On the 3rd Day of Xmas: Advent Calendars in 2024

Hi everyone,

Ronnie does like to set the studio a challenge… and making the first miniatures game in an Advent Calendar was certainly a challenge! Hopefully, you've finished assembling all your minis and your first game of BarRoom Brawl by now.

It’s been an idea for a few years, and something we’ve taken time to work out and get right. And not only did we have to work out what we wanted – we even had to explain to the factory exactly what an Advent calendar was! Pictures were not enough. We had to purchase samples and send them off to be investigated. And again many pictures and labels and instructions. Lots and lots of those…

The great news is that all that work has proved to be a resounding success. We looked at a game that the studio had written and prepared for a rainy day, and it turned out to be the perfect thing for a calendar. What better than to have a family game to play at Christmas! After all, who doesn’t want to squabble over drinks and plates of food and get into fights with a goblin bouncer? Of course you do!

For this first calendar experiment, we finished the models and sets here in-house at Mantic HQ, keeping our resin casting team very busy making 24,000 components. Next year, we’ll be releasing BarRoom Brawl again, but this time, the models will be pre-assembled plastic from the factory, so the product will come in complete.

That means of course that anyone with the hand-cast resin edition has something very special and collectible - the calendar that started it all! Wait...does that mean...

Yes it does! Given how popular BarRoom Brawl has been, we're not going to rest on our laurels. So the studio has written a new advent calendar game. And this time it’s a solo game*…IN SPAAAAACE.

You'll take on the role of Kyro, a Teraton mercenary, who is the last hope for outpost Bexa IX. An infestation of Veer-myn threatens to overwhelm the last survivors before they can be evacuated. If Kyro can seal the hatches from the maintenance tunnels, it will buy enough time for the civilians to escape!

It's a great premise, and we're working on some really fun gameplay mechanics for this seriously superb sci-fi scenario.

Now, what should we call a game set in deep space all about controlling Veer-myn pests...wait...we've got it!

We can't wait to share more on this later in the year, but we might not be done there....plans are also afoot for one more calendar. Can you guess what that might be?

Matt

*There’s an AI for the dirty rats, but a second player can take on their role to make it a 2-player game.