Design Notes – Clank! Legacy 2: Character Journals

May 9, 2023

Hi everyone, Jay Treat here – we’re into our second week on Kickstarter for Clank! Legacy 2: Acquisitions Incorporated – Darkest Magic, and I’m excited to share more details about the game and how it all works! Obviously, CLAI2 is built on the bones of known mechanics of Clank! gameplay, as well as on some of the structure and conventions found in the beloved CLAI1. That said, this outing is chock full of awesome new stuff for you to discover and play with, and today we’re looking at one of the most notable new developments in the series: the four unique characters and their journals.

The original CLANK! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated has a pretty epic storyline, with the players more or less saving the world. Any good sequel raises the stakes, but how do you get bigger stakes than that? Our approach in the sequel is to make it personal. We want to invest players in the world of the characters they are playing; give you real, personal wants and needs; make you care about the relationships you build.

The plot of any good story wraps around its characters, so Darkest Magic does that as much as possible. Each of the 4 playable characters is fundamentally connected to the primary events of this story, and everything that happens relates to one of them somehow. Each player gets their very own personalized Book of Secrets to read from—journals unique to each character, that reveal who they are and what they’re experiencing.

You read from your character’s personal Journal at the start of each game to see what they’re thinking about and what they’re trying to accomplish, and then you prioritize those personal goals alongside the goals of that game’s primary group quest. Darkest Magic introduces Solo Contracts that you take for yourself that no one else can complete. Each character gets one of these at the top of every game, and you can earn more as you explore the game’s worlds.

Each character is full of personality, with their own complicated past and connections to the Acquisitions Incorporated universe. Most importantly, they each have a future that you get to help write!

Each character’s starting deck contains cards that can be upgraded by scratching off hidden text as your journey unfolds. You can also unlock unique cards for each character by completing their quests, giving each character their own playstyle and experience. You build relationships with other player characters ranging from professional rivalries to familial bonds, and create affinities with the companions you befriend during your adventures. Keep them safe and they’ll keep helping you.

Certain quests and significant choices mark milestones in your character’s journey. Milestones help your character grow into their potential. They also affect you narratively and mechanically, influencing your story and the cards you unlock.

Our goal in all of this is to help immerse you in the experience, to invest you in your characters’ lives, and make the stakes more real when they risk themselves fighting monsters and foiling villainous plots. It’s a dangerous world out there, and we hope you take it personally.