Lock & Load was a blast, and the highlight of the con for me was getting to show off LEVEL 7 [ESCAPE]. The demos we ran Saturday and Sunday gave people a chance to experience the game, but Matt Wilson and I gave everyone a first taste during the seminar we ran Friday afternoon. For those of you who didn’t attend Lock & Load, here’s a peek at what we talked about.

The first core concept that makes LEVEL 7 [ESCAPE] a unique experience is the combination of two resources, and the fact that you don’t have complete control over those resources.

The first of these two resources is a hand of Adrenaline cards. These cards partially represent your health, but also have stat modifications and special abilities to help you overcome obstacles.

The second resource is the fear track on the character sheet. This track represents your emotional state and gives bonuses or penalties depending on its level.

The two resources work together since using a card has associated fear costs. A card can only be played if your fear token can be moved the required amount on the fear track. The aspect of the game that adds an unknown factor to these two resources is that they can both be affected by elements of the game that are not under your control. For example, enemy attacks and events can both force you to remove cards from your hand or raise your fear.

The interaction of the event deck and the tiles is the other core element of the game.

Tiles are drawn while exploring, and they come together to form the map. The tiles have icons that have specific rules associated with them, and three of these icons trigger events.

You draw an event card whenever you explore a tile with an event icon or at the end of your turn. These cards have three functions: they determine when enemies spawn, what events are triggered on a tile, and which enemies activate. The tiles and events combine to create a random element to the game that means no two experiences are the same.

That’s some of the stuff we covered at Lock & Load, but I’ll be talking about LEVEL 7 [ESCAPE] much more in an upcoming developer diary series. And if you missed Bill’s blog, you might have missed Matt Wilson’s [WELCOME TO] LEVEL 7 short film. You definitely don’t want to miss this.