So here I was fumbling online when I stumble upon Kotaku’s article about a game called Prodigy. I looked at their article and headed over to Kickstarter to check it out–oh my heaven, what do we have here?
Imagine, if you will, an adult version and mash-up of the ever-popular Skylanders and wondrous realm of Magic: The Gathering.
French indie developer Hanakai Studio has designed a whole new way to interact with a game. As veteran figurine maker and CEO of Hanakai Studio, Jean Bey’s extraordinary endeavor is a seamless fusion of tabletop and video games. This mixture of real objects and virtual is a fantasy come true.
Prodigy uses near field communication to allow players to interact with an on-screen world. Gameplay begins when the player places a Ring of Power – an actual ring they can wear that utilizes the NFC – on the game’s board, a flat white back-lit peripheral that is plugged into the PC. The Ring will have a unique ID for every player and waving it over the board will begin their game.
“You need this board to play,” Jean Bey said. “It doesn’t exist anywhere else. We’ve been working on it for a long time–it’s very intuitive, easy, responsible. It’s a very complicated board, and it seems very simple but it tracks everything you do. It was what we need to provide a good experience in depth of gaming and depth of play, that depth of feeling, ” he said. “We thought, what can we do to get that feeling, to get that depth of play–what real object can we use?”
Players can then place their character figurines and cards on the board during turns. The figurines represent in-game characters that will carry out attacks, while the cards represent the actions players can take. These include basic physical attacks, magic attacks and healing spells.
After every turn, players collect Mana Power, which allows them to execute more powerful attacks and combine cards for different effects, such as bolstering defense or draining enemy health. Each player has a total of 8 different cards: Attack, Defense, Power, Time, Will, Mind, Focus and Flow.
Players may have up to 7 figurines in play on each side. Each character has their own unique abilities and storyline. They can level up, building up power through battle for much more effective attacks.
Meet some of the characters
Orin Aki
As the Watcher of Thorns and son of a Sorcerer King, Orin Aki grew up among the military and political conflicts of the fortress city of Dis. He is pragmatic, dangerous and self-confident, and dislikes being belittled or underestimated.
The ethics of assassination that he learned in Dis gave him a hushed and indirect personality, but he is also an excellent fighter able to kill someone upfront as well as from the shadows. His calm nature hides a latent and boiling anger born from his thirst for power.
Toboro
Toboro, the Guardian of Thorns, is a beast of tremendous power in service to Orin Aki, the Herald of Dis. He does not have a past, for his existence is linked to Orin’s awakening to his powers as a Watcher.
Toboro has dangerous and dark abilities that are dreadful to his enemies… and to his allies. He is an unsettling creature, whose constant agitation and brutal anger is the incarnation of the dark thoughts Orin tries to repress.
Rota
Rota is the Guardian linked to Elon, Watcher of the Storm. He is a vision of what the young man could be if he disciplined his fiery temper: a perfect warrior, whose fickleness makes every movement efficient and deadly.
His rationality and strictness makes him a reliable combatant and an excellent counterweight to Elon’s impulsiveness. Despite his heavy armor, Rota moves like the wind and strikes faster than the eye can see.
Elae
Elae is a superb young woman of the People of the Lantern. Like all members of her race, she is able to be rejuvenated within the huge flowers of lantern trees. Doing so heals body and mind, but each regeneration erases most memories and troubles one’s perception of time.
Elae doesn’t know her age and cannot remember companions she might have bonded with in the past. She is an Alhaké, or “ranger” as humans vulgarly say. She wanders around the world, driven by the distant feeling that she has retribution to seek against the Sorcerer Kings.
Prodigy will have a single-player campaign in which players can use three or more figurines, while two players can go head-to-head in versus mode or team up for a multiplayer campaign. Players will have the opportunity to use their entire collection as they play; of the seven characters available on the board, players can swap them out for new ones at any time during gameplay.
Prodigy is running on Unreal Engine 4, a decision Bey said was made “with an eye to the future” in terms of platforms. Their Kickstarter campaign has surpassed the original goal of $100,000 earlier this month and is soon due to a close. For more details on this amazing game check out their Kickstarter page here or their website.
Published: Apr 24, 2014 05:42 pm