🌻 Spring Sale at Karma Games

​Hi Reader,

Big announcements here. There’s a Spring Sale on at the webshop. And we’ve got more to tell you about Wildscape…with a chance to playtest!

🤑 Spring Sale!

It’s almost spring – a time for new things growing, like your game collection. If you’ve been wanting a copy of Clans of Caledonia: Industria, or any of our newest games Millennia: Tracks of Time, Thiefdom, and Peninsula, but your budget is stretched a bit too thin, now is a great time to jump in.

All of our recent releases are now on sale on our webshop!

You’ll see discounts on most items from 10% – 30% depending on your region. 💶 💷 💴 So come over and see if we’ve got something for you.

⚙️ Wildscape: A Peek At Gameplay

Last time, I talked about how Sebastian Bleasdale brought us Zoo Roundel. And how, although we pivoted from the zoo theme and reshaped it into the nature-revitalizing Wildscape, the roundel really stuck with us. I want to tell you more about it (and I’ll tell you how you can playtest it at the end).

The roundel is the backbone of what you can do in Wildscape. Like most roundels, there is a ring divided up into various sections—in our case it’s 9. Each section of the roundel has a fixed 2 or 3 possible actions you can take. Things like “place a tile into your land,” “get an animal card,” or “establish a herbivore” (which makes it worth more points). Every turn, you are free to pick any section you want depending on what you want to do. 🤔

So what’s the challenge?

The challenge is that the strength of the actions are constantly changing. At the start of the game, every section has either 1 or 2 action tokens that you can spend on the actions presented there. The more action tokens that are there, the more actions you can take. And obviously, you generally want to do as much as possible. But at the end of your turn, any tokens you spend spill into the next clockwise sections of the roundel. If you spend 2 actions, then the next 2 sections each get 1 more token added to them. This part of the mechanic is not particularly new, and it’s commonly called a ‘mancala’ mechanic. In Wildscape, however, all players use the same action roundel, so the results of the mancala movement directly impact the strength of the actions available to your opponents.

Say you really want to buy an animal card, but if you choose that section, the mancala effect is going to add even more action tokens into a space that already has 4 or 5(!)… can you afford to give your opponent a super-strong turn?

The action selection is truly dynamic. You have to constantly adapt to what’s available, and what’s available is all driven by player choice. We’re really excited about the variability and tension this brings to the gameplay. ❤️‍🔥

💻 TTS Playtesting

Wait, so I can play this game now? If you have Tabletop Simulator, we have a Wildscape module ready for testing!

Go ahead and use the link here to subscribe to the module. 👾

🚧 The components are all prototype pieces with place-holder artwork. So, nothing fancy-looking. Everything is going to look different and amazing when it comes out of the box.

📄 The full rules are included in the module itself. And, if you please, we have a playtester form for you to fill out afterwards to help us collect as much data as possible to make Wildscape the best possible version of itself. 📊📈

Save this playtester link, because you can playtest and give us your game data as many times as you want. And Reader there’s also a place to leave your name if you want to be listed as a playtester in the published rules. 📖

I’m looking forward to hearing what you think of Wildscape! And there will be more to show you down the road.

Life is Play!
Juma