Resonym | Retrograde Kickstarter Press Release

For Immediate Release

February 4th, 2022 (Hanover, NH) – Resonym announces its upcoming game Retrograde, coming to Kickstarter on February 15th.

Retrograde will be the sixth board game from Resonym’s award winning designers Mary Flanagan and Max Seidman to come to Kickstarter. Retrograde will join Resonym’s ever-growing repertoire of acclaimed titles that include board games such as Monarch and Mechanica.

Retrograde is the first real-time roll and write board game. Inspired by classic arcade games, in Retrograde evil Astrodroids are attempting to take over the planet. Players try to blast as many droids as they can on their sheet, which represents an arcade cabinet, in order to beat the other players’ scores.

How to Play

Players are playing the fictional classic arcade game Retrograde, and trying to get the best score. Each evil Astrodroid they blast is worth 1 point, with extra points for blasting bosses (by completing columns) and getting trophies. Retrograde’s rounds start with real time dice rolling. Each player rolls their dice as fast as they can, keeping the results they like and rerolling the results they don’t. Whenever a player is ready, they can stop rolling in order to claim one of the Target Cards in the center of the table. Players can keep rolling until there’s only one player left who hasn’t claimed a Target Card. Then that player gets two final rerolls and takes one of the remaining cards.

After rolling, players take turns spending their dice to blast droids on their sheet. For each droid they want to blast, they must have a Target Card that shows that color droid, and spend a pair of dice depicting that color of droid! If they rolled too slow, they might have gotten stuck with a Target Card that doesn’t show the types of droid they want to blast this turn. If they claimed a Target Card too quickly, they might not have rolled many pairs of dice showing the droids that match their target card. To succeed, players must be fast and clever.

About The Game

“Retrograde was born from my love of classic arcade games, and my childhood experiences playing early roll and writes like Yahtzee,” said Mary Flanagan, Resonym’s founder, CEO and co-designer of Retrograde. “Retrograde has fun power-up combos and multiple paths to victory, but like most of Resonym’s titles, is ultimately an extremely family friendly game!”

“The game has been described by playtesters as ‘chaos yatzy.’ Who doesn’t love rolling dice?” asked Max Seidman, Retrograde’s co-designer. “Retrograde’s six Astrodroids each have between one and six eyes. That means that in addition to being a great game by itself, you can use Retrograde’s custom pixel art dice anywhere you need a six-sided die.”

Retrograde also features a unique solo mode where the game emulates racing against other players by having the solo player race against an unseen timer. Claiming a Target Card before the timer is up results in no penalties. But if the timer sounds before the player claims a Target Card, some of the available Target Cards will be discarded, and they might have to settle for a different card.

Features

Over 25 custom Astrodroid dice
100 unique roll and write sheets—each page is different
Novel “race against an unseen timer” solo mode
Retro arcade game aesthetic by Mechanica illustrator Ann-Sophie De Steur
Pixel art by Phantom Ink illustrator Spring Yu
1-4 players, 30 minutes to play

With successful support from Kickstarter backers, Retrograde will fulfill to backers in Q4 2022, and be available in stores later that quarter.

About Resonym

Resonym is Mary Flanagan’s woman-led game publishing company. Resonym works with women artists and designers to make artistic and engaging experiences—games, stories, and more.

Ghost Writer encapsulates the Resonym team’s values of accessibility and inclusivity. The mechanics are easy to learn and teach, and the minimalist art style invites everyone to see themselves in the game! Ghost Writer‘s high player count also makes the game highly social, and the team-based structure makes it competitively cooperative. Resonym’s hope is that Ghost Writer can bring people together to engage in some light-hearted and collaberative critical thinking!

For more information about Retrograde, including press assets, visit resonym.com/press/retrograde, resonym.com/game/retrograde, or contact Jazz Foster at contact@resonym.com