Designer Interview & More Cards!
over 1 year ago – Mon, Dec 05, 2022 at 01:23:09 PM

We hope everyone's having a great weekend. Today we're sharing a new unlocked stretch goal and an interview with John D Clair!

Stretch Goal - More Cards!

The campaign is trucking right along (over 1600 backers!) and we're thrilled to be able to add 11 all new cards to the game. Because each Disaster set includes exactly 11 cards (one card targeting each location space), we saw the opportunity to introduce some fun new Innovations while maintaining the overall math of the game. We asked John to create a set of "Plague" disasters, and he designed a new set of adjacency-activated abilities, many of which trigger off destroyed adjacent locations.

In Empire's End, you'll inevitably see some locations in your empire destroyed. These new Disaster cards  are perfect for players going with more Innovations and a higher balance of destroyed locations, often allowing them to generate points off those locations. Every copy of the game will include these 11 new Disaster cards.

Designer Interview - John D Clair

John has been one of our favorite designers for some time. His designs are elegant, innovative, and always fun. Getting to work with him has been every bit as cool as you might think, and we loved having the chance to sit down and ask him some questions.

What's your favorite thing about being a game designer?

I think probably that I look forward to working. I get excited about the prospect of a full day of working on a game. A close second favorite thing would be playtesting my games and watching, playing, and discussing the game with the players. It’s a real joy to see a group of people having a great time with something I’ve created.

What was your initial inspiration for Empire's End?

The brilliant bidding system in the game No Thanks! I love the simplicity and tension and saw it as an uncommonly used bidding system, but one that has interesting design space.

How does it feel to look at the final game with Kwanchai's art?

Kwanchai is a master at box covers. All his art is very good, but his approach to box covers, where you want an image that encapsulates the whole game, is where his talent is thoroughly outstanding. I think the cover he did for Empire’s End is really something special. Kinda want to get a bit print of it done and hang it on my wall.

What's the core tension in this game that drives decision-making in Empire's End?

Empire’s End is a very tight game. You can play cautiously, trying to preserve as many locations as possible, trying to take a minimal number of disasters at only just the right moments. On the other hand, you can play aggressively, taking disasters before opponents might expect you too, building up an engine early to be able to cash in on big end-game ability scores by the end of the game, or force the cautious player's hand when it doesn’t suit them.  Regardless of which strategic approach you take, you are constantly faced with the core tension of the game amidst the ever changing game state; to bid one more resource or take the disaster? It’s often a wicked-hard choice; reading players, considering your opponents’ boards, your board, the approaching phases, and deciding, is It worth one more bid?  Will the bid come back around to me? How good or bad would it be to miss out on taking the pot now?  A well executed strategy ends up feeling like you walked on a tightrope in the wind from the beginning to the end.

What tips do you have for new players? What are common mistakes to avoid, and strategies that might not be obvious?

My overall piece of advice is about mindset. Your goal should not be to “avoid disasters” or to “get good abilities”, etc. Your goal should be progress vs. the end-state. Each bid decision should weigh the expected value of what you would lose vs. the expected value of what you gain. i.e. how many points/useful abilities are you losing vs. how many points will be protected or gained via the resources you’d acquire. In a simpler sense, your goal should be to take disasters at the right time, when the benefit outweighs the cost, and to vigilantly avoid being forced to take disasters at the wrong time.

As a specific tip, try thinking of your cheap locations as resource catchers. If possible, sacrifice them early for resources, then fix them so they can be sacrificed again later. I think a lot of players look at the cost to repair a location and evaluate it based on the VP recovered when it is fixed. This ratio is better for the higher value buildings, but there is a lot of value to be captured by destroying and fixing the same cheap location more than once and then using the resources netted as bids to avoid destroying the high value locations to begin with.

Who do you think will enjoy this game most? What would you tell people who are curious to learn more about Empire's End?

I think Empire’s End is for casual and serious gamers who enjoy the challenge of the tightrope walk and constant tough choices; players who like highly interactive gameplay, but not take-that or aggressive interaction. And finally, Empire’s End is not a game about getting and adding up who got the most. It’s a game about preserving and who can do so the most efficiently. So, it is a game for players who are not afraid to face tough moments of loss in their quest for victory.

What else is on the horizon for you?

I’ve got a number of projects in the works. On the short-term horizon, I’ve got an IP-based design with Gamely games due on Kickstarter in January, if timelines don’t slide; I can’t give more details on that yet. Rolling Heights from AEG should release to retail early in 2023; that is a push-you-luck-engine-driven, city-building game, with meeple rolling as a core system. It shares some DNA with Cubitos and other city-building games, but is very much its own creature. A little further out and with unfinalized timelines are several new games including a Solo/2-player co-op  game coming from Renegade games called Unstoppable and a combotastic engine-builder with AEG called Electrify, as well as expansions for Dead Reckoning, Space Base, and Cubitos.

Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, John!

And thanks to all of your for supporting this campaign. We think you'll love this tightrope-walk, and we're excited to add even more to the game in the remaining 10 days of this campaign!

Upgrading Your Empire
over 1 year ago – Fri, Dec 02, 2022 at 07:57:49 PM

Greetings, backers! We're already over 1400 backers! To celebrate we're announcing a Materials Upgrade as today’s stretch goal: Linen Finish on all cards. We'll also talk about what makes Empire’s End such a compelling game.

Stretch Goal - Linen Finish

In Empire's End, cards get moved around a lot, particularly the Disaster cards. They're shuffled in the decks, dealt to the table, held in your hands, and then put under Location tiles to show their Innovation ability. While all of the cards for Empire's End can be sleeved with commercially available sleeves, we wanted to offer sleeve-averse players some extra protection so these cards would last longer. Linen finish does just that, adding an extra layer of protection to cards and helping to prevent nicks and scratches. It has the added bonus of making them a little easier to hold and grab off the table.

Upgrade Your Cards, Upgrade Your Empire

One of the best things about working at Brotherwise is that we only make games we love. And there’s so much to love about Empire’s End. In our first update we talked about how the game brings new life to a very old genre. We’re always looking for games that do things differently, and we’d never seen an empire builder like this one.

But what really caught our eye was the game’s foundational mechanic: the Disaster phase, and the tough, challenging decisions it presents. 

While there are four types of phases in Empire’s End, the Disaster phase is the one that shows up most often, and the one that drives the game’s evolution. Every Disaster phase, one or two disasters are revealed from the disaster deck. Each disaster targets the same numerical location in every player’s empire (but because the order of you locations will shift over the course of the game, this can mean different players see different locations targeted). 

Each player must then decide if they are going to let that disaster destroy their location. If they wish to save that location, they can pay one of the card’s listed resources to stave off disaster for one round of bidding. But, of course, all players are making this same decision, and there’s every chance the bid comes back around to you. Now that player must decide if that location is worth two resources. And this upping of the bid keeps going until one player breaks, takes the disaster and loses that location’s points and powers. BUT... disasters don’t just bring calamity, they bring change, adaption, and innovation!

The player that accepts a disaster gets all the resources bid on that disaster that round. This can be a LOT of resources depending on how well you’ve manipulated the other players that round. That player also gets the innovation that’s attached to each disaster, and here is where the game gets really interesting. Yes, you’ve lost the points from the destroyed location, but if you adopt the right innovations you can put together a game-winning resource engine, gain abilities that let you manipulate disasters as they strike, or even get enough extra end game points to make up for points lost to disasters. 

This core mechanic presents some tough, painful decisions to players. But during the months of playtesting we put this game through, one thing became clear: the best Empire’s End players didn’t see disasters as destroying their empire, they saw them as upgrading it, and they made the best decisions they could to optimize that upgrade.

If you haven’t yet, subscribe to the Tabletop Simulator build for the game and see just how good an empire manager you are!

A New Day Dawns
over 1 year ago – Thu, Dec 01, 2022 at 03:35:31 PM

Greetings, backers! We're one day into the campaign and already we've accomplished so much. With more than a thousand backers on board, we've unlocked our first stretch goal (the gorgeous full-color board) and the first day total makes us feel very good about revealing another. 

'Insert' Catchy Title Here

Today we're revealing a custom game insert that will go in every copy of the game! They say a picture's worth a thousand words, so we hope a GIF will do an even better job of showing it off.

Crafted by our friends at Black Magic inserts, the deluxe insert for Empire's End organizes your components in one of the snazziest sets of trays we've ever seen.

The bottom tray stores your cards (sleeved, of course!), game board, blinds, and markers. The large upper tray holds the common "bank" of resource tokens. Each player gets their own personal tray for location tiles, starting resource tokens, and disaster and scoring markers. It is just so gorgeous. Did I mention the snap-tight lids on the upper trays?

And to repeat, while we're calling it the Deluxe Insert, it will actually go in every copy of the game. It's a great example of your pledge dollars making the game better for everyone. We hope this upgrade makes you feel good about supporting this project. We won't be able to do stretch goals every day, and they won't all be at the scale of this insert, but we will do our best to keep adding every bit of value to this game we can afford to. More to come!

Shipping Update

After a number of backers asked about the increased shipping charge from the retail version to the Deluxe version for US/UK/China backers, we took a look at what was possible. We spoke to the factory and they're adjusting how we'll package things. The bottom line is that the Deluxe edition will come with one set of markers (the screen printed versions) and we'll be able to charge the same $5 shipping rate for US/UK/China shipping of the basic or Deluxe versions. We're also adjusting down the Deluxe + Tokens shipping cost to $8 in the same regions.

Here's the updated shipping chart. This is a more efficient way to approach production and brings down costs for most of our backers, so thanks for the feedback! We appreciate your support, and look forward to more news and reveals in the next two weeks.

Just the Beginning
over 1 year ago – Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 08:50:40 PM

Welcome, backers!

All empires end, but this one is just getting started. We funded in less than 3 hours and for the next 16 days we're looking forward to showing you more of this amazing game. Along the way, we'll reveal some exciting stretch goals and enhancements to the game. If this is your first Brotherwise Kickstarter, you'll see that we take a holistic approach to stretch goals, adding upgrades based on the campaign's total funding. Every dollar we raise on Kickstarter will help us maximize the quality of this game, and we're constantly looking at what's possible given our cumulative funding. Based on the pace of backers so far, we're hoping to reveal a new stretch goal every few days!

Breathing New Life Into an Old Genre

There are a LOT of empire builders out there, so when John said he wanted to show us a game that turns the empire builder genre on its head, we weren't sure what to expect. But we're so glad we took a look, because that's exactly what Empire's End does. You start each game with your empire at its zenith; things are never going to look this good for the rest of the game, but that's okay! Every decision you make in the game is an exciting one. If you do accept the disaster that's threatening all the empires, you lose the points that that location gives you, BUT each disaster comes with an innovation that you can use to transform your empire's strategy and capabilities.

And that's really the heart of this game. Despite the catchy title, it's not really about your empire ending; it's about your empire evolving. If you play very well, your innovations can more than offset the points you lose from destroyed locations! If you like games with tough, meaningful decisions, then look no further; they don't get any more meaningful than saving your empire from disaster.

Our First Stretch Goal: Enhanced Game Board

Speaking of breathing new life into something, let's talk about our first stretch goal. When Kwanchai delivered the art for the game board, we loved his concept of showing a frieze from antiquity. The story that plays out over the course of the board art even mirrors the theme of the game. In the space of a game we see one empire flourishing, beset by calamity, and then evolving into something new.

 But during demos at conventions for the past year, we heard from players that they'd like to see a board that was a better match for the game's colorful components. Instead of a gray relic from a fallen empire, we asked Kwanchai what would it look like if we saw the board fresh and new. So he went back to work and back in time, to when the empire was at its height and each frieze was painted in all its original glory. 

We're pleased to show off an all new board that not only reflects the glory of empire, it also helps tie all the components on the table together into a unified tableau. This board will ship with all copies of the game.

Why Back Now?

For those excited about the game, but new to crowdfunding and unsure about why they should get the game now, let us point out a few things:

Early Access: The pledge price for the retail version of the game is lower than its MSRP of $40, AND we'll ship every copy of the game before we ship it to stores.

Deluxe Components: The screen printed wooden markers and wooden tokens will NOT be available at retail (unless your store happens to sign up for the retailer pledge here). While Brotherwise does make Kickstarter "exclusives" like these available at cons and via special sales, they are generally much harder to find after the campaign is over. 

A Better Product: Dollars pledged now allow us to invest in the basic production value of the game. The bigger this campaign gets, the more additional components we'll be able to add, the more upgraded materials and printing costs we'll be able to absorb. This really is your chance to help us make this game the best it can be!

Want to Know More?

We'll be revealing more about Empire's End over the coming days, and (hopefully) raising enough to implement some great upgrades! In the mean time, if you want to know more, check out the rulebook here and if you have Tabletop Simulator, you can play the TTS version of the game here!

Let's make today a great one! Share the campaign with others. Post on social media (#empiresend) and help us get the word out!