very different from the original pitch!

Step 3: Suggested Robots

This usually goes hand-in-hand with step 2. Each chapter in the book tells you to use certain robots. We approached this in three ways:

• Quality of Life: None of the scenarios ask you to hunt and peck for 20 random bots in the box. Instead, they use groupings like the prebuilt teams, or a couple robots from a specific prebuilt team. This also means we avoided using a lot of complex robots/mechanics in one scenario, instead focusing on a couple things at a time.
• Be On-Theme: We used bots that fit the characters and story being told. If the chapter is about a canyon brawl, you won't find a bunch of sniper bots.
• Make sure they don't break something or cause questions: AEGIS has a ton of abilities, and some of them inevitably get weird with certain scenarios, while others synergize and make things interesting. This was the bulk of the work - making sure there were few to no "wait, what??" moments.

Above: One of the 4-player Scenarios, which uses the highest number of bots - But! They're all all actually just on three prebuilt teams. If your box is organized, you can quickly grab them and get rolling!

EXTRA: The Campaign

Along with the above process, we made a campaign this time! Play in order with a friend and draft new bots between each chapter!

• The campaign uses the first two decks in the box, and more-or-less uses cards in numerical order. This is a great way to experience most of AEGIS2's content!
• Most campaign chapters have different team building requirements, letting you get creative with the bots you've gathered!

In each scenario, you draft 2 of 7 bots before the game starts. This system prompted us to make these changes over time:

• We had to ensure there was an even distribution of different robot types, so neither player would be locked out of certain combines. 
• We also added more combines to the draft overall as testing continued, as having a glut of basic bots wasn't very interesting.
• To discourage using the same bots every game, we implemented varying team restrictions, such as letting you use combines from the start of the game, or letting the opponent choose some of your team for you.

Developing a simple-but-effective campaign was certainly a new and interesting experience, and we hope you'll have fun with it!

IT'S ART

The most fun part of making the book for me, however, was delving into the well of production art and materials from the last five years, and really bringing the whole story together (lore-wise and game-making-wise).

AEGIS2 features 21 characters and 110ish robots, drawn by six artists. Each contributes to the evolving, intertwining story of planet Sigaea, and it's just really neat. Our characters are fun, and I think you'll get a kick out of all this.

Until Next Time

Which should be in May!

Completing the last of AEGIS1's assets should be quick work, and next time I'll go over the differences in the reprint (for real)! Thanks for bearing with me.

While we all continue waiting for this game to ship, maybe check out Stonespine Architects, now that it's finally OUT! It's my other child, designed by Jordy Adan and then developed by me and the Brieger Creative crew. 

Draft and build them dungeons up to five players!

And remember, you can always pester me or challenge me to an AEGIS match on Discord!

Fight and Unite

Cards charging THIS WEEK, plus more progress!
4 months ago – Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 12:00:13 PM

Hello wonderfully patient robot fans! 
It is once again high time for me to update you on how our big robot game is coming along (tldr; it's going good but the game is still noticeably not out yet) 

Update Recap!

• Important: An overview of all items on the BackerKit store!
• 17: Graphic asset showcase
• 16: Very Big Fall Production Update with Lots of Pictures and Playable Demos
• 15: New characters and new games to demo!!

Order add-ons this week! Check your address!

The time has finally come to lock in your shipping and add-on charges ON JANUARY 17th (happy anniversary!). You're going to be charged $9, $20 or $29** depending on your tier and location. 

Sign in to BackerKit! Confirm your info!

These shipping prices are static unless you pass a weight threshold - Feel free to add more small add-ons without increasing your shipping costs! You will save money if you planned on getting stuff later!

** (we are still waiting for final shipping estimates from our fulfiller, but I'm pretty sure these numbers should be correct enough. I am hoping we will have these numbers this week before cards are charged.)

Progress!

Bug fixing!

As reported last time, the game's files are in finished and in also in a state of time dilation. We did a ton of testing at PAX Unplugged (last update) and OrcaCon (last weekend), and that led to me doing a lot of tightening up design and balance. Now I've used my background in ~*Video Game QA*~ to make a spreadsheet for all the incredibly granular things , typos, bugs, and clarifications so the games will be as clean as they can be!

Scenario Book!

One of the major lingering aspects of this project has been the AEGIS2 Scenario Book, a 52 Page book of alternate game modes, lore, and production pics. Over Christmas, I made a ton of progress on this and the majority of scenarios are tested and ready to be laid out in book form. 

Here's a preview of the chapter list:

• Chapters 1 - 10 are a 2-player campaign where you face off in various circumstances, drafting new robots each time. These chapters can also be played independent of the campaign if you just want to try out the wacky scenarios!
• Chapters 11 - 20 are a mix of solo, co-op, 2, 3, and 4-player scenarios that can be played whenever! They're great to tackle if you have a specific player count or experience you're aiming for on Game Night.
• Like the first scenario book, this will give you guidance on using all the fun stuff in your AEGIS2 box! If you don't have it on your pledge, grab it!
• Not to mention the immense pile of incredible design and concept work found in it too!

New TabletopSim Demo!

It's been a very long time since we've updated our TTS demo due to the cards constantly changing, but we finally have a new run of cards up there! (Solo and AEGIS1 reprint content is still outdated on TTS)

Squint and look at all these beautiful children!

Give the cards a flip-through and fight your friends here! 

FEEDBACK: And make sure to tell us if you do, so we can take your feedback!! There's a feedback form in the mod but you can also message me here, on Discord @ZephyrWX, or via email with any notes you have, big or small.

KABUTO SUMO TWO-MO

Another game I worked on is hitting Kickstarter this week! If you're a fan of stand-alone expansions to novelty combat games with cool characters (you are, or you wouldn't be here?), you'll get a kick out of KABUTO SUMO: SAKURA SLAM. 
 

As part of Brieger Creative, I did a bunch of testing and development work on this game's new content, including some design on the game's team-building Swarms expansion, where AEGIS knowledge really came in handy. I thought some of you might find this cool!

AEGIS'll Be Out Soon

As usual, don't be a stranger. Message me with questions, concerns, or challenge me to an AEGIS match on TTS any time.

Thank you!

Fight and Unite

Shipping Charges SOON! PAX Unplugged! RULEBOOK!
5 months ago – Fri, Dec 01, 2023 at 05:00:05 AM

Hey everyone,  it's update time once more. I write this from the sky as we return to Philly for this year's PAX Unplugged. See you there?

Update Catch Up:

• Important: An overview of all items on the BackerKit store!
• 16: Very Big Fall Production Update with Lots of Pictures and Playable Demos
• 15: New characters and new games to demo!!

SAY HI TO US AT PAX

Right next to Copper Frog, Mythwind, CoolStuffInc and Snapship Tactics, right up front! 

We have never-before-released holiday promo cards for you with cool art by Maung Thuta! (This card comes in the AEGIS1 Reprint and Upgrade Pack - this version is just a little pinker). Naturally any backer can have one as an apology for the game not being out yet.

You can also check out our buddies' game; TERRAFYTE  - a sick dueling spaceship game - at our booth all weekend!

SHIPPING UPDATE 

We're going to charge your cards for shipping soon! And lock orders!

We have weights, item counts, and costs figured out, and have taken seasonal cost fluctuations into account. That said, we're trying to make sure we don't charge you and then get a final bill that's much higher than expected.

I don't think that'll happen, but you can't help but be anxious when dealing with a five digit shipping bill, so thank you for bearing with me.  The scope of this campaign is a lot bigger than our first one. 

But yes...

WE'RE GOING TO CHARGE YOU AT THE START OF THE YEAR, THIS IS THE WARNING

For shipping, and any add-ons you purchased on BackerKit.

Shipping costs:

•  Domestic $59-99 Tiers: Expect shipping between $9 and $15
•  Global $59-99 Tiers: Expect shipping between $15-20

A majority of backers are on the All-in Pledge, which will be:

•  Domestic All-In: $18-25 
•  Global All-In: $25-30 

Nothing wallet shattering, the game is quite physically dense and compact, so costs are not randomly going to be $100. Costs went up a little from our campaign estimates due to fluctuating shipping prices and increased amount of content. (Also we're still discounting shipping for y'all since the true costs are $23-45)

Note:At the start of the campaign, I thought BackerKit would send you a confirmation on being charged shipping, but no, it just charges you when a button is hit, so that was my bad for not understanding their system.

!! Also take this time to correct your address if you've moved because orders will be locked in 30 days !!

Q: WHEN AM I GETTING MY GAME????!!!!

A: After we get all our files approved, the game will go to print, go on a boat for six weeks, and then you'll get your games a week or two after that. For those in Europe, probably a couple weeks after that. 

PRODUCTION UPDATES

My plan was to have all files ready for hand-off to our printer before the con, but we're still finalizing:

• Box interior 
• Kickstarter die
• Solo Expansion packaging 
• The Rulebooks (see below!!)

That's it! 

Then there is the season 2 scenario book,  which is written and now needs to be laid out. That can be delivered separately from the other files, however.

"It's still not done yet?"

This is what I say to myself every day too, but man we're close. I did a final count and the deliverable for this game is literally...

1000 JPEGS!!

(Later combined into pdfs and etc)

I was even inspired to make this hellish image of the game's file production "pipeline", where raw art and graphics (black) are combined and processed together to make final files (blue). Luckily all of this is done, and a majority has been fixed and streamlined by now.

So a handful of minor remaining files is music to my eyes. We probably didn't have to go back and spruce up AEGIS1 as much as we did, but this stuff lives forever. We'll do a full list of all the aesthetic patch notes sometime soon.

Let's look at some new production pics:

Everything is looking good and so close to being finished!

AND YOU CAN HELP! (RULEBOOK COMMENTS!!)

I've been updating the rulebook for the past year pretty regularly, so I think it's in pretty good shape. What do YOU think though?

This file is up for comment and some people have already given a lot of great feedback. Let's finesse it and catch them typos. Does anything about the game confuse you? Say so. Something sound dumb? That's valid feedback! We wanna hear from you!

Take a look-see at the rulebook and leave a comment or two. 

Once this one's looking sharp, the AEGIS1 rulebook comes next, and it's 90% the same.

Onward to the Holidays

Thank you all for your continued patience! Always feel free to reach out to us here or on our Discord.

Fight and Unite

The Fall Update
7 months ago – Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 11:41:22 AM

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay on this update, we've been busy and working hard tying this game up and I was confident it'd be mostly all wrapped by now. However, we're entering a state of time dilation where the last 10% is truly as hard as the first 90%. Polish polish polish!

This BIG update ideally should have been three or more updates, but since I'm working on all these assets more-or-less simultaneously,  it's hard to structure them out for individual highlight articles.  Enjoy the tower of content!

Before I start: I am once again  asking you to finish your BackerKit Survey! Most of you have done this, thank you! If you're a retailer, please follow up with the email we've sent you!

In This Update:

• Are we shipping this month as initially pitched? (No we're still finishing the game)
• 2 NEW PRINT&PLAY DEMOS!
• Component showcase! Cards! Trackers! Punchboards! Promo Cards! NEW cards!
• ART!

Shipping Update

(This is the same info as last time)

Are we shipping this month? 

Answer: No! Sorry again! We're tying up the last bits of the game now, though this is pushed our ship date back to probably January. We will be sending files to the factories imminently soon though, and shipping will take place shortly after that. Continue to stay tuned!

When will my cards be charged by BackerKit?

Answer: 30 days after we tell you they will! We'll make sure to send out notifications and announcements here,  via email, etc so you know ahead of time. The shipping price will be between $10-20 for the majority of y'all.

What progress has been made on shipping?

Answer: We're still exchanging emails on fixing SKUs and prepping the product for eventual fulfillment, so as soon as the games exist and hit the fulfillment center, they'll be shipped within a day or two.  This is all going smoothly and essentially the bottleneck is just us being perfectionists, on top of the games being very large, content-wise.

THE CHART

Today's chart doesn't look much different from August's, despite working on this game daily for two months. This is because I forgot about a bunch of incidental assets that ended up needing editing, redoing, or creation from scratch!  This includes:

• Reference cards
• Deck cover/contents list cards
• Machineless Commander cards
• All of AEGIS2's standees

Typesetting, typesetting, typesetting.

We've also been continuously combing through cards, playtesting, and making lots of adjustments to graphics, balance, and design. Lots of plugging away on the rulebook in tandem with this too, with error-checking happening all throughout. Lots of content to put the finesse on.

We've also finished the sexy process of 

eg figuring out deck sizes, exactly how many card slots are dedicated to reference cards and etc, and how that relates to manufacturing processes like card sheet sizes. We managed to optimize the box contents a little bit, which will help with various costs and bloat!

Print & Play Updates! (and card previews)

Last month we gave you Ainer vs Stell! Thank you for your questions and feedback, after that and a bunch of PAX West playtesting, we made some changes!

•  Ainer was functioning too efficiently as a turtle durdle defensive team, so we cut the power of some of his ranged attacks a bit. We also made all of his various self-launching push attacks into single-hit moves for the sake of clarity and rules edge cases.
• We also redesigned Ark-Infinity a bit! He's still very strong and can now deal up to infinity damage to himself and others. Have fun!
•  Stell meanwhile was born perfect. I think we fixed some typos and did some minor balance adjustments on her combined robots.

So here's an updated Ainer vs Stell! Face off! Or just look at the neat cards!

We also have another 1v1 demo for you here - Kaiju Ashla vs Falsetto

Kaiju Ashla is the 10th prebuilt team in the box, out of 10, and is the most complex by far. The team is a bit chaotic and combines three of AEGIS2's main new mechanics: 

• Rolling the Star Die (normally only in Starpoint Mode, but Ashla's breaking the rules here!)
• Triggering multiple combine abilities!
• Emerging your combined robots from across the board!

Ashla herself also lets your cheat around combine requirements. There are many decisions you can make here on any given turn.  The other teams were designed with accessibility in mind, but I know there are some Spirit Island players out there who love processing a million possibilities, so this one's for you!

When in doubt though, just roll a 6 and drop your five-letter bot into your opponent's Start Zone. Reject options and smash.

On the other end, we have FALSETTO THE ROBOT KING. Probably my personal favorite of all the new characters.  Falsetto's team plays AEGIS like an RTS, generating turret drones around the board. He can also Emerge his higher-end robots just like Ashla! Attack each other with surprise dinosaur robots! That's what AEGIS is truly all about.

Check out Kaiju Ashla vs Falsetto below!

* both of these PnPs are mainly usable if you own AEGIS1 already, and you can use components from that for various pieces.

Asset Previews!

As of this update, the major remaining tasks are:

• Finishing box/packaging graphics
• Finishing the rulebooks
• Finish the promo die's design
• The AEGIS2 Art/Scenario Book

Everything else is done!!!!!!!!!!!!* 

*(I'm sure some other incidental problems and revisions will arise, but we're almost there!)

So let's look at some cool stuff.

Energy Trackers!

Each box comes with 9 or 10 of these, and they're double-sided, representing each of the game's 38 characters. 

Each tracker features a blurb that tells you who the character is and what they want in life. I really like our cast and the personality they bring to the game, and outside of flavor text and the rulebook opener, this is the main way we deliver our narrative to y'all out of the box.

Choose your fighter!!

Reference Cards! 

A lot of the time I spend revising things comes down to reducing text and making the game easier to learn and play, and answering common questions before players have to ask them. AEGIS is a pretty dense game in terms of keywords, icons, and interactions. Here are a couple before and after comparisons between 2018's ref cards and the new ones:

Punchboards!

Each box comes with four of these, holding 100 robots total. The task here was building out the standee files (and excavating/fixing the jank ones I built 5 years ago - honestly this is the source of most of my suffering), and figuring out which reminder tokens are most needed across the 32 slots we have for those. 

Many AEGIS2 bots inflict the Blaze, Rust, and Quell status effects, we there are a bunch of those. There are 8 double-sided drones, with an indicator in the corner of half of them so you don't confuse them with your opponent's. Lots of small touches and considerations.

A quarter of the damage counters have Energy Boost counters on their backs, and we put a little green bip on the fronts of those ones to indicate that so finding them is less annoying.

AEGIS1's punchboards are mostly unchanged in the reprint. Some robots feature updated artwork on their standees.

Standee Sorting: The biggest minor change across both boxes is that the robot standee numbers are upside-down. This is so you can put those standees in the tray upside-down and use them for sorting purposes. There are still 10 slots in the tray to sort your standees. AEGIS1 & 2 also have different colored standee bottoms so you won't get them mixed up.

There are a lot of standees just by nature of the game's design, so we're trying my best to mitigate the sifting!

 !! CARDS !!

Since the last update, we tied up all the promos and Machineless Commander cards. There are around 40 cards in this category across the two boxes. So much content! (That I underestimated the time to finalize prior to the last update!)

 Machineless Commanders 

These are pilots you can equip onto any basic robot, pending requirements. AEGIS2 has five, who we profiled last time.  (Well actually, eight counting the promo commanders). AEGIS1's core five each attached themselves to a different Class (A/E/G/I/S), whereas these new kiddos can attach onto one of two Classes, and are generally more specialized with their abilities.

They're also all co-created by backers!!!

While Rayla is specialized in continuously setting enemies on fire after they take damage, Quintus lets your robots short-range warp to different spots instead of moving! Both commanders take advantage of non-conventional strategies and team builds. Let your imagination run wild!

All five of these characters also have combine abilities, and most of their commander abilities carry upwards upon combining! 

 AEGIS2 Variant Cards! 

Both AEGIS boxes have a 10-card Variant expansion that gives you alternate versions of cards in the box, featuring new abilities and art. If you're at the $59 tier and haven't added this to your pledge, I would! It's only 8 bucks!

Here are two from AEGIS2's Kaiju Variant Expansion: 

Aktel-9000 gets meaner! All Kaiju Variants feature the Emerge ability, letting you jumpscare your opponents at crucial points. To make sure that isn't obscene, all of them also have special combine abilities that are interesting, but not too powerful... Except for this one! Aktel's normal combine power is very strong and lets you shoot off all the abilities of its components, while its Kaiju version lets you pick two instead - But! You can then keep using its components' attacks. A very novel combined bot that rewards you for when/how you choose to build it!

Meanwhile, Ika-Saur gets nicer! Due to some story events, you can see that Sigaea's biggest kaiju gets a muzzle put on it via everyone's favorite ocean queen from AEGIS1. It gains a new Commander Ability that's a combination of her two previous ones. When an ally is damaged, like herself or one of her Saur Drones, you can choose from a menu of powerful options to retaliate with.

 AEGIS1 Compiled Promos! 

AEGIS1's reprint (and the Upgrade Pack) includes a set of 10 compiled convention, holiday, and tournament promos, rebalanced - with some previously unreleased content!

Check it out:

Like Province Infiltrator Ixa! AEGIS1 was missing a generic "goes on Intel bots" Machineless commander, and now here she is! Her design was prompted by AEGIS Tournament winner EpicImpulse a while ago, and she combos with various debuff and control-focused I-types. No damage? No problem!

The character herself is one of our main characters, Ixa, putzing around all disguised-like after the end of AEGIS1's Five Nations War. What's she up to? What's her face look like?

 And here's a fun one that no one's ever seen! A toy for the holidays, featuring the very first art Maung Thuta ever did for us. Joining a series of other, similar convention promos, this one got COVID'd. It features the ability to use the Actions of its components, and gains more Actions the more it's damaged, making it very versatile. What ridiculous strategies can be built around this lil Megazord figure?

 AEGIS1 Errata! 

On top of the aforementioned 10 promos, we mechanically adjusted 20 cards in AEGIS1. This set of 30 is the AEGIS 2018 Upgrade Pack. Some adjustments are rebalances, while others are bigger redesigns. 

This cool dinolad was very underused, so we just cut all its attack costs in half, therefor also making its accuracy better. Our new philosophy is that Tier 3 bots should be able to actually win games on their own, and this reflects that, though this one is still much better with allies in play.

And here we have a pretty significant buff/redesign. Mika originally could only copy a small suite of keywords from enemies, but now he can copy anything! For some content moving forward, we just let things be strong and versatile, rather than preemptively restricting them.

ROBOT ART!!

Contact us!

Again, sorry for the two month absence here. We are generally reachable and active on Twitter and Discord, and I do regularly answer messages here, as well as emails.  Never be afraid to reach out!

PAX UNPLUGGED IS SOON!

We'll see you in Philly? Hope so!

Cards! Playable Games for You!! The Final Commanders!
9 months ago – Wed, Aug 23, 2023 at 01:31:40 PM

New Update time! Last we saw each other, I said I'd do a new update ahead of Gen Con. That didn't happen, as Gen Con is a sort of a black hole that absorbs all time in the surrounding month. We did a lot of valuable 6-player playtesting with AEGIS2's stretch goal content there though!

And now I'm back and bring some gifts.

Before I start: I am once again asking you to finish your BackerKit Survey! Most of you have done this, thank you! If you're a retailer, please follow up with the email we've sent you!

In This Update:

• Are we shipping this month as initially pitched? (No we're still finishing the game)
• Print&Play demo! (Woo!)
• A look into our production process! (Interesting!)
• The Final Five Backer Commanders (Cool!)
• A NEW* AEGIS GAME YOU CAN PLAY! (Online)

We continue to move towards total graphic/game design completion for the major parts of the game.

Shipping Update

Are we shipping this month? 

Answer: No! Sorry! We underestimated the amount of content we had to build post-Kickstarter, so that took a bit. Now it's getting closer and closer to done and it's all very cool. Stay tuned. We'd still like to ship this game to you before the end of the year. I'll continue to keep you updated on how possible that is.

When will my cards be charged by BackerKit?

Answer: 30 days after we tell you they will! We'll make sure to send out notifications and announcements here, via email, etc so you know ahead of time. We're still working on final shipping quotes.

Print & Play Some Robots!

To tide you over, we've put together a little printable version of the Ainer and Stell teams y'all unlocked via stretch goals. Those of you who own the first game can play on that board or the one provided, and proxy some standees. When testing, we use plastic game pieces or LEGO bricks.

Check out the new cards!

Even if you don't play, let us know if you catch any typos or confusing wording!

The Game-Making Process

The biggest hurdle with making AEGIS is assembling the 100+ unique robot cards. It's very time consuming and kind of a weird process that we concocted many years ago,  and since it's a big factor in delaying the game, I thought I'd talk about this step-by-step. You know, for all you would-be publishers out there.

1.  THE SPREADSHEET 

AEGIS is built out of a 5-sheet Excel file - robot stats, attacks, passive abilities, and an index - that compiles into one huge sheet with 78(!!!) columns. It has formulas that look like this: 

Built by Cassandra Clark back in the day,  it's quite a feat of engineering for a silly board game.  The only reason we need something this elaborate is because each AEGIS card has around 35 graphic and text elements that can change. Follies of my youth - design a game with simpler cards. 

2. THE TEMPLATES

Most professional tabletop games are made in a program like Adobe InDesign or Affinity Publisher, where you use a feature called DataMerge to pull content from a spreadsheet and put it all onto a card in various spots. AEGIS has three templates for 1, 2, and 3-attack robots.  These have differing positions, icon sizes and font sizes. 

3. THE EXPORTING PROCESS 

Once our templates and spreadsheets are ready to go,  you slam the DataMerge button and you end up with dozens of somethings that look like this: 

Wowee what a mess.  From here, I do a skim through all the cards to see if anything broke.  Then I run two scripts built by Greenbrier Games like 7 years ago to fix all the html tags, which changes the font colors and inserts the in-text icons. Trivia: the tiny diamond in our robots' names is actually the letter W in Wingdings font. How does the script change that? I have no idea.  Just like our lore, we're dealing with mysterious lost technology here. 

4. CLEANING UP

Now is the fun part where I have to go through every card and format the text so that it fits.  AEGIS has a lot of keyword abilities, and making sure the correct ones are clearly spelled out while also not being 5pt font is an art. This is a bulk of the work. 

Some robots in AEGIS2 also have cool attacks that are spelled out in text - however this is not effectively inserted via the DataMerge process. So I have to adjust all of them manually, including the expanded text box graphic. This is terrible lmao and there's little way to streamline this. However all these abilities are very cool and you'll enjoy them,  so it's worth it. 

5. ART!!!!!!!

In AEGIS1, we did most of the art via DataMerge, where a robot image is placed on a chosen background, and then I wiggled them a bit until they looked good. In AEGIS2, I've elected to just do this process on all 110 cards manually, because it's not art if you're not suffering. It's also because a lot of our new art has more dynamic poses and wilder visual effects,  so I wanted to make sure all of them wre done justice. 

This allowed me to get creative with special frames and breaking the borders a bit, allowing for some more spicy compositions:

AEGIS2's gonna look pretty nice y'all.

New Commanders: THE FINAL FIVE

As you know, eight lovely backers here helped co-create new some new homies for you to play as in AEGIS2. These characters are in every AEGIS2 box. This specific set of five are all Machineless Commanders, meaning they have no robot of their own - you stick 'em on a basic bot of your choice, and that bot gains some special abilities in addition to everything else it normally does.

All this art and lore is subject to minorly change as we do final adjustments and to align with the backers' visions.

BLAZEBRINGER - RAYLA

Estranged daughter of Sigaea's most infamous mercenary. She's made a name for herself by being a dazzling, talented, and hirable Tournament fighter. She's hired as a stand-in fighter so often that she sometimes ends up double-booked against herself. Truthfully, she just wants a normal job. 

In-game, she'll give any Basic Assault or Intel robot the ability to set any enemy ablaze after an enemy takes noncombat damage. She'll never let the fire go out!

TIMEJETTER - QUINTUS

Born in a Sigaea 500 years in the past, this experimental pilot is brought into the present due to Uptinea's spacetime tampering. His dialect is so unique in present day that nobody can understand him. Actually, he can't understand them either. That hasn't stopped him from becoming quite the celebrity in the tournament, however.

In-game, he'll equip onto any Basic Evasive or Support robot and allow your team to teleport up to 3 spaces instead of moving normally, and give your combined robots a speed boost too!

HERO BREAKER - HEROBREAKER

A powerful fighter and fan of Empyreal Realm (even though he's never lived there), he seeks to defeat every SIGEA Tournament fighter just to take their egos down a notch. He thrives on your infamy!

In-game, he'll let any Basic Assault or Guard robot deliver a finishing blow to enemies attacked by a nearby ally! Upon combining, he'll also let another ally attack for free! It's smackdown time!

ROBOT CULTIST - ILEZ-IZEL

A reclusive-yet-friendly former Iris Dominion officer whose mask catastrophically malfunctioned, granting fragmented and forbidden knowledge of the relic robots' true nature. Now a worshipper and guardian of sentient machines, especially the Kaiju that have recently awakened.

In-game, once piloting any Basic Evasive or Intel robot, Ilez will reduce the cost to combine for each blazed, rusted, or quelled enemy in play. This includes reducing the costs of Emerge! Ritual summon your favorite robots from the depths! 

EVERYDAY HERO - SALARY RIDER

Defending the defenseless from clock out to clock in! Speeding atop her strange invention that she calls the "wheel", this mild-mannered Sector Authority office lady fights the petty and white collar crime that's flourished during the Tournament.

In-game, she boosts the Energy Output of her robot each time your team damages an enemy! Then when she combines, all that accrued energy will go straight to your Energy Pool! Crime never ceases, and neither does she!

 Which of these 5 is your fave?

And that's all 21(!!) playable characters in AEGIS2. Look at their beautiful faces:

We've built out quite a world and cast, with the total across both boxes hovering around 40. Each one special, representing a full gamut of play styles and personalities. They look kind of like a Street Fighter roster... If only we had a fighting game to put them in.

OH WAIT WE DO

The AEGIS Fighting Game

I'm treating this as if it were new, but we've been working on this for quite a long time and have mentioned it in the past. Designer Nick Trahan made a cool 10 minute dueling game called Wildmoves back in the day, and just before Covid, we signed and have been working on and off to bring it to life as a game featuring AEGIS's cast.

It's existed in orbit of AEGIS2, but it is playable via TabletopSim, and I'm wondering what some of y'all think.

It shares some core commonalities with Pocket Paragons, but this game features a little dice placement, and varying stages to brawl on, each with different rules. This game also features all 18 of AEGIS1's characters, with the ultimate idea to get everyone in there.

Give it a go! It takes a handful of minutes! 

Do you think we should publish it as its own $15-25 game?

We Fight Onwards

Next week we'll be at PAX West at the Indie Tabletop Co-Op booth! This one is local to us so it's not nearly as much of a time sink. I'm looking forward to testing bots and seeing some of you there!

From there, I hope to have shipping news for you soon!

Fight & Unite