1st September 2021
NOMAD MONTHLY MAILBAG - SEPTEMBER 2021
Hello everyone!
Another month of hard work behind the scenes here at Nomad, and another monthly mailbag where we answer all your burning questions! After the bumper first edition of the Mailbag last month (check it out here if you haven’t already), we’ve gotten a much more manageable number of questions this month.
If you’d like to be included in next month’s Monthly Mailbag, don’t forget to send an email over to questions@nomadgames.co.uk.
From артём семенец
Hi! I am from Russia and your game really sunk into my soul! My friend and I have been sitting for a couple of days now and are happy to study it. We really like the mechanics and the style of the game, which is what we were missing, because we ourselves come up with our own board game! So far, we are slowly but surely studying!
I would like to know if there will be new DLS? And will you update the game's interface? And will there be sophisticated bots?
And how do you like the idea of adding a larger boss, or rather a quest for everyone, collect some fragments and then defeat the boss who will be in the center, like a dragon or a GREAT WIZARD! How do you like that thought? Perhaps you already have DLS, so sorry for the unnecessary information earlier, I'm just playing without DLS.
Just thinking about making an Alternative PVE game! It would be great to get an answer from you! Sorry FOR MY ENGLISH, it's not perfect!
First of all, no need at all to apologise for imperfect English! We’re very glad to hear you’re enjoying our games and that you’re a fan of our work.
We’re hoping that we can continue making cool content for Talisman: Digital Edition, so stay tuned for more DLC announcements. With regards to the game interface, that’s something we’re always going to be working on - as we add new features and have the time to make the game look more ‘modern’ then we certainly will be improving it. The overhaul we did for the main menu for the game is a good example of this!
Our bots for Talisman are also similar, in that we’re always working to improve them and with every single update we roll out for the game, the bots have at least been improved in some way over their last iteration. These changes often aren’t massive, but if you compare the AI when we first made Talisman: Digital Edition to the AI we’re using today, it’s come a long way already.
Some of the Talisman expansions you can purchase actually feature endings like you’re describing! Defeating the Ice Queen in The Frostmarch or The Dragon King in The Dragon definitely changes up your traditional Talisman experience. The Sacred Pool also offers a range of different PVE endings, so make sure you check them out!
From Ivan Garcia
First I’d like to say that Talisman Origins and its expansions are amazing, It was sad to see that you said there’s little up-take on the expansions. I really believe this game can go viral and become a big thing, there’s a real need for games like these. I believe you can maybe work with the sub reddit of /r/talisman and be more interactive there. The community will help because this game is amazing.
On to my question, I’ve only reached the end of Flames of War campaign for now (but I know I’d roll right thru the whole game). This game is in real need for a co-op adventure! Hear me out: Choose your character (some will be locked), there’s the main board, dungeon, city and highlands. You and a friend start, 10 moves or so to start freely as regular then BAM! A scenario starts…Lets say, (I'm just trying to paint a picture here) The Goblin King invades the board! He appears as a character with really good stats and skills. His goal is to get the Crown of Command and you and friend’s goal is to stop him. He’ll send out goblin army face up cards around the board and even a goblin general, another character to try and kill you and your friend. If you land on your friends space, you can stick together and on his next roll you go with him, helping him fight monsters or so and then unstick on your next turn if choose to. sticking together combines your attack so you can defeat the boss.
You can probably see this playing out, if he gets the crown he wins, if you die, you lose and if you defeat him you unlock more characters to use in co op and more scenarios unlock. I’d love to see this but I know you’re very busy and I’ve said this very casually, I just hope to inspire.
Can we see something like this in the future? Or is Origins a straight solo adventure? Love the game, thanks for reading.
Thanks for the kind words first of all! We’re also understandably a bit sad to see that the expansions for Talisman: Origins didn’t set the world on fire. We do lurk and post on the Talisman subreddit - we could always do more though!
A co-op adventure would definitely be something we’d love to do - having some random elements to encourage multiple playthroughs and different enemies, bosses and encounters to surprise you each time would also be mighty cool. Turning Talisman into a multiplayer rogue-like would be quite the undertaking!
For now, we’d want to stick with Origins being a straight solo adventure - if we did release something that was a co-op focused adventure version of Talisman we’d have to properly sit down and think about how best to do it, with what we’ve learned from releasing Origins.
From Wilf
Disappointing to see from the first 'monthly mailbag' that there'll be no more Origins DLC, but if people aren't buying it, what can you do?
Have you considered allowing users to create their own extensions for either flavour of Talisman? There seems to be a lot of creativity around the physical board game, and it'd be nice to see some of that brought into the digital domain. I imagine a lot of the card data is abstracted from the code, but this would probably still be more work than you'd want to go to, especially with issues around IP management and monetization. Ah well, I can dream...
You’re definitely not the only one who’s sad about no more Talisman: Origins DLC! We’re glad you’ve all been understanding of exactly why we’ve not put out more Talisman: Origins DLC though.
And this is something we’ve considered and talked about internally, however you’re right in that it brings a whole heap of issues to the table. While we create Talisman: Digital Edition as a studio, Talisman as a board game isn’t ours to do with as we please. Unlike bigger studios that allow modding in their games (and officially support it) we have to be more aware of what we’re allowing players to do.
From Grain Mind
It is a pity that your games (except Talisman DE) do not have Russian localization! After all, the text and understanding of the essence of what is written is a very important condition for playing board games. Are you planning to translate your games into Russian? I would buy them all in this case!
So right now we’re not actively planning on translating any of our games into Russian, but I can give some insight into how exactly translation works here at Nomad!
So, we have information on game sales, player numbers and engagement across all of our games - and we can break that down by different geological areas. So when we’re looking at what languages to translate our games into, we take into account just how many people are playing in a different region already, how many of those players play our other games and much more. We also frequently talk to other developers who have translated similar games to ours, to get some insight into how those games performed.
We also factor in the amount of text for each game, as the company we use for translation charges based on the amount of text that needs to be translated. Something like Talisman: Digital Edition and all it’s expansions is much more expensive than say Cat Lady: The Card Game. So there’s a lot to consider and line-up when it comes to deciding what to translate, and a lot of those things change all the time. So anything is possible!
From Piotr Józefowicz
I have three questions about your games.
1. How many Titles and Avatars are available to unlock in Talisman: Digital Edition by completing Challenges?
2. How about releasing your other games on GOG (because Steam isn't my favourite), like Fury of Dracula or Fighting Fantasy? I'm also considering purchasing Android versions.
3. Speaking of Fighting Fantasy, why the first game (Legends) appears to be compatible only with my older Galaxy Note Pro 12.2, but not with my newer Galaxy Tab S7+? That sounds weird to me. Only the second game (Deathtrap Dungeon Trilogy) is compatible with both devices.
According to the Talisman team, in terms of titles and avatars that can be unlocked, there's currently 20 Avatars and 97 Titles. We’re planning on adding even more in the future though!
After releasing Talisman: Digital Edition on GOG we’ve been swept up in other things, so we haven’t had time to properly see how it’d be to bring even more games to the service - we can most definitely look into it though!
According to our tech wizard Mat - “There was an issue with the first Fighting Fantasy game that meant new devices with very high screen resolutions would not be automatically supported. We should release an update to fix that!”
From Abbie
How do you feel about having your offices based in a place like Lymm? I know a lot of studios work in places like London so it's weird to see a studio out in the country.
It’s definitely a different location to what most games studios find themselves in, and it has it’s perks and downsides! After all, who wouldn’t want to work somewhere that looks as lovely as Lymm does?
However, being out in the British countryside means that whenever we want to meet with other companies or games studios, either we have to make a trek or they do. Also, getting into work was previously difficult for some people in our office (much less so now that we’re more flexible with working from home). There is also one Sainsbury’s in the village centre and a few places to takeout food, so if you don’t bring in a lunch with you, your options are fairly limited - not like living in a big city such as London, where there seems to be a food market around every corner!
According to Mat (one of our directors): “Lymm is a lovely sleepy backwater where nothing much happens!” which sounds awfully like something they should put on a sign.
And that’s the end of this edition of the Nomad monthly mailbag! Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, and don’t forget to send your questions to questions@nomadgames.co.uk if you want us to answer your burning questions next month!