Limbo: The Passing

From what you’ve written so far, it sounds a lot like “I want to make Netrunner, but better” (and apparently you’re convinced that what you have is already better, something that makes me as a Netrunner fan extremely doubtful, not least because what’s “better” is really a matter of taste.)

I would abandon that approach, or that way of seeing your game design.
Make something of your own.
It’s fine if it’s inspired by Netrunner, but it should really be it’s own thing. I don’t think you’re doing the design a favour by trying to be “Netrunner, but different”.

Edit: I have to add that I have absolutely no interest in a game that is “Netrunner, but different”, because I already love Netrunner as it is (in particular and including the Android universe). Netrunner ported to a fantasy universe in itself holds zero appeal to me.
But I would almost certainly be interested in a game that is inspired by Netrunner, but has new ideas and different gameplay.

But I would almost certainly be interested in a game that is inspired by Netrunner, but has new ideas and different gameplay.

Pretty much sums what Limbo is :slight_smile: , only it’s the gameplay that was used as inspiration. I’d really encourage you to check out my answer to thopol.

The theme is definitely not a fantasy one (god forbid). Actually, it’s less of a fantasy theme than cyberpunk which it’s by itself a sort of sci-fi. You could say Limbo’s theme is a critique of modern capitalism mixed with philosophy a good dose of afterdeath dark humor.

That being said I want to emphasize that the reason why we are discussing Limbo from an ANR perspective is because, well, we are in the ANR forums after all. But that will not be the official pitch - inspired by Netrunner is meant to be a helpful reference, not saying it’s a copycat by any means.

Apologies, I misunderstood the theme.

But after everything you’ve written and a read of the rules on your website, I stand by my impression that mechanically the game is a lightly-modified Netrunner clone, which is the thing I’m not interested in.
You need to do something more original imo. I don’t see anything in it that’s different from Netrunner except renaming everything.

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It was a conscious decision to anchor some of the basic ANR concepts that just work and focus on innovating everything else. I also understand that hardcore ANR players such as yourself may be biased to see it as a “Netrunner clone”, and while we tried to keep part of it’s essence there, it also has a very distinct flavor once you get your hands on it. I’d still encourage your to keep an eye on this before waving it off :slight_smile:

There’s the additional aspect that – while game mechanisms cannot really be copyrighted in many legislations – I really think it’s not cool to copy someone else’s game mechanically without significantly iterating on it, if you want to publish it/ get it published and sell it for money.
Now, of course the game may well shake out very differently from Netrunner with the different cards in your game – I hope that that is the case. But as I said above, I think being as original with the design as you can with as little reference to Netrunner as possible will do the game good.

(I think this is the danger with starting a game design by just retheming another game. It may be harder to significantly distinguish it from the source material later.)

As I have already answered on one of my first comments, the game didn’t start as a re-theme, quite the opposite - it started as a re-imagining of some of the mechanics introduced by ANR. It’s actually the result of two years of constant iteration with players and publishers, some of whom have been active ANR players in the past. No-one has raised the flag for it being a copy of ANR - trust me, they would have if they thought that would be a considerable risk.

I understand that you may feel protective about a game you are passionate about, but I’m trying to keep the thread productive - it is not ANR. It is inspired by ANR and I’m being very forward about it. Just like some many others (Hearthstone is clearly inspired in MTG, most deckbuilders are inspired by Dominion, etc). It actually has a huge dose of “fresh” ideas, which you will surely find out once you get the chance to have a good dive in the game, which I encourage you to do given that you like ANR.

Edit: I feel like I am being put on the defense for trying to engage the ANR community. This is the result of a lot of people putting a lot of effort into making something that should be very enjoyable for a lot of players, particularly those that already enjoy the ANR mechanics. Criticism is welcome, as long as it’s constructive and well informed. I’d very much like to hear your thoughts once you learn to play, and try it half a dozen times on Tabletop Simulator, but until I think it’d be wise to approach this with an open mind and maybe some optimism.

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I checked the rulebook and the decks (so the cards) you provided in your website.

As a NR player rules look very similar, but I can see how it is going to feel different when played.

My suggestion would be to target a more “casual gamer” type crowd. And for casual gamers I mean those people that may be playing boardgames from a long time but that are “scared” of the crunchy one. In my mind LCGs are akin to wargames more than to boardgames. Try to make it a 2 to 4 players game, so to make it more palatable for boardgames clubs and groups of friends.

Limbo looks like a potentially good gateway game from boardgame to lcg. So don’t target netrunner players, to us it will always remind a simpler version of it. As a boardgame instead I can see it being succesful.

Anyway, I see you guys put a lot of effort in it and what you have is well done. I really like the flavour text on the cards.

These are just my two cents, so feel free to ignore them.

Thanks for checking it out Seraf.

You make a few good points. This is indeed targeted towards the board game crowd, but to a great extent there is an overlap between those and the less hardcore ANR guys (those that don’t solely play ANR). Some of the things that entice the board gamers include the campaign mode (which will support multiplayer down the line, async), an easier learning curve and the inclusion of a lot of premade decks so they can ease into it.

We looked at the option of adding up to 4 players and playtested it a bit but in the end realized it was never going to be as fun as the 2 player experience. That is not to say it will never happen at some point down the line but we chose to focus on delivering a very solid 2P experience for now.

Once we are done playtesting it, I’ll be posting a dev update in the coming days were we revisit some big changes we had on the docket that I believe will push this game quite far away from ANR. More new shortly :slight_smile:

Just wanted to chime in that I also look forward to seeing how this develops. I know you got a little bit of pushback earlier in this thread—and I understand that too, as my first reaction to the initial rules was a marked similarity to its parent game—but overall I think this idea could have legs with the general board gamer crowd.

And Caper is excellent and shows you have previous experience not only making a 2-player tabletop game engaging and fun, but also getting it to market.

Following with interest.

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Hey guys,

I am happy to announce the first large update of Limbo: The Passing - the Collateral Gain update. You can find more info about it here.

In short, this update capitalizes on some of the Limbo specific mechanics to rework the way points are scored for the Passer - so that any card reached can give him points. This creates a lot of new interesting decisions while making the bureau discard pile even more important than it used to. It really shakes up the gameplay quite a bit!


We have been following closely the initial impressions of Limbo over the last few weeks, and considering a few more changes alongside these. More specifically, we revisited some old ideas that included:

  • Setting up Guards forming triangles between two Guards / Locations. When the Passer snoops he would then have to choose a card with no other cards on top as a starting point, then work his way from there.
  • Remove the increasing costs of stacking up guards. As a counterpart, we introduced the concept of reactivation cost. When an active guard with a reactivation cost was faced, the bureau would have to choose to pay up it’s cost to make the Passer face it - or he can just get through.

While those changes certainly push the game farther away from ANR, they also add a lot of complexity with all the spatial planning of the guards / possible routes. At the end of the day, as some of you have suggested, this is indeed meant to be catering to a wider audience than ANR - and we feel like adding extra layers of complexity would be detrimental to that purpose.

I hope you find these changes intriguing, we are looking forward to doing some gameplay streams soon!

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Hey there,

We have a new update Trendy Venues with a let’s play video. The quality of the sound and the camera positioning are not the best but we are working on it. We are looking into recording a video each two or three weeks and are currently inviting some streamers to play with the dev team so we are hoping to have some more action soon enough!

You can check all the info about this update here.

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Let’s play video:

Hey guys,

The latest update Prohibitive is live as well as a let’s play video inside the post. We are basically tweaking existing systems to make sure they all click together, as well as some minor balance changes. Always a good sign when the change set is small!

You can check all the info about this update here .