Reflections: Armello (Tabletop to Digital!)

League of Geeks is an Australian game studio that is turning heads with its upcoming game. They set out to create a gorgeous game that combines the adventure of roleplaying games with the strategy of card and board games. They took inspiration from everything from Magic to Civilization to Fable, and created an enchanting world full of anthropomorphic animal characters that was taking a turn for the worst. Although the game is digital, the LoG studio in Melbourne has a finished tabletop version of it that’s just as gorgeous as the digital version. Upon finding Armello on kickstarter I immediately backed it and shared it with my friend, who fell in love and did the same. It was a rather successful kickstarter, raising over $300k out of $200k (reaching all of their stretch goals), which doesn’t include the numerous paypal donations they received after the kickstarter ended. I pledged enough to get into the backer beta, and after playing many rounds I have an initial impression on the game.

Now, clearly what I’m playing is a beta. It’s not even close to completed, and everything is subject to change. However, the basics of the game are as follows. You play as a hero from one of the Great Clans, and your king is slowly being taken over by this dark force known as the rot. You must take him down before he drives the world into ruin, but three other heroes from other clans are trying to do the same. There are three ways to do this: earn prestige by doing quests and playing certain cards then wait out the game (there is a limit to the number of turns), defeat your opponents or enter dungeons to earn soul stones that will overwhelm the king, or simply become as strong as you can and take the king down with your own two hands. I’ve played several rounds of Armello: it always seems to end in a prestige victory. Maybe it’s because I’m playing against AI that’s not necessarily good yet (they’re working really hard!) or maybe it’s because I’m still getting the hang of the combat system, but it seems strange to me. I should try playing against real people when I finally get the time.

The combat system is quite interesting. Each character has different stats, one being the base number of die you can roll during combat or when facing perils (obstacles you must defeat by rolling specific icons on the die, or else face the consequences). Some characters get more dice to roll during the day and some during the night, and some items allow you to roll more as well. The dice aren’t your normal six-sided die, however. They have special faces: sun, moon, rot, wyld, defense, and attack. Defense and attack do exactly what you’d expect: either add to your defense count or attack count. Wyld is the magic of the world, and when you roll the wyld icon it counts as an attack plus an additional roll. Rot is always bad, and is a waste of a die. Sun counts as attack during the day, and moon does at night. Different circumstances (such as evading and defending) and items may change how this works, but this is the base of battle. Each point of defense blocks a point of attack, and if you defeat your opponent you get a soul stone.

This rolling mechanism reminds me of classic tabletop games. However, the item, spell, and trick cards don’t simply come into play indirectly. Each card is associated with one of the die faces, and you have a certain amount of time at the start of each battle to “burn” a card and guarantee a specific roll outcome, which adds another layer of strategy to the battling. The battles are quick, with just one round of rolling determining whether it’s a complete win and the other character is sent back to their base and gives you a soul stone if they have one, a small win that knocks the other character back, or a loss of either sort that does vice versa. This takes the battles from tabletop games that can often be long and dragged out and resolves them quickly before returning you to the game.

Right now, the main RPG element in the game is adventure. The board is made of hexes, and you explore to battle other heroes and monsters, claim cities for gold, search dungeons for loot, or complete quests. When questing, you are provided with a situation and three choices you can make that are often tied to your skills (fight, body, wit, and wyld) to determine whether you are successful or not. With the game being in the early stages, each character only has a handful of quests and the rest are replaced by placeholders.

Players can accumulate rot by playing specific trickery cards or from perils and quests. With the latest beta update, players can now use this rot to become more powerful at a price. This introduces a new mechanic to rot which seemed to just be overall bad prior, and it adds in another aspect to the story of your game. While the game doesn’t always feel like an RPG right now due to the fact that many of the story elements are missing, the world is teeming with opportunity to expand into a roleplaying empire. I’m looking forward to see where LoG goes with their universe.

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