Blinding Cloud

With Blinding Cloud, you take a bit of damage, but you also end up stumbling around into another room in the dungeon.  For now, we’re planning on making it a bit of a Mr. Magoo kind of setup where you at least survive that small journey.  We’ll see if that changes!

Blissful Ignorance

Every now and again, an adventuring party will find a respite in the dungeon.  But just because they’re able to make a nice fire to warm their weary bones at, that doesn’t mean you’re safe from the things that lurk in the shadows.  You might find that though your health is being rejuvenated, your soul is not.

Fiery Illumination

Sometimes knowledge comes with a price.  In this case, you’re given the opportunity to see surrounding chambers, but you take a bit of damage for your efforts.  Of course, those that follow you gain the painful insight without the experience of learning firsthand.

Hydrafly Nest

Not much worse than the dungeon’s rats, these hydraflies are a nuisance regardless.  They slow your progress, and a weak adventurer can still perish to this swarm.

Mana Spark

You might be tempted to use spells and abilities as you progress through the dungeon, but it’s almost as if certain chambers are aware of the powers the adventurers have, and are willing to punish them.  Be on your guard in this chamber in particular!

This chamber’s art reminded us of Chain Lightning from the first set, so we asked Sergei to do the flashing outer body effect he did for that one.

Mind Control Dart

It’s never fun to see a friend lose their mind.  In this case, an adventurer could go nuts and chase after their party, doing damage along the way and leading them to new dangers.  This is definitely a chamber you either want to snatch up or avoid entirely!

Mysterious Merchant

What’re you buying?  Maybe the more apt question to ask is what you’re selling.  The merchant doesn’t partake in charity, so if you’re venturing to his secret alcove in the dungeon, you’re parting with either health or wealth!

Necromantic Storm

Here we have another chamber that gets meaner the longer you play.  Necromantic Storm punishes you for each of the adventurers you’ve lost along the way, so make sure you protect everyone!

Unholy Shadow

Unholy Shadow is a nice room.  No, really!  Remember Corruption?  Well, Unholy Shadow gives you the choice to lose one of your rooms.  Yeah.  You can either decide to lose one of your rooms, or one of your adventurers.  That’s nice.

Vicious Bear Trap

Finally, we have Vicious Bear Trap.  It’s a nasty, middle-of-the-road card that deals a decent amount of damage and slows down your progress.

We ended up asking Sergei to make the art a little meaner.  He was happy to oblige!

That wraps us up!  We’ve still got one more post to show off regarding this expansion, so keep your eyes peeled in three more weeks.  Thanks for joining us for all these posts!

The post Quantum Quest Expansion – Chamber Set Four appeared first on Tellest.

Hidden Catapult

The hidden dungeon is filled with traps, and some of them are a little bit funnier than the rest.  Hidden Catapult is a fun little trap that doesn’t do too much damage, but can still mess up your plans if you don’t have a proper party member available.

We did change this a little bit due to not wanting a lot of black space in our cards.

Mana Inferno

An inferno is a lot worse than a spark!  We feature one of our box-art characters in this chamber, where the more mana you have, the more damage you take.

Enraging Aura

Sometimes you just can’t help but get a little angry.  In this chamber, it hurts a lot more if you have an adventurer trained in combat—unless, that is, you can pay the price to own it.

Mana Stream

Since the expansion to Quantum Quest is almost like playing on hard mode, we wanted to make things harder for the players to move forward.  Mana Stream is like Mana Pool lite.

But that’s not all…

Receding Mana Pool

If you’re really unlucky, you’ll only happen upon the receding mana pool.  This chamber only helps out those who desperately need mana!

Potion Cache

Luckily, that’s not the only blessing you can happen upon.  Hidden potion caches let you restore a mana or a health when you happen upon them.

Spectral Swords

These weapons have a mind of their own, and they’ll do a number on your adventurers unless you have a worthy mage in your party to help even the odds.

Undead Pygmies

The cleric’s answer to the Spectral Swords room.  The Undead Pygmies need to be turned, otherwise they deal pretty massive damage to the party!

Unstable Ooze

This is one of my favorites.  I hope that we don’t have to change it too much, but it does rely on a token mechanic to work it properly.  Every time an adventurer dies in this room, the ooze grows stronger.  It doesn’t do a lot at the beginning, but if it has a lot of opportunity it can become the most powerful chamber in the dungeon!

Vengeful Titan

If you thought the dragon in the original set was deadly, take a look at this massive monster!  The Vengeful Titan packs a vicious punch, enough to kill just about any adventurer in just two hits.

Sergei ended up giving us a second version that we ended up liking a lot more.

Weakened Magic Portal

After struggling through all the dangers of these new chambers, you could probably use some help.  Unfortunately, the magic portals in this deadlier wing of the dungeon need a little more help to operate effectively, so you’ll be spending a couple more mana to summon help!

So, that’s it for this set of chambers, but we have one final set to show you in a few weeks.  Make sure to stop back!

The post Quantum Quest Expansion – Chamber Set Three appeared first on Tellest.

Abyssal Shade

The living dungeon has its fair share of the undead, so it’s nice to have a cleric around.  This shade not only deals more damage if one isn’t present, it also makes you lose your turn.  This card can be a game changer in the beginning of the game for sure!

We ended up using a new background for the card rather than the old dungeon.  Gotta refresh things a little bit here and there!

Arcane Imp

The Arcane Imp is the monstrous personification of kicking someone when they’re down.  If it isn’t bad enough that you’re taking damage, this room also saps a mana from you if one of your adventurers dies!

We did the same thing with this room as we did with Abyssal Shade, and switched up the background.

Brand of Silence

This one is a slightly complex card that may need to be changed a little bit by the time the game is production ready.  We like the idea of an adventurer who can’t capture chambers until certain parameters are met, but it’s going to be hard to determine how that’s represented.  Do we “bow” the card?  Token?  We’re still playing with this idea.

With this card, we decided to zoom out, because we don’t want to lose the already-established look of the adventurers if we have them in the cards.

Cursed Fountain

Since this set is all about putting together meaner chambers, it seemed like a good idea to have a chamber that paid homage to a beneficial card from the first set that completely turns it on its head.  Enter Cursed Fountain, which is just not a nice card to have.  The good news is that you can purchase this chamber, unlike the Healing Fountain from the first set!

Demon Mercenary

We’ve just arrived at my absolute favorite card from the entire set.  First of all, props to Sergei for designing such an awesome piece of art.  The Demon Mercenary is a total trip, and he definitely changes the pace of the game.  You can buy this chamber for a nasty cost, but the mercenary doesn’t work for free, and he certainly doesn’t have any loyalty.  Players can purchase this chamber even if it’s owned by another player!

A New Entrance

The entrance is one of the most important rooms to the dungeon, and we want to make sure that it always has a fresh look no matter what version of the game you’re playing.  Since this expansion kind of has a crystal cavern kind of feel, we had a snowy outside entrance.

Gelatinous Cube

Another favorite among our group, the Gelatinous Cube is an adventurer’s bane.  Nothing good can come from this monstrous blob, but at least you can decide if you want to take more damage in order to escape it.

We wanted it to look more jelly-like than icy, so we switched this one up a bit.

Gorgon’s Gaze

This is another awesome piece of artwork, with a slightly more complex hook.  It shouldn’t be too hard to remember that you need a high roll to save yourself from being petrified.  If you don’t escape the kaltauri, it deals damage to multiple adventurers, making your lost turn hurt extra bad.

Ironsilk Spider

This is another one that might have to change before the final game releases.  I like the idea of it though: the spider traps its victim, and if anyone else would happen to move past the chamber while someone is trapped, they end up being trapped as well!  It might be too complicated in the end, but we’ll certainly test it while we can.

Mirror Maze

Do you remember watching Scooby Doo where the gang would run from one side of a hallway to the other?  Or what about when they were walking by a mirror and it definitely wasn’t them on the other side?  This card is a nice little homage to those cartoon moments.  Mirror Maze is a powerful card in the start of the game, but as adventurers start to die off, it loses a little bit of its oomph and slows down.

Snare Trap

This is just a simple trap chamber, and it’s one that we’ve tweaked in order to make the end game a little more speedy.  In the first set, losing your turn at the end of the game was almost something you were hoping for, because it meant a moment of respite.  But Snare Trap only procs a loss of your turn if you have an almost-full party.  No more saving grace!

That wraps us up for our second set of chambers from this expansion set.  Keep your eyes open for our next set, as we have some more awesome cards coming up!

The post Quantum Quest Expansion – Chamber Set Two appeared first on Tellest.

A few weeks ago, we wrapped up the sprite artwork for the adventurers who are going to feature into the expansion for Quantum Quest.  The adventurers are a big part of the game, but I think it’s the new chambers that are really going to spice up the game, so I’m excited to show these off.  Below, you’ll see our first set of new chambers, and I’ll give you a little description of how they work.

Kin Maelar Portal

This room is going to be a nice tie-in to a book that’s going to be releasing around the same time the game is (give or take a few months).  The Kin Maelar are the villains in the upcoming book The Maelstrom (a sequel to The Fall).  They’re essentially storm demons, and with that comes a bit more damage.  They’re hard to tame, but if you can manage, they’ll do extra damage for you.

Phaseshift

Quantum Quest was first conceived when I was listening to a Monopoly advertisement while I was driving around, so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that there are some similarities.  The most prevalent, I think, is the entrance/go mechanic.  For this set, we decided to lean all in as a meta joke.  Phaseshift sends players back to the entrance, with a penalty incurred.  Depending on its placement in the dungeon, it can really stink to land there!

We made a small change to the art in the development process.  Our dwarf seemed a little too content with what was happening.

Frostwave

Frostwave is a high-cost chamber that the owner can really take advantage of.  They can determine whether they want to limit movement, or stop it altogether.  Their enemies take more damage if you just slow them down.  And when it’s haunted?  This room can make a huge mess of the other parties.

The Crusher

This expansion is all about more vicious cards, and The Crusher is one.  It targets the weakest party members, and can instant kill someone with two or less hit points.

There were a few things that we needed to change for the final artwork of this chamber, including a change in the skull, more signs of the trap having worked before, and for the character’s boot to be more opaque.

The Living Chamber

Quantum Quest is all about the Living Dungeon, so what better way to express that than with The Living Chamber?  The Living Chamber does damage to the healthiest adventurer, but it’s biggest gimmick is that every time someone lands on it, it switches spaces with the chamber in front of it.  In that way, the dungeon layout is always changing.

Time Crash

You ever get that feeling you’re going nowhere?  Time Crash makes sure that’s 100% true.  It sends you back to where you started your turn, and you take damage to boot!

Vampiric Essence

This one is the one that I could see changing the most from beta to full release.  It’s a little complex at the moment, requiring players to put tokens on it whenever a non-owner lands on it.  When the owner does land on it, they can discard those tokens to heal their adventurers.  It might just be an instant heal rather than a token effort.

Bonus: Under Construction

This isn’t a real card, but we did use it when we were putting together our Kickstarter!

That wraps us up for set one.  Swing back in a few weeks, and we’ll show off even more of our new chambers!

The post Quantum Quest Expansion – Chamber Set One appeared first on Tellest.

For now though, let’s finish up looking at these chambers!

Poison Dart Trap

This set is going to be heavy on the Indiana Jones references, but both times we ended up pulling our Indy (or Indy lookalike) from the set.  I obviously love Indiana Jones, but we’re not sure we’re popular enough yet to start doing the crazy pop culture references.  But I mean, if we hit north of $400,000 at Kickstarter, you can be sure we’re going to start going all out

After we pulled Indy from the piece, you could see just how deadly this long corridor is.  It takes a special kind of adventurer to avoid these traps, so hopefully if you go traipsing through the dungeon, you have an expert!

Poison Mist Trap

The Poison Dart Trap’s bigger, meaner, older brother, the Poison Mist Trap is one of our most powerful chambers.  It deals damage to everyone in the room, so you just need one dummy to make a mistake.  Luckily, if you have a necessary hero, they can mitigate some of that damage.

Rolling Boulder

Here’s our other Indy reference.  I loved that sequence in Raiders, and I thought it would be a cool idea to integrate into Quantum Quest.  And it does spruce up the game in some pretty cool ways.

Here you can see we’ve moved on from our Indy cosplayer, and put one of our other characters in his place.  Rolling Boulder not only deals damage to the party, but also displaces them from their spot in the dungeon.

Sacrificial Altar

This is one of those cards that can either be a boon or a curse.  When you enter the room with this altar, your adventurers will be compelled to sacrifice one among them, but it isn’t without reward. Another adventurer will be delivered to the party in their stead.

Shadow Door

This is supposed to be kind of a nod to the Fable series with their demon doors.  These doors can be a huge pain in the butt, especially if you don’t have a wily rogue in the party who can spot their inherent danger.  The shadow door whisks the player ahead through the dungeon, where they encounter even more dangers!

Sludge Beast’s Pit

How’s this for an RPG staple? Slimes are the go-to enemy for a lot of old adventure games, and we couldn’t open up our base set without including one of these guys in it.  These ones aren’t exactly a pushover though.  Coming into contact with one of them is sure to slow your progress.

Soul Sapper

Oof.  This chamber hits you while you’re down.  It’s one of our most powerful rooms, because if another player owns it, they get rewarded for it.

Spectral Hand

The opposite of the Shadow Door, the Spectral Hand pulls you back through the dungeon.  Luckily, this ghostly hand doesn’t damage you further when it drops you off.

Whirling Blades

Arguably one of our most damaging chambers, this room dumps you into a mess of pain.  But if that wasn’t enough, it forces you further through the dungeon as well, where you’re prone to incur even more damage!

The first version of the card looked a little too much like a 3D dungeon crawler, so we ended up making a 2D variation that felt a little more “Quantum Quest.”

Whirlwind

Here it is ladies and gentlemen, our final chamber.  A little bit like Whirling Blades, but not nearly as punishing, Whirlwind does a tiny bit of damage to a few characters before whisking them off, further into the dungeon.

Well, that’ll about do it for our awesome chambers.  We’ll be back in a couple of weeks to show off some more pieces of the game, and then before you know it, the Kickstarter will be here!

See you soon!

The post Quantum Quest – Final Chambers appeared first on Tellest.

We’ll get right to it:

Guardian of the Void

Our Guardian of the Void is supposed to be a pseudo reference to one of the characters in the short story Keeper of the Void, which sort of bookended the other stories in Tales of Tellest.  In that tale, a fellow named Vedas with cobalt skin and golden armor led the thief Rhys through the Void, which is a central place where time flows through.

Unfortunately, our description ended up making the game’s guardian look a little too much like the Night King from Game of Thrones.

We decided to make this guardian a different color, and we messed around with some of the colors a few times before we landed where we wanted to.

Because the guardians aren’t necessarily evil, we decided to go with a bit of white along with the copious amounts of red.  Above all else, they’re supposed to protect the stream of time.  With all those heroes coming from all over Tellest, and from different points of time, this fellow has a lot of work ahead of him.

Hand of Fate

Hand of Fate is one of our special cards.  It isn’t one that can be owned, and it has some game-changing effects.  It essentially removes one of the heroes from the living dungeon, and swaps them out with another one from Tellest’s vast timeline.  It can be incredibly helpful if you’re doing poorly, but if you have a tight, well-functioning group, losing one of you more important pieces can be a real pain!

Icy Aetherite

Tellest’s aetherites are a magic-based race that essentially make up the genies and a few lesser known people.  We may see these characters crop up as playable adventurers way down the line, but for now, there are a few who have been trapped in the living dungeon for far longer than they would have liked.  That kind of isolation and punishment can drive you mad, and this poor fellow has no problem letting out his frustration on the adventurers who want to control the dungeon in order to ensure their survival.

Ironbark Arborescent

This was another one of the chambers that we ended up changing a little bit.  The arborescents are Tellest’s treefolk, and it makes up things like treants, dryads, and so forth.  This particular tree person is a big, mean sentinel in the dungeon, suffering the same madness that our poor aetherite is.

We needed to make a few changes to this dendroid, however.  He has his face a bit lower than what I would have expected, and he’s got a little bit of a butt on him.  As it stands, too much of his head is in his torso, so we ended up asking Sergei for some changes.

He ended up touching up the arborescent nicely, and thinned him out as well.  The change ends up making him look a little peeved off, too, which just ended up helping us with the feeling we were trying to convey.

Libra’s Scales

Somewhat in line with that Hand of Fate chamber we showed you earlier, Libra’s Scales is kind of a lite version of that.  While you don’t switch out heroes here, you do harm one for the benefit of another. This can be a huge burden if you’re down to two heroes, and one only has a single health to his name.  On the other side, if you’ve got an adventurer who is replete with life force, he can lend a hand to a flagging ally.

That’s it for us today, but we’ll be back in about three weeks to show off our penultimate set of chambers.  Stay tuned!

The post Quantum Quest, Third Chambers Set appeared first on Tellest.

Check out some of the places you’ll find in the dungeon:

Antimagic Chamber

First up today, we have our antimagic chamber.  Adventurers can’t use any of their special abilities in this room, which is already a hit in the gut, but it also prevents you from getting a lucky roll and gaining extra mana.  And of course it also damages one member of your party.

This variation of the card is kind of cool because it has a promotional sprite in it.  We opted to take him out because we felt like this version of Kaos didn’t really fit with what we were trying to do.

Instead, we gave one of our other characters a chance at the spotlight.

Berras Ames is one of our gnome adventurers, and he typically has a shining lantern atop his implement.  Because of the antimagic chamber, though, that light has been snuffed out!

Blood Demon

Gross.  This blood demon is made of—and hungers for—that lovely crimson life force.  While most perils in the dungeon have an equal chance to deal damage to just about anyone, this denizen of the underworld takes its aim at the healthiest heroes.  They have the most blood to spare, after all.

Chain Lightning

This is one of my favorite dungeon chambers.  Every now and again, your adventurers have a chance to set off a spell, and this one in particular can be kind of rough.  It’s one of the more powerful rooms in the game, and when you own it, it can be a real game changer.

Chronomancer

This set is actually full of some of my favorites.  I really like the way Sergei put this fellow together.  Usually, when you’re trying to gain control of the dungeon, you’re moving forward.  The second you confront this guy though, he has you moving backward instead.

Corruption

This is one of the worst chambers to land in.  When you do, you instantly lose control of one of your other chambers.  The good news is that its too powerful to be controlled by any player.

I love the way this one looks, too.  It almost feels like if you look at that darkness in the center, it spreads.  It’s a really cool effect.

Death Knight’s Tomb

This guy holds one heck of a grudge, it seems.  Perhaps he’s a little upset that one of his cleric buddies didn’t do enough to keep him alive.  In any case, he takes his rage out on healers more than any other party member.  Good luck to whatever clerics come through this room!

Demon Portal

Here, we have a very similar room.  These demons know that the mages who venture into the dungeon have the power to send them back to whatever realm they came from, though, so they target the various arcanists that they find.  That’s incredibly dangerous too, since mages are known to be among the squishiest of all the adventurers.

Disintegration Ray

Another room that has a connection to one of the others.  Whereas the blood demon hammers away at the healthiest heroes, this spell trap weans away the health of the meekest adventurers.  This can really disappoint you if you’re down to one hit point and you’re trying to keep your character safe to score one more room.

The Entrance

Arguably the most important room in the game, this is where you start, and where your characters continue their journey.  Every time your heroes think that they’ve made it through the dungeon, they end up back at the start.  But it’s not all bad news.  The Entrance sort of acts like Monopoly’s Go.  It’s a safe place, and it gives players mana, the currency of the game.  Unfortunately, the only way for the adventurers to make their way home is to gain control of the dungeon, so in through those doors once more they must go.

Golem Foundry

This is a heavy hitter, for sure.  Golems are known for packing a punch, but the good news is that they don’t usually care unless a lot is going on at once.  If you’ve got a small party, you’ll make it through without catching the attention of one of these big brutes.  But if you have a larger force, you can be sure one of them is going to take a hefty bit of damage.  And if you’re playing with more than two players, and this room is haunted, it’s almost a guarantee that one of your adventurers is going to bite the dust.

Green Dragon’s Lair

It’s like the Golem Foundry, but worse.  This particular dragon doesn’t care how many people show up—he just wants some carnage.  He deals just as much damage as a golem, too.  This is definitely one of the more important chambers to gain control of as you play the game!

Well, that’s it for this set, but before the end of the month, we’ll be back with another set of chambers.  What dangers do you think you’ll see before we launch our Kickstarter?  Stay tuned!

The post Quantum Quest, Second Chambers Set appeared first on Tellest.

Healing Fountain

First up, we have one of the more beneficial rooms in our dungeon. If your adventurers happen upon a healing fountain, they’re in for some rest.  It’ll refresh their vigor, and give them a new chance at tackling the dangers of the dungeon.

You’ll also see that we have two different variations of the chamber. Since we have so many different races, we thought some might like the more sinister looking symbol.

Our artist gave us a slightly different version of this fountain as well, and we chose the one that looked a little cleaner.

Magic Portal

Part of the dangers of going through the living dungeon in Quantum Quest is that you run out of people you can depend on. Unfortunately, when you’re trying to take over a dungeon in order to survive, you need all the help you can get.  That’s where the magic portal comes into play.  If heroes manage to find this chamber, they can call on allies from distant lands across time and space.

Mana Pool

Mana is the primary resource in Quantum Quest.  When you’re running low, all kinds of bad things can happen.  Meanwhile, if you’ve an overabundance of the stuff, you can sway the dungeon to your favor, and even cast incredible spells.

Mana Storm

If a mana pool is beneficial, then a mana storm has got to be the opposite.  It’s what happens when you lean too heavily on magic all at once.  Not only do you lose hold over the arcane, but you also feel your mind overcome.  Not a pretty picture.

We chose to go with a slightly more askew version of the art for the final piece.  Plus it’s got some added rocks to add to the feel that things are really chaotic!

Pit Trap

One of the quintessential traps in every dungeon, the pit trap damages you and rubs some salt in the wound by making you have to climb your way out.  This could be a valuable waste of time, however, as even being stuck in a pit could be seen as a brief respite from the dungeons many other dangers.

Rat’s Den

Another popular fantasy game archetype, rats make up a good portion of opening enemies, letting you learn the ropes while you lay the smack down on enemies that can’t really hurt you all too badly.

That’s it for our first set of chambers, but be on the lookout in the weeks to come when we show off more of what makes our dungeon tick!

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