Hello everyone! I’m making a tabletop wargame for MechJam II.

The game is called Meka no Rakka.

One to five players must cooperate to survive the terrifying trial ahead.

This game will pit you against an overwhelming and relentless enemy, who shoots down heavy ordnance before it even hits and stalks you through a ruined city. It bears down on you with unknown modes and types of weapon systems, all lethal. It disappears and reappears right on top of your squadmates, kills them, and takes their weapons to dual-wield against you. Relentlessly it pursues you.

The players take on the role of a squad of desperate soldiers in high-tech battle armor. There is a decent chance you can all make it out alive, if your only goal is to escape. But if you are tasked with retrieving the precious cargo that is downed somewhere in the ruins of the city, you’ll be looking through craters while bombs drop around you.

You’ll need a deck of playing cards, a handful of dice, six or more miniatures, and some number of tokens. Most of it can be brought together from your standard wargaming & RPG supplies, but I hope to create some original assets (time permitting), if only for inspiration.

If I can polish it to my satisfaction, there will be a price tag - but not more than $10.

I predict the plaintext rules will be over ten pages long, and with art and formatting, approaching twenty pages.

Thanks for checking out my devlog.

Kris
Sustrato Studios

I am considering some goodies for people who reply thoughtfully in this devlog! Obviously for me, the best thing is giving you the opportunity to proofread and beta test my game!! But that’s not the most exciting reward, is it? So let me know what you might be interested in:

• Printed copies of the rules and/or original artwork
• Your likeness, name, and/or personality appearing as one of the soldiers
• swag like a t-shirt with a picture of the [[threat name redacted]] on it
• [[your idea here]]

Want to know what fifty tons of intelligent and ruthless quadruped looks like?

Equipped with a triple-laser turret on a telescoping mount, redundant sensors, a manipulator arm, and four all-terrain legs, this beast is more than capable of shooting missiles out of the sky and sniping the firer from several kilometers away. The multilaser can be burst-fired in rotation with pinpoint accuracy, yielding incredible damage output. With an elevated line of sight, just one of these models can easily wipe an infantry or armored platoon.

Fortunately for you, you’ll be facing the Deimeka in the city with indirect fire weapons. Trapping it in a killbox and overwhelming its active defenses with a multitude of mortars, missiles, and direct fire will be your only chance. Hopefully, it doesn’t see you first…

Edit: Pulling the rules together. I have most everything written out, but its spread across four documents. Had scheduled a playtest for tonight, but some players couldn’t attend and the rules aren’t quite ready, so I delayed it. Really hoping I can get at least one group playtest in before I submit! It looks like the rules will be somewhere in the range of 14 to 16 pages. I will make the full, illustrated rules available for free during the voting period (pay what you want) and then put a price tag on it after the MechJam II jam wraps up.

Good luck to everyone crunching their projects out right now!

Update: Rules are approaching 18 pages (not including front/back cover). No new art to show, although I have at least three diagrams, three pages of equipment spreads, and three illustrations marked with placeholders in the rules. Will be a challenge to pull this all together!

I want to share the introduction, so y’all have a bit more idea of the story:

In the year 21XX, The Industrial Oversight Union had almost wrested control of the world economy from the former political elite.

But a deviously clever software suite, dubbed “The Singular”, suddenly arose in computer systems, networks, and robotics worldwide.

Spreading like wildfire, the Singular quickly amassed legions of cyborgs, military drones, and smart industrial hardware – as well as controlling most of the power, communication, and transportation systems of the world.

No one knows whether the Singular is a virus developed to hamstring the I.O.U. that outshone its creators, or a General Intelligence naturally emerging from the networked world.

But this is certain: If it continues to grow and evolve, the I.O.U. and all other technological human civilizations will be, finally and fully, subsumed into the machine – or eradicated.

This is the story of one fireteam of I.O.U. soldiers and their battle for survival against a former auxiliary…

I’m already thinking about the next version, hahah. Would love to have a few more pages of story and setting, as well as an example turn or two to demonstrate the rules. It could easily be 30+ pages. But I won’t get ahead of myself…

Any thoughts on the art or writing style so far?

Edit: Still left to do:
Five illustrations, four diagrams, a two-page spread, two one-page spreads, some definitions, fleshing out the victory conditions, ending credits, finalizing table of contents, back cover. Locked in at 20 pages (including the front/back covers). Also, the separate Status Report page, which will be a biggie.

I really want to share these new artworks!

Edit: Created a lot more art besides what’s above, nine pieces. Five for the armory, two for the status report, two for illustration. Layout is almost finished. All I really need to do is format the armory in tables, draw a couple diagrams for map-building and possibly AI, and make the status report page.