by Middara: Unintentional Malum – The Complete Trilogy is a massive fantasy co-op game that looks stunning!
Succubus Publishing just dropped a heavy payload on Kickstarter yesterday as they unleashed Middara: Unintentional Malum – The Complete Trilogy. This new tabletop project sits on a massive fantasy world spanning four novels worth of content.
This isn’t Succubus Publishing’s first game on the crowdfunding platform. Back in 2015, they had a project in the form of Middara, a 1-5 player cooperative storytelling miniature board game. It was backed by about 3,000 people and garnered $340,000 out of the pledged $35,000. This new Kickstarter is actually the reprint of Middara, only this time Succubus is kicking it up a notch by providing three storyline Acts all in one package.
Unintentional Malum carries over all the systems and mechanics of the first game. We still have no character classes or archetypes, a choose your own adventure type system (coined the Narrative System), and the setting is still in an alternate fantasy Earth.
For those only hearing about Middara for the first time, here’s a quick refresher. The game makes use of different abilities and items for players to create their very own unique character. Hence the reason why we don’t have character classes or archetypes. Being a story-driven choose your own adventure game, every decision and encounter affects the story outcome. This means, there are rarely any do-overs as the story continues even if your party makes a wrong turn or lose a fight.
For shorter sessions, there is a combat-driven mode (Crawl Mode), with a little less narrative and more action. We have a completely modular board and a unique dice-driven combat system. To add a little bit more flavor to gameplay, Succubus developed an Audio app. This also serves as a notifier for when players have to make a decision or face an encounter.
Succubus Publishing has outdone themselves in the sheer amount of available content as we have a vast number of add-ons to choose from. Starting with the Act II and III expansions all the way to adventure packs, bounty packs, update packs, micro-adventures, and resin kits. To top it all off, Succubus is promising more content down the road. The base pledge, which includes Act I, all free daily unlocks, and all free stretch goals, is priced at $115 (~Php 5,906). The most expensive pledge, which includes all of the available add-ons as well as Acts I through III, is priced at $500 (~Php 25,680).
The campaign ends in 29 days, delivery of the game is split into two waves — Wave 1 for the Act I and Wave 2 for the rest of the Acts and add-ons. Wave 1 is slated for a May 2020 delivery, while Wave 2 is a little later at Dec 2021. As of writing the project already has 7,418 backers and about $1.6M in pledges, which is just amazing for a day 1 launch. Check out the project here.
