Our aspiration to omnipotence has led to the enhancement of our capacities so far beyond our species' limits that we created our genetic successors. Inevitably, the evolved reached their first realization as a unified entity: the extinction of humanity as we know it.
Posthuman pits you as one of the last human survivors in a world where nature is reclaiming the planet and our evolved offspring are working to eradicate us. Will you resist mutation and survive, or give in to the inevitable and join the evolved?
In the game, players are humans on a solitary journey to a promised safe house. This journey takes them through ten zones, with the zones being tile-based and randomly generated. As they travel, they encounter each other, other humans, and posthuman mutants. Encounters with mutants may inflict scars, and the more scars players have, the less human they are and the more posthuman they become. Will they strive to cling to their humanity and make a run for the safe house, winning the game? Or will they give in to the ever more tempting mutation, join the posthuman, and deny the win from the rest of the humans?
- strong thematic flavor and lore-rich setting
- scales for different player counts and solo play
- emergent storytelling potential through world building
- early challenges balancing mechanics with expansions
- large design space made balancing and testing time-consuming
- big complexity could hinder newcomer onboarding
- survival, lore-driven exploration, emergent storytelling
- Post-apocalyptic open world in the Posthuman universe
- emergent storytelling with rich world lore
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- auction at turn start — an auction mechanic that determines early game pace and resource access
- open-world modular system — modular board and rules to simulate an open-world exploration and discovery loop
- rogue-like progression — randomized encounters and events generating an engine-like feel and replayability
- story/lore integration — lore pieces and world-building threaded into the core experience
- terrain tile collection — players collect terrain tiles and resources to enable actions and objectives
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- It's sort of a puzzle. It's a big puzzle yeah.
- Bring cozy back to post-apocalyptic, Cozying up the end of the world.
- The world without us—exploring what would happen if humans disappeared in five, ten years time.
- We decided to stop being coy about the whole lore and story and actually to delve more to communicate a lot more of that lore.
- Posthuman Saga takes place a good year after the events of the first game and the video game ties into that.
- Nights of Fire is on Kickstarter right now, and meanwhile we're moving on to Posthuman Saga.
- Petrichor was developed by David Chircop and David Turczi, with the Poland team.
- There were four main challenges people had with expanding Posthuman, which narrowed the design space.
- Expansions need to be robust enough to take on new content without destabilizing the system.