Charge the Circle társasjáték

Angol leírás

You never imagined that it would come to this… The Earth shakes. The Air is foul. Fires burn. Waters rise. So much destruction. So much chaos. So much knowledge lost… And now, magic itself is dangerously out of balance. The Elements pool. The leylines are… off.

None still alive remember what pattern the leylines used to take, what the magic is supposed to look like, to feel like. The lore contradicts itself. Some accounts describe magic as a network of energy, connecting all living things, a web of sorts. Others describe a great circle surrounding and maintaining our world. However; one phrase repeats over and over in the remaining magical lore:

“…balance the elements, renew the lines, charge the circle…”

Whatever that means, you need to figure it out; fast. You are a Guardian, one of the world’s last remaining magic users. You have always had an almost intuitive control over your own abilities, your magic. And you are the most powerful mage left. You have made your way to Atlantis, the heart of all the world’s magic, where here, in a crumbling temple, lies the keystone to the world’s leylines. The journey has been perilous; but now, the real task begins. It falls to you and you alone to figure it out, to fix it, to bring the Elements back into alignment and restore the magic. It’s taken time and effort to get this far; but your time grows short. If you fail, magic itself will die and the world will crumble. You have 10 minutes. Good luck. You’re going to need it.

Charge the Circle is a real-time solitaire game of magical crisis management. The player takes on the role of a mage trying to save magic itself… before the Elements spiral completely out of control and destroy the world. The game takes place in Atlantis. There, the player is faced with fixing the keystone to the world’s leylines. The keystone is represented in the game by a set of nine cards. These keystone cards begin on the Elemental Side. Throughout the game, the player draws and rolls dice, representing the 4 Elements (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water) and Wild Magic. The player places these dice in particular combinations on the Elemental Side of the game’s nine cards to restore balance between the Elements and “charge” a section of the world’s magical network, the “circle” in the game’s name. The goal is to “charge” all of the cards, revealing the restored “circle” of the world’s magical network BEFORE the 10 minute timer runs out.

Charge the Circle was designed for the 2023 9-Cards Nanogame Print and Play Design Contest. Post-contest, the designer introduced the two-player mode, which pits Guardian against Necromancer in a 10-minute duel to save the world’s magic. Charge the Circle is Rachel Carpenter’s first game and is also the first game in her Minutes to Midnight series.

—description from the designer