Progress Update + The Tome of Creatures
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 08:57:36 AM

The sky, grey and saturated with disease, hung over the swamp that exuded the sickly sweet scent of decomposing flowers. The swamp was spreading without restraint and poisonous grasses floated placidly under its opaque, unperturbed waters. A ripple on the surface of the water revealed the s-shaped curve of the body of a snake that was swimming towards an islet. Other snakes follow it, emerging from the water, which is whipped up by the frenzied movement of their tails, and slithering in all directions. Their bodies writhed frantically as they made their way through the swamp like an inkblot spreading out on a canvas. They all came from a pale strip of land: in the centre was a body, motionless in death, with its stomach torn open. From it came the newborn snakes that were darting away as they dispersed into the swamp. The eyes of the corpse suddenly opened, unveiling the gaping black void of the eye sockets, and even though the decomposing mouth did not move, the following words could be heard: "Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you?” 

Hey everyone!

That was a short extract from the visions of the Keeper. As part of the "expanded lore" content, each quest in the game will give you access to one vision that will help you dig into the story and piece together the mysteries of The Awakening. Can you guess what those serpents are? ;)

Now, it's time for our monthly update! February is the shortest month of the year, and, ironically, I realize this will be probably our shortest update as well. Recently we have been fully absorbed by the finalization work, carrying forward the tasks from the past month. Today we want to take the time to share with you the state of the progress.

Progress Update

In the last month, everything has moved forward as our team continued to work tirelessly on all fronts. We are currently finalizing the graphic design, proofreading all texts (that's a long process which is ongoing for months so far), and conducting blind tests of the rules. This is a very intense phase, and unfortunately we are not done yet. We are putting our greatest effort to make sure everything is perfect before stepping into mass production. Next month will be crucial in having all files for cards, punchboards and rulebooks finalized for printing. It's difficult to express the excitement of seeing every piece of work, art and design choice giving birth to the final components. It really gives you twice the energy to make these final steps.

Pre-Packed Shipping

With the manufacturing being set up, the fulfillment plans are currently in full development. In the last few weeks we have been talking with many different companies, receiving their updated quotes and carefully evaluating the most cost-effective, yet high quality, solution.

After studying the best way to optimize the process, we are planning to have our factory make custom boxes for the different pledges. This will allow us to have full control over the shipping boxes dimensions which can be a critical issue when having large size packages like ours with many different combinations of add-on items. 

Also, our manufacturer has a great experience on preparing the packing boxes for large campaigns like this, so, after talking with potential logistics partners, we are evaluating using a pre-packed shipping strategy to ensure a better-organized process and quicker fulfillment steps once the games reach our worldwide hubs. Although this would mean a slight delay of approximately one month in the freight shipment from China (the factory needs additional 3-4 weeks to make the packaging), then the delivery process will be facilitated and speeded up so the overall timeline shouldn't be affected as much with respect of our estimates, while ultimately leading to a better service in the final stages of the fulfillment.

Of course, you can be sure we will continue to keep you updated as things move forward.

Speaking of pledges and combinations of different items, it's been a long time since we talked about the Artbook add-on :)

The Tome of Creatures

As we are working on its layout finalization, we thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about the Tome of Creatures and how it fits into the game.

 The Tome of Creatures is both the artbook and the bestiary of the game. For each region of Thyrea the book features a detailed description that includes information about the monsters and their environment along with the illustrations and the model sheets we developed during the world-building process.

The book is written from the perspective of a seeker that has travelled all over the island. The identity of this character will be discovered during the course of the story. The Tome contains his notes and his discoveries about the monsters and the wild regions of Thyrea. 

 Not only the Tome of Creatures gives the name to its associated item reward card, but the book itself can be used as a physical reward that players may unlock during the campaign.

Players who have the add-on can use it to read the information that the seeker discovered about the monsters and the regions, and fully immerse yourself in the experience. On the other hand, since the Tome of Creature is not included in the Core game, we assure that it will not contain any information that is required for the completion of the quests.

 That's all for today, this was a quick update to keep you in the loop. We hope you enjoyed the artbook preview and we want to thank you once again for being part of this project and for your constant support to our team. 

Stay tuned as we will be back soon next month!

Until next, have a great gaming time

Reggie Games 

Progress Update + Campaign Rules
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 09:38:38 AM

Hey everyone!

We hope the start of 2023 has been great for all of you. We have high hopes for what this year will bring!

Today we would like to share with you some details regarding the campaign mode, and talk about the changes and the improvements we made during the final stages of the design process.

But before anything else, let's talk about the recent progress and the current state of art of the project.

Progress Update

First of all, we are excited to announce that the mold production for all minis has been completed! Despite recent serious covid outbreaks in China, the factory has worked hard to complete the toolings. We are now waiting for the injection tests and then we'll be ready for miniature mass production. This is an important milestone as the miniature testing and finalization has been a very long and complex process that took us a lot of time in the last year.

In the meantime, the development is proceeding well with our team now focused on finalizing the rulebook and campaign book. There was a slight slowdown in the narrative content translation in the last few weeks, but we are working closely with our partner and we are confident we can remain in our current schedule.

The shipping expectations from Update #40 are still confirmed as we plan to ship the games from China within May. However, the factory will return from the Chinese New Year in the next few weeks, after which we will finalize a detailed production schedule for printing components being able to provide more accurate estimates.

Regarding the shipping and fulfillment phase, the global situation has continued to improve and the shipping costs have decreased in the last few months. The worst seems to be passed and the overall delay of the project could have had a positive side here. However, it will take several months before shipping starts and we still have to be very cautious. Please, consider that it's possible we will incur in a slight increase of the costs with respect to our estimates on the Kickstarter page, but you can be sure we are making every effort to ensure we get the lowest price possible. Speaking of shipping costs, we expect to close the Pledge Manager and charge for shipping around May which is as close as possible to the actual shipment phase. Anyway, this is still an estimate and you can be sure we will keep you informed in the next updates.

Campaign Rules Update

It's been a while since we talked about gameplay, and in particular about the campaign. These weeks we are focused on the final rulebook and campaign book, so we thought it was a great opportunity to share with you some important changes and improvements on the campaign mode.

Please consider that some components have been changed during the finalization, but any update of the rules has been made as a consequence of all the playtest iterations to ensure the final game will meet and exceed your expectations.

An Open World Experience

Since the early stages of development, Primal has been designed with the campaign mode in mind and with the aim to give an "open-world" vibe to the players. We wanted the campaign to offer a free approach to objectives, without following a limited linear structure.

In gameplay terms, while the main storyline takes shape independently in the background, session by session players can freely choose the quests they want to embark on. Most of the quests can be played at any time during the course of the campaign and monsters level up as the campaign progresses to adapt to the player characters' level.

Thanks to the integration of the Legendary quests from the unlocked Stretch Goals, we reached a total of 50 scenarios available in the campaign. Such a wide variety makes the campaign fully replayable. Although the main storyline stays the same, every time you run a campaign you will have the opportunity to encounter different monsters and discover new secrets about the lore of Thyrea.

Speaking of lore, we are proud to say the 'Expanded Lore' we unlocked during the KS has been integrated in scenarios and bonus content bringing the Campaign book to a total of 150+ pages. (For those of you who feel intimidated or not interested in the narrative, no worries: we decided to keep most of the interludes between 300 and 500 words. In case you are wondering about it, yes, it is possible to play without caring about the story... though it is highly not recommended since you would miss some real awesomeness ;P)

While expanding the lore and designing the campaign, we wanted to give the players the ability to explore the narrative background outside of the narrative of the quests, to find clues about the story and experience a sense of mystery and wonder. That's how we came to the idea of the visions: each time you slay a monster in the game, through the monster's blood you get access to a mystic vision. The visions give players enigmatic glimpses over the past of Thyrea and are an important resource they use to investigate the events and connect the dots of the story. 

For those players who accept the challenge to reconstruct the whole puzzle behind The Awakening, at the end of the Campaign book there is a list of questions about the lore. Will you solve the mysteries of Thyrea?

Gameplay and Balance

As we approached the final stages of the design, we took a close look at the quest-tree balance to ensure there are no illusory choices. After many tests, we made a change to the original design by removing the Contracts and replacing them with new achievements that helped us reaching a more even structured tree. The campaign run simulations showed that the Contracts limited the players in the choice of which monster to fight, taking away from the freedom to approach quests and crafting.

Speaking of crafting, this is definitely one of the pillars of the campaign experience. The forge system has been improved with the addition of new rules that now give the players more freedom and control over their options:

• Players can convert 1 Element resource into any common crafting material.
• Players can discard any Equipment card (disassemble, thematically) to gain any common crafting material of their choice.
• Crafting a piece of equipment requires 1 corresponding Element resource, but upgrading it to a higher level does not require any Element.

Here below is the new design for the Character sheet. From session to session, that's where you'll note down any important information of your hunter (quantity and type of resources you collect are now directly tracked on your character sheets; this makes resource management more streamlined and intuitive).

 From the Character sheet you certainly noticed the Skill Tree section. This is where you'll keep track of your deck upgrades. 

Players will be instructed to level up as they advance in the story. In facts, in the fiction the level up corresponds to the recurring consumption of a potion made from the monsters' blood (why such a potion makes your character stronger? Maybe you will find the answer during the campaign!)

So, how does the level up work? Each player has a starting deck and mastery from the Prologue scenario. In addition each character comes with 20 upgraded Action cards and 5 Mastery cards to be unlocked as the campaign progresses. These cards are divided into 5 skill branches with 2 upgrade steps each. When you level up, you simply choose a skill branch to be upgraded and you unlock the corresponding cards. This way you gradually expand your card pool, which is the collection of cards from which you can build your deck. You won't be able to unlock every card in your skill tree, so... choose wisely ;)

All that being said... let's briefly see how all of this work.

How to Play a Campaign?

A campaign is made of a series of 11 chapters; each chapter can be considered as a game session and it follows the structure below:

 Story Phase: At the start of a new chapter, players read the corresponding introduction on the Campaign book. These are narrative interludes that not only add immersive context and move the main storyline forward, but they are also accompanied by gameplay instructions such as unlocking or removing quests based on the achievements that players have obtained.

Questboard Phase: Players collectively choose a quest from their Questboard to become the active quest for the current chapter. The quest you choose has a great impact on the crafting options in your future sessions. In facts, forge cards and crafting materials are unlocked based on the monsters you defeat, so when choosing a quest you should carefully evaluate your crafting strategy. Also, each quest brings forward a unique storyline and leads to special rewards. 

Garrison Phase: The garrison is the place where the hunters spend most of their time on activities like training, healing, crafting equipment and preparing for the next missions. During the Garrison phase, each player can

•  Craft Equipment cards from the available Forges (you can craft any number of cards as long as you can spend the required materials)
•  Craft Potion cards & Heal Wounds from the Herbalist by spending the required plants.
•  Build their deck and choose the equipment for the active quest's scenario.

Hunt Phase: that's where the boss battle take place! Look for the scenario associated to the active quest in the Campaign book, follow the setup instructions and get ready for the fight!

When you successfully complete a scenario you advance in the story chapters and a new game session begins. Of course, you receive rewards such as special item cards and crafting materials (each monster drops specific resources), you unlock the forge card associated to the monster's element (if you haven't unlocked it yet) as well as achievements that give you access to new quests. The Campaign book has an entire section only dedicated to rewards for each quest.

What happens if you are defeated by the monster instead? Simple, you keep any Wound card in your deck (you may be able to heal them at the Herbalist), you get back to the Questboard phase and then try again! The game is designed to be very challenging, so loosing a fight is a part of the experience and does not compromise your campaign... unless you play the Hunter's Trial variant.

 If you choose to play the Campaign mode with the Hunter's Trial rules, you have to mark on your campaign sheet every defeat you suffer. If you suffer more than 3 defeats in a row within the same chapter, the campaign is over! If you manage to get to the end of the campaign, you are given a Hunter score based on the total number of defeats you suffered. To make things more interesting, there are some achievements that increase your score: you gain Valor points that add to your final score by slaying a monster without being KO'd or by completing a Nightmare scenario. Consider that Nightmare scenarios come in 3 difficulty levels: choose the level you want to play, at your risk. The higher the difficulty, the more Valor you gain. The Hunter's Trial is suggested for experienced players that want to put their skill to the test. If you want to get to the highest rankings, you'll have to take risky choices and optimize your crafting strategy. Will you make a perfect run? ;)

That's all for today, we hope you enjoyed the changes and improvements to the campaign mode. We're eager to keep you in the loop with the next updates.

Once again, thank you for being here and we will be back soon with more developments as we bring this project to life.

Reggie Games

Christmas Giveaway + TTS Vote!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Dec 27, 2022 at 05:41:25 AM

Hey Hunters,

Winter has come to the lands of Thyrea! Since Christmas is approaching, today we have something special for you :)

Progress Update

Before moving onto the holiday season vibes, we wanted to mention that the work came along very well in the last few weeks and everything is on track with our updated timeline (see update #40 for more info). In particular our team is putting some hard work on campaign book, proofreading and graphic finalization. Also, we are happy to say the miniature manufacturing is proceeding at full steam with all the masters being already approved and all the molds being currently under production.

Did you watch KoA's miniature unboxing video?

In case you missed it, King of Average has recently released an exciting video showing every single mini in the game and going into many details about the design process and the decisions we've made to optimize each model. 

As you know, we are collaborating with Michael (KoA) who helped us in the quality control to achieve the highest detail level for the minis. If you want to know more about the design iterations we went through and the kind of challenges we faced during the process, be sure to check the video out!

Christmas Giveaway

Now it's time to create a bit of Christmas atmosphere: here is a little surprise to celebrate the holiday season! :)

We are giving away 3 resin miniatures from our monstrous roster! They are prototype copies realized during the last few months and they well represent the recent steps of the development.

We love the idea to share with you some physical preview of the final product - and we thought Santa deserved a few exclusives ;P

Wait wait... How does the giveaway work?

To make it easy and open to everyone in our community, we will create a list by merging together our community members from Kickstarter and our social platforms :) Of course, if you are part of all our groups you will have more chance to be extracted. So, in case you haven't yet, follow us on our socials!

We will create the list and process the extraction on January 10th. The winners will be announced on our social channels and then they will be contacted via email for confirmation and shipping info! 

Good luck everyone ;) 

TTS Vote & Upcoming Release

Recently many of you asked us about the release of an updated version of the game on TableTop Simulator. We are glad to announce that a new version is in our plans and it will be published soon :)

As you know, with the manufacturing in progress and the mass production coming soon, the TTS demo is not the priority at the moment. However, as soon as we are ready with all the materials, we will release the TTS mod with the new graphics, texts and rulebook. The expected release time is March/April.

The new TTS version will include 2 monsters: Vyraxen (the Prologue), and another one of your choice! :) 

How does the voting work?

Easy! Pick your favorite boss from our monstrous Christmas tree and simply comment under this update indicating its name. The monster with the most votes will be included in the TTS! All preferences will be collected on January 10th and the winner monster will be announced via our social channels!

Until then...

The new year is coming. Are you excited for what it's gonna bring? We are, extremely.

In the last year our company has consistently grown, we've met amazing people and we've started great collaborations. However, the 2022 has also brought difficulties and intense moments, we had to face delays and tough challenges to get where we wanted. But all the difficulties have stimulated us finding new creative solutions that further increased the quality of our work and made us stronger as a team. We couldn't imagine how much progress we would have made as creators.

With this in mind, we feel up for new challenges and we have high hopes for 2023.

The first half of the year will be totally devoted to complete and deliver this incredible game. We are so excited and feel ready for any struggle and obstacle that might arise along the way.

But there's more, because the next year will also be the beginning of a new cycle for us, with new ideas being ready about developing the Primal universe which will continue to be our main focus and source of inspiration for the projects to come.

That being said, though our mind is bursting with ideas for the future, our body calls for a little rest.

We see the holiday season as a sweet opportunity to spend valuable time with family. We wish you all have a relaxing and peaceful holidays, with your loved ones and friends.

What about us? We'll do the same here and take a needed break to slow down a bit, restore energies and dedicate time to the people we love. Just long enough to say a proper goodbye to 2022 and to prepare for the amazing things that are coming next. 

Thank you for having always supported along the way and for being part of this wonderful community.

Happy holidays, from Reggie Games

Miniatures & Artwork Update
about 2 years ago – Thu, Dec 01, 2022 at 01:38:10 AM

Hey Hunters!

It's time for our monthly update from Thyrea! We recently received the new batch of minis from the factory and we couldn't wait to share some new pictures with you :)

Meanwhile, everything this month is proceeding well and in accordance with the updated timeline (see Update #40 in case you missed it for more details).

Before talking about the overall progress, let's jump into these awesome shots from the hunting fields!

As we anticipated in the previous update we felt the need to make slight changes to some masters. What we did with the models you see above was both enlarging their size and enhancing some small details to make sure the quality you see here will be faithfully reproduced during the injection process for the final PVC copies (up to an unavoidable margin - less than 5%).

The models have been raised by approx 1cm each. Of course this not only affects the height of the mini, but it enhances the overall presence of the monster on the board. They are bigger, brutal and threatening as they are expected to be!

The overall process came with its cost (also in terms of time), but we are very satisfied with the decision we made. The factory is doing a great job, being responsive and effective over the whole process, and the current result is what we desired it to be.

Progress Update

Another month has brought us closer to our goals on all fronts. The process that involves the finalization of all files is not completed yet: given the high complexity of the project, things in the last few months turned out to be more intense and delicate than what we thought. However, everything is coming along great and we are working hard to get things done within the current deadlines. 

This month we have been writing, translating scenarios (more than 60 texts from italian to english), proofreading card texts and working on the final graphic design for boxes, rulebook and any other component in the game.

Last but not least, with the lore design being completed, we have also been working with our artist team to realize the final illustrations for all legendary items as well as for important characters and some evocative locations of the game world.

To give you a glimpse of the quality of the new content, here below we are excited to show some preview images!

The artwork you see here represents the unlocked legendary equipment sets. These weapons and armor pieces are special rewards that players may unlock by exploring specific story-paths in the campaign mode.

The legendary equipment can be mixed and matched with any other gear you craft. These sets in particular are designed for the final battle and they feature unique ability texts that interact specifically with the mechanics of The Awakened.

Do you have any idea of what the "Elder" and the "Celestial" stands for? ;)

We hope you enjoy the new art for the legendary sets. More artwork will be revealed in the next months although we cannot show too much since we don't want to spoil any story element (expect some sneak peek!).

That's all for today! We will be back soon next month once the winter will be coming to the lands of Thyrea!

Reggie Games

New Resins & Progress Update
about 2 years ago – Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 07:37:08 AM

Hey Hunters,

It's time for our monthly update! Let's start by discovering what's inside the big package we recently received from the factory ;) 

The latest batch of resin masters is here and it includes all remaining miniatures we worked on in the last month. Every model has been reviewed and discussed to provide the factory with our final approval.

We are so excited to see the level of details on both the large monsters and the small minis like the hunters and the plants. Most of the models have been now finalized and ready for the tooling production.

 Progress Update

This month we worked on the proofreading of all cards (we crossed 50% of the whole process), we continued the writing for the campaign scenarios and we designed the final layout of rulebook and scenario book for the core and all the expansions. Everything on these fronts advanced at good pace in line with our plans. 

Speaking of the manufacturing process, the mold production is running and some of them, from the 1st batch, are now finished.

On the other hand, we recently discussed the timeline in detail with the manufacturer and unfortunately the overall plastic schedule has been stretched also due to the recent modifications and adjustments we asked for some of the models. In facts, after some tests we did with the printed models, we decided to make slight improvements on a few minis. This involved enlarging the size a little bit in the case of a few monsters and further enhancing some fine details in view of the casting. The print optimization, especially in the case of a game like this, is a complex back and forth process. In our case it took more time than expected because, given the amazing quality we need to achieve with the factory, we are keeping the bar as high as possible.

What does it all mean? Since our plastic production actually determines the overall manufacturing time, it means we have to update our estimates and ask for your patience. According with the new schedule we agreed with the factory, since we will also inevitably run into CNY (which shuts down manufacturers in China for several weeks), the most realistic estimate we can give now is that the game will be shipped from China in Q2 (Apr/May) next year. Then, the fulfillment will start in 4-6 weeks as the game reaches our international hubs. We're sorry we can't be more specific now, but we will continue keeping you updated and provide a precise delivery timeline as we enter the mass production. 

On the upside, freight costs are slowly decreasing and, if the trend hopefully continues, by the time we ship your rewards there is a concrete possibility that the shipping prices will be back to normal (from the crazy inflation of the recent times).

Please know all our efforts are committed to this epic game and to get it to you as soon as possible without making compromises on any aspect of the project. We have no doubt we are making something special and your patience will be rewarded.

Once again, we want to express our gratitude for the great support you are giving us all along this incredible journey.

Reggie Games