Enormity Review!

[@sattm8230]

I think an issue that needs to be brought up with ITU right now is their backlog of existing projects and the delivery timelines they're posting for these projects. For Enormity, they're saying it's expected to deliver in a year. There's no chance that's going to happen. They're effectively saying this will deliver before ATO:TSOH and its expansions, a campaign that's been completed for some time now. The timelines they posted for these other projects (Kingdoms: Forlorn included) have been very off, and there's just no chance this delivers in 1 year. I really like the games ITU makes - like, really like them. I've invested well over a grand into these (and they're board games! Anyone outside the hobby would think we're crazy). But I'm starting to see a pattern in their delivery timelines, and it doesn't make me happy to see. If the expectation is these won't deliver for 2-3 years, be open and transparent about that. I for one will still back them, but I can see why some others might re-consider. And I think that likely tells us the reason they're putting very incorrect timelines on these projects.

[@Johan_Cohen]

It is industry standard to lie about delivery timelines during the campaign. There is no way that many people will pledge for something they wont see for 2+ years. That wont change unless backers demand to be treated with respect.

[@Nameless_Adventurer]

I will go a step further and say that, given what we have seen in crowdfunding the last couple of years, we should be alarmed that ITU has only truly delivered one large campaign and has two other large campaigns well overdue. We should also be asking why ITU is launching this campaign now, gaining an influx of revenue just before the first wave of Kingdoms Forlorn is supposedly going to print. There are many red flags here that beg caution. Don't get me wrong, I love AT:O, and I wish ITU all the best, but I cannot in good conscience back another project until they have a more proven track record.

[@intotheunknownstudio9176]

Let us put your minds at ease. The miniature scale is 32mm - true 32mm 'to the eyes'. The later game suits are actually bigger than that, just like late game Titans in ATO. The Spacer minis in the prototype are resin casts, and these tend to be around 10% smaller than plastic ones; remember it's a prototype!

[@Gamebent1]

Are you measuring from bottom of feet to the eyes or bottom of mini base to the eyes? What do you mean by "later game suits?" Will you officially state on the campaign page that they are 32mm? I have found that most mini-based games that don't state the mini size during campaign end up being smaller than most people want. Tidal Blades 2 is one example. They did not post mini size, and most people expected them to be around 35mm like Tidal Blades 1. They ended up being a disappointing 28mm (or even 25mm). Another example is Steamforged Games, who did not post the mini size in their latest Monster Hunter campaign, but they answered in the comments section that the minis were 30mm when in fact they were 28mm.

[@intotheunknownstudio9176]

@@Gamebent1Thank you for your questions. It is feet to eyes. Our late game Titans towered over starting ones, with some being 50mm-60mm giants. There won't be such a scale difference for Spacers, but some suits are bulky. Yes, the scale will be advertized.

[@Gamebent1]

@@intotheunknownstudio9176 Thank you

[@WestChamber21]

I appreciate the review earlier than the day of the campaign. As there seems to be too many vids on the day of a campaign for games I just don’t check them all out.

[@TheKingofAverage]

Great to know, thank you!

[@tobyr21]

Before seeing this video, I would have said: please see the KS before you preview a game. After seeing this video, I say: This is excellent. Do more previews before the KS begins. -toby

[@TheKingofAverage]

Ah. Very interesting! I appreciate the feedback!

[@warrensmith5066]

If I own nemesis. Do I really need this ?

[@Twineandribbon]

I think if you can think of a response to "I have Zombicide Invader, do I really need Nemesis?" then it would also apply here. Mildly similar themes and mechanical roots don't make for similar experiences.

[@Johan_Cohen]

@@Twineandribbon aka "Do I need a bicycle if I already own a skateboard?"

[@IoannisSkartsolias]

I feel that I will go for the minimum pledge above 1 dollar in this till KF starts shipping and the go all in in the pledge manager.

[@Johan_Cohen]

Noted, so you need a picnic table to play this solo 💀💀

[@TheKid_88]

Is it similar like Shadows of Brimstone? What is the size of your gaming table?

[@TheKingofAverage]

A Megan Medium, not the largest table by a lot. It's kind of similar in that you have a "town phase" and then the dungeon phase that as an escalation timeline you go against, but it plays quite a bit differently. So similar is structure but different in gameplay. It's definitely smaller than SoB on the table :)

[@thebrothersslim6056]

Great review; thanks King!

[@TheKingofAverage]

Glad you liked it!

[@peterkreisel7485]

Oh I like it already! Theme, DG, streamlining, not too much space required and above all ITU.. sounds like a great deal and a project definitely worth supporting! 😃❤️‍🔥 Thank you for your review! 😇🙏 And you know: Please contact me by the power of Grayskull!! 🗡️😄🤙

[@MiguelArciaCaballini]

You prefer this or Aeon Tresspass?

[@TheKingofAverage]

Hard to compare a full game to a prototype, but this is definitely easier to table so there's that.

[@CheddahSlammer]

The only thing holding me back are the countless games that are sitting on the shelf left unplayed lol.

[@HarleyFirestorm]

I love Sci fi and really want to back this, but feel I can't until I have my stuff for ATO, we are STILL waiting in the UK for fulfillment to start.

[@phillipbirt]

Let's go! Thanks King 🎉

[@hans_pixel-me5mx]

13:19 My biggest concern is the player board ''fiddliness'. Is that a word LOL. I hope they come up with a better player board system.

[@goldsmeeth2771]

Same. There's got to be a better way to track the 3 parameters

[@TheKingofAverage]

Hard to super judge on the prototype, but now is the time for that sort of feedback I suppose :)

[@goldsmeeth2771]

The tokens loop also feels repetative, having played ATO. There should be a better system to add in synergy and luck mitigation. I do like enormity can uses confidence token to do other things like saving actions. Wish there's more, making the tokens more meaningful

[@samharkin9981]

Bombastic meaning - forceful and confident in a way that is intended to be very powerful and impressive, but may not have much real meaning or effect.

[@deano2099]

This does look great but... Wave 2 of ATO is just delivering now, then we have two waves of Kingdoms Forlorn, then ATO Sins of Herakles (which is meant to one wave but I am starting to wonder)... ITU make great stuff but seem to be stuck on one fulfilment per year - the speed up they promised in the Herakles campaign never happened. So I just can't see this coming before 2028 at the earliest. Which is fine unless... they're dependent on the ongoing success of one crowdfunder every year to keep up with one fulfilment every year. (And if they continue to run one crowdfunder every year, but only fulfil half a crowdfunder every year... it becomes quickly unsustainable). This project will be a success (and looks amazing) but if somehow it wasn't, would we ever see Sins of Herakles?

[@Nameless_Adventurer]

I have the exact same concerns. Love their stuff, but this is hard pass from me. I've been burned before.

[@kalega311]

Really excited for this game. Love the theme and gameplay and I've been a fan of Into the Unknown, despite never having backed/played their games. But man, with Avalon and Insania hitting my wallet soon and the upcoming Blasphemous board game and Champs of Midgard 10th Anniversary... I may be 0/3 in backing ItU games :(

[@benja6902]

What is an "ingram?" I can't visualize what this mysterious item is.

[@TheKingofAverage]

@@benja6902 engram - an item you can use, changes based on area of the ship your in. Might heal you, or move a blip, etc. on the flip side is the resource for crafting you get at the end of the mission

[@1Muffit]

Looks beautiful, but a real table hogger....

[@jasonhine1194]

The game is called Enormity... 😂😂😂

[@1Muffit]

@jasonhine1194 i see what you did there🤣

[@GoodEggGuy]

They've said this is Alien + Aliens and that seems about right from the playthroughs I've seen. A lot of it is very Alien - slow and tense. Not much going on other than taking move/interact actions and blip tokens moving around for much of a 2+ hour scenario. The Aliens style firefights will be rare according to the company and mostly a sign that you messed up. Personally, I'm worried that I'll get bored if that's 50% or more of the game for 100+ hours of campaign but YMMV.

[@TheKingofAverage]

In the rulebook they mention themed scenarios as well with one of them being all guns blazing and even all stealth. The boss battles are obviously all combat. Thankfully I never felt powerless, I was able to blast aliens very well, it's just methodical and adds a bit of a "crap I have to reload this turn so cover me" or even exerting to reload +attack or swapping weapons for another attack. If you get too many slips you trigger an overwhelm mechanic so it's best to continually check in them and reveal if needed, also get a free attack if it's an intruder.

[@GoodEggGuy]

@@TheKingofAverage Marcin definitely said that all stealth and all combat missions are the "hard mode" missions. You can choose to do them, but they're likely to stomp you I guess. The mission you played in the prototype is the default mode. Of course, the boss battles should be awesome - I mean, you'd hope so after they nailed that side of ATO :-)

[@TheKingofAverage]

@@GoodEggGuy oh good clarification the!

[@hans_pixel-me5mx]

I love that blips can be false positives. That''s fun....and scary! !

[@TheKingofAverage]

Yeah and having too many is super bad so best to scan them as you can even if enemies pop up. It's a balancing act of keeping some but not too many

[@philliplegrand384]

Appreciate the review. With Enormity and CDMD launching the same day, it will be a good day for dungeon crawlers.

[@TheKid_88]

Kombajgara?

[@TheKingofAverage]

Indeed!

[@jasonhine1194]

...And a terrible day for my wallet.

[@Xaxor123]

The size of the mini's looks amazing!

[@warpaint9385]

Yeah another game I don’t need. Still got Nemesis so I’ll stick with that.

[@timwanger4491]

Great story bro! Nobody gives a shit 😂

[@warpaint9385]

you do cause you replied lol.

[@timwanger4491]

​@@warpaint9385wow, took you long enough for this extremely witty response 👏

[@Gamebent1]

Still waiting on confirmation that the hero minis are only 28mm. Seems like it would be difficult to recognize which hero you're playing when they all look identical.

[@zimbo5521]

Yes, I agree. The miniatures are too small.

[@TheKingofAverage]

They answered another comment, 32mm feet to eyes, with later suits trending larger as well. These resin casts were a bit smaller than the final production plastic will be.

[@Gamebent1]

@@TheKingofAverage Thanks

[@Exilium2090]

I just think they are running toooo many long campaigns with not much delivered. We just got the last cycles from ATO, KF is not out, TSOH who knows... now this?

[@cyder534]

They'll get there. The team has expanded considerably. KF will deliver in 2025. SOH was never going to be a 2025 delivery. The amount of content means 2027/2028 is more realistic. I wouldn't be surprised if Enormity arrives first!

[@TheKingofAverage]

My understanding is KF should be in print at least now.

[@timwanger4491]

That is just half of the truth. They are very transparent with their communication and they communicate very regulary. Their first really big campaign just finished delivering and the files for their second KS campaign are now all of to the factory. Which leaves "only" Sins of Heracles out in the open. Similar to other companies they cannot just lay off part of their employees and therefore need to have a certain development cycle. So this campaign now makes absolute sense. They are not CMON with like 6+ games in the pipeline at every new campaign and also nobody is running scared like this that CMON will not deliver their games. So please do your proper research and stop seeing the Mythic boogie man around every corner.

[@lexmachina8961]

@@timwanger4491 "stop seeing the Mythic boogie man around every corner" => That's their customer's responsibility to check and be skeptical. I don't think it's a good thing to say to people to stop worrying about their investment. They did their research as what they said is true: we got the last cycles from ATO, KF is not out and TSOH is tbd. Never blame someone for being cautious when there is an information asymmetry. The person never said that ITU was a suspicious company, they said that there were too many campaigns pending for their taste. And to them it's a risk. What you consider to be a risk or not is up to you. Same for them.

[@geoffdenham5063]

@@timwanger4491which campaign just delivered. OST if the world is still waiting for wave 2 of ATO

[@LesPortesRouges]

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[@Pandemic08]

So is this just Nemesis but with a little different theme turned Dungeon Crawler? Don't get me wrong I love Nemesis. I just see A LOT of similar characteristics.

[@TheKingofAverage]

They both have a big Alien/Aliens vibe style wise, they play very differently. This is a tight mechanic game that is fully coop and a heavy helping of boss battlers and story whereas nemesis is mostly semi coop and focused more on thrill/experience in its mechanics and one shot focused. Definitely if you like the theme I think you'd get value out of both :)

[@Pandemic08]

@TheKingofAverage Awesome! I'm a huge Nemesis fan and love Crawlers so this should be right up my alley then. Backing day 1.

[@TheKingofAverage]

@@Pandemic08 hope you love it! They'll surely show off a lot more tomorrow so you and I will both have to take a look at what's fully on offer here :D

[@Kindlesmith70]

"Good game" is subjective. Some people consider Fallout 76 a good game. Rather gushing about how much you enjoyed, please explain the game. 2:07 Ah yes. An abonination of a game. Bloated, disorganised, amateurish, and certainly not portable. That game has so many flaws it's laughable I spent so much money on it expecting a quality product. Not that it is any consolation, but it at least it wasn't in the same state that Monster Hunter World the Board Game was in when it was released. I could run down a giant list of issues found within Aeon Tresspass. Shelfside touches upon some of main ones, but misses out on a few. I have to admit, it did include different take on the same formula for Kingdom Death Monster, yet it wasn't as captivating for us. The gimmicks utilized weren't all that strategic. If you stripped the entire campaign content from the game it would have been a better experience just as a boss battler. I guess it comes down to how much a person dismisses quality to how much they are accepting of the game. For the price tag it misses the mark by a longshot. If I could go back in time I'd tell myself not to bother with this mess.

[@TheKingofAverage]

Definitely! I always appreciate when viewers don't blindly agree with everything I say - each person has different tastes. I agree with you about MHW, said plenty of that in my review even at the prototype stage.

[@Kindlesmith70]

@@TheKingofAverage Yeah it was a bit of side rant that took a direction away from the main topic above. I was kind of on edge about Enormity when I first heard of it. A lot of description but no substance. Like video game trailers that show nothing about the game itself. XD Always a "fun" experience. I had news relating to this bg bookamrked for future viewing once there was actually something substanial about the game. I'd have to say if this was released in 1989 it may have grabbed my attention. Why that date? Hero Quest was released then, a game that was pretty awesome at the time - less so now that game mechanics have changed in some ways for the better. It is unfortunately not a game for me. Still learning to look past the flowery descriptors, and vague promises. Not a fan of FOMO. Some games unfortunately never rerelease. I got Freedom Five: A Sentinel Comics Board Game, and am kicking myself for not going all in. I can find the base game (which i have), but the expansions I have not. It's such a coin toss when it comes to kickstarted projects. Like besides missing out on content that might be fun, there's also the other side of the experience of getting a game that becomes obsolete due to a newer version of it coming about that requires an entire repurchase of the game (Rum & Bones Board Game for instance). I feel somewhat swindled from that experience.

[@Remiremi-m3n]

ATO: an abomination of a game? lol. Not every games are for everyone. Go play Monopoly and Catan, you'll enjoy yourself.

[@Kindlesmith70]

@@Remiremi-m3n Yeah pass. Neither of those recommendations are any good. ATO is an abomination. It has so many flaws. Buy hey, power to you if it's your thing. I have higher standards for the price tag it came with. minimum expectations were not reached.

[@Remiremi-m3n]

@@Kindlesmith70 yeah, just go for less complex games i guess and watch more videos before buying. Just because you don’t like a game does not mean it’s an abomination. Thousands of people love that game.