ichthyoid

At long last, the beta for Of Duchies and Polities is being released today! I do apologize for the delay, as this was supposed to be done last week. The biggest hurdle was creating, prototyping, testing, and then retesting the Population Tokens to make sure everything was doable.

Sauron, on a Rubik's cube, overlooking the mess of prototypes

But it's finally done, and with it being done, the beta is ready to be released. Here are the instructions for those who want to participate in testing out Of Duchies and Polities before I officially release it into the wild!

A Few Notes

A couple notes about this beta before you begin:

In the current beta stage (version 0.1), I still haven't implemented Contracts, which I talked about in the previous two development blogs. This is intentional, as the game functions completely fine without it, and I still need to work out the kinks and bolts about it before I wanted it tested.

Beta testers will need their own dice. While almost every other asset for the game will be printable, physical dice is still needed to keep track of most things, including Army upgrades, Favor points per territory, Bribery Counters, etc. Dice are also referenced and used to determine certain things, such as battle outcomes. The need to roll dice can be mitigated by simply using apps which simulate different dice rolls. I recommend getting one that can simulate both D6 and D20 dice.

The instructions, as linked below, are currently subscriber only. If you are viewing on an iOS or Android device, I suggest using the Puma Browser, which will allow Coil subscribers to be able to view any Coil subscriber-only posts. Otherwise, on a normal PC, any browser which can install the Coil extension will do.

If you don't feel like keeping this single page open to read about printing, instructions to print will also be located in each zip file (which is what testers will be downloading). These instructions are a simple text file and will be labelled README.

From now on, I will be linking everything, including new beta and release versions, on this Of Duchies and Polities Index of Posts. For those who want to continue to follow the development and download further versions of this game, you can bookmark that page to keep things simple.

If you're eager to get started playing the beta, continue past the subscriber line below to download and print the assets!

Continue reading with a Coil membership.