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An animated board and card game for tablet and PC, inspired by Dark Crystal, Red Wall, Talisman, and other fantasy favorites

Armello

Kickstarter ending 5/8/14

Occasionally, someone will say–of a favorite book, or game, or movie or whatever–that it “transcends genres.” This is rarely literally the case, and yet, here’s Armello, playtested for eight months as a board game before being coded for Ipad and PC.

And it’s so, so pretty.

Take the concepts of a Dutch-style board game–Settlers of Catan springs immediately to mind, mostly because of the hex-based map and the tile art. Take some of the concepts of a Magic: The Gathering/Pokémon “Vs” card game. Take a little of the inventory management and top-down look of a JRPG and some of the modular character building of a tabletop RPG. Throw them all into a genre blender and set to frappe.

It’s a tile-based board game where clouds drift overhead, where your playing piece looks across the kingdom and considers her course. It’s a card game where, just occasionally, the cards shimmer, wink, or drool, and the illustrations are as rich as anything put out by Wizards of the Coast or The Pathfinder Society.

Yeah, I’ve got a video game crush on this product. Apologies if I gush.

And not only is it pretty, Armello is intensely furry. Clans of bears, rats, weasels, a bunny with a Japanese umbrella. Backstabbing badgers. A mad lion king, allegorically and physically consumed by the same Rot that plagues the land and turns critters into monstrosities. As the king dies, other “loyal subjects” rise to take his place. Maybe they’re heroes, maybe they’re opportunists. Maybe there’s not any real difference.

At its heart, Armello is a complex card game ported to tablet and PC, so many of the graphics are cards, dice, board pieces, and so on. It’s a nicely-executed conceit. Sure, many of the same mechanics exist in any turn-based game, but recasting them as a deck of cards adds a warm sense of game-geek nostalgia and a sense that the game is something other than automated process. Cards are Items, Spells, and Trickery, with a bit of the feel of “Talisman” to them.

The “board” itself is procedurally generated, with seven tile types with different effects on the character, so positioning plays an aspect in the game’s tactics. The politics and quest change with play, so there’s a variety of experience to be had.

The inspirations for Armello read like a fantasy film festival, geekstravangza, and “best of” book display–Redwall, Game of Thrones, Magic the Gathering, Studio Ghibli (you can really see “Mononoke” in the lion king’s corruption), Civilization, Fable, Dark Crystal…it’s a list.

One thing that makes the Kickstarter page compelling, and then raises some irksome questions–the trailer videos (and there are at least three) uses some really nice animation–the style’s simple but moody and evocative, reminds me a bit of Samurai Jack in balancing “stylized” and “detailed.” They’re great to watch and go a long way toward establishing the world of the game, but are they part of the game? Can we hope for cut scenes of this quality? Yesno? The animation and illustration of the game itself is pretty high quality, but the trailers are, well, pretty watchable, but not sure how they intersect with the product itself except to establish mood. Neither here or there, I guess.

Rewards, stretch goals, nothing terribly out of the ordinary there. The magical price point seems to be $55, where the game download comes with a new set of heroes and characters. It looks like backers will also receive (already receive?) access to the Beta release, and there are a few game play videos floating around on youtube. so the buzz is out there and somebody’s played it. Maybe you can play that staff-wielding bear druid sooner than scheduled.

Note: Images used above are included to promote the work of crowdfunding artists, and are owned by the original creator.

 

 

Of Hexes and Foxes: Armello

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Can we stop the "Hi, I'm new" posts? I can understand saying something like, "HI. I'm new, so can someone help me with _____", but otherwise, it just seems like spam to me. Sure, it's always nice to see new people, but I don't see the point in these introductory posts. Call me a cynical asshole, but that's just how I feel. Does anyone else feel this way?

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submitted by ProfessorNope
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Hey everyone im new here ive been a furry for a few years now but never really got into the community and dont have many gurry friends. Im a dog mor specifically a german Shepard and im just looking for some friends to talk to.

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Hi, Im new here and also having trouble getting furaffinity.net to work. I have tried for a solid 4 hours today but to no avail. If anyone could help me out or just get me some pictures by Dj Rodney/Rodney Bear that would be super cool. Thanks

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Author: Dear Papabear, Note: – Even though I don’t think you are a 100 % spiritual tolerated person, I still like to ask stuff, sort of now. Do you think society is getting better and more tolerance? Or is it just getting… worse? Because of what I been hearing about (People abusing critique, attacking stuff […]

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One of the lesser-known but much-beloved series by comic book great Jack Kirby returns as Marvel Comics collects Devil Dinosaur in a new trade paperback this May. “The adventures of a boy and his dinosaur! At the dawn of human evolution, during a time when primitive man co-existed with the dinosaurs that dominated the Earth, a unique friendship is born – a friendship that may be the only thing that can save mankind! Meet Moon Boy and his Tyrannosaurus pal – the red-skinned Devil Dinosaur – as they face off against giant spiders, enormous ants, and rampaging dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes!” Find out more at the Previews page. Devil Dinosaur: The Complete Collection brings together issues #1 – 9 of the original series.

image c. 2014 Marvel Comics

Dear Papabear,

Note: - Even though I don't think you are a 100 % spiritual tolerated person, I still like to ask stuff, sort of now.

Do you think society is getting better and more tolerance?
Or is it just getting... worse?
Because of what I been hearing about (People abusing critique, attacking stuff for what it is, etc.), I feel like my faith is much more down the drain. My dream future will probably be frowned upon, so it feels like there is no point.

I was recently looking up why people generally hated "Twilight" (I'm not even a fan), and I was hoping that it wasn't based on any biased reasons. Even though, people should respect each other still. Sadly, all I have seen was very biased reasons of that movie (or book), people hate something that's meant to be what it is, they force there idiotic opinions over something just because it was, different. They then bash any fan, and tell them not to embrace it.

The Twilight hate is very bigoted, and often, completely zero real criticism. They complain that "vampires" don't sparkle (When yet, people has always made up new styles for any "fictional" originated story.), compare it to the wrong movies, etc. etc. They expect that every written story to be the same, generic type of thing. (I mean really, what if a story about an art-style/sparkle vampire was crazy awesome, there is a chance of that you know.)

When something is made that is MEANT to be for certain people, people who hates a different audience movie should learn to move on and not complain, but NO, they go out, bash fans who likes it and force complete biased opinions over them. I even heard a known guy for bashing it, saying "Twilight" should not exist, and seeing a bunch of corrupts loving him just for that. This makes me sick. Even worse: I see people stand up for other people and teach haters to move on and leave others who like it, but the haters waste there damn energy pouring hatred on those kinds of people. This makes me sick. Very sick. And it sounds like people promoting unconstitutional censorship!

Society has in fact, FAILED to listen to the Golden Rule - "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself."

Here is another example: Mary Sue - I come to understand that making a "Mary Sue" story can end up often being "boring" (I think) to a certain type of audience, and I can suggest to avoid that if you are trying to reach a general audience or something, but when a story is meant to be Mary Sue, and is meant for a different, different audience, people should respect the interests of it, but sadly, I see abusive criticizing (Pointing out something for what it is and comparing it to something it's not) over it.

Here is another example: There was a fan-game of My Little Pony: http://www.equestriagaming.com/2014/02/a-my-little-pony-platformer-game.html

And apparently, instead of being a Mature tolerance kind of person, the person bashes it for what it is, just because it was a style of Mario, a self-insert (Self-inserts can be good), etc. He/She used misleading tags such as "creepypasta" and "survival horror", just because of the biased reasons. I have argued how offensive it was to compare this to different things and bashing something that CAN be good for what it is, but the person just ignorantly complained, and disabled the comments. The original artist of the fan game has also complained about Tuxxy (The site owner) being rude against His/Her own fan-game. So when He/She disabled them, he refused to delete those tags.

These are an example of how bad society is possibly getting, they abused critique, attack something for what it is and compare something to something it's not, it's just another form of hatred. They also often hate something, just because of fans (Fans never hurt anyone, but haters do).

The reason why I take (Especially the Twilight thing) these kinds of things seriously in a bad way is because this can effect future works of others that desire to make something for difference audience. Now sadly if society continues to do this, so many good new, creative works will probably be bashed just because, people hate it.

I have a huge dream of people to embrace other kinds of fandoms, to even have the freedom to be just as popular as any kinds of things (Take Frozen for example), but seeing this horrid crap (Especially people telling others that they must be limited) makes my own faith and others very low.

It's just another valid reason on why I'm 80-95 % misanthropic, and the fact that I tend to avoid society a lot.

I just don't know what to do, even the Furry Fandom may be slowly moving to the side of the horrid side of humanity. The Brony Fandom is much ahead to the real dark side, with little tolerance I think, and I see no signs (or much) of hope of respect of real critique. All I see is people bashing Art-Styles, Story Ideas, etc. for WHAT THEY ARE.

And it's like if I were to make a story that judges intolerance or something, I would get abused by false criticism just because most people on here isn't into it (Biased). Yet, it's meant for certain people and to grow to teach the world later. Or people bashing your bear fursona JUST because it's consider "weird"; furry, different, etc.

Of course, there are many other issues of society (Like anti-sexuality, and other kinds of things), but this is just one of great things, making things worse.

>>Also, I can respect any biased reason to personality dislike something, but I will NEVER respect people who cross the line with them: Bashing fans, claiming "name" is bad based of biased, telling others they can't embrace, other kinds of abusing critique (Failure of promoting the PURPOSE), etc.<<

I don't even know if you are the right person here to ask this, if you don't know for sure, then you don't have to reply.

Diamond Man

* * *

Hi, Diamond Man,

Hmm, not sure what you mean by saying I’m not a “100% spiritual tolerated person,” but I hope you don’t think I’m intolerant of others for their spiritual beliefs. I try not to be.

As to your question, “Do you think society is getting better and more tolerance? Or is it just getting... worse?” My belief is that, historically, intolerance has been a chronic condition of the human race. In one sense, I think that a large portion of humanity (not a majority, but a larger and larger chunk) is becoming more enlightened thanks to increased education, the advancement of science, and increased exposure to other cultures, all of which has allowed those who are able to take advantage of these developments to open their eyes to the larger world rather than remaining in a parochial one.

In another sense, though, it might seem like there is more intolerance because, thanks to the “communication age” of the Internet and other technology, we are privileged to hear a lot more blowholes spouting invective about the least little thing.

What puzzles me a bit is why you are concerned so much about criticism over such things as The Twilight Saga and Mary Sue fiction when there are much more serious issues to be concerned about, such as debate over global warming, the destruction of the environment, the continued inequities among the races in our culture, and the war of the wealthy right-wing elite against the poor and middle classes and against religious minorities.

When one considers the serious problems in the world, does it really matter if vampires have sparkly skin or not? Of course it doesn’t. And if some people object to it (or other types of fiction) then maybe they shouldn’t read it. As for criticizing it, I don’t have much respect for critics. Most of them simply get off trashing other people’s work. When it comes to fiction, for instance, I would say that unless you have written a successful novel yourself (or something similar) you really don’t have any solid ground to stand on when attempting to criticize something you are incapable of doing yourself. To stretch out an old saying: those who can’t do, teach; those who can’t teach, criticize.

Critics, as you’ve pointed out, can often stifle creativity by hurting the feelings of the sensitive who might have created something worthwhile had their egos not been so badly damaged. There are few things more painful than putting one’s heart and soul into a story only to have it roundly criticized. As someone who has a hundred rejection letters in his file cabinet, I can attest to that. But those who really believe in themselves will forge ahead anyway. Margaret Mitchell, to mention one author who leaps to mind, was rejected by dozens of publishers before Gone with the Wind was finally accepted.

I think one of your main points was that haters were bashing certain works of fiction simply for what they are rather than on more objective merits, such as character and plot development. Some people, for instance, are “purists” when it comes to things like what a vampire looks like and how it behaves. To me, such people are stuck in a rut. I actually thought the idea of the sparkly skin as an explanation as to why vampires don’t like to go out into the sun was clever and, in a way, makes more sense than the notion that they burst into flames. I’m not a fan of Twilight (mostly because it really is written to appeal to young girls), but I wouldn’t criticize it just because Stephenie Meyers took liberties with the premise.

Indeed, changing details about genres and creatures in fiction has been going on for generations. For example, Bela Lugosi’s characterization of Count Dracula is uniquely his and not really at all as Bram Stoker wrote him. Stoker, indeed, described the Count only in very vague terms; it was Lugosi who gave him the looks and mannerisms that became the standard for decades. Early vampires, modeled after Lugosi’s portrayal, tended to be elegant, classy gentlemen. This model became more complex over time, with probably the Anne Rice books really contributing to the shift in the modern era. Vampires started, too, to gain other magical talents, like superspeed and the ability to transform into various creatures, even into mist. Finally, we also saw the advent of “good vampires.” So, to complain that Meyers’ vampires are too different is to be ignorant of the fact that what a vampire is is not chiseled in stone.

ANYway, technology that gives us such questionable advances as Facebook also gives us more opportunity to hear and read all the obnoxious, ignorant, and downright stupid thoughts that many people have no qualms sharing. And don’t forget! Trolls! Trolls are people who hiss inflammatory insults about almost anything with the goal of provoking a reaction out of you. As far as you’re concerned, you are falling right into the paws of the trolls, Diamond Man. Giving them exactly what they want, which is to upset you.

The best strategy for you is to live and let live. Let the haters hate; let them live in their shallow, petty, nasty little world, which is the worst type of self-inflicted punishment you could ask for. In the meantime, don’t let them get to you. 

Enjoy whatever you like, and you can counter the haters by posting love and support for the writers who produce the stories you enjoy.

No, it’s not a more hateful world, just a more vocal one.

Hugs,

Papabear

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It’s Webl stuff with yet another catchy tune and this time it’s all about sloths!

Hey guys, a little bit long ago I've discovered I'm into fuzzbuts, and a little bit time after that, I've noticed I might actually be a furry. My fursona is a dog, whose pic I am yet to post (I'm currently on mobile). I have no idea what else to say, so you can just ask me stuff I guess!

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