Development Updates

Exploration in Nevervale is a gamble. Every time.

You're standing at the edge of the known map. Beyond is... nothing. Just the unexplored darkness. You spend your action point, draw a tile from the Explore Deck, and place it.

What you get is random. Could be a Pure forest - safe, resources, maybe a discovery. Could be a Corrupted wasteland crawling with monsters. You won't know until you flip it.

Step onto a corrupted tile. Draw from the Threat Deck.

That's the moment when you never know what's waiting.

Early game, you'll face Slimes - weak individually, but they split when wounded. Hit one for 2 damage and roll a 5 or 6? Now there's two of them. Goblin Patrols are smarter - they gang up, getting +1 attack when fighting together. Corrupted Wolves are worse. Fast, so their first attack can't be blocked. And they leave wounds that reduce your maximum HP until you return to the settlement.

Between the monster fights and cleansing rituals, there's something quieter happening in Nevervale. You're building a home.

Every quest rewards resources - Wood, Stone, Herbs, Relics. And when you return to Nevervale, you spend them. A Healer's Hut means your heroes heal to half HP for free. A Workshop lets you buy equipment at a discount. A Training Ground gives everyone +1 to combat rolls.

Here's the thing about Nevervale as a settlement: it's permanently safe. The center tile and the six tiles around it can never be corrupted. That's your anchor. No matter how badly a quest goes, no matter how much corruption spreads across the map, you always have somewhere to come back to.

One of my favorite things about designing Nevervale is the tension between healing and surviving.

You're not just fighting monsters - you're racing against the world itself. Every round, corruption spreads. That peaceful meadow you cleansed three turns ago? Watch it closely. One marker, two markers... at three, the darkness reclaims it. The tile physically changes back to corrupted. Everything you worked for, gone.

That's why Harmony Stones matter so much. When you place one, that tile becomes permanently protected. A safe zone that can never fall. But stones are limited. You need 8 to win the campaign, and you'll only find 10. Every placement is a strategic decision.

The rulebook is almost done. 15 sections of rules and mechanics, it's finally starting to feel like a real thing.

Turns out balancing a board game is absolute torture. Every single number matters more than you'd think. I changed monster health by just 1 and suddenly fights feel unwinnable. Make cleansing corruption a little easier? The whole progression falls apart.

It's been days of "okay, this feels almost right" then playtest and then back to the spreadsheet then tiny tweak and repeat forever.

The hardest part of the process is finding that balance where it's challenging but not frustrating, where your choices matter but dice rolls still give the luck factor.

Nevervale is getting closer. Every day, a little bit closer.

I'm finally at the stage where I'm ready to share my passion project with the outside world.

I've been working for some time on "Nevervale" - a cooperative board game for 1-4 players. An interesting fact is that it was originally intended as a video game, but in digital format it just didn't come together the way I had envisioned. So I transformed the same idea into a board game - and that turned out to be the right decision.

What the game is about: A fantasy world that suffered a great catastrophe called "The Collapse" - dark evil began to spread and take over the world, leaving monsters behind and transforming the land. You are heroes - bearers of the last hope - who use ancient "Harmony Stones" to free the land from the corruption and encroaching evil, fighting monsters and building your village in a safe haven called "Nevervale." The map changes during gameplay and you never know how it will turn out - physical hexagon game tiles that will change through 2 stages: corrupted and pure.

The game will originally be in English, but I hope to also adapt it to Latvian, although there will be terms that are difficult to translate.

The prototype and first version will be made with AI-generated artwork, because commissioning an artist to do it the way I want would be too expensive, since the game will consist of approximately 190 cards and 80 hex game tiles. I hope to collaborate with an artist in the future to create something more special.

Still a lot of work ahead, but I'm excited about the progress. If anyone is interested in following along - I'll gladly share.