2024 Update Part 1: Tuned To A Dead Channel

Hello World
If you were only keeping tabs on Black Hats via this blog, I would forgive you for thinking that Erik and I had suddenly gone missing on a transatlantic flight. Or perhaps we’d fallen into a wormhole, or for some other tragic reason stopped working on this game. Rest assured, we remain as corporeally bound to meatspace as we are dedicated to Black Hats.

Of course, you’re probably already a member of our Discord community, so you would already know that we’ve been kicking the tires and adding fresh coats of paint to Black Hats since our first appearance at Gen Con 2023.

But maybe you’re the sort of incredible person who likes “reading” and “concise information” - in which case I apologize for how I write (I am told it is an affront to both readers and conciseness). I’m going to break it down into a three part series.

This is Part 1 and lays out everything we have been up to since our update last year. Part 2 will share our plans for Black Hats’ future leading up to our crowdfunding campaign. Finally, Part 3 with our ambitions for the far future of Black Hats.

Total Visual Overhaul
If there is a single reference point for the general art direction I try to provide, it would be the Neuromancer game for the Super Nintendo that never existed. There is a kind of retro-future technology presented in early cyberpunk that grabbed at the right direction that our technology was headed at the time. What they predicted correctly was the function of how networked computers would evolve into every facet of our lives. Less accurately predicted was the form that technology would take.

“Case, you want the fifth socket from the left, top panel. There’s adaptor plugs in the cabinet under the console. Needs Ono-Sendai twenty-point into Hitachi forty.” ― William Gibson, Neuromancer

The original cyberpunk aesthetic is chunky. The world of William Gibson’s Sprawl is more analogue than what a person in 2024 could consider futuristic. That world doesn’t run on solid-state drives, it runs on tape-decks. It doesn’t use touch screens, it uses thick mechanical keyboards. The cyberpunk of the 90s could not conceive of wireless technology. Everything must be cabled, the thicker, the better. As late as 1999, The Matrix was still conceiving of a world dominated by a connected phone line system.

That vision of the future is largely consigned to the dust-bin of history alongside the chrome plated flying cars of 1950s science fiction. But for me, I just can’t fall out of love with the clicky button cable laden CRT monitor-driven aesthetics of those works. I’ve done my best to work with the artists I commissioned to bring out that aesthetic flavor all over Black Hats - from the characters to the cards and tokens.

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As you can see from this handy graphic, every token in the game has been re-designed to be more thematic and have a better game feel. Our community of play testers weighed in their feedback as well to make sure the game elements were presented clearly.

I just love how the game feels in the hand now. Fanning through a pile of rigs feels like looking at a little pile of pixel microchips. Rig and runner cards have an aligned texture showing where they “plug” into each other. Going through the executables, their fonts and coloring, gives the effect of peering into a little command terminal window with a dull CRT glow. When a runner has taken their activation they now exhaust to the classic hourglass icon sprite as they await the round end.

It all adds up to a distinctly pixelated-analogue-cyberpunk look when it hits the table that makes it just a joy to engage with for this old millennial cyber cowboy.

More Characters!
Since Gen Con we have commissioned art for three additional runners, now 50% of the runners in the game have their art and tokens!

A Play Test League!
While the art was cooking, we organized a playtesting league among several of our discord players to search out anything too broken to hit the printer. The results of the league gave way to our last big change to how scoring and the end game worked. Gone are the semi-confusing 3 points ahead rules, but they have been replaced with a new variable scoring system which bases points earned for data scored on the damage values of your deck. This change reinforced the value of damage numbers as a balancing force against a cards primary effect text, which helped to reign in some of the abusive strategies that emerged in the league.

​Here are some prizes our players earned caught in the wild-

More To Come
We have had a great year so far as we gear up for the launch of our crowdfunding campaign. Keep an eye here for Part 2 of our giant 2024 update!