I spoke with Cormac Russell, the project leader for the game, who gave me an update on the game’s progress. Last year Wizards announced the game, but it was nothing more than the game engine and several graphical placeholders and was truly nothing to write home about (hence the reason last year’s preview was shelved). One year later, Wizards has added alot of artwork to the game, and many of the fantasy artists from Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, and Magic the Gathering have inserted their talents into the character and board art. A player of the game will notice that the goblins in the game appear recognizably similar to Magic the Gathering and D&D.
Wizards has been playtesting the Alpha with current friends and family, and the game is alomst ready for a public playtest. Wizards will start accepting Beta playtesters in January or February, and will use a lottery system for selection.
Since this game was shown last year, I asked Cormac what the holdup was with the game. He stated that while the development time is unusually long for Wizards of the Coast, that the timeline is on par with other games in the industry. They have spent alot more time prototyping the engine and interface, so most of the recent work has been creating the fantastic new artwork.
The gameplay works like this: You can play “The Goblin Game” from any standard web broser that supports the Flash plugin. You make one play per day, but each play could involve doing several tasks (moving units, gathering resources, attacking enemies, etc.).
In “The Goblin Game” you are the leader of a goblin warren. Goblin Heroes and Taskmasters look to you for orders and round up goblin followers to do your bidding. The goal of the game is to build up your warren until you attract the attention of one of the major goblin factions, then join that faction, and help your faction win the game. Your goblin heroes might encounter trolls or dwarves or any number of other fantasy creatures– even dragons!
Turns store up, so if you don’t play for a three days, then you can take three turns. You can’t do military actions on stored turns, , so you cannot attack or participate in auctions. You can only perform resource-based actions on these stored turns. Basically if you miss a day, then you can’t do something that will affect other players, because that would not be fair to store up 3 turns and then make 3 attacks.
A typical game will take about two months to play, with a player taking five or so turns a week.
