𝙀𝙭𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙂𝙤𝙡𝙙

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 don’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 player’s Gold reserve fluctuates over a game, while a player’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 “XG”.

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

Next week we’ll address how XG is utilised in Aethermon.

Keep your heads up AetherRen.