Looking for community support

[eschatonwotg]

Hello Heroscapers! Let me begin this post with a little story. Growing up my father was in the military and would usually be gone for a year or so at a time for deployments. It was hard but we always found cool things to do together when ever he returned. Usually we would find a new table-top game to get into. One day at our local Walmart a new game had hit the shelves. The box said HeroScape Master set. Seeing all the little figurines and landscape peeked my interest so we bought the set and tried it out. That was it we were both instantly hooked. My favorite thing about it being the easy to build modular landscape.

Now into the future. Me and a group of my buddies recently had an idea. What if we made a game that stuck the the classics of HS while not being totally the same. Now, we are huge card gamers so we figured lets make a HS type game and throw in a TCG style twist into it. Thus Eschaton was born!

We now have plenty of cards, hex designs, and character designs, and we're ready to start the indiegogo campaign later this year! First we would like to know, is there interest in this? Is it worth it to pursue this project? Please let us know before we launch this campaign we would love your thoughts. If you want to know more info just ask.

Some basic info: The theme is ancient Mythology (gods, goddesses, and creatures) the playing style is a bit like Magic: The Gathering mixed with the classic HeroScape.
Please read the comments for more info!

Thank you HeroScapers!

The Eschaton team

[Agent Minivann]

Interest? Maybe. It depends on how good the game is going to be. We only have a vague idea of what it is going to be. We don't even have any mechanics to chew on. It could be good, it could be bad.

Worth it to pursue? That's a tough question. Are you going to try to crowd fund because you hope to make a lot of money? Probably not a good idea. Are you going to crowd fund because you have a decent prototype that has had favorable blind play testing and just need that little bit to fund a print run? Maybe a better idea. Crowd funding has had a few bad eggs come through in board game campaigns. I don't know if that will make potential buyers gun shy. I do know you need to have a strong pitch, and a decent amount of development already done to have a successful campaign. I don't know how indiegogo compares to kickstarter as far as population, but my first thought when I hear indiegogo is that you want to get money more than you want to put out the project. That might not be fair, but the possibility of getting money on an unsuccessful campaign points me in that direction.

That's all I have. I can't really say what I'll think because I barely have an idea of what this game is about. It might be something I will be interested in.

[eschatonwotg]

Fair enough. Indiegogo is not for us to make money we chose Indiegogo as its easier to get a project started. Like you said its hard to do crowd funding unless you are well developed and we have most of the rules and mechanics ironed out we just don't have the money to make that many prototypes of that many pieces, thus our Indiegogo. 0% of the proceeds are going to the team the only people actually making "profit" off of the campaign will be our artists. It is roughly an 80/20 split for the funds 80% to development and 20% to advertisement (mostly funding a website.)

Now on to some of the mechanics...
Essentially you choose a god to "devote to" now each god comes with 2 static abilities, one is a buff and the other is an anti-buff. You create a 40+ card deck (or buy pre-made decks) Your deck will consist of creatures, abilities, Heroes and equipment. When the game starts you will "claim" part of the map by placing your temple on it. you lose the game when the temple is destroyed. Creatures will spawn adjacent to your temple. You will summon cards out of your hand with acquired devotion points that can be acquired in various ways depending on the choice of god. Summon cards will place something in the arena (creature, hero, or structure) Ability cards can do any number of things like change the landscape, destroy creatures, deal damage, add buffs.

That's about the jist of it. I'd go deeper into mechanics but as of now we are still in development and don't want to give out to much info.

[eschatonwotg]

Agent Minivann is there anything else you want to know? We just want to know if we should pursue this. I mean we are at the starting point and ready to rumble. Thanks so much for the input. Criticism is even greatly appreciated!

[Agent Minivann]

I would say if you haven't even got a prototype made yet, I'm assuming you haven't done any or much play testing. I wouldn't bother paying for art yet. Even if all you do is print all text on copy paper and stick the "cards" in some sleeves, get something together so you can actually try out the game with other people. Your design might change because of testing in ways that could make art you already have superfluous. I wouldn't get serious about art until you have the design pretty well in hand and play testing is getting down to fine tuning.

[eschatonwotg]

We have prototypes for play testing but nothing worth putting on display (or at all pretty) for the Indiegogo. We have a few pieces coming from Shapeways and currently working with a company to get these pieces prototyped for cheaper. Our artists are pretty good friends so they are not too worried about being payed right away. They are equally as pumped about the game as we are. We also plan on previewing our game at some small conventions in our area within the next year. In all honesty we probably wont be launching the Indiegogo until later this year when we are confident we have a solid product and a well developed game and company.

Thanks Agent Minivann This is very useful info! We plan on having another play test night this Friday with a ton of new cards we thought up. Again thanks so much!

[Agent Minivann]

I haven't listened to this particular episode yet, but the most recent Plaid Hat Games podcast talks about play testing. They have talked about all stages of game design at one time or another.

[eschatonwotg]

Awesome thanks!

[eschatonwotg]

Going to self bump this. Still need to know if there is interest. Would there be a more reliable thread to post this?

[A3n]

I'm not interested yet. That's my first thought. And that might be because you haven't done a full pitch here. But it doesn't feel like there is much to put faith in so I wouldn't back it.

If you want to put up your full pitch here (as you would set it out on the Indiegogo page) you might get people assist to make it better and maybe find something that people would want to invest in.

Think about that TV show Dragon's Den. You have to put a pitch across that is going to excite investors & get their emotional buy-in. Otherwise don't bother trying to produce anything but enough to make your own copy playable for yourself with your own money.

[Seraph]

One thing pertinent to your timing is the release of the mtg strategy game, which combines heroscape miniature combat with cards like summons and spells.

[eschatonwotg]

A3n- Honestly you are probably right. We have the full game planned out we just are not quite ready to make a full pitch as we still have kinks to work out. I will probably re-release this poll once we are further into the production of the game.

Seraph- This has been an idea we have had for more then 2 years and we decided to make it a reality with where we all finally are in life. Unfortunately our "prime time" fell parallel to the release of the MTG strategy game and we had to make a tough decision, give up on our dream or risk the fight. Obviously we chose to risk it. No one knows what the outcome of this will be but we are hoping for the best. From what we have seen with the new MTG game coming out ours is fairly different in many aspects. The only major thing they seem to share is the interlocking hex tile system. Our tiles vary in many ways from the HS tiles as well. They do use a similar dovetail type locking system but ours is designed to be more snug and secure of a fit. The one up they currently have on us is the pre-painted figures. At this time it is not something we have the resources to do.