December 1, 2024
Today I am very pleased to announce that we are releasing Grimdark Future: Star Quest. Since the release of Age of Fantasy: Quest earlier this year, calls for a Sci-Fi version have been flooding in, and we're happy to finally release it to our community!
With this release, we are expanding our games library by even one more game, which is, as always, completely free. We are also going to be adding new hero miniatures and narrative campaigns for the game to our Patreon every month, at no additional cost, though the miniatures will not be available at this time. More stuff, same price, just as we like it!
Grimdark Future: Star Quest is a solo/co-op skirmish adventure game, set in the Grimdark Future universe.
The easiest way to imagine this is as a hybrid between a skirmish game and an RPG, where your party of 2-4 hero fights off waves of enemies, whilst going on epic missions. The game is played in campaigns made up of multiple chapters, each with various missions for you to play through, and your heroes will gain experience, find loot, level up to unlock new skills, and suffer injuries whilst adventuring.
During the game, all heroes activate and take actions, which works like our other games, keeping things familiar. Heroes can also take one free skill action each round, which allows them to boost attacks, buff allies, heal, and more. When using skill actions heroes suffer stress, and once they have hit their stress limit they must use a rest action to remove it all. Heroes can also suffer stress to take one additional action each round, as well as suffer stress to negate a failed Str/Dex/Wil roll, so make sure to use these things wisely, especially when at a low level.
After all heroes have activated, all AI enemies activate and fight back, so watch out. There are also lots of other new quest-specific things, which you won't find in our other games, like heroes suffering status conditions, to finding loot, to being able to use consumables like med kits, adrenaline injectors, and frag grenades. Consumables are especially important for your survival, especially at higher difficulties, so don't forget to stack up on med kits and curing kits before going on a mission.
If you're familiar with dungeon crawlers or other similar skirmish campaign games, then you will feel right at home with GF: Star Quest. This type of game is perfect to play solo, or coop with your family and friends, and is especially great to play with people unfamiliar with wargames, as well as young children. The game is primarily focused on building a narrative experience, so if you're looking for a competitive versus game, then this isn't it.
Hopefully you're already excited to play, but before you run off to download the rules, we recommend reading the next section first. GF: Star Quest is a different, but familiar, game from the rest of our library, so you should know its basic concepts, how to play, and other important info.
If you've already played Age of Fantasy: Quest, these concepts may be familiar with you, but for those of you jumping in for the fist time, here is what you can expect. Before we get into the meat of it, the most basic concepts to grasp are:
Heroes & Parties: The game can be played solo or coop, with a party of 2-4 heroes, which are controlled by the players. When playing solo the player controls all heroes, and when playing coop we recommend that each player controls one hero. A group of heroes that goes on a mission together is called a party.
Enemies & Collections: The heroes face off against enemies, which are controlled by a simple AI system (similar to the one from the other games). Before the game, players will need to create a collection based on the miniatures they have, which works exactly the same as building an army for the other games.
Campaigns, Chapters, and Missions: The game is usually played in a campaign format. Each campaign is made up of a set number of chapters, and each chapter is made of a set number of missions. Once a chapter has been selected, the heroes must play all of its missions in sequence to complete it, and once all chapters have been completed, the campaign is over.
Dynamic Difficulty Balancing: The game has 4 different difficulty levels, which set how many points of enemies you fight, based on how many points the party is worth in total. Since all the numbers are in relation to each other, you don't need to worry about point costs in this game. The cost of heroes is determined automatically, and you should build as large a collection of enemies as available miniatures you have, so that you get the most varied enemy waves as possible.
Alright, those are the basic concepts, now let's move on to how to play this game.
Here's the basic step-by-step on how to start playing:
All of this process is explained step-by-step once you're in the app, where you follow a simple tutorial to get started.
Heroes are based off existing armies, so you can make a Saurian Starhost hero, or a Robots Legions hero, or anything in-between. Once a hero has been created, the app will take care of everything for you (don't worry about the points value of your hero, it's not relevant). We've also added a "free edit" option so that you can break the system and do whatever you like (start at any level, modify your gold stash, etc.).
Collections are also based off existing armies, so you can make an enemy collection using any of the models you already own. We recommend putting all of the models you own in your collection from the start, so that then you can use any and all of them during your missions (don't worry about the points value of your collection, it's not relevant). This is not just limited to OPR armies, so if you have some cool models you picked up from the Worlds Beyond campaign, they're all ready to go for GF: Star Quest as well.
Playing missions has been made as simple and convenient as possible: select your heroes and collection, pick a difficulty level, and you're ready to go. Once you start a mission, you can generate enemy waves automatically, or do it manually if you want to fight specific enemies. We've also added convenient controls for you to track your stress, wounds, bleeding, status conditions, and consumables. When you're done, simply click on "complete mission", and you'll be able to set how much XP and credits you earned, and then the system will take you through leveling up automatically. It's all extremely convenient.
We even added a lobby system so that you and your friends can play together on different devices. One of the player simply hosts the game, gives the other players the session code, and they are ready to join. Please note that max. 4 heroes can go on a quest, so you can't have 100 people join your session.
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If you don't like using the app to play the game, don't worry, once you've done the initial setup in the app, you can print things out, and play with pen & paper as well.
The app is only mandatory to create your heroes and level them up (due to the way costs are calculated dynamically), but there is no need for the app beyond that if you don't want to use it.
Once you have created your heroes, you simply select which heroes you want to play with, and can then print them out on paper. For collections, you can either skip making the collections entirely, and just print out the whole army list, or you can create your collection and print it out as well.
The only downside of playing with pen & paper is that you will have to manually pick which enemies are spawned and what their total cost is, and that you will have to manually track the status of each hero (number of wounds taken, which grenades they have, etc.).
After a mission has been completed, don't forget that you need to go on the app to track how much XP each hero has gained, so that you can level them up and unlock new things. To do this, select the hero in the app, and then click on "complete a mission" to go through the post-mission sequence.
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With the launch of GF: Star Quest, we are also going to be releasing a bunch of new stuff on Patreon for you to play with.
Soon we will also be launching an all new narrative campaign to play through! Our first campaign, Into the Frontier, puts you in pursuit of a legendary adventurer, hot on the trail of a fabled treasure at the edge of the known galaxy, with the aid of an eccentric robot companion. It ties into our Human Defense Force releases, and the plan is to continue releasing campaigns alongside our Patreon armies, and eventually also release campaigns featuring previously released armies.
While they are not ready for the launch of the game, like Age of Fantasy: Quest, we will be releasing 4 hero minis that will be added to our Welcome Packs and then we will be releasing 1 new hero mini every month for you to expand your party. On top of that we will be releasing 1 new villain mini for every campaign we release. All of this at no additional cost to our patrons! While we hope to release these models very soon, because we were not able to get these minis ready in time for launch, the 4 hero minis and campaign villain mini will be given to all October 2024 Tier 2 Patreon Supporters, even if they cancel their subscriptions for future months.
That's right, we are adding even more new content for you, and we are not asking you for any extra money, this treat is on us.
Happy Adventuring!
– OPR Team
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