Tuesday 7 June 2016

War in Heaven, or is that home?


Welcome back to the world of Purgatory. It’s been a while since we last came to you via the blog. First and foremost, please accept our apologies, for all of the right reasons there has been a lot going on in the world of Purgatory. So let’s update you shall we?

Of course the newsletter will be out in the coming days, this monthly release show cases a lot of art work as well as gives you a glimpse of works in progress as we work closely toward our new goal. Kickstarter in October. The next newsletter will quite the game issue as we drop in depth with how the game will work, specific mechanics, characters and the themes for each of the cohorts. But first off, let’s see what’s in the works at the moment. 

·         It’s official. Moloch has started work. For those of you following the webpage and sites such as Beasts of War you will have seen the armature with the first level of ‘fleshing’ out by our sculptor. This will be the third model created by the talented Fancagne Didier for Purgatory and it symbolises a lot of what we are striving to achieve.

·         Mike is also in the works as we speak. Yes, there are no pictures online of him at the moment, not even a WIP but as we move closer to Kickstarter, the plan is now to release models as they are completed. So you won’t see Mike now, until he is done (maybe a week or 2) and you certainly won’t see Moloch until KS as we are taking our time with this one.

·         The game rules for BETA are finished. There has been a slight delay and we will talk about that a bit later on. The games group on facebook is established and those of you that are part of this group will have seen much more than the general public. If you want to be involved, email us at purgatoryenquiries@gmail.com and we will enlist you.

·         The pledge levels have been set and we know what will be included in each set when October arrives and we firmly believe you are in for a treat. The funding target has been calculated and we are now putting the final touches on the numbers before we start the fund manager in earnest.

·         Siren’s faction is in development and with the release of Siren in the coming weeks you will be able to pick up some quick reads about this cohort and some of the others as we build the background ready for rule book.

·         Play testing. We are currently exploring a couple of play testing events around the UK. To invite you guys along to come and see the models as well as perhaps play a game of Purgatory. As we do this we will let you know what we are up to and where we are so that you can come along.

Earlier in this article we touched on the delays. We had a delay with Erishkigal which was technically our first and it has been immeasurably frustrating for all parties involved. To give it a fictitious spin, the moons had aligned and we were up against it, for there is quite simply no blame to impart. Holiday’s coinciding with expo’s and production changes Erishkigal experienced some delay of around 3-4 weeks.

To put this into perspective, a delay in the artist, effects the whole process as the great art cards that we include cannot be created ready for the boxes. A delay in the model itself has the same impact and with delays in both, we have had some very lonely boxes waiting for content. Though we are pleased to announce that Erishkigal is in the UK and we will be dispatching these models in the next few days (phew).

The BETA rules also experienced and unexpected delay. The ALPHA rules were always designed to be quite private. Play testing as very much limited to a number of close friends locally so that we could remove those embarrassing oversights that a good gamer would have pointed out. We used this process as a first ‘breaking’ session where we could chew the fat so to speak about the very bones of the mechanics. Quite pleasingly this worked and whilst it was quite amusing shuffling A4 stat cards around with copious amounts of notes on each, it enabled us to focus on specific aspects of the game to refine and hone them to the next level.

Playing with friends though, you have the luxury of standing sentinel over the game and pointing people in the right direction in terms of certain effects and processes. You can’t do that when you dispatch them to the masses and so, we reach the delay point.

Short of designing a game, dreaming up bonkers characters and cohorts plotting a backstory for a world that just has to be different, the talent level is pretty poor, we don’t mind admitting. Though thankfully we have an artist who is as flexible as she is talented and Lorinda has once more come to the fore to assist us with the diagrams that have held us back from releasing to now.

The game is sensible and straight forward but some of the rules for the purposes of sense, reality or just being different require a visual explanation and we figured that you wouldn’t want a picture that looked like it had been freshly drawn by a 5 year old. (No offense to the talented 5 year olds how there) So in the coming days these will be completed and you will finally get a hold of those rules and you can tell us what you really think of our game.

Your patience in our project has been really welcome and now the tables will turn and we will be waiting patiently and probably a little bit nervously as we anticipate your feedback…

Thank you stopping by once more and for following our project ramblings. If you have not already head over to the website and get yourself signed up to the newsletter and look for the exciting things to come.

Team Purgatory

#warforheaven

#maythegodsshoweryouingifts