CoolMiniOrNot Talk More About Upcoming Massive Darkness
May 16, 2016 by brennon
CoolMiniOrNot got in touch to tell us a bit more about their upcoming dungeon crawling game called Massive Darkness which will be coming later this year. We got a great look at some of the neat heroes and the monsters you'll be facing off against...
The game focuses on their being no Overlord or DM player so everything is focused on you working together to battle against those creatures in the darkness below. First up lets see what the heroes look like...
Heroes Of Massive Darkness
Let's kick off with the mainstay of all dungeon crawlers, the Barbarian named Bjord.
This chap is a mighty warrior who is truly harnessing the power of Conan with that hairstyle. I love the look of him and the might axe which I reckon must have been taken from a much larger creature. Following on from him we have the Wizard, Elias.
He has a nice typical Wizard look to him with the pointy hat and big beard. I like that these heroes have rather ripped and tattered outfits actually as it gives you the feeling that they've been down delving in the dark for a while. Next up we're back to fighting up close with the Dwarf.
Big hammer? Check. Big shield? Check. Big hair and beard? Also check. This chap has all the hallmarks of an awesome warrior and Siegfriend here will be the counterpoint to the Barbarian with his more defensive play I reckon.
Next we're onto the lady known as Sibyl who plays the role of the Ranger and the Rogue. She comes with a big long bow and a sword sword too - the flowing hair makes her seem even taller than she probably is too.
She's a neat model and the use of the dress and armour to show off leaf patterns is great. It echoes a lot of the designs I liked about the Mirkwood Elves in The Hobbit.
Last but not least we have another battling up-front warrior in Owen. He comes with two swords which are rather hefty looking indeed!
I really like the character design of the heroes here with maybe the exception of Sibyl who would have been a lot cooler actually shooting her bow I reckon. The others are fantastic though.
The Dungeon & Game Mechanics
Of course with heroes you need a dungeon to explore and the game will come packed with tiles which will spawn enemies each time you reveal a new one.
The tiles you see above show off one of the interesting new mechanics for Massive Darkness. The Shadow Areas allow you to hide from your enemies and ambush them if you're clever enough. Straight up fights won't work out well for you in this game so you'll have to plan ahead.
Wandering monsters are also a cause for concern in this game so don't spend too long dawdling and looking for treasure!
In terms of the mechanics of the game all attacks are resolved with a pool of dice that you will accumulate featuring a range of different symbols.
Attack is compared against Defence, noted by swords and shields while there might also be special effects and advantages from rolling particular icons. As you can see above the Goblin Archer has a special rule which spawns Goblins on the explosion icon.
Heroes will grow and expand their repertoire of skills and items as they progress through the campaign and you will lead them down branching arcs to unlock the skills that you feel fit well with your character.
Your Foes
CoolMiniOrNot has also let us show off some of the enemies you'll be facing down in the dungeons of Massive Darkness. With that in mind here are the bosses from some of the monster groups...
The Dwarf Defender leads the way with an evil look on his face and a cruel hammer to boot. The Goblins aren't to be outdone however with their boss...
This is one of their Archer Bosses who seems like he might have a few tricks up his sleeve. While the rest are using bows he might be able to call on some spells. I love the big pointy hats!
Finally we have a big brute with the Orc Enforcer Boss swinging a club around like a maniac! Once again we get some point hats which seems to be a staple of these enemies and a rather fantastic sculpt. I think he'll be smashing you apart quite easily with that thing.
So there you have it; a better look at Massive Darkness. Look out for it on Kickstarter soon and shelves quickly after!
What do you think?
"The Shadow Areas allow you to hide from your enemies and ambush them if you're clever enough. Straight up fights won't work out well for you in this game so you'll have to plan ahead..."
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I agree, not a big fan of the Sibyl pose. Did she just drop her Starbucks card down a dungeon grate?
You cannot pass!
Not a fan of the Dwarf Defender just looks like a lump of plastic.
But, when’s it starting, when’s it starting.
the figures look good.
By the look of the character sheets, leveling will be pretty zombicidish. That’s a shame, I like my DC’s to be persistent, I like to keep evolving the character between campaigns. I passed dark souls and silver tower for the same reason, guess I’ll pass massive darkness and stick with myth and sword & sorcery
There will be a form of persistence. From what I gather they wanted to keep the advancing during the game mechanic that Zombicide uses, but they wanted that persistence over an extended campaign too. I’m not 100% on how this works, but I think you can purchase the skills listed on the sheet as you gain experience. Once you have a skill purchased it can then unlock over the course of a single game as you advance from level one through to five. So you always reset back to level one at the start of each game, but the skills… Read more »
Looks really good. I am impressed with the miniatures, being single cast is very very smart and having the coloured bases is just such a smart idea but I think they should have gone with coloured plastic.
However, it does seem very impressive.
As far as I’m aware the clip-on coloured bases were introduced with Arcadia Quest where coloured plastics wouldn’t work as the minis are drafted into teams. The clip-ons made it easy to see which minis were in which team in any given game. They were used in Zombicide: Black Plague in which they were still useful in helping keep track of which hero was which, though they could have been statically colour-coded. I guess that having tooled and manufactured the clip-on bases already, it’s easier just to include them with new games.
I am liking look of those.
Hit-and-miss on the miniatures for me, but there are some nice ones in there.
Some of the minis look good. Others are pretty bad imho.
Although I don’t like Sibyl’s pose, it actually tells a bit of a story. It seems she’s just prodded a downed monster with her bow, and has her hand on her knife ready to strike if it’s still alive.
Some minis look cool, some look a bit meh. Also they really need more poses, i saw some pics on bgg and for example they had abyssal dwarf x6 with all the same pose.
Also the colours of the cards and sheet look kinda bland. Dunno but if feels that they sweeped through their warehouse and grapped stuff and came up with this.
I have to see more but overall, liking what I’m seeing so far. Nice to see them doing something else like this without the Zombicide label on it.
I get the feel from Sibyl’s pose that she is bowing towards her future targets, as if to honor their bravery before being mowed down with cold precision… Also, Learn To Play Games posted video of the Massive Darkness panel from the CMON Expo in Atlanta, where they discuss the game mechanics in more detail. https://youtu.be/QUgY8aFe6g0 I’m quite excited by the idea of this game. I will admit I am a fanboy of CMON and Guillotine Games’ output so far, but I imagine even if I didn’t own almost every Zombicide product I would still get this. From what I… Read more »
After clicking on the images I’m rather let down at the quality of the sculpts. They look rather dirty as in not polished. Look at the faces and you’ll start to notice it. Siegfried looks like he got hit by his own hammer.
Perhaps I’m being too picky as this is a board game and not a tabletop miniatures game. The two type of games tend to have different standards for what is quality.
Only one of the characters is female? What’s that about?
Funny how no one bothered asking this about Warhammer Quest.
I would imagine there are more female characters behind the first few stretch goals.