Comic Strip, Apes and a Spotlight on Tribes
almost 3 years ago – Sat, May 29, 2021 at 07:07:42 AM

Comic

I thought it would be fun to commission a few comic strips about the game and think the team over at Semicoop.com did an amazing job highlighting some of the new features of the game.  Anyways, I hope you enjoy it. There will be another one in a week or so and I'm excited to share it with you.

Smart Simians

We had a really amazing day yesterday (especially considering we're in the middle) and unlocked the Male Beekeeper.  I'll do my best to add a new poll in the BGG thread shortly so we can discuss and vote on ability ideas. Today I've revealed a new apocalypse/monster deck with the Intelligent Apes Tribe:

I'd love to hear your thoughts and the mechanics you think would be interesting for these monsters since all I really know is that I want them to be "more hostile" than a human tribe.  There's several ways we can achieve that, but I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments or BGG forum.  We could make the Simians naturally move towards "Irate" instead of "Wary" or when certain apes are drawn, their Hostility could naturally increase.

Spotlight on Tribes

If you've watched any of our playthroughs, the way Tribe monster cards interact at the end of your turn adds a decent amount of complexity and depth to the game. Each Tribe has its own individual Hostility towards you, represented by the track on the card: Allied, Trade, Wary, Angry, Irate, and Enraged. Monster cards associated with the Tribe will activate differently depending on their current hostility:

HOSTILE: Angry, Irate or Enraged

If a Tribe is Angry, Irate or Enraged, they act like a normal monster card. During their activation, they will attack every player in range and deal damage.

Suspicious: Wary

If a Tribe is Wary, they activate like a normal monster card. After attacking every player in range, they are discarded. 

Friendly: Trade or Allied

If a Tribe is at Trade, they do nothing during their activation, but the Trade action becomes available (see below).

If a Tribe is Allied, they deal their damage to a target in range of the player’s choosing. Allies can also sacrifice themselves and jump in front of you to take damage, but at a cost as their hostility will go up.

Over time (as the Clock Board rotates around), Tribes will naturally move towards being Wary of you, but you can interact with tribes to utilize them to your benefit.  In this game, there is a new basic action "Parlay" which allows you to give a Tribe monster card in range one of your equipped gear or a scavenge card to move their opinion of you toward friendly.  This is very beneficial because you can make these enemies, allies that will attack bears and other monsters for you during their activation.  When this gets really interesting is in later missions when you have multiple tribes, because it is nearly impossible to keep everyone happy with you.

Let me know what other aspects of the games you'd like me to spotlight below.

The 2nd Week Begins!
almost 3 years ago – Tue, May 25, 2021 at 06:06:46 PM

We've had an amazing first week, so keep doing what you're doing!  If you missed our stream over the weekend, you can watch it here:

We warped a few missions into the Frozen campaign so that we could show off more game mechanics and some Ice Age monsters.

Let's talk Campaigns

There's a lot to talk about with our new Mission structure and campaigns.  Someone asked a great question about whether or not you can still play through the campaign as self contained missions with players who can drop/in out and where you can change characters between missions... the answer is YES of course! The campaign missions are tied together with a narrative and some minor things that carry over from mission to mission but nothing that would prevent a friend from joining in down the line.  With that being said, my goal is to offer several different ways to tackle the campaigns:

• #1 Drop in/out method - you're enjoying the story that ties missions together, but your characters are fully healed and reset between missions so that anyone can drop in or out of your campaign.
• #2 Mission Tracker - We introduced this campaign mission tracker in the Legendary edition and it supports changing player counts in between missions, but forces you to rest survivors to heal them up or risk losing them permanently for the rest of the campaign.  We will be sure to upload a new mission tracker PDF to support the new characters.
• #3 Character Sheets - You guys are zipping past stretch goals so fast that I worked a lot over the weekend  brainstorming new ones. One idea I'm really liking and experimenting with (and is inspired by the MA RPG) is the idea of a character sheet PDF that you can print out to play through a campaign.  This method would allow you to change characters but each sheet and character's progress would be locked to that class.  There would be rules for gaining XP and then your sheet would contain an inventory of free bailout actions and some permanent perks that you could spend your XP on (such as drawing +1 card into your starting hand or keeping 1 of your gear equipped into the next mission).  Not much more to say at this point, but if it's something that sounds interesting let me know in the comments and I can commit some more time to developing it.

The best news about the list above is that you can pretty easily combine #2 and #3 if you want a more complex campaign or just enjoy all the new missions and how they're interconnected by story and not have to worry about any new rules.

Old Missions

We're very close to unlocking this stretch goal, so I'd like to expand on it a bit more. I mentioned in our first update that our design goal is to move everything over into our new simplified scavenge decks. This Stretch Goal unlocks a Mission Log supplement book that will make sure all the original missions are compatible with Wasted Wilds.  There have been some great ideas in the BGG thread about how to still use the old scavenge cards and we're certainly going to take that into consideration as we move through each mission and do our best to no only update it to support the new scavenge decks and storage trays, but also will do our best to expand the narrative and weave them together where appropriate.  This is a big undertaking and we hope that by the end of the campaign we will be able to include ALL of the previous missions in this supplement.

We have a fun update for Wednesday!

Stream tomorrow and new Stretch Goal revealed!
almost 3 years ago – Sun, May 23, 2021 at 11:40:46 AM

Stream Tomorrow

First up, I wanted to remind everyone that I'll be streaming Wasted Wilds with these delightful people on Twitch and Youtube from 1-3pm PST (4-6pm EST).  I think it will be a great opportunity to watch some gameplay, ask questions and have some fun.  I'm running the game so if there's any particular monsters/missions you'd like to see, let me know in the comments below if I should throw them to the Sabretooth tigers.

New Stretch Goal

It's been amazing to see you guys knock down stretch goal after stretch goal.  My goal is to post at least 1 new stretch goal each weekday (whether you unlock one or not), so be sure to check daily for new content reveals and unlocks.  Today's stretch goal is a Kickstarter Exclusive addition to the Time Traveler expansion. Thematically/Narratively it makes the most sense to me to add it there, plus I want to make sure there are some Kickstarter Exclusive goodies for you Kickstarter backers.

On paper this stretch goal will add 12 new monster cards and probably a tribe card.  I like the idea of a Nazis being a tribe that makes other tribes hostile to you if you befriend them.  Gustav just sent me this piece of art this week so I'd love to discuss them more in our thread.  I think these guys would be really interesting to mix with the Cthulhu Cultists from Gothic Horrors too.

It's been an amazing week, but don't worry we have a bunch of fun little things coming up as things slow down.  I also hope to be able to delve a bit deeper into gameplay mechanics and content.  I'm planning on highlighting the Few and Cursed expansion, the campaign structure and more in future updates. If there's anything in particular that you're interested in hearing more about, please let me know in the comments.

Enjoy the weekend!

Day 1 Recap
almost 3 years ago – Wed, May 19, 2021 at 05:34:43 AM

Good morning (or evening for some) - 

What an incredible 24 hours.  We're closing in on $150K which is more than we made for the entirety of the first Maximum Apocalypse Kickstarter campaign 4+ years ago. Thank you all for your amazing support! We've nearly unlocked 9 Stretch Goals already and today we're revealing a pretty big one:

Introducing the Beekeeper!  I must admit that I had a lot of fun coming up with this character.  She's a bit cracked and sort of embodies what happens when someone who loves animals survives an apocalypse.  Her deck has a new pet card type, these pets are equipped like normal gear but don't take up storage and have health instead. When they run out of health, they're discarded.  Her other cards focus on poisoning enemies over time, but she can always break out the chainsaw or woodchipper if necessary.

Since we're getting close to unlocking the Male Driver, I'll add another poll to this thread so you can vote on potential alternate innate abilities for him shortly.  Don't forget to subscribe to that thread and feel free to post your stretch goal ideas and feedback there or here on Kickstarter.

Thank you for your support...and tell your friends. ;-)

We're Funded! Here are the Stretch Goals you voted on
almost 3 years ago – Wed, May 19, 2021 at 04:16:04 AM

Hooray we've funded! Thank you for reducing my anxiety level and getting this part out of the way.  The build up to Kickstarter launch and then the anxiety of funding is stressful.  Now that we're funded, we get into a much more enjoyable part of the campaign for me: 

Stretch Goals!

I'm really excited for this whole community driven stretch goal thing we're trying for this campaign.  A lot of you have been playing Maximum Apocalypse for a long time and have great ideas on not only what you want to see added, but also what those new cards and abilities could actually do.  It's an experiment, but I'm excited to delve into it.  Without further ado, here are the first 3 stretch goals based on your votes:

This last one was VERY close to the others but it edged the others out at the time of posting this:

Thanks so much for your trust and support!