Timeline Update & Scenario Sneak Peek!
3 months ago
– Fri, Feb 23, 2024 at 10:53:10 AM
Greetings, Santorinians!
Today, we're excited to bring you another sneak peek of the Riddle of the Sphinx scenario. But first, we need to share some news on the delivery timeline for this project.
Our original timeline called for fulfillment to begin in April/May 2024. However, as our development journey unfolded, it became clear that additional time and attention would be required. At Roxley, our unwavering objective has always been to deliver nothing short of top tier products across the entire tabletop industry to our supporters, backers, and fans. And for those reasons, we have decided to recalibrate our fulfillment schedule.
While we're currently discussing with our manufacturing partner to finalize the timeline, we anticipate that fulfillment will commence in the Fall of 2024. We understand any feelings of frustration caused by this adjustment, and we are more than willing to address any concerns or queries you may have in the comments section of this update.
As always, thank you for your support. Now, let's turn our attention to Riddle of the Sphinx and its most recent developments!
New Addition: Thematic Story Text
Last week, our team was refining some of the introduction text for each riddle, and we came up with a great and thematic new formatting for all the story text in Riddle of the Sphinx.
Each story has now been rewritten as a four-line rhyming poem. They each stand alone and present an introduction to the riddle's theme, but can also be read together in sequence to present a broader story. We are very excited about this, as it is fun to read and feels on brand with the world of Santorini and the theme of riddles in this book.
Also New: Blessing Deck
Since the Kickstarter campaign, our development of Riddle of the Sphinx has caused us to add a new mechanic called Blessings.
Blessings are a unique deck of 1-off powers. Nearly every map features three blessing tokens, and when you end your move on one of them, you can pick up the token and add a blessing card to the god deck. Blessing cards that get revealed in the queue can be used instantly for their power without consuming your turn. Notably, every blessing has a unique primary power, and a default backup power that allows you a reroll. So you can always count on blessings for some luck mitigation, among their many other uses.
Scenario Sneak Peek: Silence from the Gods
The riddle Silence from the Gods is the first in a sequence of riddles telling a story about Mount Olympus.
In this story, the gods have gone silent, and shards of the palace of Olympus have rained down across the countryside. The Greek King has commanded our workers to take him up to Olympus to investigate!
Because the gods are silent, this unique riddle does not use ANY god cards. Instead of gaining the bricks you need from gods, you must rebuild each of the shards of Olympus to gain new blessing cards that will provide you the blocks you need for the scenario.
This alone creates a really unique challenge to ponder, but the second challenge is that the King is also on the map. Anytime a building is built next to him, he is moved on top of it! Players must work together to lead the King around the map by building, while collecting the shards of Olympus along the way. To win the riddle, players need to lead the King onto each of the objective coins and ultimately end with the King on top of the gold coin, so that he can climb the stairwell to Olympus!
It is a very fun scenario that feels really different from every other!
Solo Mode & Player Count Adjustments
3 months ago
– Fri, Feb 09, 2024 at 09:27:08 AM
Greetings, Santorinians!
In today's update, we want to offer a deep dive into the changes that have been made to Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx. Let's put on our Greecian goggles and explore the modifications to this unique player experience!
As we mentioned in the previous update, after extensive playtesting, we came to learn that our solo mode was not always playing to the same difficulty balance as our other player counts, especially in certain scenarios. We have made a few small changes to all the player counts, particularly to solo mode, and now we are incredibly happy with the feel of every player count option!
So let us elaborate on some of our modifications!
All Player Counts
Originally, a scenario would be forfeited if there were no workers remaining on the map. This is first problem we fixed. Now, at all player counts, you can only lose 1 worker. If you lose a second worker, you are forced to forfeit the scenario. This simple universal rule fixes a few issues:
- It means there is no way for a player to get eliminated and sit out for any amount of time.
- It means there is no exploit of purposefully destroying a worker color you no longer need. (This exploit cropped up in a few scenarios.)
- It means you cannot rely on the Sphinx's Game to chance your way through a problem by burning through unneeded workers (unless you hold some cards that allow you really control your luck!).
Solo Mode
The Solo mode modification we implemented makes the experience of solo mode feel more similar to other player counts, without the need to play "two-handed." In solo mode, you control 2 white and 2 blue workers. You own all the workers, and any god powers you collect can be used by any of these workers. However, you now have a special solo mode card, which has 4 quadrants on it.
Each turn, you must place the Red Wanderer Mini on one of the 4 quadrants, then carry out the listed action. The simple rule is that you must move the wanderer to a different quadrant with every turn, and the solo mode card makes this really easy for the player to keep track of.
- The main thing this fixes is that you cannot use a single white worker over and over again, which increases planning and strategy.
- Like in all the other player counts, you must alternate workers of different colours, and this is a significant part of the puzzle you must master.
The two above revisions align the difficulty and strategic planning experience of all player counts. We have now played through the whole campaign with these new solo mode and worker defeat rules, and they strike at the perfect balance we were looking for, so we are quite pleased to call these changes final!
As always, thank you for your support, and please let us know if you have any questions about these modifications.
We'll be back again in two weeks with more information on Santorini's journey, and until then...
Keep rollin' sixes!
Team Roxley
Follow us everywhere. Make it weird.
Expansion Development Update + Scenario Sneak Peek!
4 months ago
– Fri, Jan 26, 2024 at 10:17:15 AM
Welcome back!
In today's update, we're sharing the latest development news on Riddle of the Sphinx, along with a sneak peek at one of the campaign maps!
Solving the Development Riddle!
We're pleased to share that a change has been made to the Riddle of the Sphinx solo mode that greatly increases the enjoyment factor throughout the entire campaign. We'll go into more detail in a future update, but for now, we wanted to share that great news!
Last week, we wrapped up our development cycle on ALL the scenarios for Riddle of the Sphinx. Our team of playtesters are verifying all of the content, which will conclude our final development steps and allow us to move forward to wrapping up the production elements of the expansion!
Scenario Peek: Level the Stronghold!
The Adventure Map in Riddle of the Sphinx acts as a menu for selecting which scenario you want to play next.
The map is split between 5 islands (each consisting of 4 scenarios) and then the final challenge: The Sphinx's Lair. Each section of the map has a unique theme, progressing a small story about the Sphinx's meddling in that area of the Greek Isles.
The scenario we are featuring today is called "Level the Stronghold," from the "Isles at War."
The Isles at War uses 4 scenarios to tell the story of the Greeks battling the Romans. In this map, we actually have no building goals at all!
Instead, every player is given Kratos' god power as a default power, allowing anyone to spend a dome you have earned to launch an attack and destroy a neighboring block. To excel at this scenario, you must use Kratos' power again and again to bring down the Roman's stronghold and try to get your workers inside! There are a ton of unique challenges to toil over on this map:
- You want to summit the wall efficiently without wasting too many bricks to climb it. Choosing effective god powers is key to solving this problem!
- Once you get on top of the wall, you must consider traffic, and not block each other's movement!
- Domes are hard to come by, and you are going to need a LOT of them to bring down the walls.
- This map has a mountain line in the center, splitting workers across the pages. With no bridges, it is like playing 2 maps simultaneously!
- The ace objective presents an extreme challenge for players who want to brave it. Not only do you have to destroy all the domes and level 3 blocks on the map, you must also complete your final move with all 4 workers inside the stronghold walls! Thematic and super challenging!
As always, thank you for your ongoing patience and support as we navigate the long process of bringing a game to life! We'll be back again in two weeks with another update, and until then...
Keep rollin' sixes!
Team Roxley
Follow us everywhere. Make it weird.
New Year's Update!
4 months ago
– Thu, Jan 11, 2024 at 01:40:43 PM
Happy New Year, Santorinians!
Team Roxley has been back to work on Santorini for over a week after our holiday break, and in today's update we have a handful of developments to share!
- Our team of playtesters is running through the entire Riddle of the Sphinx campaign, as well as testing the campaign's Hardcore mode.
- We have just received the first run of all the plastic molded miniatures. In a future update, we'll share some photos of these samples.
- We are also awaiting the arrival of a number of different samples, and you can expect to get a sneak peek at some of those in future updates.
All things considered, we're pleased with how both the Pantheon Edition and Riddle of the Sphinx are progressing!
We look forward to sharing new maps, samples, and more insights into the development and production process in our next wave of updates. And until then...
Keep rollin' sixes!
Team Roxley
Follow us everywhere. Make it weird.
Happy Holidays from Team Roxley!
5 months ago
– Thu, Dec 21, 2023 at 11:22:35 AM
Greetings, Santorinians!
Our pre-holiday update will be a bit light on news, but we're here and excited to report that production continues to move forward in a smooth and steady fashion.
We have begun tooling all plastic components, including the Santorini turntable, miniatures, and the cliff.
We'll leave you today with a colorful treat - a lovely paint job of one of our early Sphinx miniature prototypes, courtesy of a superfan local to Roxley HQ, James Gillespie!
Regardless of how you celebrate (or not!), the entirety of Team Roxley wishes you a wonderful holiday season, and we'll be back in January with a fresh round of update information!
Until then...
Keep rollin' sixes!
Team Roxley
Follow us everywhere. Make it weird.
