All-new stand-alone expansion + Reprint!! Build your team, unite their power and fight to victory in furious tactics battles!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
AEGIS Printing Has Begun
14 days ago
– Tue, Nov 19, 2024 at 10:07:44 AM
That's it, that's the update.
Kidding, but basically. Last week we finally sent the big pile of money to our manufacturer to begin the game printing process. This means, in an ideal world, we'll be getting final proof copies in the next couple weeks.
If it comes in all nice and complete, maybe we'll raffle it off to the backer who wants their copy the earliest!
UPDATE YOUR ADDRESSES
It's been a while and some of you have moved! Please make sure all your info is correct. As fulfillment actually gets closer, let's make sure you're ready to get your games!
Also like 10 of you still have broken credit cards, so fix that too please! If you have any questions about BackerKit, please reach out to me!
Our most active social media was originally Twitter, but it's honestly become a hellhole, so along with many other publishers, designers, artists, etc, we moved over to BlueSky! It's been a great experience, has a lot of nice features, and has no ads.
If you have a scrolling fixation, help us rebuild our following! You can even harass us over the game being late!
If this project seems like it's fulfilling very slowly, that's because it is! Sorry! Here's a little timeline of the very uninteresting process of printing a game:
Me, Sept 27: Sent some final graphics revisions. Requested invoice for this many thousand of each of the 10 items
Printer, Sept 28: received! Thanks!
Me, Oct 4: Hey checking in
Printer, Oct 5: Hey! Here is a final giant folder of all the digital files to approve
Me, Oct 8: I have checked all the files, here are like 5 small errors
Oct 9 to 21: back and forth over confusion about which version/specs of a couple files are correct
Printer, Oct 25: THE BILL ARRIVES
Oct 26 to 30: back and forth correcting some fees and adjusting item quantities to make the number go lower lmao
(Oct 31st, I fly to New England for a wedding/vacation)
Me, Nov 5, now on the other side of the country: sit in a bank for an hour sending a big international wire transfer. The 50% deposit is sent and thus printing shall begin.
Me, Nov 6: begin writing this update
Printer, Nov 7: would you like to re-confirm all the files one more time?
Me, Nov 9: ok they still look fine
Me, Nov 15: so when is printing
Printer, Nov 17: this week lol
And that's really how weeks just sort of melt away. Everyone's doing their best but progress is marred by the game being huge, me making too many revisions, and communication being similar to telegraph. Our printer also surely has 100 other clients and yet our rep is a darling who is always on-point.
Aside from the above, I've also been having a few different conversations about freight quotes, how many pallets fit into a shipping container, and where/ how to split the shipment into multiple regions the most time/cost effectively. All in all we're printing about 3x the volume of ~Stuff~ as our first Kickstarter, so it's much more daunting. I don't know how those fridge-sized minis campaigns manage these things. Definitely don't want to get rekt by some sort of shipping malarkey, so I'm being extra careful here.
Hey Look It's That Mat Finally
We finally have a look at what the 6-Player Mat looks like, and it's pretty neat! They stitched the edges! It's a big hexagon!
In retrospect we should've put some AEGIS branding on it. Oh well, next time.
This floppy lad is great for 3-player, as well as 6-player. Or heck, just play 1v1 on it if you want a bigger map! It looks like it has a lot of stuff on it, but only the walls and start zones matter - everything else is just aesthetic.
WHEN'S THE GAME ARRIVE?
I wrote a big thing here, but then backspaced it. Instead I'll say "probably January"
For those who really want it sooner, the game will be printed by early/mid December, and for an additional shipping charge, I can have them zoom it to your doorstep straight from the factory, months ahead of schedule. Interested backers, please message me.
PAX UNPLUGGED!
We'll be in Philly next month! Again! With no AEGIS to sell! Again!! But the important thing is that we'll be able to say hi to everyone, and we'll have some cool promo cards to give out. More deets in the next update.
Come say hi at BOOTH 3909, we'll be there with Galen's Games and Super Snipers again, like at Gen Con.
Also, he is wrapping his new Kickstarter TODAY! It would be irresponsible if I didn't give it a shout out --
Maybe our next game should be something like this, that won't take 2 years to fulfill...
Until Next Time
If printing is actually starting now, I expect it'll be done around PAX time, along with the mass production print proof, and that'll be an exciting update!
Fight and Unite
2nd Prototype Unboxing, Everything is Still Done
2 months ago
– Mon, Sep 23, 2024 at 11:11:53 AM
Annnd we're back! Last time I told you that the everything was finished and we're waiting on printing, that's still true. Last week we got the second round of physical print proofs in the mail, so let's check it out!
It's like Christmas every month! So many little surprises.
Basically where we're at now is the phase where I'm sending a bunch of emails back and forth, fixing extremely minor things. Everything in the above prototype was perfect, except:
Scenario book had the wrong cover (How? Who knows, the print proof from June was perfect)
They just didn't include the 6-player mat, again! To date we haven't seen a physical version of this even though that file's been done since before Spring.
The various plastic pieces are undergoing a color redo that the printer has been talking about since July, but I haven't seen them yet. Will just commit to the previous plastic colors if it seems like it'll delay the project.
Some minor typos and typography stuff that's already fixed.
I've actually given the OK to begin printing AEGIS2 and a couple of the other SKUs just to get the ball rolling. Last week was a factory holiday, but I'm hoping we'll get it all going ASAP.
That's pretty much it! Aside from answering emails very quickly and turning around minor file adjustments, it's out of my hands at this point. I can only incessantly poke our printer to make progress, which I've been doing!
Pictures!
Let's look at some nice pics of the new prototype in the meantime. AEGIS1 has never looked so nice.
AEGIS1 Reprint
Box: Check! I sent a lil revision to make the bottom-left text more readable.
Cards: Check! Here are some of the cards with newer art!
All three decks: Check! 140 cards of raw robot power. Also, the errata pack!
Punchboards: Check! The pieces are more easily punched this time.
Terrain punchboards: Check!
Board: Check! It pops and the wall pieces look good!
Solo Expansion
This is the first time this has been printed! And it's nice and shiny. Debating on making the box thinner, but not if it delays the whole production.
Box: Check!
Punchboard: Check!
Seen here: The Solo Expansion boss standee vs the standard bot standee.
AEGIS1R Scenario Book
It looks good! We expanded it by a page or two and spruced up some wording, font sizes, QOL stuff, etc. However they printed both sides as the back cover. We've since gone back and forth sending new versions of the file to them a few times, it's unclear why A2's book came out perfect in June, but now they're booth having trouble. The wonders of game making!
2018 Errata Pack
Looks good! 30 cards is thicker than I thought.
These are the 10 new promo cards for 2018 backers, they're cool!
Kickstarter Promo Pack
These three goobers are lookin' good. Still waiting on the Kickstarter dice to go with them. I could also nix it to speed up printing, but I doubt y'all would want that. Hopefully it will appear this coming week.
6 Player Mat
We still don't have this, but you all should go look into Knee Deep in Hexes, since our game actually works pretty well with it LOL. I still don't know why they sent us this.
PAX West
Were you there? We were! On a little table in the Indie Co-Co-Op booth. Next year we're gonna have da big booth!
We're also locked in for PAX Unplugged, which is getting closer and closer by the day... see you there! Hope I can yield some good news before then!
Until Next Time
Still slamming the "print this game now please!!" button @ our printer.
They're saying we have one more proof box incoming with the mat, and hopefully the final plastic doodads and other fixed things. We're so close!!
Fight and Unite
1st Prototype Unboxing, Everything's Done
4 months ago
– Tue, Aug 13, 2024 at 06:03:24 AM
Hello!!! Another late update, but this one's a happy one. I'm officially done with working on this game!! All of it! It's all done!
Of course, there's always minor revisions and ancillary tasks, like writing Kickstarter Updates, but after a stressful first half of the year, I'm feeling pretty good about the project finally being delivered.
Also happy to say that after talking with our printer and logistics people at Gen Con, it's looking like this game will be hitting your doorstep this fall (if you're in the US - other regions will probably take longer, but we'll see.) I'm hoping to get everything proofed, printed and on a boat ASAP before we hit the holidays.
Though, on this very morning, I've woken up to excellent news that certainly won't cause me irritation and suffering in the future:
I guess we'll see how this unfolds.
AEGIS2 Prototype Unboxing
I give "micro updates" in the Kickstarter comments, so some of you may have seen this already. A couple days after the last update, we got AEGIS2 in the mail, and it's beautiful!
This was the first, and most important, print proof we've gotten. We went through it and tweaked a bunch of the files throughout June, then based on those issues, I adjusted and finished the rest of the games/books/expansions, leading all the way up to Gen Con (leaving no time for update writing.)
AEGIS Stream Replays
Also during that time, we did a bunch of Twitch streams where we tested bits of the Scenario Book. We caught a bunch of minor, final issues here, and they're pretty fun to watch. You can catch all of them on our YouTube channel.
We're very far from pro streamers, so our audio kind of sucks, honestly, but we try our best! The audio is very different from video to video.
Gen Con!!!
I was so busy leading up to Gen Con that I didn't really advertise that we were going to be there. And we kinda weren't - our presence was understated at our booth, opting to show off the new game Super Snipers instead.
However, we ran about a dozen sold out 6-player events! And they went well!!! So nice to see it taught and played so many times, and the only issues that cropped up were already fixed. The game is good, folks!
Some of you did manage to find us and stop by and say hi, and it was great to see you!
Progress and Final Assets
As mentioned above, the 7 or 8 weeks between last update and Gen Con was spent putting the final touches on the game. Some of this was finishing packaging, cards, etc while other stuff was simply fixing very dumb and tedious problems, including but not limited to:
Adding correct barcodes and SKU numbers to each little thing
compiling all the robot cards into decks a bunch of times every time one card had a minor typo and then making sure I didn't forget to update those cards in other SKUs if they appeared in multiple things
Fixing typos and minor errors only I would notice on seemingly every asset in the game, every week
Finding diecut lines for specific punchboards I made 6 years ago
Discovering and then fixing some of the hex grids on certain boards being 7% smaller than they should be
Testing and adjusting various bits of the AEGIS2 scenario book
Going through and adjusting all the map images, robot lists, and rules text, along making QOL improvements in the AEGIS1 scenario book
Adjusting a handful of this stuff again after getting notes back from the printer last week after Gen Con.
Aside from fixing errors so we don't have to Day 1 Patch the game and call it an expansion, I also built the remaining stuff we promised, mostly in the solo expansion:
SOLO EXPANSION BOX
Box layouts are my passion. It has all the legalese and info a never-coming-to-retail product would ever need!
SOLO PUNCHBOARD
A new punchboard! How exciting. The Solo Expansion comes with 8 large standees for the bosses, along with some more drone tokens, just in case you only own AEGIS1.
SOLO RULEBOOK
I really wanted to make sure this expansion was usable without AEGIS2, so it comes with its own special rulebook! A side effect of this is that it actually has expanded Solo Rules with more clarifications, tips, etc, on top of new setup instructions for playing on AEGIS1's board.
So when you whip out Solo Mode, you can just grab this one book and it'll have everything you need.
Did you remember this? Well, if you didn't, we made it anyway!
Everyone on this campaign is getting the Kickstarter Promo Pack, which includes a few crossover characters and this special, rollable cube. It's made to be used in AEGIS2's Starpoint Arena game mode, but otherwise still functions as a standard d6. It will be more impressive when we get a manufacturer proof for it. It's gonna sparkly!
And Off to PAX
We'll be making appearances at PAX West and Unplugged this fall, and hopefully delivering your games too!
Let's see if global trade collapses just in time to ruin everything. Hopefully not!!
Fight and Unite
Bonus Robot Art!
Just for fun, I commissioned the artist eyetyper (follow him) to do chibi versions of some of AEGIS2's important robots. Check em out! Maybe we should make stickers or promos of these dudes...
AEGIS Streams are back! Print Proofs incoming! AEGIS1 Reprint!
6 months ago
– Fri, May 31, 2024 at 03:21:35 PM
And we're back - I promised a May Update, and here it is. Let's dive in.
Streams will take place at 7:00 PM Eastern on the following days:
Monday, May 20th (1v1 Quintus vs. Kaiju)
Monday, May 27 (Solo Mode Test)
Thursday, May 30 (3-Player Scenario)
Friday, June 7 (Solo/Co-op Scenario)
Monday, June 10 (TBA)
Thursday, June 13 (TBA)
Replays of the streams can be found on our YouTube Channel. We've already done a couple (mostly focused on working out technical kinks).
AEGIS Events
We were at KublaCon Protospiele in SFO last weekend, testing a bunch of stuff!
Origins Game Fair: We were planning to go to this! But we aren't now! Mostly to save time and costs, since we have nothing to sell and cons are very expensive.
Gen Con: We WILL be at Gen Con however, at booth 2939 allllllll the way near the back wall, in the middle (thank you Gen Con!). We have a whole ton of events there where you can take AEGIS for a swing and try out the final production version! Several events have 1 slot (of 6) left, but there are a couple that are pretty open:
Also at Gen Con, you can check out SUPER SNIPERS at our booth! It's a great lil dueling game that will be making its sales premier at the show. We're also attached to Giga-Robo's booth, as always, with Solis Game Studio right around the corner.
PAX West: We'll be here as part of the Indie Game Co-Op on the tabletop floor (and also probably setup nearby in freeplay)
PAX Unplugged: As always, we will be here!
AEGIS Printing Update
We expect AEGIS will be printed and available at PAX Unplugged, maybe PAX West if we're very lucky!
In our last update, we sent a bunch of the files. Since then, we've been going back and forth, fixing misc print errors and files issues. Now we're being sent some file proofs THIS WEEK! Around June 3rd, we'll have a DHL box with a bunch of the physical assets to look over, which we'll then OK for a production sample. We'll stream opening these on Facebook or Twitch.
It's happening!!!
A Look at AEGIS1's Reprint
Now that AEGIS2 is more-or-less finalized and getting sent over here, we'll push the AEGIS1 Reprint files to them (both games use all the same sizes, molds, etc).
Owners of the 1st Edition: The reprint edition is mostly minor aesthetic upgrades, and QOL things for new players. The 2018 Upgrade Pack you're all getting contains just the robots with errata'd mechanics, plus 10 new/compiled promo cards. The slightly fancy-fied boards and other assets aren't included.
Let's start by checking out this amazing new key art by Noah Nagata. We have a cool poster for AEGIS2, so we went back to make one for AEGIS1!
Next I revisted the box art - basically just replacing some of the hex robots so that it was "the same, but different" - you'll also see new bots on the sides.
Then we re-approached the boards and added a bit more depth and detail, adding clearer "put terrain tiles here" slots:
Compared to 2018's, which was a good deal flatter:
To go along with the new boards, we upgraded the terrain art that matches the rest of the game a bit better. We also included new Starpoint hexes for playing Solo Mode on the AEGIS1 board. There's also no more Player 1 Token.
New
Old
We also redid all the Energy Trackers and moved the character descriptions to them, much like AEGIS2, and removed the commander cards. We also dropped the number from 13 to 9 and just made them all double-sided. Streamlined!
On the robot front, we errata'd 20 bots in the box and added 20 more (counting the Variant Command expansion), for a total of ~120 playable units.
Cards: Consolidated!
While we had the chance, we also upgraded art on 6 or 7 robots:
Robots: Beautified!
Robots: Beautified!
And of course, the rules are updated to match AEGIS2's. The major adjustment to A1's specific rules is that we've redone the "Point Control" king of the hill mode entirely.
Summer Cometh
And so does AEGIS. Stay tuned to our social media for pics of the test prints coming in the mail next week!
The Spring Update (Files sent to the Printer!!!)
8 months 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(!!!!)
The most cathartic email I've received in months.
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!)
(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.
Pictured: 3 months of being menaced by text box formatting and playtests.
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!
Building dungeons in Stonespine Architects is SOO FUN!! This is very much my jam😋 pic.twitter.com/BU3FJT4a5X
