A cooperative campaign experience for 1-4 adventurers set in a fantasy world on the brink of being consumed by nature. Setup in only 5 minutes, and complete a scenario in 30 minutes per player. Pre-Orders & Late Pledges are open now for a limited time!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Mid-October Update
about 1 month ago
– Mon, Oct 14, 2024 at 06:25:26 PM
Hello there!
The team at Addax Games is here with another update. Things are moving along quickly as we near the end of Rove's development. This week, we've reached a new milestone- both the Core and Expansion are complete, and we've now shifted to the final stages of playtesting, editing, and proofing.
While we would love to talk about the Expansion's exciting new gameplay mechanics, terrifying new enemies, expanded player choice & consequence in our campaign system, and the threat posed by the [redacted], we're going to save that information for another update down the road.
Today we're going to be taking a look at two topics: Development & Pledge Manager.
Let's talk about Books
First, let's talk about the Quest Book. Originally, this book contained all of the encounter rules as well as the storyline text that is revealed before, during, and after each encounter. After quite a bit of testing, we have split this into a Campaign Book and a Codex. With this split, we now have the Campaign book containing the encounters and rules, and a Codex which contains all of the story information. We're also upgrading our books to be Spiral Bound, which has been the preference for both our team and our playtesters.
Why make these changes?
The first and most important reason is to make gameplay and component management easier for you, the players. As you dive into the campaign, you'll discover that some of our later scenarios can be a bit more complex, and would have required page flipping (Yuck!) to review all of the rules and storyline information. We really wanted to avoid having any page flipping in our game, as we felt this isn't enjoyable for players. With this division, we can avoid this problem, allowing you to leave the book opened up on the table as a handy encounter rules reference for your players.
The second reason is that this change also makes sense for us on the production end, as the split eliminates some graphic design challenges and concerns that we had previously with a single book.
While two books sounds more complicated than one, this change also simplifies proofing and manufacturing, allowing us to complete the game faster than before, as on-time delivery remains a core promise that we aim to keep!
Interested to see what the books look like? Here's a sneak peak provided by Tim Tesstor, the Art Director of Rove.
Let's talk about the Pledge Manager
Next, let's take a moment to quickly answer the most frequently asked questions about Rove, Kickstarter, and Backerkit.
When is the Pledge Manager closing? The short answer: Soon, so be sure to complete your pledges ASAP! The long answer is that we don't have a fixed date just yet, as there are a few remaining tasks to complete, but we are internally narrowing down the dates to a two week period between the end of October and early November. We will notify everyone repeatedly once the date is set to be sure that you're aware of the closing. As we're getting closer and closer to the start of our manufacturing, time is running out to update your final pledge for Rove.
When will my card be charged? That's tied to the question above- once we are set to close pledges, we will notify everyone and then charge for any addons that have been added to the pledge manager. Once again, we're going to give multiple notifications so there are no surprises.
What about shipping? I'm waiting to update my pledge until I see what shipping costs. If you're afraid of shipping prices increasing, have no fear- the previously listed prices are still valid. We worked hard during our campaign to get our prices for the US and EU as affordable as possible, and are happy to report that our prices have not changed. A few areas did not have clear pricing (Mexico) while others had higher pricing that we have been working to lower (New Zealand). The pricing will be posted this month, and in advance of any announcement that we are closing pledges to be sure that you have enough time to evaluate your final purchase.
I can't find my survey / Can't access Backerkit. Try using this link for Backerkit. This allows you to find your pledge. We have noticed that some emails (particularly Apple's private email relay service) can have issues, which require Backerkit customer service's intervention. They can be reached here: Customer Service.
I'd like to back, but I have questions about the game or contents. The best way to reach us is via our Discord. We're a small team, but are all always available via Rove's discord channel. Hop in, chat with us, and feel free to ask anything you'd like about Rove. We're always happy to help you out! If you're interested in learning more about the game mechanics or lore of the game, feel free to chat with Raul about virtual playtesting, or Charles about editing and proofreading.
When are you planning to deliver? We're aiming for our originally promised date, 1 year from the conclusion of our Kickstarter: May 2025. After months and months of hard work, we can't wait to get Rove into your hands and onto your gaming tables!
That's all for today! Thank you so much for joining us on this adventure.
September Update: Skill and Item Cards
2 months ago
– Mon, Sep 16, 2024 at 02:45:15 PM
Hello there,
Mike from Addax Games here with our first September Update! Today, we're checking in on the progress that our Art & Graphics team has made over the past few weeks.
Skill Cards Update
First, let's take a look at the changes that Tim has made to Rove's Skill Cards. As a reminder, skill cards are the main way in which our Rovers execute their actions in the game. Each time you play a Skill Card, it (and possibly others) will flip in response, changing the landscape of possibilities and tactics for you and your team. Many of your skills will work on a Rally and Rave paradigm; one side gathers power, the other unleashes it.
In the pairs of images below, you can see the old design on the left and the new, updated version on the right. Thanks to the feedback we've received from our Public Playtesters on Discord, we've been able to identify areas that were causing confusion, and have redesigned some of our iconography and the layout in small but important ways.
New formatting based upon the hard work and feedback we've received from our Public Playtesters. You can join them and play Rove digitally on Discord.
Item Card Updates
After our latest updates to the Skill Cards were completed, we then took the opportunity to revisit our Item Cards. Specifically, the way in which items required Ether and also how it was infused into these items to grant them additional power was unclear, and deserved a redesign.
This is the previous version of the item card, prior to our update. The cost in Lyst (our currency) and the Ether Infusion occupied the same area, leading to confusion from players.
Thank you to everyone who helped us identify and improve our components. Our volunteer playtesters, proofreaders, and editors have been a massive help, and we appreciate each and every one of you! If you're interested in lending a hand, taking a sneak peak, or just chatting about Rove, please join our official Discord.
What is the team working on next?
Currently, we're working on finalizing the books used in Rove. While we will save the details for a later post, we've made the decision to divide our Quest Book into a Quest Book and Codex, which should be a bit more player-friendly and avoid page-flipping in the middle of an encounter. We're also reviewing the story text from Rove with our volunteers, and getting ready to hand off our work to the talented voice actors at Forteller.
Our Pledge Manager is closing soon!
If you haven't yet filled in your information via the Pledge Manager on Backerkit, please do so as soon as possible! We're getting very close to completing our game and will be closing the pledge manager in the near future. The final date depends upon when the team finishes their final touches on Rove. You can finalize your pledge via the link below:
We're hard at work ensuring that we will hit our deadline for an on-time delivery, but you always reach us with any questions or comments on our Discord page. If you have any customer service related questions, please send us a message at [email protected] and we will get back to you as soon as we can!
August Update - Rove's Development
3 months ago
– Fri, Aug 23, 2024 at 09:34:59 AM
Hey! Mike from Addax Games here with a long list of updates about Rove!
So what's new with Rove?
We've been extremely busy trying to keep up the pace to complete Rove and deliver our game on-time. As a small team, we're all focused full-time on development, testing, and manufacturing and have not been able to keep up with the same number of updates as we had during our campaign. Moving forwards, we aim to provide an update every two weeks with information about our drive towards fulfillment as well as new information about the game and fulfillment.
Our Miniatures are finished!
All twenty-six of our miniatures are now completed, sculpted by the immensely talented Nikos Natsios. While we don't want to share any spoilers, we are so excited by the way our Prime and Apex class miniatures have turned out. We're now testing and evaluating these models with our manufacturing partner, but once that is completed, we will be ready to cut our molds and begin manufacturing. Sculpting and moldmaking is a time-intensive and difficult task, so we're very happy to have our minis entering the final stages of development and manufacturing.
A bit further down the road, we may share a few of our Prime and Apex miniatures (with appropriate spoiler tags), as we just can't contain our excitement about these models have turned out.
New Improvements to our Dice!
When it comes to Dice, we have several new updates.
First, after discussing with our manufacturing partner we have discovered a way to upgrade all of the dice across the Core Game, our Expansion, and the Dice Upgrade Kit. Rather than having the symbols be printed on the faces of our dice, all of our dice will now be engraved and painted. This is an improvement that we originally wanted but could not work into our budget, but after a bit of work we were able to find a way to upgrade our dice without needing to increase the price of Rove.
Second, we've updated the icons that represent Ether in our game: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Morph, and Crux. The reason for this update is simple- we wanted to be sure that each icon was visually distinct enough to be recognized from a distance if our players have any challenges with their vision. Specifically, we realized that Morph and Air were far too similar for players, so we've made changes to make them quite different. We want to be absolutely sure that everyone can fully enjoy Rove!
Third, we have a bit more detail regarding the Dice Upgrade Kit. If you recall, this is a set that provides additional premium Adversary and Player dice, along with new Countdown d20s all in a custom dice bag. We didn't provide much detail previously, so let's discuss it now. The bag itself will be a blue velvet drawstring bag with a Rove logo printed on the front. The bag will be blue (Matching Rove's Pantone 7702C) with gold printed lettering. The "premium" dice will all feature multi-colored swirls, similar to RPG Dice kits that are popular with roleplaying games. All of the dice will be engraved and painted.
New, updated icons for our Ether types.
Draft prototypes showing off the engraved and painted icons!
From the Factory: The updated color of our dice bag, a close match to Rove's Pantone 7702C.
How is Development going?
Development of Rove is steaming along at full speed, with our lead designer Tyvan Grossi leading the charge. To give you a peak behind the curtain, the Core Game has been fully developed and we're now working on completing the Expansion. Our playtest team is hard at work fine-tuning our encounters and game economy, while our art team polishes the design of our books and components. We will be sharing more details about the updates to our component design in a future post.
Any News on the Expansion?
We will go over this a bit more in a later update, but we're very excited with how the Expansion is developing. In this campaign, you will face a new threat that has emerged in the wake of the events of the Core Campaign. We will be introducing a variety of deadly new adversaries, an expansion to the Choice & Consequence campaign system, and exciting new gameplay mechanics that change the flow of battle and expand the tactical options available to our Rovers.
Ahh! What IS that thing?!
How can I get involved?
There are currently two areas where we are looking for additional help. The first is playtesting Rove digitally on TTS. If you're interested in helping test and providing feedback for our team, we are happy to onboard you via our Discord server. In particular, we are looking for assistance and community feedback for our Tutorial Chapter, as we want to be sure that players can quickly jump into Rove without difficulty.
In addition, our writer Charles McCloud is also in need of a bit of community assistance. As we near the deadline for print, he would like to ensure that the writing is landing with our readers and that everyone is enjoying and understanding the narrative of our game. If you're interested in getting a sneak-peak at our story and assisting with additional proofreading, we would love to hear from you! Please reach out directly to him at [email protected] if you are interested.
What is the team at Addax focusing on next?
With the Miniatures and Dice nearly completed and the Core Game nearing the finish line, our next target is completing the Expansion while continuing to prepare our game materials for manufacturing. Our target remains an on-time delivery as promised, and we're making great progress towards that goal!
I have problems with Backerkit. How can I reach you? When will you reply?
While our friends at Backerkit are able to answer most questions directly, we've had a few special questions come through that need to be taken care of by our team. We've compiled all of the messages across our various platforms into a list and are working through them one by one. If you sent a message and haven't heard back, please feel free to send us a message at [email protected] so that we can assist you promptly.
If you did not receive a survey, please use the link below to recover your pledge. Note that you will need to use the same email that you used on Kickstarter.
Moving forwards, [email protected] will be our main customer service point of contact and inquiries should be sent there. While we do read and try to reply to comments on our pages and on social media, this email account is the best way to reach us if you have any questions or concerns about your pledge. We check this email several times per week, and should be able to address most questions quickly.
Please remember to complete your survey!
Thank you for your continued support! We're working hard to make sure that we are able to deliver a high quality game on-schedule.
Backerkit Pledge Manager is Now Open!
4 months ago
– Tue, Jul 16, 2024 at 12:16:17 PM
Hello everyone! Two weeks ago, Preorders were made available for those that had missed backing the Kickstarter initially. Starting today, Late Pledges via the are now available for all backers! This will allow for you to scoop up any add-ons you might have been on the fence about before the campaign ended, or to upgrade your pledge level entirely.
The Pledge Manager will also allow you to update any shipping information if you’ve had a recent move or need to send your delivery to a different location. We’re still angling to get shipping costs reduced outside of the US (especially for AU and NZ!), so please keep an eye out for updates about that if it concerns you. This was the primary cause of the delay on our end in getting out the surveys- we're trying a new Beta Feature from Backerkit that will allow us to charge for shipping closer to the fulfillment date, giving us extra time to try and reduce the shipping cost for all of our backers around the globe.
Interested in upgrading from a $1 pledge? Click this button to easily adjust your pledge level.
Please be sure to fully fill out the Backer Survey. You should have received an email today from [email protected]. If you haven’t please let us know, as this is critical information for us to help ensure you receive your products! Everything is being handled through Backerkit–be on the lookout for emails from their service specifically.
If you have any questions, concerns, or encounter any issues with your pledges or Backerkit, be sure to let us know by sending a message through Kickstarter (or you can email the team directly via [email protected]). We’re always available for outreach to help!
The Peoples of Chorus: Starlings
4 months ago
– Fri, Jul 12, 2024 at 12:06:50 PM
Hello everyone! Charles here; before I launch into my diatribe, just know that we're still working on getting the Pledge Manager sorted for those of you with existing pledges that may want to adjust things. We're now just waiting for the final review to be finished by Backerkit, and then we'll be up and running. We should have an update about that soon!
You all have been asking about learning more about the world, and while we briefly discussed the creation of the Rovers and how they related to the conceptualization of their respective species during the campaign, we didn’t really visit the people of Chorus in specific detail. Let me ramble about all of that now!
Starlings are a curious sort. They are theorized to be one of the oldest sapients on Chorus, but we’re not entirely certain starlings could have even been called ‘sapient’ until they came into contact with humans and were granted their name (a name which no starling has yet to refute, despite their obvious terrestrial origins). Their behavior, and seemingly cognition, is derived from mimicking the surrounding beings and environment. Ancient humans were apparently the first to not flee when coming into contact with them, and from there it seems the natural human inclination for bonding led to the discovery that starlings could develop consciousness!
As beings of pure energy, starlings seem to coalesce into existence in regions rich with ether. This could be literally anywhere; the sky, the ocean, your backyard. There is no reproduction with starlings–just a sudden genesis of being anywhere on the planet! Starlings aren’t so much “rare” to see as they are simply “spread out” due to this arbitrary formation. Regardless of when and where a starling forms they always seem to be formed first of pure Morph or Crux ether (sometimes referred to as the elements of “body” and “soul” by some clans). Their one impulse at this stage is a deep hunger for ether. Over time, a starling absorbs the ether aspected to the arcane elements of Water, Fire, Earth or Air, which supplants their original animatic Morph or Crux ether. Imagine if your entire body was just one weird magical baby tooth!
Starlings of Morph and Crux origins, taking on Fire ether.
One consistent trait across all starlings is the presence of their tendrils. The body of a starling will always sprout myriad tendrils, which seem to be their “real” limbs as opposed to the ones you might see on them fashioned to resemble arms or legs. These tendrils are something of a combined sensory organ for starlings and seem to be the most sensitive to stimuli as well. The other consistent trait is that upon the “death” (an event that can be roughly summarized as “when they run out of live ether entirely”) of a starling, they leave behind a rather potent core of crystallized ether that holds the same qualities of mixed ether than the starling possessed while alive. These cores are especially important to other starlings as they contain the cumulative memory and experience of the starling it was wrought from–but only other starlings are able to perceive those stored memories as it involves reabsorbing the core into themselves over time.
Notice the small blue core wrapped in their tendrils; it would have belonged to a Water-aspected starling much like the individual shown!
“What happens when somebody other than a starling tries to absorb a core?” I hear you ask. This is a central question to one of the Chapters in your adventure, so no need to worry about that one going unanswered! But a lesser addressed question is “What else can you do with a starling core?” to which the answer is “Quite a lot, actually!”. While a bit grim, these starling 'corpses' make for amazing channeling utilities for weapons, armor, alchemical mixtures, and enhancing one’s natural affinities for ether to list a few. Some starlings have even requested to be made into jewelry for their loved ones when they pass 🥺
Some staves are assembled using offered, or abandoned, starling cores.
Speaking of loved ones, starlings hold unique positions within clans they find themselves to be members of. Once humans handled the heavy-lifting of establishing that starlings were potential friends instead of potential enemies, it wasn't long before everyone else got the message. Nascent starlings are universally adopted by any clan regardless of the bias of its dominant species, as they develop rather quickly within a community of sapient beings, but starlings are always in perennial search of ether as their most basic instinct. Without biological limitations like the need for food, water, or shelter, starlings are able to fluidly move between clans as desired to develop themselves both physically and mentally. While many clans have their particular population bias, there isn’t a clan with a population of just starlings. Well, that we know of…
Given their unique position within societal chains, there is often a certain deference afforded to the instances in which starlings confer a label to something. Starlings seem to have a particular affinity for entendre as their names are most frequently a word taken from human language with multiple meanings. The ever-common urn, the pesky streak, the imposing crown; each are something that while perhaps at one point had other names, the relationship starlings had with each became most prominent over time. Even their titles draw from this as you can see with our first playable starling Rover the Flash—A flash of light, a flash of heat, a flash of movement; everything happens in a flash with the Flash.
Starlings are always a treat to design because they are a literal manifestation of the concept of "broadening your horizons". A person that is literally transformed through their experiences. The transformative nature of starlings also gives them insight into more esoteric knowledge. Who was the first to lead that clan? What is life like as a cloud of gas? When does the self truly change? Where does the bottom of that immense canyon lead? Why was this monument built? How do you defend yourself as a finger-length fish? Starlings are the only people equipped to answer questions of this nature (much to the delight of scholarly sorts).
I'll be back over the coming weeks with writeups like these for the other denizens of Chorus. Please look forward to it!
