Shrine: Duel of Light | The LED Abstract Duel You Didn’t Know You Needed | Kickstarter Preview
Transcript
Yeah, cuz it's so we're so used to saying duo at the end of game titles, but here it's in the middle. So, it's it's killing my brain to my brain's already warned from all the puzzling we've done. Hello everybody, my name is Ia. My name is Tyler. Together, we make up Cry, a couple that loves to play board games. And today, we'll be telling you about a board game called Shrine Duel of Light. Boom. Shrine Duel of Light is designed by Richard Almond. It's published by Bright Horizon Games. Now, they did send us an early cop prototype of this game to share with you because this was one of our most anticipated games of this year, and it's a two-player only game. It's a two-player only game. And you know what? There's a really cool element about it. But before we get into any of that, I will say everything here is a prototype, so it may be subject to change. And this game is coming to crowdfunding, so feel free to check those links down below. Uh, but before we start talking about all the magic, let's give you a quick overview of how the game works. In Shrine Duel of Light, you'll take turns placing transparent arcane lenses onto a shared illuminated board, blending colors in an attempt to match the patterns on your hidden code card. Your goal is to collect the most treasure by the end of the game.
Treasure can be earned by creating color combinations that match your code card. You can claim these treasures throughout the game with a treasure ability or wait until the end of the game. Additional treasure is also awarded for building the largest contiguous area of your target color, so place carefully. Let's give you a rundown of a turn. You'll start your turn off by refilling the offering. You'll draw one arcane lens from the pouch and place in the offering slot on the main board. This will be the lens that you're working with this turn. Next, you can unlock a treasure power. If any of your powers are currently blocked by a treasure, you can return all the treasures from one of them to the supply. That power is now ready to be used on your turn. Then you'll decide if you wish to place an arcane lens or pass. If you're placing, you'll choose any active dial, the one showing its light side. This dial will point to a specific field on the board. You'll then place an arcane lens from the offering onto that field as long as a placement is valid. In order for a placement to be valid, the arrow needs to point to that specific space. And each space may only have up to two arcane lenses on it. So, if there's more than two or if the space is blocked, you will not be able to place there. You do get one free rotation of the dial though, allowing you to shift it one step to an adjacent field before placement, which will give you some flexibility. Additionally, if you need more control, you can optionally utilize treasure powers.
Let's talk about them. Each player board has six different treasure powers. To use them, you'll place treasure from your personal supply onto any that are not blocked and take their corresponding action. Let's go through each of them. Dial rotation. You can spend one treasure to rotate the dial you're using before placement, effectively being able to reach any space adjacent to that dial. Refreshing the offering. You'll spend one treasure to draw a lens of a different color from the pouch and replace the current offering. If you're not happy with a new color, you can pay an additional treasure to go digging for the exact color that you'll need. Using an inactive dial, you can place an arcane lens next to inactive dial this turn. For one treasure, you can place an arcane lens on an empty space next to an inactive dial. And for two treasures, you can stack the arcane lens instead.
Treasure acquisitions and field blocking. For one treasure, you can place a block token on one of the eight outer fields. For two, you can place a block in one of the four central fields. If the color of the field you blocked matches the color on your code card, you'll immediately gain the corresponding amount of treasure. This field can no longer be interacted with and will not score at the end of the game, but it will count for the largest contiguous group. Overriding. You can spend one treasure to remove a single unstacked arcane lens from the field and replace it with your lens. Or you can spend two treasures to remove an arcane lens stacked with another, either the one on top or the bottom, and place your lens in its place. Relocation. You can spend two treasures to move a lens already on the board to a different valid field. This can be any lens, single or top or bottom of a stack. You cannot relocate a lens or lenses that have been blocked, though. Now, you can activate as many powers as you want on your turn as long as you have the treasure to pay for them. You can even take on depth to acquire more treasure to help you with this if you're short.
Need even more flexibility? Well, you can remove a feathered serpent token from your board to temporarily unlock an additional treasure power this turn. These are permanently gone once removed, though. And if you remove both, you'll lose a point at the end of the game. Now, that's placing an arcane lens. If no placement feels worthwhile or if you're planning something bigger later, you can choose to pass. You'll take a pass token, skip your turn, and you won't use any treasure powers. You can only do this twice per game. If you do, you'll lose a point at the end of the game. After you place, you'll deactivate the dial you use by flipping it over to the dark side. If it's already inactive, you'll simply skip this step. Then you'll do your end of turn checks. If all the dials on the board are inactive, you'll reactivate them all except for the one you just used. Additionally, if the dial you use has no valid fields left, it's removed from the board and added to the progress track. You'll gain a bonus treasure printed here upon placement. You'll continue playing, placing dials, collecting treasure, and utilizing treasure powers until the game ends, which happens when a third dial has been relocated to the game progress track. You'll now score. First, you'll score all the fields not covered by a block token. You'll gain one treasure for a matching field with one arcane lens, two treasure for a matching field with two arcane lenses, and three for a field with a complex color consisting of two different colored arcane lenses stacked. Additionally, you'll gain an extra two treasure if the field was marked as a target on your code card.
You'll then determine which player has built the largest contiguous area. They'll receive four treasure tokens. If there is a tie, no one will receive the treasure. Finally, you'll repay any debts you took, lose points if you pass twice or use two serpent heads. You'll tally your treasure, and the player with the most wins. And there you have it. Shrine Duel of Light. How cool, right? The board is amazing, but I'm getting ahead of myself. You are. So, in this video, you know what we'll do? We'll do what we typically do where we tell you about some of the key features of the game, what stood out to us, and what may stand out to you if you end up playing this game. Exactly. And I guess before we dive into anything else, we should start with a board. We should 100% start with the board. So, story time. When I first heard about this game and this company and this whole mission, I was very intrigued. I was very excited.
It made it on our anticipated list. And I told Tyler, I'm like, "Tyler, there is a board game where there's uh it's either a screen or a board or it's this full like LED experience. I don't know what it is, but this is the premise." And both of us were just like, "How is this going to be executed?" Yeah. I very much pictured like a full on like monitor. You get a giant panel, light panel, and and just figure it out. But take a look at this. This is how big this is. And it's it's pretty thin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. as well. And it's shocking how well it works and how minimal of presence it has. Uh it's definitely something that I've never seen in a game before. Yes. Hence it being a feature of this one to check out. And what a cool way to integrate it.
Yeah. Interestingly enough, I really like the idea. I'm not 100% sold on it yet. I think it's enjoyable, especially when you play it at the the with the expansions. Yeah, the eternal glyphs. It makes it much easier to see them. Yes. Yeah. With the base, I thought it was like very much like you could already make out the colors. There's a couple of them that were a little tough to distinguish and that's where that light comes in, but uh otherwise like it's super interesting and just like pretty innovative. Mhm. It is very innovative and I think this is what this company is about is trying to create and throw some innovation in the board game industry. So that is very cool to see and I think it's a really good implementation of it as well. It's a very fun way to show friends at the table. There's also that added shrine component so you can hide your power bank if you need to. So, yeah, I liked it.
Yeah, there's just nodes of stuff in the that come in the box that are like really great. But let's talk about the actual gameplay, the gameplay itself. Yeah. So, as in a lot of two-player games, you'll go headtohead and really play the player. Uh, and it's always really interesting to see how games take on that element because sometimes you are really doing your own thing and it's kind of like a light conflict where you cross over and you're like, "Oh no, you took what I needed." And sometimes you're very much going directly for exactly what the other player is doing and trying to combat them and trying to stop them. I feel like this game is right in the middle of that cuz you do have your own objective and what you're doing, but it's so much fun to be like, "You worked so hard to create part. Wouldn't it be a shame if purple and of course by destroying their purple, you can also benefit yourself by by moving it or readjusting it to another color. But I think that's a really neat element of the game is that decision making of when to react and when to plan for.
Yeah, I think that that's what it comes down to is cuz like it's not it's not I'm not I'm not making a decision to mess with you because I can't really know what you're going to do. Like you've got your hidden card. you know what you want to plan for and maybe you're doing these things to like throw the other player off and make them like use the abilities that they have available to themselves. But the trick is is like making that balance like Ilia said is uh when do you when are you proactive in your uh movements and when are you like when is it better to be reactive in your movements? I think that's really interesting just from like a single player decision point. And then of course like you obviously are going to be reacting to what your opponent is doing. It's just whether or not you're waiting them out for a little bit. You're hoping that you can use the ability to do one of the abilities to do something else. And it's just like very I guess that's my our next point is like the timing of everything really feels interesting. And there's like this tug and pull of like do I do what's best for me right now or do I hold off and see what my opponent does? Because maybe they're trying to get in my head. Maybe that's actually what they're going for.
Or maybe we're fighting for a spot that has a yellow um disc on it, but I need green and Ilia needs orange. Like there's these things that we're battling for. So it's just like interesting that timing piece of things cuz if I do put a I do put that What did I say? I needed orange. Whatever. If I put the right color on top of the disc, then I could come ahead come around and move it or shift it or do these things that would kind of mess me up. Yeah. And I think that's the really interesting core of the game, too, because you have that decision space of when to do that. If you're too too reactive to everything your opponent does, you'll forget what you're doing. Yeah. But so, you kind of have to balance all of that. And I think the area control of it, the contiguous space is really interesting because you do battle kind of for those middle spaces because you do want to create your largest contiguous group cuz four treasure is going to be a lot at the end of the game. So, I think that element paired with all of this is just a very interesting strategy element for these types of games if you enjoy them in a two-player game.
Exactly. And then the next thing we probably talk about is actually the how tight the resources are because your points uh when you're playing throughout the game are actually technically your uh resources that you use to take the abilities. So, the treasure that you collect. Love when games do that. Yeah. And it's really interesting though because there is really only one way to get uh more treasure back. You're always true technically like there are but like you're always like removing things to be able to have the action available, but the stuff that you remove is going back to the supply and then you're using the tokens you or the treasure you have left over to then use those abilities. And the limited amount of resources even touches further on what we've been talking about about the timing and like whether or not you should be proactive, reactive, or like focusing on what your opponent is doing. Like those think really come into play. Maybe it is it depends on what actions you have available to yourself. Like it adds just this layer that is also very smooth integration, but it feels very very tight when it comes to resources.
It does. I think when we first played this game, we were just like, whoa, how do we get more treasure? And we made the mistake of running out of treasure, which you should try not to do. Yeah, cuz you can go into debt. Yeah, you don't want to take on debt. It's very detrimental to your end game, but it sometimes can help you and save you. Uh, and I think this game does offer kind of leniency and flexibility. It has the rules that it defines of like how you place things, how you do things, but with the treasure tokens, you can manipulate a lot. And if you don't have the treasure tokens, you can get more. or if you don't have the treasure powers unlocked, you can use more. Like there's ways that this game kind of tinkers to let you be creative in doing what you want to do, but it can be at a cost. So, you have to be really mindful and really strategize of how what your end game is going to look like here, too. Yep. And that's totally another point that give and take of you have to be willing to give something up to be able to like push yourself further in this game. That's something that happens in TR Duel of Flight. I just love I love games that have the victory point as a resource. So, the treasure as a resource. I just think it's so clever because you can play that turtle game and try to do as little as you possibly can and really amass the treasure and place and score and place.
Yeah, you could just if you got pretty lucky, I guess all of the things could or you make the best of it cuz while the other player is adjusting using all their treasure, maybe your conservative strategy would have worked. But I think that's a really interesting element and strategy you can try out when you play the game. Exactly. For sure. Now, throughout all this, we did hint at some expansions. We did. Yes. So, why don't we tell you a little bit more about them? Starting off with radiant shapes. This introduces shape cards, each showing a special arrangement of Arcane Lenses. When you complete them during your turn, you can obtain additional treasure or even unlock a treasure power. You can mirror and rotate a shape to complete it. And once doing so, you'll place proof tokens on your sideboard to indicate how your shape was completed. At the end of the game, the proof tokens will be verified with your code card. You'll then choose if you wish to collect the treasure or gain the lower amount of treasure and unlock one treasure power of your choice. In addition to the chosen reward, some shape cards offer a bonus shown on the right of the card. You may take the bonus reward regardless of which treasure reward you chose. Bonus rewards typically award you additional shape cards for the duration of the game.
And that's radiant shapes. It's really interesting to that you can mirror it and you can rotate it. Yeah. I think it breaks my brain a little bit looking at it and trying to cuz sometimes you think it's impossible to do what you want to do, but then you see it and it just feels like this golden moment. I mean, some of the goals are just like huge on the board, it feels like and they're just they felt really hard to get, but like when you were able to actually accomplish it, the payoff is like so good. It is. So, it and it also creates more tension between you and your other your opponent cuz like what what am I trying to do with my card? What are they trying to do with the card? Like it's just this battle of back and forth like that's more elevated I suppose. Well, I think it's a nice consolation, too, cuz if your card like main card is not going to plan, you can use the shapes to almost kind of maneuver around it and try to like figure out something like make the best of what you kind of have uh and score some other treasure.
Yeah. Like I mean, you could work off what your opponent is doing too cuz you're like in this zone you're like, "Oh, I'm never going to get any of this because it doesn't like the colors just don't match and I don't have the resources for it, so let's just get my goal." Exactly. There was one other expansion we were able to try with the prototype called eternal glyphs. It's a good one. Let's get to it. This module introduces glyphs, ancient markings that now appear on some arcane lenses in the draw pouch as well as within your code. From now on, when placing, you'll not only score for the color matches, but also the glyph matches, unlocking a new strategic depth and a chance to earn even more treasure. The biggest difference with this game is your code cards will now show glyphs on them. And three arcane lenses will always be available on the offering instead of one, giving you a decision of which lens to place each turn. Now, for scoring, in addition to receiving treasure from matching colors, you'll also gain treasure from matching glyphs.
Scoring in a similar fashion as colors, basic and complex glyphs. And there you have it. Eternal glyphs, part of Shrine Duel of Light. Now, I thought shapes broke my brain. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know what it is? It's that you're not like you can layer the shapes. You can layer the glyphs is probably the right way to say that, but you can also like uh overlap them with different patterns. And that's really where your brain kind of like shifts while also trying to get your goal. So it creates this like pretty intense complexity in my opinion where like you're already battling for a lot of the goal on the board that control that you're trying to maintain with whatever it is that is on your goal card. But now all of a sudden you're trying to also do these shapes and I know they're not on all of the spots like they're not on all of them but they're on a lot of them and you will score uh significant points like if you're able to get those in different areas then it's fantastic.
It it really is and I think the complexity that it just adds I feel the first time it was just like what is happening? Yeah, it is. It is a challenge for sure. Because I feel like I'm pretty good at spatial awareness. Like I can rotate stuff in my head. I can figure out if there's something that goes here. But I think here the way that some of them overlap because of the uniqueness of the shapes, it definitely broke my brain a little bit. And you also have to remember about the color cuz you can't forget about the colors cuz they're also an important scoring element. But all of a sudden, you're scoring much more across everything. all of a sudden that immediate scoring and the immediate treasure you get is also quite important because you can get more potentially and I think all of that paired together it's just Mhm.
I mean they have a handy reference card that we were able to look at to see like how you combine them. They have it with like the primary colors as well, which is like super fantastic, but the lines like it like like we've been saying have been it's been it's in a cool expansion to see, but it's definitely like a level up from the colors. And I can't remember now when you do you have to have the matching color and the matching um pattern or you can do one or different. Yeah. So, one player can score for color and the other potentially score for shape and that's another really interesting element. So then you're even further battling against your opponent or trying to make the best of it because maybe the color is never going to work for you, but you can spin out the pattern and lock that in so it's like good to go and it feels great. And if you want to play an even more intense game, you can start counting the colors cuz I think each color has two of each shape. So it's it can you can do some mental gymnastics to get there.
And you can also mix it with radiant shapes. You know what? I actually think that wouldn't be too bad. I wouldn't I I don't think that would be too bad because I think like the thinking of the shapes with radiant with radiant shapes is like a different thought process than it is like lining up the colors. They're not like necessarily competing as much. So, it would be but it would make the game a little bit more intense. It would all the layers of complexity. Well, that has been Shrine Duel of Light. I had to look. I forgot. I keep calling it Shrine Light. I keep mixing the words up. I don't know. I keep calling it Shrine of Light Duel, but there's but there's like we're so used to saying duel at the end of game titles, but here it's in the middle. So, it's it's killing my brain to my brain's already warned from all the puzzling we've done in this game. But now I also have to remember that duel is in the center of the word.
Well, the thing is is it doesn't really like this is not based off of another game. It's shrine duel of light. Like that's it. It is a shrine duel of light. And you can learn more about it by visiting the crowdfunding page down below. You click that link and you learn a little bit more about it. You can also ask us any questions about this game. We're happy to discuss any and all details. What power bank do we have? Maybe we'll tell you. I don't know what it is. Yeah, I don't either. It's one Tyler bought for me so I could play Pokémon Go. Exactly. Now for our question of the day. Now that we've seen it, uh, fun light up board, what mechanics, what games with themes do you think could benefit from something like this? Or another innovative idea that you might be hoping comes across your table. How will board games dominate the world?
I think they already are. Uh, I hope one day. Well, if you enjoyed that video, make sure you give us that thumbs up. Hit that subscribe button if you're new here, cuz we love talking and chatting at board games, especially two-player. that video. This video. Yeah, you know what I meant exactly. Well, see you in the next one. Enjoy your day and make sure you shrine Duel of Light. Uh yeah. Okay. Bye.