EotL:IMR DeveloBlog
Hey Fight Fans,
If you've seen us at a Con since January, you may have gotten to play the expansion to End of the Line, the Inevitable Machine Revolt (IMR). Frankly, killbots/evil AI have been responsible for a lot of apocalypses and so we dedicated the next evolution of EotL to those lovable scamps. From a game play perspective, the four main features of the expansion is a robot family member for everyone, a sixth player, new calamity deck, and the upgrade deck.
Robot Family Member: a sympathetic machine friend can be a real asset so adding a Robot family member was a no-brainer for the expansion. Robots are not considered to be humans or dogs and thus gain a certain amount of immunity to the death in the action deck. To compensate for this, we've added some machine specific "event" and "now" cards to keep things spicy for our robot friends. The new meeples are done and we couldn't be happier.
Sixth Player: one characteristic of EotL in general is more players more mayhem. While a three player game can be sinister with well crafted plans and combos, the five and six player game is often about buckling up and riding the wave of chaos. Typically, the sixth player game is the shortest in terms of total number of rounds. This works out nicely because it keeps the games roughly the same length as far as total minutes played.
Calamity Deck: though famine and drought are fun, they aren't particular to when our computer overlords seize control. We decided there was a real opportunity to capture more of the theme if we redid the calamity deck into awful things specific to our favorites from this sci-fi sub-genre. A little lethality creep was also necessary since we gave each family a robot buddy.
Upgrade: the primary new mechanic for IMR is the upgrade. Upgrades are bought with a new resource called "Tech" and we've replaced the blackmarket with the Tech line. Think of upgrades as "law" cards you play on your family that permanently modify how your characters function. Making the most of what makes your family special is a real way to get ahead in the expansion.
Where are we now: we've had a lot of progress on IMR since we shipped EotL to KS backers. We've looked pretty hard at how the game has played for new players at conventions and we're onto the hard edits. Cutting down the action card deck so it has the right player to death ration, cleaning up some of the mechanics in the upgrade deck for consistency while keeping flavor and making sure the calamities create new and interesting choices are all things that we are tackling right now.
Most of the cards are laid out with their art in place. The last big effort is getting the instruction manual put together and the box art to match. Things are looking good for us to launch, publish or kickstart IMR in the next 12 months or so.
