I wanted to make a thread for this sooner but I got caught up in some other things.
Beneath Nexus is a card based dungeon crawler from Silverclutch Games where one player takes the role of a Blight Lord (think Dungeon Boss and GM in one) and two to five other players take on the roles of various heroes to defeat them. The heroes have unique decks of special abilities and need to work together in order to defeat the waves of monsters and finally the Blight Lord themself.
Kickstarter Link
I discovered Beneath Nexus a few months ago at the Indie Games showcase for a local convention. I played two rounds of the game and also got to spend a few hours talking with the developers about their inspiration, their design philosophy, and their hopes for the game.
Essentially they wanted to create a game that felt like D&D but allowed for shorter play times and wouldn't be as intimidating for new players. They also hoped that the game would be interesting enough to keep more experienced players engaged. Having played the game with two pick up groups, I think they may have nailed it.
From the ease of play side of the design, each player just needs to decide what role they want to play and pick the hero that suits them. The heros fall into basic archetypes of sword and board, ranged, heal, and magic, with each hero having a few cross discipline surprises hiding in their deck. This means it's easy to get a feel for a hero the first time you play them and start figuring out how to manage their resources and abilities. It also means that you're never out of luck because no one decided to play the cleric or the rogue, there's always just enough wiggled room in the archetypes to make sure you don't get completely screwed by a given monster or obstacle. Play proceeds quickly because the turn orders are straightforward and I didn't see it bog down into the sort of order of operations issues that sometimes lead new tabletop players into feeling that combat is slow or unwieldy.
For more experienced players I think a lot of the fun is going to come from figuring out how certain hero cards and abilities feed into eachother. Durring my play session there were a few moments where I was playing cards that directly empowered another hero in a way that not only dealt heavy damage to one of the monsters we were fighting but also prevented the other from attacking at all that turn. It felt like getting a good combo lined up in a game like Magic and I hope that there's going to be a lot more of that to discover in the full game.
The other thing that impressed me was how much care they put into balancing the game. One of the most obvious examples is how the Blight Lord scales in relation to the number of hero players. Number of players dictates the number of monsters the Blightlord can play, which is a pretty standard balancing measure. In addition, depending on how many heroes they are facing, the Blight Lord player has access to more or less of their abilities. So more heros means not only larger encounters, but also contending with more dangerous abilities.
Encounters are also balanced to be challenging for the heroes. There are persistent damage effects to be managed, considerations of tanking and striking, and monsters can hit hard against an unprepared party. Clasic D&D encounter design theory says that an encounter with monsters should require about a quarter of the party's resources to defeat. Beneath Nexus is balanced on a similar curve to ensure that there is a compelling sense of danger and challenge all the way to the final match up with the Blight Lord.
A final thing worth mentioning is that the game has some fantastic art:
The game is currently available in print and play format on the
Beneath Nexus website and 82% funded for the full physical release on Kickstarter. It should be noted that the game is complete and playable from a design standpoint, the Kickstarter is only necessary to fund the printing and release of the physical game. Please take a look and consider backing. I am very excited for this game and I am doing everything I can to raise awareness and help them reach their funding goal.
Disclosure: I am a backer of this project. I am not an employee of Silverclutch games and have not worked on Beneath Nexus, however I am in discussion with them to provide writing for a future colaboration.
