Game Development Highlight: Guardians!

In our last endeavour, we went on rebalancing and improving all our Guardians.

Guardians are quite important, you choose one per game and win the game if you have the Kabula with you once the Guardian has been defeated.

The Guardian can win too, of course :)

Each Guardian comes with 10 cards, and draws one each round until the Kabula is stolen. Cards determine the behaviour of the Guardian in time of peace, so to speak, and affect the game in many ways. After the Kabula is stolen, Guardians behave almost like a wild monster, flipping two coins and performing one of the three attack actions shown on their unique mat. A series of defensive actions makes sure they are never passive even outside of their turns. 

What if the Guardian runs out of cards? It will steal the Kabula on its own and proceed to kick your heroical bottoms!

Here is a brief overview of our six Guardians:

The WaterKing, the environmentalist dragon! Having no extra rules, nor any kind of upkeep, it is our suggested first-game Guardian!

A very balanced Guardian, many of its cards aim at levelling the "economy" of the game, attacking those players with the most items, giving farz to the poorest ones and so on.

Its attack patterns start weak enough, but ramps up quickly if players don't put an end to the fight in a few turns!

Floppy, the alpha wannabe, uses most of its cards to cover the Island in Fire. Fire is a double edged sword: It deals unblockable damage, sealing off map areas from those who cannot afford losing hp. At the same time, it can be extremely useful to recharge Parts (in Kabula you perform actions by spending Parts, and you recharge one Part every time you suffer the effects of one attack, including Fire damage!) giving the brave more chances to show off cool combos. Its attack patterns keep spreading fire and causing mayhem. Its action "Overthrow the alpha", targeting the hero with highest hp, tends to make the last battle a tight match.

This cute demon cannot stand the use of socials. It starts with an incredibly high amount of hp, but loses 2 of them any time a hero collects a #tag on one of their personality cards (only trending heroes can steal the Kabula!). Many of its cards grant players different ways to collect more #tags but this comes at a cost during the last battle. Its attack "Satanic Trolling" delivers more damage according to the #tags that its target owns. "Demon unleashed" powers up as the game goes by and will deliver massive area damage if triggered later in the game.

This narcissistic lion/unicorn/pig, will make sure you all get the perfect body you want. Its cards offer a range of possibilities to collect more Parts, making it easier to get the build you wanted for your hero and ensuring you can use all the cool items you find. Nonetheless, the Isochore will get extra Parts any time you do...and the power of its attacks is strongly dependant on the amount of Parts it owns. Great Guardian to play, it is also one in which you witness players digging their own graves trying to achieve perfection :)

Is this a new dawn for the Horned White Rabbits? Evolutionary biologists always thought they would go extinct, mostly due to the TNT in their horns, which becomes unstable when they mate. But Shaggy is doing its best to keep them alive! This Guardian works with two decks. One handles spawning and moving Rabbit tokens. When two of them are near-by, they flip to their mating side and stop moving when single rabbits do. They also become vulnerable to friction-explode, a strong area attack which makes regions around them pretty dangerous to approach. The other deck is for Shaggy, going around trying to save the rabbits, and giving players the chance to interact with them for their own benefit. Shaggy's unique fight mechanic is Swallowing whole heroes. Swallowed heroes are harder to damage, but can only perform attacks as Shaggy, while they are in its stomach. After one round, they are spit out at quite a distance and very nauseated by their experience.

Though very different, both these siblings really enjoy tomb raiding. During the early game, they will remove Dungeon Pins from the map and go around with their bags full of loot. Players attacking them after one of their sorties will receive fancy items or tons of gold. Unfortunately, following them around is not so easy when the board is full of banana peels. To avoid falling in ravines or ending up in the Island's rivers, you will need to carefully choose your path to avoid the Push mechanics of these bananas. Peels aside, Bibi&Bobu have a very unique fighting mechanic: Attacks targeting them can knock Bobu unconscious (flipping a Bobu token on the Guardian mat). When Bobu is K.O., Bibi gets a bonus to all her attacks, while when he is awake, her defenses trigger more often!

If you really managed to read all of this is, you are a hero. We hope it gave you an idea of how differently these Guardians play and feel!

With our next KS update, on July 11th, we'll share some cool info on Hero Automas but we hope to be back to you sooner for the opening of the Preorder store!

Thanks again for all your support and patience, speak to you soon!
Antonio and the Kabula team