Hi Spacers!
We’re back with another Enormity update, straight from the deck of The Shepherd. This time, we’re navigating through the exploration mechanics, showcasing some incredible new miniatures, and sharing a special treat from a talented member of our community!
Let’s get right into it!
Exploring The Shepherd: Every Step, Every Door, Every Decision
Navigating The Shepherd isn’t just about moving through rooms – it's about mastering the intricacies of its ever changing landscape. Each Location map page you explore is part of a larger zone, every one of which has its own ecosystem of enemies, unique loot, and hidden dangers. You’ll experience these in a freeform fashion during a sandbox campaign, or in a more structured way through the story arcs. These introduce special ‘keys’ (think, codes, keycards, passages!) for use specifically in your current set of runs, to help you along the narrative path, like a compass that guides you through the twisted corridors of the ship. You’ll need that, as The Shepherd is a living labyrinth, where every Location map page, every Course Card, and every key contribute to the evolving story. Of course, even during a story campaign, you’ll have the chance to go off the beaten path and explore the restricted or secret parts of the ship.
The key system uses colored and tiered keys (the keys are a game term – these come in a variety of shapes and forms) to manage access to higher-level zones. Different keys open different paths, which essentially means that the same map can offer a brand new experience in each campaign. The dual-purpose doors add a layer of strategy – while most doors lead to story missions, those opened with a special boss key can become portals to instanced boss arenas, where players will face powerful enemies outside of their standard scenarios.
Oh, and before you ask, no, you won’t have to grind for these keys. ITU games are never about grind! Instead, their acquisition happens through the story and natural exploration of the ship. There will enough to meet your needs, but just barely, so you have to make meaningful decisions.
The Course Deck system has been expanded, and dissected, to facilitate this growing emergent part of the otherwise narrative-driven campaigns. The Course Deck still drives the narrative, presenting the players with a plethora of story-packed cards, filled with extraction runs, boss battles, andside stories. However, now, as players complete these Course missions, they earn Time Units, a valuable resource that will grant more opportunities to freely explore the magnitude of The Shepherd. Time Units are used, among other things, for triggering additional runs and boss battles, in parts unknown, as well as to advance through the ship or prepare for future encounters by utilizing additional options of your safehouse. Meanwhile, emergent side quests and Discovery events introduce a sense of urgency, with Urgency Tokens counting down to unique opportunities or looming threats that you need to tackle before the time runs out…
As you know, The Shepherd's map is a collection of interconnected zones, each with its own enemy ecosystem and loot deck. As players navigate locations of their story campaign, they encounter increasingly difficult challenges, with the map's structure reflecting both narrative progression and the growing danger within the ship. Of course, there is nothing – besides educated fear! – stopping you from venturing into higher level zones, for a chance at more powerful loot and a painful death, or lower level ones, which, through the loot reforging mechanic, continue to be relevant even as you move to new heights of power.
If it isn’t already apparent, we’re very proud of the sprawling zoned map! We also know that, in a board game, backtracking from one side of the ship to the other would become exhausting, busy work. We don’t want that; that’s why we have a fast travel system that allows to revisit unlocked Locations and optimize your routes during story runs and side quests. And it’s quite intuitive too – each unlocked extraction point becomes an insertion point for future runs, regardless of where you currently are.
Narratively, this represents an intra-ship tram system, one connected to your safehouse, which you steadily bring back online.
Linked campaigns?!
One last tidbit; we’ve heard your requests for multi-campaign progression, and I’m happy to say that, with a slight reshuffling of the zones, and introduction of a mechanic (or two), we’re on our way to facilitate it. I’m still not sure we’ll be able to squeeze it in with our aggressive production timeline, but we’re working on it. If it pans out, you’ll be able to chain the core game campaigns together. These campaigns will still have to follow a certain pattern – Dark Side of the Sun leads into Black Kompromat, this can continue into Three Laws of Heresy, and it will conclude with Assimilation.
Stay sharp, Spacers. The map is only as friendly as your next decision allows it to be.
Sculpting in progress
Our 3D artists are still at it, working non-stop to bring the Enormity miniatures to life. The process is far from simple – each model goes through multiple iterations, and a lot of back-and-forth allows us to nail every detail, no matter how small. We're talking about everything from the tiniest armor engraving to the exact tilt of a character’s head.
We know how much these miniatures mean to you and we want every piece to feel special. Whether it’s a Spacer or a creature straight out of your nightmares, our goal is to create something that feels truly alive on your tabletop.
Take a look at the latest batch of miniatures we’ve been working on. We’re pretty excited about how they’re shaping up, and we hope you are too!
Pledge Manager: On the Way!
As we wrote to you this update, we know many of you are eagerly waiting for the Pledge Manager, and while it's not quite ready yet, we’re getting closer. We're still in discussions with potential partners, to ensure the process is smooth, intuitive, and includes installment payment options. Our goal is to launch in March, but as always, you’ll get a heads-up before it goes live – both here and on our official Discord.
Rest assured, this delay won’t impact the game’s timeline – Marcin, Cash, and the entire team are hard at work building The Shepherd! Hang on tight; it’s coming soon!
A special treat from Kassie!
To wrap up this update, we’ve got something truly special. An incredibly talented painter, Kassiopeia Kimbrough, agreed to bring our demo miniatures to life with her amazing painting skills. You may know her from our Discord, where she’s very active in the miniature painting threads.
Kassie’s work is nothing short of breathtaking. She has a unique ability to transform a miniature into a piece of art, capturing every detail and adding a touch of magic. We’re beyond happy to share her painted miniatures with you – trust us, they look even better than we could have ever imagined!
If you want to see more of Kassie’s work (and we highly recommend it!), you can find her at Instagram: @KarmaKassie and BlueSky: @karmakassiopeia.bsky.social.
Take a look at her stunning work below - you won’t be disappointed!
That’s all for this update! We hope you enjoyed it - until next time, see you soon!
