Just a quick update today on BattleCON, the card-based fighting game I wrote about last week. Level 99 Games hit their $12,000 stretch goal pretty quickly, adding yet another character on top of all the extras they’ve already included. They also announced that they’ve got a BattleCON module for the Vassal engine so you can play the game online. I must admit that I hadn’t heard of the Vassal engine before now but you can be sure I’ll be checking that out, too! There’s also some background information about the world in which the game is set, in case you like that sort of thing.
I only got one play in this weekend (we were on the road, out and about) so it’s not enough to do a full review, but I like what I saw. I got my butt kicked in the game, but it was a pretty cool mechanic and I’m looking forward to playing it once everything’s printed and done, which might take a few months. The only tricky thing I found about playing the game was the logistics of physically holding two hands of cards and trying to compare them to find the best combination; but I imagine that once you become familiar with the cards (particularly the bases, which are shared among all the characters) that will go a lot faster. I’m also reserving judgment on how well the characters are balanced, which is a very tricky thing to do with asymmetric character design and won’t be immediately obvious until many plays of the game.
You’ve got until Friday afternoon if you still want to jump in and pre-order the game through Kickstarter. At this point you can be sure that it’ll get printed and that it’s chock full of all sorts of bonus goodies, but if you want to hold off until a final review you just might be kicking yourself later. Or, maybe my games radar is totally off and I’ve invested in a stinker — time will tell. But for now, I’m excited to see what comes of this, and I’m happy to support an enthusiastic, independent game designer!
