We showed over 150 people how to play POND this weekend and received SOOO much positive feedback, it honestly blows me away at how well this game is resonating with you all! (Plus lots of demos given for my upcoming marble puzzle fighting game, Re;MATCH!)

After taking all of this playtest data home, we've done a TON more development and internal playtesting and I am VERY excited to announce our final round of open beta testing for POND on Tabletop Simulator!

Come in to my discord to share your feedback about the game after playing or to find others to play the game with~

Pre-Orders for POND is also now available so if are just following along, you definitely don't want to miss out on the Backerkit edition to get over 50 different guest artist cards!

First, we've created some custom player boards for each player to hold their meeples and tells you what your unique faction ability is~

Additionally, there have been a few high level changes for the game to make it easier to learn and play, removing some of the most confusing parts of the game.

Namely, the Long Fwooog cards. There are no longer any variables and exponents involved for the Long Fwooog. Additionally, their effect has been streamlined to simply be 1 unique ability for the faction's long fwoog, then a choice between either creating a new long fwooog meeple or gaining 2 berries.

Previously, the Long Fwooogs also provided 1 hibernation, but thats been completely removed. Instead, a new rule has been added to the overall game:
- Whenever you shuffle your discard into your deck, choose 1 card from your discard and hibernate it

This way, every cycle of your deck (which should be around ever 2 to 3 turns), you'll get 1 hibernated card. Hero frogs are then still created by merging your hibernated frog cards into a hero.

We've also cleaned up the text for alot of cards to make them easier to digest, like the Frog with a Net card now just says "Choose 1:" for their 3 options!

The last big change is that combat dice have been slightly adjusted to have 3 Swords, 2 Bombs, and 1 Miss, instead of 2/2/2. This makes combat a bit more lethal, and promotes attacking as advantageous a bit more as well, as before moving to control was just much more efficient compared to attacking.

Finally, the Factions have been rebalanced a bit, specifically the Cowboys and Wizards, to make them play more consistently. Right now, I am VERY happy with the balance of the 4 factions AND how asymmetric they feel in play. Each faction really feels like they lean into a specialized strategy off the bat but they all still maintain very good balance with each other.

We'll be doing this final open beta playtest over the next month while we wrap up all of the assets of the game, with the goal of going to production by mid October (for everything except the rulebook, which print alot faster so we'll be working on that after the rest of the game's print files are set)

If you'd like to provide feedback for the open beta, please join us on the discord to tell us what was confusing, or if you found any typos!

Sorry for the delayed update this month. Right after Gen Con, both me and POND were at Otakon, and now this weekend we'll both be at Anime NYC!

If you pre-ordered POND and are going to Anime NYC this weekend, make sure to stop by PONDHQ's booth to pick up some adorable Frog plushies~ (or just order them online!)