Clay anniversary: Golem Arcana hits one year since Kickstarter funding, grows

Prague has never had it so good.

It was just over one year ago that Harebrained Schemes successfully reached and surpassed a $500,000 funding target for their ambitious, app-driven miniatures game Golem Arcana. While normally this wouldn’t be cause for any special alarm, Arcana stands out because A) it’s actually playable, now, with a box and everything, unlike far too many other ostensible KS successes, and B) the game is set for further scenario expansions which promise to deliver on the much-touted notion of a “living” Golem Arcana world.

Owen gave us a breakdown of how Arcana’s meant to work back when the Kickstarter went live. To recap: it’s an army-building game about big ol’ magic war machines (real figurines on a physical battle map) piloted by mages with special buffs (that exist only on the companion app), which aims to cut down on laborious in-game math-crunching and rules checks while still preserving what makes tabletop gaming special–pained expressions and an eventual attempt to flip the gaming table, basically.

In a recent blog post the team discuss rolling out new scenarios based on the outcomes of games played at GenCon. The goal, it seems, is to offer players choices during battles which can affect Arcana lore, not just the results of any one battle–though you’re right to be skeptical if hand-crafted scenarios based on a few specific matches isn’t quite as dynamic as the “Living World” pitch suggests. (Harebrained admits these scenarios are an “Alpha” for what one hopes is a greatly expanded system.) Still, even thinking about this sort of player-generated expansion–for a tabletop game–is tenable only because of the heavy-lifting that app is doing. For more on mixed-media board games, check out Neumann’s thoughts on the upcoming XCOM and Alchemists.

The Golem Arcana app is free on iOS and Android, naturally, with the base game running for $80 via the Harebrained Schemes store. Video after the break about 60/40 on “complicated story setup” vs. “how the game actually looks and plays”.