Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles is live (A cruise to dinosaur island)
Update: Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles has launched on Kickstarter and the campaign will run for 21 days. You may choose to back either the standard or the deluxe edition. Deluxe comes with dinosaur minis, metal tokens, squishy berries, an artbook, and a magnetic box.
Our preview post below was published on July 3.
Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles is a 1-4 player dice drafting and dice placement game in which passengers on a cruise liner get stranded on an island inhabited by dinosaurs. It will launch on Kickstarter on July 7.
In Perseverance, you play as the leader of a faction. These factions were created after the cruise liner you were a passenger of somehow entered a time portal and crashed on the shore of an island. Now, in Episode 1, your goal is to build a settlement. The upper boundaries of the settlements have to be barricaded, to protect against possible assaults by dinosaurs. Over the course of the game, you will try to gain followers (they count as victory points). Having the most followers means you have the most influence in the community.
On each turn, you first take a Primary Action: you choose a die from the dice pool (if it is an opponent's colour, you lose 2 followers) and place it on the space of the action you want to take. If you wish to change the die face before you use it, you can spend one of your 'story tokens' (speech bubbles) to do so. Actions give you rations, tokens, dice modifications, or let you place dino traps and build barriers. Some action spaces show the dinosaurs that have to be placed on the board if you take that specific action.
After you take your Primary action, you will then take a Secondary action. You may place your leader on one of the 4 leader spaces on the board beneath the settlements (they stay there until the end of the game). Alternatively, you may place the leader in the defense area, to guard against the dinosaurs (they stay there until a dino attacks). Other Secondary options are to place soldiers in the defense area, or to place influence on one of the Officers: if you complete an Officer's influence track, you gain the associated bonus.
Once a dinosaur area at the top of the board is full, they attack. If you had placed any traps, you roll the trap die to see if you catch them. The owner of the trap gets the rewards. You also roll a die to check for successful barricades. Combat is resolved by opposing the dinos-soldiers columns. Raptors kill soldiers but not leaders. Leaders and heavy soldiers kill 2 dinos, soldiers kill one.
In the solo mode, designed by David Turczi, you are playing against The Dissenters: a rival faction that may prevent you from gaining followers. Even if you hate them, you still have to protect their settlement, to preserve your good reputation.
This Kickstarter campaign is for Episodes 1 and 2. These are standalone games with their own boards and rulebooks (but same components). You can also link them together and carry over your progress from one episode to the next.