Thea 2: The Shattering Update #5, £34,275 and Counting

All conflict in Thea 2: The Shattering is going to be resolved through this nifty card game where your characters square off against their enemies, or even such concepts like climbing a mountain or solving a riddle, in a variety of physical, mental, and spiritual challenges. The basics of this card game are explained in the latest Kickstarter update, and after you read all about it, you’re invited to try your hand at the card game in the freely available demo. A snip:

As promised, after much frantic bug fixing and patching, we now have a first demo of the card game with a little bit of the event system and inventory as well.

So have a go and please do let us know your thoughts.

Cheers!

The demo should download as a zip file, you simply need to unzip it and it comes out as a Thea 2: The Shattering folder, and within, you’ll find the Thea 2 unity icon to click.

It takes a few seconds for the demo to load, so stay with it.

After each demo run is done, it will exit to desktop and you need to restart it to play again.

We do recommend reading the handy tutorial situated on your left when you first start 😉

Card Game Mechanics

All conflicts in Thea 2 will be resolved via the tactical card minigame. The game is an immersive, challenging experience where your people as well as the enemy you face, become the card decks. As with Thea 1, the sequel will have different types of challenges to resolve problems, so that brute force is not the only way. There are three challenge types, Physical, Spiritual and Mental, and those three are also broken down into two subcategories – vs enemy or vs concept. Unlike Thea 1, in Thea 2 enemies will have a favoured challenge type and will attack you with it – so not always with brawn!

Physical vs enemy – the most common and straightforward challenge type – fights!

Physical vs concept – all things that require strength or brawn, running, climbing etc.

Spiritual vs enemy – spirit challenges will represent the mystical, so battles of willpower or magic (demons especially may use this challenge type).

Spiritual vs concept – this will represent facing magic, doing rituals, banishing spirits and the like.

Mental vs enemy – this will represent social conflicts between two groups.

Mental vs concept – this will represent intellectual challenges, solving riddles, figuring out hidden knowledge or tactics.

Basic concepts carried forward from Thea 1:

• As with Thea 1, the basic idea of the card game is to set up the cards on the table, then resolve the challenge and repeat until a winner emerges, or one side surrenders.
• Also continuing Thea’s tradition, your people become your card deck and your enemies become the opposing hand. As such, any injuries or effects from the card game may carry on afterwards (physical wounds can kill, illness will persist until healed etc)
• Characters’ equipment, skills and stats will have direct impact on what is available in the challenge (But different skills will count for different challenge types, so strength is key for physical, but not for mental etc).

Some of the fancy new stuff:

• Play one character many times! – Your characters become your cards, but you will now be able to play one character’s skills multiple times. (Note that the duplicate card will attack separately but it will still take damage as one, after all, it is still that one character!)
• Melee and ranged rows. – As with Thea 1 we do have a melee/support skills, but this time it is more dynamic and does not split your hand into two, but allows you to play different skills as needed (no more losing your best fighter because he went to the support hand!).
• Skills, spells, god intervention – Thea 2 will introduce a vast array of skill sets, but also summons, spells and even divine intervention, all making the card game much more exciting.
• More control! – We’ve designed the mechanics to give players greater control over the challenges. You will now have such stats as action points (each skill and/or card has AP cost to play) and initiative delay stat, that allows you to determine when your character will act.