So It Begins

Story

The city of Ergonia was founded on the site of a new clean energy, "Mana", the discover of which led to a boom in technology and a bast improvement in the quality of life of it's residents. Until the day the creature came from the sea...

It swept through Ergonia, drawn by the city's rampant Mana use and caused extreme destruction in it's search for the Mana source. After a hard won battle at great cost, the creature was defeated and Ergonia was left to pick up the pieces after the hard won battle.

Ergonia dubbed this creature the "Other" and had to move on moved to rebuild, but they did not forget. They erected walls and built early warning scanner systems so they would not be caught unawares again.

Years passed, and the rampage fell into memory, Ergonia recovering and growing to an even greater city than before until the forgotten Other warning siren stared to blare. Their time of peace was at an end, an Other has been detected... So It Begins...

Inspirations

So It Begins is inspired by Godzilla, Pacific Rim, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Kaiju no 8 and Attack on Titan and looks to capture the feeling of being a powerful, intelligent and scheming creature with the edge of your seat panic and scrabbling of trying to defend against such a creature

Description

A 2 player tactical Asymmetrical game that plays in around 60 minutes. One player takes control of the Other, risen from the ocean and the other player controls the city that is the target of its wrath. 

As the Other, rampage through the city, wreaking destruction on their defences and infrastructure. Evolve to increase in strength and gain dangerous new powers. Use the fear cultivated in the wake of rampages for powerful effects. Bring the city and its residents to despair and break their morale.

As the city, deploy units to intercept the Other's rampages, upgrade your defences to better weather the storm and research new technologies to even the odds. All while working towards building a means to end the threat for good.

Gameplay

How to win

The City player wins by spending escalating amounts of resources to build and launch their Anti-Other-Missile.

The Other player wins by reducing the City's Morale to 0 or by ensuring all of the City's sectors are damaged at the same time. 

Other gameplay

The Other plays through a mix of misdirection in their actions, secret powerful effects from Fear cards that can be played on demand, direct combat on their rampages and growing new permanent powers and gaining improved stats as they grow and evolve! At the start of each turn the Other places 3 tokens blank tokens for their potential actions:-

• Rampage - the Other approaches the city to start their attack. This is mainly where the Other can reduce the City player's morale, damage their sectors, gain Fear and battle their units.
• Scheme - the Other gains some Fear and a new Fear card.
• Grow - the Other moves towards gaining their new powers or evolving.
• Heal - the Other recuperates and regains some health.

the turn then passes to the City player to take their action and once they have done so, the Other then reveals which of their tokens was their actual action and carries it out.

City gameplay

The City player will be taking actions on their city sectors to help advance their gameplan using the following facilities:

• Farm - the source of one of the main resources, Food. The Farm produces food each turn and the city player can spend their action to create more food if they need to.
• Power plant - like the Farm, the power plant produces another of the main resources, Power. The Power Plant produces Power each turn and the city player can spend their action to generate more Power if they need to.
• PR Centre - The city player can use their action to pump out some anti-Other propaganda and buoy the spirits of their citizens. Increasing their Morale by 1 and reducing the Fear of the Other by 1
• Workshop - The city player can use their workshop to repair any other damaged city sector
• Laboratory - This sector slowly accrues research over the course of the game until it reaches a breakthrough, unlocking new units for recruitment, defensive upgrades or technologies to help.
• Academy - This sector trains citizens of Ergonia to become the next great defence against the threat of the Other. Each turn training will tick up until it reaches it's maximum, when the City player can spend resources to field a new unit to the city (as long as they've unlocked the research to do so!)
• HQ - The City player can spend their action and 1 food and 1 power for each step they have yet to advance. The first stage costing 1 food and 1 power, the second stage costing 2 food and 2 power etc. Once the city player has performed this action 6 times, they have successfully launched their missile and won!

Beware though, as these sectors (except for HQ) can be damaged during the Other's rampages, changing their effects until they are repaired.  

Each player will be looking to leverage their unique gameplay mechanics to come out on top. How will you fare?!

Who is Devilfly?

I'm Nick, the designer, graphic designer and artist on So it Begins... and the man behind Devilfly Games.

I've always loved playing games in all formats for as long as I can remember and feel games are such a great way to bring people together and forge connections, while also training so many different skillsets!

After the success of our first game, Undermined! Pairadice City and it's expansion Personas en Strata, we've set our sights on doing it all again with So it Begins!

I've had a lot of fun taking this idea from it's seed and slowly growing and pruning it through playtesting and tinkering to ensure a fun and thematic gaming experience that captures the feeling of both sides of the board.

Pledges

Below are the pledges that you will also see in the pledges tab and the right hand side of this Kickstarter Project. If you have any questions, you are welcome to drop us a note or a message and we will answer as quickly as possible. If you are a retailer and interested in getting hold of some copies of the game after the Kickstarter has delivered, please refer to details at the bottom of the page, or contact us for more information.

• The Game itself - For GBP 35 you get a base copy of the game. Cheaper than retail of GBP 45
• The Kaiju Edition - For GBP 60 you get a base copy of the game plus upgraded components to really jazz up your game. These will be cheaper than at retail of GBP 80. These upgraded components are:-
  • More deluxe tokens to note completed researches and rapid growth
  • Miniatures to represent the Other and a multi stage rocket for the City player to use
  • Dual layered boards to hold the upgrade tokens

New to Kickstarter?

If you haven't backed a Kickstarter project before, you might be unsure of what to expect. Kickstarter is a platform that allows people to launch new creative projects. If the project meets its funding goal and remains funded for the entire campaign, the pledged funds are collected at the end of the campaign and the project is successful. At this point, production begins for rewards and these rewards are dispatched within the estimated date.

When the campaign is over, we will send you a survey through the use of a Pledge Manager. This is where you will be able to review your choice of pledge, choose any additional add-ons you want, and provide your shipping address and details, as well as pay for the shipping part for your rewards chosen.

If you want to learn more about backing a Kickstarter, this article can help. If you have any additional queries then please feel free to contact us either by message on Kickstarter, or through any of our social media accounts.

Quick Jargon Buster:

• Rewards: These are the items you will receive for backing at a certain level. These are specified in each of the pledge levels and on this page with more information.
• Add-Ons: These are items that are not included within the rewards, which you can choose to add to your pledge for an additional fee in order to add those items to your rewards.
• Unlocks: These are items that are unlocked and become available during the Kickstarter if the Campaign successfully meets and then exceeds its funding goal; these are offered as additional items either for free to certain pledge levels or as paid for Add-Ons for people to upgrade their pledges with newly added (Unlocked) items.
• Stretch Goals: These are Goals (such as raising a certain amount of funds or reaching a certain number of backers), set above the campaign funding goal. Once a Stretch Goal is reached, an item of some sort is Unlocked, and is either then provided as a complimentary reward to specific pledge levels, or is available as an Add-On for people to add to their pledge. Once a stretch goal is met, it is common for a new Stretch Goal to be set.
• Pledge Manager: This is an online portal that enables backers to manage what add-ons they wish to select and to confirm details for shipping, such as addresses and contact details, and is the place where payments for shipping will be taken after the campaign has finished. 

Shipping and Timeframes

We are planning to work with a few specialist distributors for our project, though depending on how well funded the project becomes, this will adjust to suit the most cost efficient method for you, our backers.

Friendly Shipping: We are aiming to deliver as much as we can from local fulfilment centres (depending on the success of the campaign). We will be offering friendly shipping to EU backers, though in some cases, you may be required to provide Personal ID numbers to receive the rewards. We hope to extend this to other areas, though this will depend on how many backers this campaign receives from different areas. We will update here as the campaign progresses.  Customs and import duty that is due to any other location is the responsibility of the backer. We hope to work on this during the campaign, and if this project goes really well, we hope to be able to review this and offer friendly shipping to other locations and regions too.

Please be aware that you are responsible for providing accurate information for shipping purposes (including any relevant contact information for the purpose of any delivery or customs requirements). If shipping information is incorrect, this may incur further costs in order to ship your parcel to you. At this stage, we have not created a priority order for shipping. This order that the shipments will be fufilled will all depend on speed of shipping to hubs and the overall volume of backers on completion of this campaign.

Unfortunately, we are not able to ship to the following countries and regions (any pledge to these countries will be cancelled and refunded minus any Kickstarter payment processing costs). Before backing, if you are not sure, we encourage you to contact us first to check if we are able to ship to your location and to confirm an estimated cost. Please do not back this campaign if you are hoping to get the project rewards delivered to any of the following areas. The areas/countries or regions we are unable to ship to include: Russia, Ukraine, South America, Africa (excluding South Africa), Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, North Korea, and All PO Boxes. Other countries may also be affected by shipping restrictions. Please contact us if you have any concerns.

Current estimated shipping prices are listed below. Shipping will be charged after the campaign finishes through a Pledge Manager, so that shipping rates are as accurate as possible for this project, closer to the time of shipping. The costs may vary depending on the size of the pledge, but we will be working hard with our shipping partners to keep costs as low as we can for the fulfilment part of this project, and have focused on designing a product which is as efficient with space as possible – we felt that it was important that we didn’t ship lots of air around the world! 

• UK - £6-12
• EU - £12-24
• Europe (non EU) - £15-30
• North America - £18-40
• Australia & NZ - £20-50
• ROW - £20-75

All prices are subject to change, but this gives a fair reflection of the total cost you should expect to pay for the shipping to the country you are having your pledge shipped to. Any adjustments or changes to this will be updated during the campaign or afterwards through Kickstarter updates. If you have any specific questions, please don’t hesitate to ask, and we’ll do our best to get back to you a quickly as we can!