Good day to all! This is a small preview of our latest project, Deus ex Machina! In this first entry we’ll give you a sneak peek of the theme and the research done.
Deus ex Machina is a competitive board game with a mythological theme, in which the ancient Greek gods of Olympus vie for supremacy by manipulating heroes and monsters.
The setting is – naturally – Ancient Greece, where one can find a variety of creatures and heroes, as well as other events spicing things up. We have done extensive research to gather information on a large number of legends and the heroes and mythical creatures involved, all from the complete and well rounded work of Ioannis Kakridis (for more information here ), a five-volume collection of greek myths translated from ancient to modern Greek language. There are notes and explanations of how heroes, events and gods are related to each other, giving us the opportunity to select elements for our game as accurately as possible.
Ancient Greek Mythology consists of myths, legends and lore from 1500 BC till the birth of the first democracy in Athens (508–507 BC). After that time historians like Herodotus (484 – c. 420 BC), Thucydides (460 – c. 400 BC), Xenophon (431 – c. 360 BC) and others started writing down facts from a “clearer” point of view, free from superstitions, customs and deities. Our project reflects the period where humans believed and were led by those beliefs.
The main target of our research was locating heroes (names, locations they acted at, gods they were involved with), monsters (including bandits and criminals that brought misery and despair in the land), quests (like Hercules’ 12 Labors, or Theseus great achievements) and by all means gods (the Greek pantheon, plus lesser deities).
Deus ex Machina is designed to be a euro style board game. Firstly, a closer look to the basics: You are a god, so you do as you wish. That includes appointing heroes to do your bidding, preventing other gods from doing so, hiring demigod heroes in progress, thus changing the course of the game.
There are already some ideas as of how to “manipulate” heroes as agents and gather resources/information/equipment, so at the moment we’re tinkering with this mechanic in order to decide what fits our game best.
Once the prototype was ready (board, locations, quest cards, heroes, counters, tokens and placeholder artwork), we started play-testing and we like the direction we’ve given to our game.
Our next update will feature more information regarding quests and heroes.
Until next time!
