Sentinels of the Multiverse: The Video Game coming to Steam

http://handelabra.com/blog/2014/12/15/just-in-time-for-christmas

A week, y'all. I can't wait.

You non-tablet people, I'm very happy for you. :)

Don't know how Steam works. Do I have to have an Internet connection to play the game? Like, could I play the game via Steam while on a plane?

I'm not honestly sure. I've also tweeted the question of whether a single purchase will work for multi-OS households like mine. Will respond if I get an answer.

My brother and I share a Steam account.  My experience has been that both of us can't be logged in at the same time, and you need to log in to start a game, but once you're playing a game that's entirely off line, you can get logged off without a problem.  I don't play very much, though, so my knowledge pool is pretty small.

Most games, unless they have an online requirement, can be played offline. In fact, if you don't have a connection, you can log in in offline mode, and access any games you have already installed that don't require you to be online and play them

A Steam account can be logged into by one machine at a time, though it is easy enough to log into an account on one computer, start a game, log out of Steam and log in on another computer.

If you opt into the beta, you can do things like Family Share and streaming, but it's not necessary (and your Steam client updates pretty much every day with more bug fixes.).

If the game has a purely offline mode (like it is now), there would be no requirement for you to be online, except for the original installation.

A single purchase on Steam will work on both Windows and OS X. We're not doing anything special, so it will work like most other games on Steam.

What will be the system specs of the PC game?

Huzzah!

And yet boo!

The only "problem" I have with this release is that steam pricing hates countries other than the US and $1=£1, this is going to be expensive... (when factoring in all the expansions too)

Really, cause I have friends in the US who report that most pricing on Steam is roughly equal after the exchange rate.

Can those who already got a SST promo get a second one by being one of the first 1,000?

Ooh, there's gonna be a PC version? I may have to consider getting it. I just got a twenty quid Steam voucher off my dad for my birthday yesterday so maybe I can use that (or some of it)...any idea how much the game is gonna cost (in UK currency if possible ;))?

So far it's been $10, which (according to Google) is #6.36 (My keyboard doesn't have the pound sign, so I used the other pound sign).

Is this based off of the app price, or have they announced it somewhere? Not that I expect it to be much different, just wondering.

In the Uk app store it's £7.49, I can't see it being much higher than that, and certainly not more than £15.

Hmm, doesn't sound too bad. I might keep an eye on it once it shows up on Steam.

Yes. However, you may want to personally consider whether having 2 cards is worth preventing another fan from getting one.

When mine arrives in the mail (from the tablet promo promo), I will have two - but I will donate the excess to someone less fortunate than me.

<This software needs a like function>

I approve of that Silverleaf =)

She never states if 2 is excess or 3.

I don't plan on keeping both. I bought two Kvothe, too, in case someone wants one who doesn't have one. Lets just say I'm paying it forward.

We should totally organise a promo donation event of some kind.

Alright, pissing contest time.

I have already given away a copy of SS Tachyon, and the Dark Watch promo pack, someone top that. (Not a designer!)

I'm 99% certain that more than one copy of Young Legacy has been given away by some people here...

Come back when it’s 100%.

It's 100%

Pics or it didn't happen.

Can we have a marketplace section where we can trade/give away promos/accessories and fan-made art or items?

Working night shift on the 22nd, do you know at what time the download will be? If i can’t manage to get m’y handset on SST id be grateful if you guys wish to share the fun.

Well … I gave away two copies of Young Legacy.

I don't suppose there are any duplicates still out there? :)

Dunno. Christopher is cagey about how many he has left.

The tragedy is how many were probably thrown away. They were handed out at GenCon 2011 when SotM was released. I think they were given to anyone who playtested the game. I imagine that quite a few people playtested the game, weren't particularly enthralled, were given a card, and later tossed it.

That's genuinely sad...

What bothers me is how inflated they've become on the secondary market. The money some are willing to pay for them could go toward the next expansion rather than someone else's pocket.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sentinels-of-the-Multiverse-Americas-Newest-Legacy-Rare-Promo-Card-/291306199656?pt=Games_US&hash=item43d333da68

..I mean, come on.

Not sure on the exact time but we're looking to have all the ducks in a row and announced on pricing, timing, etc pretty soon.

And look at that the Steam game page is up, so you can follow/wishlist/etc!

We'll be announcing the rest of the details tomorrow so stay tuned =)

What do we do if we are already off key?

Download an app to make your phone play A440.

I love how harmonious things have been on this forum lately. I'm glad everyone has been so in tune with each other lately.

• MINIMUM:
  • OS:  Windows XP 
  • Processor:  SSE2 instruction set support 
  • Memory:  2 GB RAM 
  • Graphics:  DX9 (shader model 2.0) capabilities 
  • DirectX:  Version 9.0 
  • Hard Drive:  2 GB available space

[From the Steam Client]

I notice the game is only for single player/local co-op. Will it ever be possible to play with other people online? It'd be really cool to be able to play Sentinels without needing to wait for a weekend where my partner can come to my house for long enough that it's worth playing ;).

Multiplayer is coming! Just not yet.

Online multiplayer is one of the first things they plan to add, or at least very high on the priority list.

Until then you can play online using skype screensharing or any similar system.

Hmm, good point. Another good thing about it being on Steam is the possibility of being able to add other forum members to my Steam friends list so I can see when they're online and maybe play with them :).

Will also be nice when other decks are added - it looks like it's just the Core Set for now. But presumably the others are on the way. I hope you can move your cards around (at least, the ones that don't have a set trigger time) because the Adept will be a total pain otherwise.

They plan to announce something expansion related in january.

Someone should probably set up a steam nick thread or something for all this.

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/steam-nickname-thread-6337

Done!

For those who missed it they just announce the price and launch time here.

Too lazy to click, it launches at 9am eastern for $14.99 (price varies by region).  Hopefully we can get more information about international pricing soon.

EDIT: Did some research with some help from US friends, UK folks are looking around the £10.99 mark for Sentinels.

I realize this isn't a top priority right now, but are there plans on improving the soundtrack a bit? It would be really awesome to include character-specific themes. For example: selecting Bunker would result in a heavy metal theme, Legacy has a Superman-esque anthem, and Visionary has a Sci-Fi tone to her theme (Twilight Zone/Dr. Who). Just a thought.

As much as I like the suggestion there are a few issues with this idea.

First is the fact that they have to design another 50+ soundtracks to do this and make each distinctly unique for each character and environment, then you have copyright and trademark issues to take into account, from your post alone any superman-esque theme runs the risk of sounding close enough to any one of the hundreds of Superman themes to count as an infringement.

Second is the question of where to play these tracks, during each players turn?  What about poor Legacy, in comparision to Tachyon most of Legacy's turns are over too quickly for the theme to be heard.  And when we get online multiplayer, what do we do about someone who purposely draws out their turns because they like the theme.  And picking a random one for the entire match can result in people dropping out because they dislike the theme chosen.

Right now with the theme being chosen by the Environment we're in a sweet spot of design and game cohesion.  For the design perspective it means that they only need to make 2 themes per expansion, for the game cohesion it means that you know what the music will be going into the match, and it helps the environment (especially ones like The Block, Silver Gulch and MDP where they spend most of the game either fighting each other or doing nothing) have a greater impact on the game.

Fair enough, but do the environment themes feel dynamic enough? Perhaps in future expansions they will turn it up a notch. I think Mars Base is decent, probably one of my favorites. Even the main theme seems a tad generic and sounds like a stock theme. I fully understand budget decisions, and prioritizing what needs to be polished. But this IS more than just a card game, and it should hold its weight among the other games in the Steam library. It DID get greenlit, which alone is enough to prove that it has a following. Suffice to say, you and I would probably buy it and enjoy it regardless. But I think when teaching someone else Sentinels from the video game, it's an entirely new perspective.

The main theme is great. Like, Saturday morning great.

I don't think I'd have the music turned on for a game like this - I'd rather concentrate on the actual game. It's not like we have music on when we're actually playing at tabletop, after all ;).

How did you find out the price for it? It's not showing for me when I look it up on Steam, just a countdown for when the game unlocks (no pre-order option or anything). I got a £20 Steam voucher for my birthday so maybe I'll make use of that. I don't really buy stuff on Steam very often (or games in general, really) and I have a bit of a backlog of games to get through as it is (not helped by the fact that I keep replaying games I've already played) ;).

The price is listed here.

http://handelabra.com/blog/2014/12/18/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-steam-release

Ah cool, missed that if it was already linked elsewhere :).

I got the US price from the links me and Ronway provided, after that it was a simple case of getting some US friends to tell me what other games cost $14.99 and the compare with the UK store.

Most games that cost $14.99 in the US Steam store cost 10.99 over here in the UK Steam store.

All of the music in the game is original and made by our in-house composer, there is nothing stock at all. And frankly, we love it =)

Each new environment will have its own theme, and we're working on some more music ideas too.

How about a small audio file for each cameo that plays when the card is played.

That's cool. I really don't mind it too much (not my personal favorite, but that's just me). I was more or less relaying the crititicsms I've heard from my friends who were skeptical about getting it. They love the game itself, but I was told it look very indie-like.

Tying music to the environment is aweesome.

The purely aesthetic thing I would like to change is to have each deck have one card that changed the image representing it.

Like Hud Goggles would cause Tachyon to put her goggles on.

Volcano entering play would cause the Volcano to look like it was erupting.

Fire in the Biosphere would cause WMB to look on fire, or have smoke.

Megalopolis Targetting Innocents would show damage and blasts hitting the city.

Stuff like that.

Not that the game needs it, and you wouldn't want more than one card per deck, but it could be fun.

Well it should, since we're a small indie studio. So… thanks? =)

As we were planning and building the game we were thinking of adding flourishes like that. That's part of why you see the environment backgrounds and character portraits as they are. Those extra bits haven't made it in yet, but you never know what might happen later!

Of course. No offense intended

Another idea I had was maybe having a "test" or "practice/training" mode, where you could stack the deck how you wanted, and being able to play out any scenario you saw fit (provided you could actually legally pull it off; for example, you couldn't play two limited cards of the same name). The reason why I say this is because this app has been a fantastic tool for stress-testing different ruling scenarios, like redirection mechanics and modifiers in a recent thread. Being able to use those cards right away uninterrupted is a good way to instantly find out what happens. It's also a good way to learn other card interactions, learning a character's deck, and other things.

Or have a "dummy villian" with no powers and infinite HP. Like a cardboard cutout of a crudely drawn Baron Blade. That would be neat. Of course, this is another one of those things where it really isn't needed, but would be a good addition. Thoughts?

That's probably what that robot-looking version of Blade is on Inspiring Supertonic - Unity beat you to it and has already created practice dummies for people :D.

At some point we would like to add a feature like that. As usual though, it's up against more important things, so it'll have to wait.

Completely understandable. Glad to know it's being considered :)

I wonder if they're planning to include the new challenges in the video game?

I played the game at PAX, had two of my non-SotM friends play the game, then mailed the two extras to Brits who couldn't otherwise get them.

As my little laptop will not be able to handle SotM, would anyone be up for trading a Dark Watch promo-pack for a Super Scientific Tachyon promo with a UK resident?

GAH!

33 hours and 40 minutes left!

I can't stand it!

I just hope I get back home in time from work to get SST, but that<s icing on the cake just being able to play SotM more often will be awesome.

BTW, funny story about that. I'd given a copy of Young Legacy to my brother-in-law, but forgot that I'd done so, so ended up giving him a second copy. Later, I wanted to give my nephew a copy of every promo that existed at the time (summer 2013, I think there were 14 then), and my brother-in-law graciously mailed one of the Young Legacy copies back to me.

I think I will get the game, but I'm gonna wait about a day or so (it doesn't come on sale till about 3pm here tomorrow anyway, timezones :P) so that hopefully a thousand people will get the game before me since I don't need a copy of the new Tachyon any more and even if I did, urgh shipping charges ;).

If it is like the tablet version, you don't get it automatically, you need to register for it once you buy the game. In other words, DON'T WAIT!

And there's no charge for the card or for shipping it.

Ah okay, I didn't want to accidentally get something that I've already got and which someone else could've got, is all ;). I'll probably play this more once online multiplayer is possible, though. We'll be able to have players take multiple heroes if they want, right?

Yep!

Cool...I thought that'd be a thing, given that this is tabletop-Sentinels-but-on-a-computer but I thought I'd check, seeing how all the games I play (except for the ones in London) only have a total of two players ;).

Well multiplayer would make it really easy for you to play with more than two players…

Soooooooo it turns out that we're not allowed to release the game on Steam until 9 AM Pacific time. So that's when it will be available - i.e. noon Eastern. Sorry for the mixup.

No! That means it won't release until 11 am Central time instead of 8 am central! So much for waking up and waiting an hour to buy it...

Yeah, we just found out minutes ago. Surprise surprise!

And people should note " To enter to get your free card, you’ll need to buy and play the game on launch day"

So you have to Purchase

Download

and play the game to get the card.

Well, you can keep the same plan by waking up at 10:00.

But then I will miss out on my 7:18 ritual of checking the forums to see if anything has been posted while I was sleeping.

You sleep?

Patience, Greywind, patience. The Ronway creature still has another hour and 18 minutes to rest.

Ahh that's why I got a bit confused when I checked the Steam page a minute ago, then - previously I'd worked out that the game should be available at about 3pm but it's just gone midday and it says there's about five hours to go, not three. This might explain it ;).

Yep. It's our first time at this Steam rodeo =)

It's kind of annoying how Steam games say they'll be out on such-and-such a date but actually they don't become available till about 6pm or something in my timezone. It'd be nice if they just came ouat at 9am (or whatever) in all the timezones, to save those of us further east from having to wait even longer ;).

It's available now, go get it!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/337150

Already did! Now waiting for the download bar to finish.

watches green bar while impatiently clicking fingers on desk

Have to wait until I'm home from work to install and play.../sadface

And now SS Tachyon will be mine.

Mine is installing now, should be done in a minute or two :).

Mine is downloaded and installed, but the SST redemption form appears to have frozen up after I hit 'submit.'

Yeah!!!

Screenshot 2014-12-22 11.29.37.png766×431 339 KB

Very pleased with the Steam version.

Looking forward when I have some more time this evening to getting this on my laptop as well and finding out if I can play it w/out being connected to the Internet.

I decided to forego getting another copy of SST.

Just played my first game - just did one I knew should be fairly quick and easy, so it was Legacy, Ra, and Wraith versus Baron Blade in Insula Primalis (volcano came out in the second round, right after Ra had played Flesh of th Sun God so that kind of helped ;)). I have some feedback :).

~ Creating a desktop shortcut doesn't seem to work - it does create a shortcut (which is an image of a globe, which seemed a bit odd to me as I'd've thought it'd be a picture of Blade's face or an SC logo or something) but then I just get an error when I try to use it, saying the shortcut properties are wrong or something. I had to run the game by opening my Steam window and accessing it from within my library.

~ The way the cards flash to show which ones you can play I found kind of irritating as I was trying to look at the cards and the constant glowy thing was distracting.

~ There seems no way to change the order in which the cards are laid out (either in-hand or in play) - I like to switch around my cards to have all the ongoings together, for example. Also, I like to stack multiple copies of the same card on top of each other in order to save space (so in this game I had three copies of Stun Bolt in-hand taking up three cards' worth of space when they could easily just be in a pile with the top of the lower cards sticking out so you can see how many you have). It makes it feel more restricted and less like a proper "virtual tabletop".

~ It would be nice if you could make the play areas resizeable or something, to save having to scroll back and forth along your hand when deciding what to play. I can see that being a pain if you're playing a hero who ends up with a big hand or a lot of stuff in play (someone like the Adept or Omni-10, even if many of the latter's cards go off automatically).

~ It felt like there was a lot of unnecessary mouse movement, having to go halfway across the screen to confirm various card activities and stuff. But maybe there are hotkeys or something - I haven't looked into that.

I forgot to check whether you can look at other heroes' hands/play areas when trying to decide what to play on your current hero. I'll try and remember to do that next time ;). But all in all, it wasn't bad and I was able to mostly follow what was going on (though I failed to spot whether Stealth was actually soaking damage since I didn't notice it in the damage report message...maybe I didn't read it before it disappeared though). Also, these are just the things that stood out to me the most after one short game, so don't think that I only have grumpy, moany things to say ;). I'm just used to tabletop, that's all, and it felt weird not keeping track of all the things that were going on (damage buffs, etc) because the computer was doing that for me.

SST will be mine and I<m kind of weirded out by the fact that the randomizer doesn'T ask how many heroes, well at the same time it<s fine when I<m alone but would be annoying on a hotseat game. Can't wait for the multiplayer online option as that will be great.

PM me your email address and I'll take a look if your entry went in. Feel free to try again too.

What version of Windows are you on? We'll take a look into this.

so played my first game on steam

... sigh ... randomed it. Dawn, started out with Tears, Winter, and Assault and by turn 2 had 2  Return from the Deads in play, and the next citizen to finally come out was Anvil. No cards, no way to get any ongoings destroyed, and when it ended... with a Devesttaing Aura.... ive never played so bad a 'haha, youre screwed' game in my life! xD

Okay, much weirdness - I created another desktop shortcut so I could try loading it and get exactly what the error message was so that I could copy it here...only to find the the shortcut was an image of Blade's face this time and that it did run the game. So it's working now, even though the only thing that's changed between now and then was that the first time around, I hadn't run the game yet (but no other Steam game has ever done this). Weird!

It's Windows 7, though, if you still want to know ;).

And wow Lynkfox...that's...wow...certainly ranks up there in terms of the "horrible games versus Dawn" thing, doesn't it! ;)

I'd chalk it up to a Steam bug then. Good to hear it's working now!

Could have been worse. What if you got that after shuffling all the decks and putting out a bunch of tokens.

I would have played again :P

I beat Voss in the Insula Primalis with the Freedom Five.  I got Super Scientific Tachyon on the last round!  I wasn't even trying to unlock anything!  Hooray!

Oh and I saved the world from an alien invasion.  That was good too, I guess.

I got it. After I shut down and restarted Steam the second time iut went right through.

Is there a way to view a game log? I had an odd card interaction that I wanted to look back at but couldn't find a way to do so.

Just played  a couple more games, with randomised villain and environment each time. First I had Omnitron in Atlantis, which was going okay till the Pillars of Hercules came out and played an EPE which immediately went off and approximately halved everyone's health, then I think Sedative Flechettes or something came out, and basically we didn't last long after that. Had a rematch and won, though :). Then we took on Voss on Mars and I tried using the Visionary (and the Wraith and Tempest, the former just because I felt like it, the latter because Nemesis) to see if I could get a combo I'd tried for once before at tabletop...and holy crap I actually got it - Wrest and Twist on a Psy-Weaver, then into TK Cocoon for the rest of the game, the Psy-Weaver then took out most minions (and those it missed Tempest took care of). An unexpected development was getting Tempest to play his Sub-Wave Inducer and selecting Psychic damage every time so that I could happily AE everything without accidentally taking out my pet minion. He survived until the end of the game which occurred when the Wraith threw all her stuff at Voss, burying him beneath a mound of throwing knives, stun bolts, and a mega computer and stuff ;).

I accidentally pressed the redeem button twice and opened two windows but only submitted one of them. I hope that's not a problem.

Not yet, but we are planning to add that feature in an update.

No worries!

Be happy!

have they anoused if any other set's are comeing?

it fun but it's missing some of my faverit heors.

I was playing with my friend over Skype in her second ever game, Bunker, Wraith, Tachyon and Visionary against Omnitron in Wagner Mars Base.

Omnitron's first turn came out with Electro-Pulse Explosive followed by, another Electro-Pulse explosive.

On Omnitron's second turn he incapacitated all 4 heroes with a Sedative Flechettes.

They say they'll have news on the expansions front in January.

Find out about SotM game a few days ago.

Wonder about how the hell I missed this.

Find on Steam.

Wait for it to come out.

Wait more for it.

Wait more.

Buy game, and decide to save on my data consumption by waiting to bring my comp to a buddy's house to download game.

Check forum at around 11:50.

Find out promo is avaliable if you play on day of release.

*Sound of head smashing against desk over and over and over.*

Edit: I somehow was still able to redeem my promo? Is 'day of release' more '24 hours after release', or is this 'midnight on the west coast' rules?

Unlocked both SS Tachyon and G.I. Bunker today.

First 1000 people to sign up for it get the promo, even if it takes a day or two.

Good lord.  This may have been the worse fight I've ever had against Citizen Dawn.

At least I got Mad Bomber Blade out of it but still, pain.  So much pain.

Unlocked all the hero promos except Legacy (wasnt fighting on Mars) in the same fight against Blade.  The highlight was probably Tacky nuking her own Synaptic Interruption with a Blinding Speed to get the 5th Burst in the trash

It appears that all the Super Scientific Tachyon promos have been claimed.

Not sure what happened here - did you get the form filled out in time? If not shoot me a PM.

Glad you added in “a PM”.

Hmm, what's this about unlocking promos? I noticed some heroes had a "Variants" label (though it was only a few of the heroes, not all the ones that have a promo in the physical game) but it had a padlock on it, and I took that to mean they were gonna be released at a later date or something. Whre in the game does it say about unlocking them? I missed that :O.

Those padlocks indicate unlockable promos! Somewhere there’s a thread containing all you need to know about unlocking them, should you choose to do so.

Ah okay, I might have a look for that then. Will the other promos be available at some point? I can't remember which ones were missing...I think Ra's was, not that I've ever really played Horus Ra (I think I played him once), but still... ;)

Spoilers.

The other promos will probably come alone when thematically appropriate. Horus Ra and Redeemer Fanatic probably require The Ennead and Apostate respectively.

Got my copy as an early Christmas present (I got money from family, so it counts, right?)

Didn't go to redeem the SST card, since I have one for being part of the alpha. Hope it went to someone who enjoyed it!

ill speculate that more specifically Redeemer requires Apostate to incapacitate Fanatic, a la the Young Legacy unlock.

If that's the case then the same should be true for the Horus of Two Horizons Ra as he only turned up like that after attempting to take down The Ennead solo (To say they curbstomped him is the understatement of the decade, IIRC the Ennead along with all the other heroes believed Ra was dead until he showed up again)

EDIT: Ooh, more promo ideas.

The Eternal Haka - Have Haka draw from the effect of the Ancient Library in the Final Wasteland.

Greatest Legacy and GI Bunker probably require a game played in the Time Cataclysm.

The Freedom Six heros probably need to fight against Iron Legacy (although there are six of them, so I'm not sure how that would work), and the Prime Wardens probably need to beat up Akash'bhuta.

GI Bunker is already able to be unlocked.

…Oh.

This is what I get for not actually having a copy.

I declare time travel shenanigans!

If they release the mini expansions alongside Eternal Haka.

Well so far the promos released, three out of the four don't have a major story arc as to why they're around, Rook City Wraith, despite the name, is just Wraith in her day job away from the Freedom Five, Super Scientific Tachyon is the same and G.I. Bunker is the WWII version of Bunker.  As a result these are unlocked through just playing the hero, abet unnaturally to some experienced players.

Young Legacy on the other hand is directly tied into the storyline, she went to Mars with her father and picked up the mantle full time after Baron Blade killed Paul Parsons (at least in one timeline before Shattered Timelines screwed everything).

Onto the other promos, it's reasonable to assume that team promos (Freedom Six, Dark Watch, Prime Wardens) will be unlocked together, other promos are tied to significant story events (Redeemer Fanatic, Ra Horus of Two Horizons)

Now my reasoning is that Eternal Haka is Haka from The Final Wasteland, it's a minor plot point that Haka has survived beyond any other human ever to live, hell, half the flavor text on the cards from The Final Wasteland is Haka describing the Cryptids.

Now I'll admit it would suck if there was a promo tied to a single mini-expansion, but still, it's worth considering even as an alternate method to unlock him.

Any of the authors of the great strategy guides out there might want to post them up in the Steam community for SotM. It would be a great help for new players! Here's the link: http://steamcommunity.com/app/337150/guides/