It’s not always easy to know exactly how much I can say here. However, with the Mantic blog mentioning that DreadBall Xtreme was “just around the corner” the other day I don’t think anyone’s going to be surprised that I’ve been doing quite a bit on that project lately.
So far, it’s been a tricky one. Some games come easy and others less so. In general, this doesn’t seem to actually have any bearing on whether they’re any good or not when they’re finished. As long as you go through the whole process to the bitter end (and don’t just give up and release it anyway) then they can be of any quality. I’ve pondered the why of that at some length and still don’t think I entirely understand it.
Obviously I can’t go into specifics on DBX yet, but I thought I’d drop one idea into your minds. Because DreadBall is well liked as it is, the real challenge with designing DBX has not been the violence, nor the changing arena. Instead it’s been balancing doing something new and exciting against not messing up a great game. The good news is that I think this last iteration has cracked it. Some considerable changes to what I had in order to make it all more streamlined without sacrificing the depth and difference of tactical decisions. That, at least, is the plan.
Got another demo at Mantic tomorrow to see if they agree.
Fingers crossed 😉
Quirkworthy 
Jake-
Are you at all involved in the Purple Guerrilla “improvements” to the Dreadball rulebook?
Nope. Other than generating any FAQ and so on they might be incorporating, not at all. Why do you ask?
Was just curious if you had an opinion or insight on the process. I think conceptually it’s really cool, but right now it’s more hype than delivery. I bought in, only to find it’s barely a marginal improvement over my existing PDFs (from being a Kickstarter backer).
Oh, right. I haven’t seen a final version. They showed me where they’d got to at the last Mantic Open Day. At that stage it looked quite good and included some features which were definitely not in the rulebook. I don’t know how much of that is live yet.
I’m sure they’d be happy to have suggestions on what extra features (or bugs) you’d like to see in it 🙂
Was just wondering how you are reading the digital rulebooks?
If your downloading the to read as a PDF they are not much better that we had before.
However if you go to the mantic digital page and just click read they work really well.
Hi Jake,
In light of the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” what was the rationale for designing a “new” Dreadball? I’ve not been following this game closely, but isn’t it doing really well? What’s the perceived need for a new version?
From the very start we had the idea of two styles of DreadBall. On the one hand you have the official, big shiny arena game with the lucrative sponsorship deals and the prom queen cheerleaders. On the other hand you have the contrasting “Fight Club”, illegal back room version run by Brick Top and his dodgy mates.
This duality was mentioned briefly in the original Kickstarter and if it had gone bigger it would have been part of that. However, we just managed to get the first of the Xtreme characters in right at the end: Blaine.
There is plenty to explore in the world of DreadBall, and to date we’ve focussed on the mainstream version. However, DBX has been mentioned as an aside in the various books and the idea has never gone away. We always intended to come back to DreadBall Xtreme when we had the time. And now we do 😉
So it’s not an attempt to design a new version to replace the existing one, it’s a case of going back and finishing off the other half of the original concept.
heh, the concept of DBX reminds me of kung fu movies where there’s an illegal martial arts tournament held in the basement of a restaurant (usually attended by millionaires in tuxes watching Van Damme trying to win the prize money to release his kidnapped daughter)….
Good luck with DBX. I’m sure it will be great. I’m already bracing my bank account ( and buttering up the mrs ) for the kickstarter .
Also quick 3 word pitch for a new dreadball team …,,,
….… psychotic reprogrammed refbots
Whilst refs don’t exactly feature heavily in illegal games, there is one possibility that’s looking rather amusing and which isn’t a million miles away from that sort of outlook on the game.
Jake, did you manage to influence Ronnie in the end?
It took a few goes…
Will the standard Dreadball teams/players be playable in Xtreme? And vice versa? If I have to wait for an answer until the Kickstarter that’s fine; just curious…
Um, sort of.
Well, how did the demo go?
OK. Then I went and made some more changes and we did this https://quirkworthy.com/2014/02/13/latest-dreadball-xtreme-playtest/
And that worked even better 🙂
Another note to the digital ‘improvements’ the new hex display for each team doesnt indicate what stat is what… and doesnt show starting roster numbers of each player.
have you pointed this out to them? I’ve not looked, but am assuming they’ve got a forum or somesuch.
Has this been changed? Because the symbols in the Azure Forest book seem pretty self explanatory… a dumbell, lightning bolt, ball, armour plate and direction arrows… lends itself pretty well to each of the stats.
Pingback: BcP Juegos » Juegos de deportes en Kickstarter