A game of auctioning and artistic egos, for 2 to 4 players.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
FQ: Incredible Box Art from Andrew Bosley! Plus: Salt & Sass Video Playthrough
almost 2 years ago
– Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 12:07:07 AM
TL;DR: We've achieved the Embroidered Token Bag and are close to reaching Era 2 Medium building alternate sculpts. See the incredible artwork for the next FQ below. Video playthrough from Salt & Sass.
We're into the second week of the campaign, and our journey through the Funding Quests, through which you've helped us add incredible new features to the Collector's Edition of the game!
We're very pleased to add a beautifully embroidered logo to the list of unlocks - and to be SO close to confirming not one, but two more additions - alternate medium building sculpts for Era 2, and today's new Funding Quest:
The birds love Skyrise almost as much as the humans do!
Upon the completion of Funding Quest #9, the inside of the box lid of every Collector's Editions will feature this fantastic artwork of a completed Skyrise cityscape, from game artist Andrew Bosley!
If you're a hobby gamer, you've probably seen Andrew's work before - you can find it in dozens of games, including Everdell, Tapestry, Chai: Tea For Two, and Roxley's own Gorilla Marketing. His visionary artwork has been integral to bringing Skyrise to life, so the opportunity for us to showcase another window opened by him into the game world was just too tempting for us to pass up!
3D rendered concept image. Final appearance and design may vary.
In addition, as a Limited Edition Kickstarter exclusive, every Collector's Edition will come with its own unique, randomly assigned number:
3D rendered concept image. Final appearance and design may vary.
Over the weekend, Mandi & David hosted designer Adam Wyse to stream a full teach and playthrough of the 3 player Skyrise experience, on Tabletop Simulator! Can either of these two take down one of Roxley's champions? Check it out for yourself to see!
Today's additional preview image is the full game from Tamara de Lempicka's point of view, on BoardGameGeek. As always, if you're so inclined, we'd love to have you throw us a thumb and a comment for Hotness purposes. Thanks, everybody!
Development Diary with Adam Wyse! Visionary #2 - Vera Mukhina
almost 2 years ago
– Tue, Jun 21, 2022 at 08:49:41 PM
TL;DR - 3D Renderings of the sky blue insert below. Development Diary with Adam Wyse. Have a great weekend, everybody!
The Collector's Edition is getting better by the minute! Upon the funding of our next Funding Quest, we're going to have wonderful, custom sky blue pantone colored inserts, to make the components really shine! As a reminder, this insert will accommodate the Wooden Token add-on pack, and will also accommodate sleeved cards, for all the sleevers out there.
Check out these awesome 3D renderings!
3D rendered prototype concept art. Final product may vary in design and appearance.
3D rendered prototype concept art. Final product may vary in design and appearance.
Note: while manufacturing costs mean that most of our Funding Quests are going to apply strictly to the Collector's Edition, we are pleased to say that the fantastic upgrade to the bag fabric quality that we've just unlocked is another exception to this, and will apply to all versions of the game.
We've still got LOTS more to announce, so keep checking back to see what's next!
Skyrise: By The Numbers
Design and development can be a strange balancing act, requiring you to square off math against psychology, logic against emotions, and science against art. A game can often follow a very complex chain of development through all of these lenses before reaching its final state.
But there are times on that journey when a team member who can really work well with statistics is exactly what you need.
In this update, codesigner Adam Wyse will be diving into some of the thoughts and processes behind the unique numbers on the buildings in Skyrise.
Development Diary: Unique Building Numbers
-Adam Wyse
Every player has a unique set of numbered buildings in Skyrise, compared to the set of buildings numbered [1] through [13] for each player found in Metropolys. Game development can be a long and winding path, but this is a little bit about how they came to be.
Early on in the development process, we had decided on breaking up the game into 2 halves. The first half being designed to allow players to start to grasp the concepts of the auction, with only some of their buildings available for bids. At the half, players would get the chance to see how some of the scoring worked (Panorama Cards and Island Control) and unlock the remainder of their buildings. They would get into the second half with a refreshed lineup full of buildings and their Wonder.
It worked great in regards to game flow and pacing, but it had the unintended side effect of shortening the auctions. When players suddenly had 6 or 7 buildings in the first half instead of the full set of 13, auctions never really had the chance to chain very long and an interesting dynamic was lost. We tried various things to fix it, one being that you could "outbid" by placing a bid of equal or greater value (ie. my [10] can beat your [10]). This lengthened the auctions but put too much emphasis on turn order, it was confusing ("There's three [10]s here, which [10] won the bid again?"), and it was simply unsatisfying to be outbid by something equal.
That's when the idea was floated to have every building have a unique number. It would have the effect of lengthening the auctions by about 50%, even though players would still only have a subset of their buildings, and there would never be the possibility of ties. Where previously each player had a [1] building, now one player would have an [11], one player a [12], one a [13], and one a [14]. The second digit would become the "tie-breaker" digit.
Then comes the challenge of balance. Luckily we had a perfect starting point to work from. We had bought some Go First Dice from Maths Gear a few years prior:
Warning: sneaking these into your D&D game to use instead of using normal d12s to roll damage may have unintended consequences.
Go First Dice are a set of 4 dice, perfectly balanced to rank players first, second, third, and fourth with mathematically equal chance, with only a single roll and no ties - AND taking any subset of these dice and rolling only 2 or 3 of them, still being perfectly balanced for each player. Since they are four 12-sided dice and Skyrise has four players with 12 buildings each, this was the perfect place to start from:
Each "building set" (column) was assigned a different 10s digit, and the 1s digit was a player's rank within that set. Of course, Skyrise has complexities in its buildings and auction system that make things more complicated:
(A) In an auction, each building set that is higher than the previous set is more valuable.
(B) We also have to factor in whether buildings are short, medium, or tall (affecting Island Control scoring).
(C) And whether they are part of Era 1 or Era 2 (affecting Panorama Card scoring).
We assigned each building set an importance factor relative to all the others, and each ranking within the subset of players a factor. We used these factors and a big spreadsheet to evaluate all 11 "player count"/colour permutations (4 player game, 3 players missing red, 3 players missing blue, etc.). After many many nudges and tweaks, we came to the final set of building numbers in the game. Playtesting and recording data over hundreds of playtests has borne out their balance - no matter the player count or which colours aren't used, no matter who's sitting to whose left, the building numbers are statistically balanced and give no advantage to any player.
Vera Ignatyevna Mukhina(1889-1953)
Born in Riga (present-day Latvia),
lost her nose in a sledding accident, 8 French plastic surgeries
studied art, painting, and sculpture in Russia, France, and Italy
By 1919 she was establishing a career working on commissioned sketches, sculptures, buildings, monuments, and bridges. Initially known for Cubist sculpture, she moved on to become a leading figure in Socialist realism (both the style and the ideology). As her success and reputation grew, she won numerous Russian and international awards, worked with theatrical costumers and fashion designers, wrote the book A Sculptor's Thoughts, and taught her skills to new generations at both state and private schools.
In the 1940s, she was invited to Russian-occupied Latvia to consult on the destruction of Freedom, a monument celebrating Latvian independence and the soldiers who had died to preserve it against Russia in a previous war. She took the bold stance of speaking out against the state's plan and is credited by many as being one of the main reasons the monument still stands today.
She continued creating, inventing, discovering, and sharing new artistic materials, techniques, and theories until her death in 1953. A museum in Ukraine was dedicated to her in 1985, and a crater on Venus has been named in her honor.
What will she create in the world of Skyrise?
Lend Us Your Thumbs!
Check out this cool preview picture of Antonio Sant'elia in action, on BoardGameGeek - and if you're so inclined, feel free to give us a thumb and a comment for algorithm purposes. The more Hotness we get, the faster we'll unlock those Funding Quests!
New Sculpts Unlocked-Dual Layer Player Boards Next! Spotlight On Fritz Lang!
almost 2 years ago
– Tue, Jun 21, 2022 at 08:43:32 PM
TL;DR: Alternate tall building sculpts are unlocked. Next FQ: dual layer player boards. Visionary Spotlight on Fritz Lang. Catch Heavy Cardboard's livestream tonight!
All Collector's Edition pledges will now come with unique tall building sculpts, for all four players! These are going to be SO gorgeous! Click on through to Boardgamegeek to embiggenate these images and to see them in all their artistic thumbs-uppable glory!*
3D rendered concept image. Final version may vary.
These have been one of our most popular requests so far, so we're so pleased to announce them as the next Funding Quest! These are going to be both elegant to behold and physically satisfying to use, and very practical for keeping your bits from being knocked around every time someone bumps the table. Connecting the inset spaces for the Neighborhood tokens to each other ensures that during cleanup it will be equally simple to remove either the Wooden Token add-on discs or the basic cardboard versions.
Let's get these unlocked!
Fritz Lang (1890-1976)
The son of an Austrian architect, Lang studied civil engineering, art, and painting before making his career as a director. Already a world traveler in his 20s, he fought in Russia and Romania in World War One, where he was wounded four times and lost vision in one eye.
As World War Two approached, the German government first censored his work, calling it anti-Nazi, before offering him his own film studio to make films they would approve of. Instead of accepting, he fled to Paris and later America to continue his career, leaving his divorced second wife (a sympathizer) behind.
Lang's films were atmospheric and brutal, and his own reputation wasn't much better. According to one account, he threw actor Peter Lorre down a staircase during the filming of M to add authenticity to his battered look.
Dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute and considered by many to be the creator of many genres including the film noir, the serial killer movie, and the "entertainment war flick", it's no surprise that this visionary has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
What will he create in the world of Skyrise?
Thank you so much - we'll be back again to update you in a couple of days!
Livestream Tomorrow With Heavy Cardboard. WE'RE FUNDED!!!
almost 2 years ago
– Tue, Jun 21, 2022 at 04:28:37 PM
From The Bottom Of Our Hearts...
We need to begin by thanking you all.
It's been a crazy first day. Skyrise smashed its funding goal within an hour after launch, and we've already passed our first two Funding Quests! Your engagement with us, in dozens of comments already, has been amazing - the project has already been improved by your suggestions, and the love you've shared for Brass, Radlands, Dice Throne, Steampunk Rally, and all our other games is touching, to say the least.
It's hard to put into words exactly how we feel... but it's safe to say, Team Roxley is on Cloud Nine!
Welcome To Skyrise!
The Mayor has enlisted some of humanity's greatest visionaries to help build Skyrise: a magnificent city in the sky, dedicated to art, science, and beauty... but only one artisan can be remembered as the greatest! Prove your genius by using a brilliant spatial auction system to win sites to build in, earning favor across Islands and factions, scoring secret and public objectives, courting mysterious Patrons and building your own unique Wonder.
Skyrise tells an interactive story of a growing cityscape, hard decisions, scarce resources, and ever-rising stakes that will keep you enthralled until the final scores are revealed.
Gameplay
Mechanically, Skyrise is very simple to play. The auction mechanic is as easy as it is brilliant: players may bid for a neighborhood (either one of the starting ones in the central island, or adjacent to any existing bid), by placing one of their unbuilt buildings into it.
To outbid that bid, the next bidder may bid a higher numbered building... but because bids can't share a space with other bids or existing buildings, that bid must be played into an adjacent neighborhood. This results in chains of bids being placed across the board - some long, some short, some leading into dead-ends (which automatically wins the bid, as there's nowhere left to bid in).
When an auction is won, the winner flips their building over to claim the neighborhood (and the valuable token sitting in it) and begins the next bidding chain (after all failed bids have been reclaimed by their owners).
When a player runs out of biddable buildings, the first Era of the game is over, and players score Prestige for area control, and from two special Panorama cards, which will be different every game. This unlocks new buildings for all players, including powerful Wonders that can end auctions immediately, and have special abilities that can dramatically alter your strategy.
At the end of the game, players score Prestige for Panorama and area control a second time - but many more factors go into your final score. The neighborhoods your buildings are in can be worth a lot of points, based on the number of Neighborhood tokens you built - but many points can also be awarded from Secret Objective cards, Patron discs with hidden values (deducible through gameplay), your unique Wonder, or for being the first or second player to complete all of your buildings first.
For a more detailed explanation, check out the rulebook here, or tune in to tomorrow's livestream of the game from Heavy Cardboard!
We’ve loved Heavy Cardboard since before they helped us introduce Brass: Birmingham! (And we've been overjoyed to have them return that love!) So we're very much looking forward to their four-player live stream of Skyrise, tomorrow at 7 PM Eastern (5 PM Mountain; 11 PM GMT). Set yourself a reminder here, and join us in the video chat for what promises to be an amazing playthrough!
Let's Talk About Funding Quests!
Funding Quests (FQ) are objectives that help enhance the game. 3 FQ's will be revealed on the first day of the campaign. After that, a new quest will be revealed every day at 9am PST for the entirety of the campaign, regardless of whether or not the previous one has been unlocked. This means we can even be working on multiple FQ's simultaneously!
Like Stretch Goals, each FQ requires a specific funding amount to unlock. Unlike Stretch Goals, we'll begin a new Funding Quest together every day of the campaign! We put great consideration into every FQ idea we read. If we hear an idea that is amazing and possible, we're absolutely willing to alter our secret plan. As always, our goal is to create a well honed experience while giving you a ton of value for backing our project.
We're very happy to be able to open this campaign by presenting you with our first already-unlocked Funding Quest: the campaign-exclusive metal Key To The City and interlocking Coin! All Kickstarter editions of the game will now automatically be upgraded with these exclusive tokens, at no additional charge.
In gameplay, the first player to successfully place all of their buildings (including their unique Wonder) is awarded the Key To The City, which is worth an additional ten Prestige (victory points) during endgame scoring (which can be a significant advantage). The second player to place all of their buildings is awarded the interlocking Coin token, worth only four Prestige, but still worth vying for!
This could be a key part of your strategy!
As a further bonus, during the time we were editing this update, our second Funding Quest was also unlocked! The four hexagonal Patron Tokens, originally cardboard, will now be upgraded to solid wooden tokens with metallic screen printed ink.
In gameplay, these tokens will be shuffled face down and placed on the board to indicate the hidden Prestige values of the different Patron Discs players will collect by building on them during the game. When you collect a Patron Disc, you are allowed to peek at the hidden value of the Patron Token - giving you an advantage over the other players when placing bids for them in the future!
(Patron Value tokens, concept art - prototype image not yet available)
As of this update, we're also 71% of the way to unlocking our third FQ - Kickstarter exclusive alternate sculpts for the tall buildings players will unlock in Era 2! These are absolutely gorgeous, and we can't wait to show them off to you!
We hope you'll stay tuned as we come back to you with regular updates throughout the campaign, where we'll bring you details about new Funding Quests, designer diaries, spotlights on the game's Visionaries, lots of new video content, and plenty more!
NOTE: An FAQ for the project has been created, and is located HERE.
Thank you so much - we'll be back to update you again very soon.
