๐™€๐™ญ๐™ฅ๐™š๐™ง๐™ž๐™š๐™ฃ๐™˜๐™š ๐™–๐™ฃ๐™™ ๐™‚๐™ค๐™ก๐™™

Aethermon has been designed and redesigned from the ground up to create a streamlined player experience. This rigor has led to an unexpected design decision in Aethermon – the amalgamation of Experience and Gold.

 

Certain concepts that donโ€™t need explaining to gamers: You run from left to right; XP levels you up; and gold buys you new stuff.

 

Gold and XP fundamentally serve the same function in games, they are a reward which players can use to make their characters stronger. The two, however, scale and accrue differently: The cost of goods tends to remain static over a game, whereas the cost of leveling up increases; A playerโ€™s Gold reserve fluctuates over a game, while a playerโ€™s total XP tends to only move in an upward direction.

 

In a pen and paper RPG or computer RPGs tracking both these stats comes at very little cost to the player – so keeping these two stats is a no-brainer. But in a board game, tracking these stats takes significant player overhead and upkeep – as well as costing literal components.

 

Given the premium we are placing on a smooth user experience, we made the difficult decision to amalgamate the two stats into a unified statistic โ€œXGโ€.

 

This single decision influenced every game design feature related to how the game scaled.

 

Next week weโ€™ll address how XG is utilised in Aethermon.

 

Keep your heads up AetherRen.