Designer's Notes #1

Introducing AZADI

In the coming weeks, Abhishek and I, the creators of SHASN:AZADI, will be sharing our designer’s notes on the game. We’ll be talking about the design philosophy of the game, the narrative lens we’ve adopted, and how we’ve tried to realise this story through our mechanics. 

SHASN: AZADI is a semi-cooperative expansion to our first game SHASN - The Political Strategy Board Game. Each player is a revolutionary, trying to liberate their country from the grips of a tyrannical Imperial power and establish democracy.

AZADI builds upon the SHASN game engine of building ideologies, managing resources, influencing voters, forming majorities, and gerrymandering. Like SHASN, AZADI is rooted in the genres of area control, resource management, and social strategy.

In AZADI, players must work together to combat the Imperials - an adaptive, automated adversary. When players grow stronger, so do the Imperials, targeting them with increasingly dangerous attacks. 

As players struggle to survive the Imperial onslaught, they must navigate unique events from history, dissent against injustices at great personal cost, and unlock new resistance tactics to fuel the revolution. As their influence increases, players will add more zones using the new modular board, amass glory and legacy, and build monuments to their efforts.

Freedom however, is not guaranteed. And should the players succeed, only one of them will emerge as the leader of the free nation. AZADI straddles a unique line between cooperation and competition, as players constantly juggle the needs of the revolution with the scope of their own ambition.

With 4 new campaigns containing historic events across the ages, resistance tactics of all ideologies, and a variety of nation archetypes, we wanted to create a wealth of strategic options and playstyles. Walk the path of great leaders before you or forge your own path to victory, while building a new nation every time you play.

AZADI can also be played as a standalone game. While experienced SHASN players will definitely appreciate the new engines and moods of AZADI, the game is a great entry point for anybody who wants a taste of revolution.