Earth was dying. We had to leave. One colony world, Teohid-3, stands alone as a brilliant success. When people first arrived, they found it extremely similar to Earth, but over time they’ve discovered its unique natural resources.
The closer one looks at Teohid-3, the more alien the world appears. The plant and animal life of Earth has largely choked out the native species, but not quite all of them. Orange nivemhelite crystals litter the world’s technology, and deep in the oceans there lies dormant an unusual resource called mana which has caused many to question their understanding of reality. Even the people, fitted with a wide variety of augmentations and modifications to their bodies, don’t quite appear the same anymore.
Teohid-3 celebrated its independence over a hundred years ago. In order to maintain peace, communication—and to present a demonstration of power—the Fourth Horizon Council meets every other year. Trade deals, alliances, wars, and more have been started and ended at these meetings.
What will this year’s Council meeting hold?
What is Fourth Horizon?
Fourth Horizon is an expandable card game which depicts a power struggle between the major regions of Teohid-3. After constructing your deck, each player competes to gain morale, or instill doubt in their opponents. Simple as that. But the path to accomplish these goals may become rather complex with the array of processes, mods, allies, and agents you can add to your deck.
Leverage powerful resources to gain an advantage.
Install powerful augmentations and glitches.
Aquire powerful allies and agents to support you.
Although Fourth Horizon was inspired in part by dueling card games such as Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone, our goal is to create a game with more choice regarding how players use their cards. We’ve revamped the traditional resource system many games use, allowing each player to begin with the same amount of resources—enough to play a few cards at once or their most valuable cards on turn one. This levels the playing field and removes a level of variance from the game. Now, if you draw a hand full of expensive cards, it doesn’t mean you have to skip your first few turns. We wanted to let the player focus on their strategy and deckbuilding, forcing them to make difficult decisions about what cards they play first, and not be beholden to a mana curve.
Additionally, there are two win conditions: gaining morale, or giving your opponent doubt. In other words: you could empower yourself, or attack your opponent to win the game. This flexibility allows us to let the player have greater agency not only over what kind of deck they want to play, but also let them decide how they want to win. In some cases, decks may even be built to accomplish both goals!
We’re also excited to announce that we’re with Kyanite Publishing to release an anthology of short stories from Teohid-3 around the time of release. We’ll begin production on that in 2021, so expect to see more news about that as we approach the new year. For now all we can share is that we’re very excited to delve deeper into the setting and share the stories with you!
*Art and design not final, subject to change.
We’ll be sharing more about the game and world of Fourth Horizon with you through channels such as our blog, alongside Kyanite Publishing, and in cooperation with our Smunchy Games Ambassadors. Join our Discord community and keep an eye out for updates via our social media if you’re interested in learning more about Fourth Horizon!