Mechanics: Area Control and a Dynamic Map

After so much lore, it’s finally time to expose some of the mechanics of the game.

In Mysthea, you control a Champion with unique skills. Your goal is to explore five islands floating around the central crystal, called the Henakor, and come back victorious to your homeland.

The game is a carefully crafted fusion of hand-management and area control, with hefty player customization, asymmetric gameplay and a variable scoring system. In this post, we want to delve deeper into the area control aspect of the game, especially since it’s based on a dynamic map that is constantly transforming thanks to player action and choice!

Each of the five islands is made of three regions, and each region represents a different biome. These are the elements that make up the game map. Players have to gain control of the regions by establishing a majority of troops on them.

Players can move from one island to another, but only between the same region type on two adjacent islands.

A Champion can move from one island to an adjacent one, but only on the same region type.

So, that is the basic rule set. There is, though, also a twist. Players can actually reshape the game map! Do you remember how each Guild entrusted their Champion with a rare artefact to increase their powers? If you read the lore you learned that with huge concentration, the Champions could use the artefact to perform amazing feats of strength, including moving entire islands!

Champions have the power to move entire islands, making for a dynamic game map

The shifting game map means that player strategy has to take into consideration the possibility of change, almost always just around the corner.

This opens up a lot of strategic options, especially if we consider that almost invincible monsters roam these lands. Monsters can attack or move abruptly, forcing players to cooperate with one another in order to defeat them.

This dynamic game map is an important variable for the players to keep in mind when choosing an action during their turn. We will go further into that in the next mechanics posts. Stay tuned!