If you are into the figurine tabletop gaming experience such as Warhammer, Heroscape or Heroclix, you’re whole idea and thoughts on the genre are about to be flipped upside down. A company called Harebrained Schemes is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter to release a new figurine tabletop strategy experience that takes all the physical aspects and digitizes it for a more efficient and more accessible gameplay. The game they are working on is called Golem Arcana and currently has already raised over $100k of their $300k goal on their Kickstarter campaign.
How exactly is Golem Arcana going to digitize physical tabletop games? Well they have come up with an interesting way to connect the physical aspects with a mobile companion app. The idea is the gameboard for Golem Arcana and the included figurines have microdots on the base of them which allows the app to know if a move or attack is valid. The other key to this is an included Tabletop Digital Interface Stylus (TDI) which has two ends, one end for tapping the microdots to gain info, confirm actions, etc. and another for use on your device’s touchscreen. Information is transferred using Bluetooth 4. This is actually quite a huge step in what Harebrained Schemes is trying to accomplish because the app knows all the rules of Golem Arcana so no more accidentally breaking the rules and it also keeps track of stats and other aspects of a tabletop game that usually took time to figure out, which makes the game a lot quicker.
Harebrained Schemes has already promised downloadable content such as new scenarios. These range from normal modes like King of the Hill, Control Points and Defense but others are more unique such as an Inferno mode in which all forests are on fire and golems knocked into them take extra damage. But with all this how much are you looking to pay for this interesting experience? Well if you back now to get the base game it is $65 but when you think about it that seems a fair price for a tabletop game. The base game comes with the TDI, the companion app, two sets of golem figurines, terrain cards, dice, and rules/score cards. Of course if you pledge more on Kickstarter you get better rewards including more/different golem figurine sets.
The game dynamics of Golem Arcana are still being worked on and if you want to help out one of the tiers is access to their beta testing. As for the story behind Golem Arcana it seems huge. The golems are a product of magic and are called Golem and Blood Knights and are also classified into four size classes; War Sprite, Ogre, Titan and Colossus. There is a whole lot more lore and backstory if you are interested at their Kickstarter page as well as all the listings for reward tiers and optional package extensions. In general I feel that Golem Arcana is the perfect bridge between physical gaming and digital gaming that could really bridge the learning gap on tabletop games. So again, if you want to help them reach their goal check out their Kickstarter.
