Video: Behind the dice-based design of space cannibalism sim Tharsis

Developer and publisher Choice Provisions has published a new video deconstructing the design of its space game Tharsis as part of a promotional campaign for the game, which launches this week.

The video is worth watching (we've taken the liberty of embedding it above) because it's just over eight minutes of game designer Zach Gage expounding on how and why he drew inspiration from dice-based tabletop games like King of Tokyo and Quantum while creating the virtual dice-based gameplay of Tharsis.

Gage speaks at length about the "intensity" that dice rolls can bring to a player's experience, and how he worked to bring that intensity to the systems of Tharsis, which has been advertised as (among other things) a turn-based space survival game game in which a crew of astronauts may be driven to cannibalism in order to survive long enough to make it to Mars.

"I really want Tharsis to feel like playing with the tension of craps, the tension of gambling," notes Gage. "But the result is the loss -- or the not-loss -- of the lives of this virtual crew."

You can find the video and others like it over on the Choice Provisions YouTube channel.