From prolific designer Dávid Turczi comes the wargame for the eurogamer: The Defence of Procyon III.
In this smart sci-fi struggle, one-to-four players take control of unique factions as part of a team-based conflict. The card-driven battle wages over two boards using 120 amazing miniatures, with humans defending against invading aliens on the surface and orbital space of Procyon III.
Played competitively or cooperatively, the highly asymmetric gameplay involves four different card-based combat games interacting with each other and continues until one side has achieved victory in this previously insignificant corner of the galaxy.
The world of Procyon III is brought to life by the evocative art of Jakub Politzer (Adrenaline, Sanctum).
Latest Updates from Our Project:
February update
about 3 years ago
– Mon, Feb 08, 2021 at 11:53:22 PM
We have just a quick update for you today with more detailed information to come in the weeks ahead.
What’s happening?
Since our last update we’ve been working with our manufacturing partner to prepare the game for production. Last month we received samples of the miniatures and, unfortunately, there were some issues that needed to be addressed. In brief, some plastic components required changes to scale them properly to each other.
The minis above are from the first sample received last month. We’ve made adjustments to the files and new samples are already on their way to us for review and sign-off. In addition to the revised minis, we’re also receiving samples of the cubes, dice, and all the printed material from the game to test for sizing and finish.
We’ll post photos of what’s inside those bags in our next update!
What’s next?
Once we receive the samples we will review and check everything thoroughly. Our primary goal is to ensure that you have the best game experience possible, even if that potentially means some small delays to the production.
We will post our next update within a few weeks after we have reviewed all the sample material. We will provide an update on the production and fulfilment timeline at that point, as we don’t want to set any expectations before knowing that everything is up to standard. Thank you for your patience as we work through this.
In the meantime, we’re launching the Rome & Roll: Gladiators expansion here on Kickstarter on 22 February. Designed by Dávid Turczi and Nick Shaw, Gladiators is an exciting new expansion to last year’s euro-roll-and-write hybrid, Rome & Roll.
Remaining Rulebooks and TTS Mod Update
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 06:26:06 PM
We’re back today with the final two rulebooks for you. Below you’ll find links to revised rulebooks that you saw in an earlier form in the previous update, along with your first look at the rulebooks for the Meld and the Armada. Thanks to everyone who left us comments or sent messages with feedback on the first rounds of these books!
Rulebook Previews
over 3 years ago
– Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 02:34:04 AM
We have just a short update for you today, but it's got a lot for you to dig in on!
Below you'll find links to the first three (of five) rulebooks for the game. These are all nicely laid out but are still very much in need of some proofing. As such, you'll notice a few inconsistencies or grammatical errors here and there that we will fix on future edits. We just couldn't wait any longer to share them with you though, so here they are!
As you saw in last month's update, there's been a lot of thoughtful consideration to the changes you'll see reflected in these files.
We're really looking forward to your thoughts and feedback on the rulebooks. To help us make the most of the feedback, please leave your comments directly on this update and not on the Dropbox files themselves.
What’s Next?
We will post another update in the next few weeks with the remaining rulebooks.
Summer development update from the designer!
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 07:31:40 PM
Greetings Procyon III backers!
We have a special update for you today direct from the game’s designer Dávid Turczi. Let’s dive straight into the latest and greatest in development news.
Hello dear backers,
A lot has happened with Procyon over the quiet summer months, and since it was mostly development and improvement, I figured I could give a better update myself. :)
During the campaign, we released the game on TTS, and luckily many of you took up the challenge to learn the game from my non-proofed Google Doc of a rulebook, and play it.
We got a ton of feedback, a few positive and one or two negative reviews on BGG out of it, but even the positives were filled with questions, suggestions, a few head scratches. Lucky for all of us, these comments came in plenty of time to be considered. And so I did -- I listened, re-evaluated a few things, and set out to smooth things out.
Here is a rough list of changes:
The turn structure of the Expedition was unnatural. It used to be: play a card to activate a hero, do the activations, then go back to the card for its effect, then play more cards to do actions, one of which is going back to the activated hero for a special effect. Now it’s: play a card to do the effect, then play cards to take actions, including a free action to activate the hero (and their special effect) corresponding to the first played card. Much simpler. :)
The ship activations of the Armada were confusing. Frigates could move+move, move+shoot close or ranged (in either order), or shoot twice close. Players either kept forgetting that it can shoot ranged or tried to shoot ranged twice. Interceptors could move+shoot close or shoot close+move twice. Players kept forgetting about the moving twice option. Now it’s simple: Dreadnoughts move or shoot, Frigates move or shoot twice (but you cannot choose shoot ranged both times), Interceptors move or shoot close, then move or shoot close (but you cannot choose to shoot both times). While it amounts to roughly the same as the previous activations, these options are much easier to remember.
The movement options of the Principal pushed the cognitive capacity of players too far. When you played a card for the top option, you could attack twice, move 5 units, move 4 units and attack the activated location, or move 3 units and attack an adjacent location. This led to micro-optimizing, which slowed newbie Principal players down considerably. I simply merged the last two options and it’s now: move 3 units and attack the activated or an adjacent location - and made them a tiny bit stronger elsewhere to compensate for the loss of movement.
The card “Surprise Attack” was clearly overpowered. By moving the card effect before the activations I had already made it a bit weaker (since you could no longer move then move again via the card), but I then added some further tweaking to it to guarantee Keeler cannot deal ~5 damage to roughly anywhere on the map.
Mac’s ability got reworded, and the number of cards in the Principal deck were fine-tuned accordingly, so that they can reshuffle on the 5-7th round, depending on how many cards they willingly give up (to reshuffle sooner) and how many times Mac shoots them (to reshuffle later).
After these changes, my attention shifted to the solo mode. You play as the humans (alone or with a friend) against the Meldbot and the Principalbot based on some pretty nifty simplification ideas my newest collaborator (and amazing partner) Noralie came up with.
The Principalbot uses an automa system to put pressure on your ground defences (and if the Empress makes it to the city you lose immediately), while the Meldbot uses a “light wargame bot” to punch you where it hurts using either aggressive or defensive moves depending on the card drawn that turn. The bots don’t score points: you start on 10 VP and whenever the bots would score points, you lose them instead -- and if you ever hit zero, it’s “Game over man, game over!”.
But unlike the multiplayer game, in the solo mode, it’s not enough to simply survive, you must also rescue a number of scientists (depending on the difficulty level). To ease your pain a little bit, you get one free launch each turn.
The ground battle is fairly replayable, since the automa system has the potential to attack a couple of different ways (similar to how in multiplayer games the Principal’s opening turn “sets the mood” of the game) and then it can branch further from that.
During testing with my most trustworthy solo developer John Albertson, (you may be familiar with him from the Chronossus of Anachrony or the Dissenters of Perseverance) he noted that the space battle is just a “math of survival” and pushing your luck in different places, depending on whether the upcoming Meld die is focused on function (getting shot at) or sensory (other punishments) activations. But we take the solo replayability seriously, so John and I didn’t rest until we created two more scenarios that differ from the basic one primarily through the setup of the space board and your priorities on where to be. One diverts you towards the lunar refinery creating a second front while the Meld is raining a fleet of Rattles onto the ground board, and the other one puts the Armada on the offensive because the Mothership, the Cobra, and the Empress all must die to win! With this, we essentially tripled the replayability of the solo mode, and then of course provided a lot of difficulty modifiers, so now I can boldly say the solo replayability matches the replayability of the human faction in multiplayer.
Unfortunately, no Humanbot is available at this point (time, development efforts, etc.). On the one hand, we knew this from the start and we were clear in our communication about this, and on the other hand… never say never.
After the solo mode was taken care of, the game went for a little trip across the Atlantic to my trusted editors Robert and Emmy (again, they might be familiar to some of you from many of my other games with Mindclash Games and recently Board and Dice). They twisted my sentences and questioned my wordings, but now I’m happy to say the beasts that are the Procyon rulebooks have been tamed!
Our graphic designer is diving into the last batch of work (solo components, corrections, rulebook) as we speak, and in about a month the game will start its journey into actual production - but I’ll hand the microphone for that back to PSC Games!
Once the final graphics are all in place, we *will* update the Tabletop Simulator module, so you can continue playing the game virtually (including the solo mode) while you wait for the real game to arrive.
Thank you very much,
Dávid T
Pledge Manager Progress | Stretch Goal Minis!
almost 4 years ago
– Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 02:48:11 AM
Pledge Manager Update
Thanks to the 75% of you who have completed the pledge manager survey over the past couple of weeks. Providing this information quickly really helps us with our planning as we prepare to produce the game.
We will be locking Backerkit orders on 27 July 2020. After that point, you’ll still be able to change your address if needed, but you won’t be able to make any changes to your order within Backerkit (add-ons, changing pledge level, etc.).
If you’ve not received your survey email yet, please check your junk mail/spam folder. If the email is not there, just send us a message here on Kickstarter and we will take care of it for you.
Stretch Goal Sculpts
We have renders of the four remaining stretch goal miniature upgrades to share with you today! Below you’ll find:
Naharan artefact that will serve as the round marker (looks suspiciously like a warp portal...)
Skybeam
Absorption Field & Deflector Shield
We hope you like the look of them! Let us know in the comments below.
Work continues in the development of the game, and we look forward to sharing more details on that soon.
We’ll be back with another update closer to the time of closing the pledge manager and charging your cards. Until then!
