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The Isofarian Guard is a solo & cooperative narrative driven adventure boardgame for 1-2 players.
In The Isofarian Guard you’ll explore the various areas of the country of Isofar in the land of Telios, and you’ll see (and hear) the journey through the eyes of eight members of the guard.
You and your companions will travel vast distances across the country and you’ll need to work together to overcome a great darkness corrupting the land. There are four unique campaigns that can be played completely solo or with two players, and span over 30+ hours of gameplay.
The Isofarian Guard features:
⭐️ A highly immersive narrative driven campaign powered by 'Forteller'.
⭐️ A fully voice acted narration and orchestral score that immerses you into the story!
⭐️ Bag Building
⭐️ Card/Tableau Building
⭐️ Character customization
⭐️ Unique crafting system for equipment
⭐️ Enemy AI System
⭐️ Open World Exploration
ALL PLANNED CONTENT HAS BEEN UNLOCKED AND WILL BE INCLUDED IN EVERY COPY OF THE GAME!
The Isofarian Guard has 3 main phases of gameplay. They are:
⭐️ Exploration
⭐️ Combat/Quests
⭐️ Narrative Events
Exploring an open world...
In The Isofarian Guard your characters will be represented by a miniature that you'll move across the map to progress the campaign.
In the first campaign you'll control Grigory - the captain of the Isofarian Guard. Another character joins Grigory shortly after the start of the opening scenes. The story begins at the 'Mountain Pass' just to the West of the capitol city of Silny.
After the initial narrative is either read or listened to you'll begin your journey across the country of Isofar! In The Isofarian Guard you'll have the freedom to explore an open world and travel to any location as you wish, but beware, you'll have to manage your health to survive for long journeys on the road!
You'll notice several 'nodes' on the map that are placed between the various cities and locations on Isofar. Each circle shaped area is a place that you can interact with on your adventure.
Many of these side quests will give you various choices that have branching paths. Some may unlock incredible treasures while others may lead you to dangerous situations!
As you continue to journey across the country you'll enter larger locations like 'Silny'. Each scroll location on the main world map represents a larger area that you'll be able to explore. These larger areas have their own mini-map that you'll place on the table and you'll move your miniature between various nodes there as well. In these areas you'll progress the main storyline that has a fully voice acted narration (powered by Forteller)!
Below is the mini-map of Silny that Grigory will travel to first in his campaign!
In The Isofarian Guard you'll have the option to read the storyline from the rulebook, or listen or both!
When you first enter a mini-map location the rules will direct you to place 'narrative/scenario' chips on different nodes of the map. When you land on these nodes the storyline and narration begins.
You can choose to read the narrative from the rulebook...
...or you can listen to the narrative by incredibly talented voice actors backed by an orchestral score using the Forteller companion application!
Listen to the same scene below!
Encountering enemies across Isofar...
In The Isofarian Guard, you will travel throughout the cities and wildernesses of Isofar on a beautifully illustrated world map, and fight off enemies using a unique and highly customizable battle system!
There's a wide variety of enemies throughout Isofar!
When encountering enemies in the wild you'll be managing your characters using character dashboards and ability boards.
During each of the 4 campaigns you'll control 2 Isofarian Guards either solo, or with a friend.
Each dashboard has slots to equip a weapon, armor, an accessory, and one item. The character's health and action points (AP) are tracked with acrylic cubes. Various items from defeating enemies are stored in the satchel area on the dashboard. You'll use these items (loot) to craft powerful equipment for your characters as well.
You can even store additional equipment in their satchel area to swap between battles to adjust your strategy for a particular encounter! These items will be represented by 2x2 inch cards.
During combat your characters will each have a bag that stores multiple weighted chips that represent the character's stamina in battle. Each character has starting stats and equipment that determine how many chips are stored within the character's bag. There are 2 types of chips a character may build their bag with.
A sword chip is used to power a character's offensive abilities, and a shield chip is used to power a character's defensive abilities. Character abilities have various chip costs as well. Some may require multiple chips of the same type, while others may require a mix of both.
As your characters progress you will find and craft various weapons, armor and accessories that can bolster your chip count in your bags. You will also gain experience from defeating enemies and be able to unlock skills to add additional chips to your character's bag.
Characters can also upgrade their chips to more powerful versions. For example - black chips count as 1 sword or 1 shield while red chips count as 2 swords or 2 shields.
Enemies will even add negative effect chips to your character's bags that will hinder you in battle!
Most enemies in The Isofarian Guard use a 8 card 'AI Deck' that control their various actions in battle. Each enemy has their own AI deck and the deck is composed of 3 pairs of identical cards and 2 unique 'special ability' cards. Unique enemies and bosses will have slightly larger AI decks that can't be predicted as easily.
Timing is everything and counting the enemy's cards to predict their next action can be critical for victory!
For example - 'Focused Stance' allows Grigory to gain 1 extra action point (AP) on his next turn if you can correctly predict when an enemy will use one of its special ability AI cards!
Each enemy has a star rating that tells you how powerful that enemy is. As the narrative progresses the game will naturally unlock new and more powerful versions of enemies! The higher star rated enemies that are more powerful still use the same AI deck as less powerful versions of the same enemy.
However, because the more powerful enemies have more resources, they are able to perform more actions from their AI deck! This can lead to multiple cards being triggered on one turn and more damage against your characters!
Unlock the power of the Speaking Stones!
As your characters progress on their journey they will unlock unique abilities called 'Speaking Stone' abilities. These abilities are not powered by chips from your character's bags. Instead, they use Speaking Stones as resources which are represented by colored gems that are placed on the bottom of your character ability boards.
Speaking Stone abilities are very powerful, and can only be used once every other round.
Advance your characters on their own skill trees!
Each of the 8 Isofarian Guards has their own 'Character Skill Tree' - which are printed on 4 dual sided boards. Characters will gain 'Lux Essence' from defeating enemies in battle which is then used to unlock various nodes on the trees.
These unlocks can range from additional chips to permanent stat bonuses! The character's Speaking Stone abilities are also unlocked on the trees. While 4 speaking stone abilities (Roman numerals I-IV) are listed on each tree, there are even more to discover through training and side quests across Isofar!
Character skill trees have multiple paths of progression so you'll have to choose how you want your characters to advance! Sometimes you'll have to leave bonuses behind in favor for others. There are 3 specialties that each character can train in and each one has it's own play style and bonuses!
So, what's Forteller?
If you’re excited to start playing The Isofarian Guard, you’ll be even happier to hear about how the partnership between Sky Kingdom Games and Forteller will enhance your gaming experience. When you add Forteller to your Kickstarter purchase, you’ll find out what it’s like to bring the characters of The Isofarian Guard to life as you listen to high-quality narration on the Forteller platform.
How Forteller Improves the Gaming Experience
The main purpose of our interactive app is to let you listen to the story in the character’s own words instead of reading the lore yourself. When you download Forteller, you’ll be treated to narration by a carefully curated team of professional voice actors. We round out the narration with realistic sound effects and haunting music that sets the scene as you play.
How to Use Forteller
Using this app alone with The Isofarian Guard is easy. Just choose which scenario you want to hear come to life through our app by using the appropriate narration bundle. Any time the story branches, you’ll be prompted to choose a story path. From there, you’ll hear the effects of your choice on Forteller.
Our goal is to bridge the gap between digital and cardboard, providing a truly immersive, unforgettable experience as you play. And we’re excited to introduce our professionally narrated version of The Isofarian Guard!
App Features to Look Forward To
When you download Forteller and prepare to play The Isofarian Guard, you’ll get a quality narrative experience that will take you through the full story from start to finish. If you plan on playing with a friend, you can stream the audio from your phone and/or directly to your favorite Bluetooth device so you can experience it together.
You’ll get the following features on Forteller:
- The app saves previous sessions so you don’t lose your place during breaks
- The option to enable a spoiler-free experience as you browse the app
- Gameplay tracking that shows you the hours played per game
- Single sign-on through your Facebook or Google account - other methods currently in development
- The power to toggle between the full art display page and the listed scenario audio tracks for faster searches
Forteller is included in the 'The Isofarian Guard + Forteller' tier , and The Isofarian Guard: Stonebound Edition!
Below you can listen to the opening scenario of Grigory's campaign. These tracks are best experienced with a good set of headphones!
When we began creating the vast world of Telios we wanted to make it come alive with music. Isofar, one of the countries in Telios is in the far northeastern area of the continent. There's a vast snowy mountainous area in the north and sweeping plains in the south. The music and sound of the people there had to have a distinct sound and feel.
So, we reached out to composer Satta Rojanagatanyoo to compose an orchestral score that would accompany the immersive voice acting that players would experience with Forteller!
Take a listen to the main theme of The Isofarian Guard featuring vocalist Julie Elven who has sung on games like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Horizon Zero Dawn and more!
Check out The Meeple Street's preview of The Isofarian Guard here!
https://themeeplestreet.com/2019/09/05/review-of-the-isofarian-guard/
Click on the rulebook chip below to download and view the WIP rulebook for The Isofarian Guard!
Please be aware that this is a Work In Progress rulebook. It is NOT final. Rules may still be tweaked and changed, layout and graphics will be altered. This rulebook was written for previewing the game and taking the player through the opening scenes from campaign 1 which follows Grigory - the captain of The Isofarian Guard shortly following the opening prelude of the game.
CLICK ON THIS RULEBOOK CHIP TO DOWNLOAD THE WIP RULEBOOK!
Find out more about Sky Kingdom Games by clicking the images below:
This is our 3rd Kickstarter (The Stonebound Saga successfully funded Summer 2017, and Visions of Telios funded Summer 2018). Throughout the process of Kickstarting, manufacturing and fulfilling The Stonebound Saga and Visions of Telios our team has learned a great deal about the boardgaming industry and how each piece of the process works.
Here's some major areas we are prepared for and how we are addressing them.
1. Production/Artwork - The Isofarian Guard is our most ambitious project yet! Our team has set out to create something special with this game. We expect about a solid 8-10 months of development and refining after the Kickstarter is complete which will include art design, continued writing, voice narration, music composition and more. Not only will Sky Kingdom Games be working on the project, but the team from Forteller will also be part of that process along with dozens of voice actors around the world!
2. Manufacturing/Fulfillment - We are working with Gameland who is known for their very high component quality (Too Many Bones, Cloudspire). With over 100 + chips in The Isofarian Guard we knew this was a great fit for us.
We will be using industry leading/established fulfillment partners to deliver quickly and efficiently all over the world.
3. Our Vision - You can be assured that every possible precaution and care will be put into providing an incredible game in a timely matter and exactly as we promised. Our team has worked for years pouring our time and our own personal funds into crafting a game series that we are proud to share with the world.
Sky Kingdom Games can't thank YOU enough for your support. Without that support we could not create and publish The Isofarian Guard so THANK YOU!
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