Greeting Whovians, 

We would like to share a development update with you regarding the current progress on Doctor Who: Worlds Apart. Since July 2021 there have been many new additions to the team, and we are continuing to scale and hire key positions within the studio. I joined RGG as Head of Studio and have been busy ensuring the foundations for development are as solid as they can be before we add the upcoming meta features to the game. Other new starters include Marcie (Game Designer), Holo (3D Artist), Emily (3D Artist) and Michael (UX Designer).  

Recent changes to the game include using server authentication for multiplayer instead of the initial peer to peer approach. This massively reduces the risk of exploits and cheats. We’ve also removed the patching solution we were using for now as it was presenting us with issues, we plan to implement a new patching/launcher solution next year.  

Our focus has been working on the Early Access build, available to Founders Token holders, which is due to be released before the end of 2021. A huge amount of work has taken place behind the scenes with adjustments to the back-end and game logic, as well as a great deal of care and attention going into the gameplay modifications and scene visuals/User Experience. 

We hope to announce a launch date for the Early Access build soon, however we want to continue internal testing, bug fixing and polishing until we have a build that we are confident in distributing to players… it is not that far away!

An example of some visual changes is the remodeling of the Skaro environment, previously seen in marketing materials and during the live Gamerjibe event. We are incredibly happy with this new direction, and we are excited to talk more about the approach we have settled on for progression through different iconic Doctor Who locations. 

Skaro as seen in ‘The Magician's Apprentice S9 Ep1’

Some of the new assets that will be heading onto the game board in time for the Early Access build. We are incredibly happy with this new direction, and we are excited to talk more about the approach we have settled on for progression through different iconic Doctor Who locations. 

We are desperate to share the entire fresh look of the core gameplay scene, but we also do not want to spoil the impact of having it in the Early Access build, so the above image is a little teaser. If you’re not a Founders Token holder though, don’t worry – we'll be sharing content of this build far more regularly once it’s released, including regular streams featuring developers, designers and community members. There will also be a chance to own a Founders Token through our sale which we will be announcing full dates for in December. 

We are also working on a new roadmap to be released which shows the upcoming major feature releases as well as internally planning the ‘meta’ game to be added from early 2022. This includes features outside of the main gameplay such as ‘progression and ranking’, ‘tasks/quests’ and ‘player avatars and profiles’ to name a few.  

 Next year we will be looking to propose a system that allows us to balance the cards within the game for both functional and aesthetic purposes. This will also need to consider what happens to the visuals of the NFTs outside of the game client. We are treating this proposal very seriously and want the community to be looked after whilst giving us the flexibility to make the gameplay as entertaining and balanced as possible. More on this in 2022! 

To finish this update, we are extremely excited to be close to having a live build out in the world for players to experience. We massively value community feedback and will communicate the methods to provide this closer to the release of the Early Access build in the coming weeks.  

Thanks for your time, 

Adam (Head of Studio) & the DWWA Dev Team

As we are getting closer to early alpha, we are getting the core gameplay and cards in better shape than ever before.

While the developers have been working hard on the client, the design team have been finetuning the Unearthly Origins set, to make sure that every card has a place in the game.

• Some keywords are being removed or added to cards.
• Keywords such as Arrest and Incapacitate are being unified into similar keywords like Imprison and Disable.

The player's hand will now be referred to as Hand, rather than TARDIS. Furthermore the TARDIS Shields will now just be Shield or Shields. This way we avoid confusion about the TARDIS as shield and the TARDIS as hand, while also keeping in line with Doctor Who’s lore and standards granted by the BBC.

There are tons of exciting changes and tweaks.

The change most visible to the eye is that the card type Planet will now be Environment with Planet becoming a subtype. This will give all cards a similar layout and allow us to design other interesting Environments that players can enjoy.

This is way more fitting to Doctor Who and supports ideas involving space-stations, pocket universes and everything in between.

Back in March we released an article which briefly touched on the planets and their role in deckbuilding and gameplay. Since then we have tweaked that system to be more cohesive with the rest of the game and with future designs. (If you are interested in knowing more about the game mechanics in detail, you can read more in the game manual at a future date.)

What changed?

It is important to note that while some cards have been changed due to technical limitations, the overall goal is to improve the game and the cardpool in general. This will inevitably affect the current power of some cards.
Yes, some has been nerfed, but it’s mostly buffs and tweaks that make cards more accurately resemble what is happening in the show.

The card changes fall roughly into three categories, which we will explore briefly below.

Clarification of Concepts

These are changes to wordings that do not affect gameplay, added or removed subtypes, and name changes. The reason for most of these changes are a concern for readability and lore.
This also includes changes such as the players’ available cards being referred to as Hand rather than TARDIS.

Most cards have received changes in this category.

Attribute changes

Attribute changes such as increased/decreased artron, attack, health and other numerical values. This can also be added/removed keyword abilities.

All of the changes to attributes are with balance in mind.

We want to make sure that as many cards as possible will be picked up and played along with the already top-performing cards.

Although many of the cards are getting their attributes improved there are still some cards that have been performing too well during internal testing. Some of those will be brought down in powerlevel a bit. Maintenance of the powerlevel of cards will be an ongoing effort on our part, as we want to see a different variety of cards being played as well as ensuring fun and engaging gameplay.

Card Reworks

Complete list of card reworks, such as a complete change of text or main card type, can be found below.

Cards could also be considered reworked if they receive multiple Semantic and Attribute changes.

As a result of the core mechanics, and the underlying game-systems being finished, some cards just had to change to fit. If some cards must change the question becomes; what to change them into?

By changing some cards, we can take the opportunity to neatly adjust the game to be more cohesive and immersive.

Among the top priorities are; to make sure that the card represents the lore from the show, and to utilize and showcase core mechanics like placement and reactions.

We have also kept an eye on opportunities to make the cards better fit their rarity.

Click here to see the complete list of cards:

In 1970, the story Doctor Who and the Silurians, written by Malcom Hulke and aired on the BBC, presented a new species to the vast universe of Doctor Who. Only this time, these creatures seemed to have a valid and ancient right to the ownership of planet Earth.

The Silurians are a reptilian humanoid species. They were the natural inhabitants of prehistoric Earth. They were a civilised species that was more technologically advanced than humans today.

Some Silurian tribes went underground in hibernation when the moon was formed as they thought it was on a crash course to Earth. Others stayed on the surface, mingled with dinosaurs and explored the unknown.

New Times, New Villians

The Silurians added something different to the show as they considered humans as the invaders of their land. This resulted in the two races having to negotiate an agreement for both species to cohabit on the surface of Earth.

In the Silurians’ TV debut Doctor Who and the Silurians, the Third Doctor was exiled on Earth with a TARDIS broken by the Time Lords. On Earth, he worked as the Scientific Advisor for UNIT and drove around in a car called Bessie.

Green Aliens in your Future

In the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart game, the ability to draw cards or to see the future is given to the different psychics, academics, time travellers or very curious characters. The Curious Paleontologist draws a card for you if you control another Silurian or Dinosaur.

The Psych Patient, who went mad after witnessing a dinosaur in a cave in the 20th century, draws the next Silurian from your future. In addition to the card drawing mechanics, the Silurians offer a broad variety of positive effects for your card deck to combine with.

Many Silurian have direct synergy with Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, especially the T-Rex and the Ankylosaurus Pack, are big creatures with many card stats. The Silurian Researcher can bring these creatures back from the past, and the Expert Dinosaur Tamer gives them extra card stats.

The first set of DW:WA cards explores the episodes The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood (2010). The main Silurian characters are all present: the warmongering Restac and her sister Alaya, the curious scientist Malohkeh and the patient leader, Eldane.

Odd (and lethal) fishes

This specific tribe of Silurians, hidden under the Welsh city, Cwmtaff, had the ability to stretch out their tongue in a venomous attack that would slowly kill the target. This ability has been converted to the keyword “Lethargic Poison”.

Lethargic Poison means that after a creature has taken damage from a Silurian with the keyword, the creature takes one additional damage and loses one attack, which adds to the variety of the Silurians.

The Silurians, when discovered by the Third Doctor in 1970, didn’t have that ability. Instead, they used a third eye located on their forehead to either stun enemies or break through concrete material with a high pitched noise.

The Lethargic Poison makes the Silurians quite useful to trade with the opponent’s creatures, since they can take on creatures bigger than themselves.

Poison, love and Harmony

There are different ways to play your Silurians: bring them all to your future and bring their dinosaur-friends with them in a scary deck that features big creatures and lots of different utilities to help you draw the next big creature.

Or, you could just bring Eldane, Tribe Leader in your pacifistic combo-deck. When Eldane is present, no organic creatures can attack. If you’re still unsure about the situation, you can use one or four Zygon Morphers to copy Eldane to completely freeze the game. Let’s just hope your opponent doesn’t play Daleks.

On the 8th of October, 1966, the BBC began airing the Doctor Who story, The Tenth Planet. These episodes featured the first on-screen regeneration of the Doctor.
They also introduced a new villain, the Cybermen, created by Dr. Kit Pedler.

A long time ago, Earth had a twin planet. It was called Mondas and was very much like it’s sibling, green and blue. The inhabitants of Mondas shared a parallel evolution with Earth and were inhabited by dinosaurs, Silurians and eventually humans.

Mondas and Earth also shared the same orbit around the sun, but when the Earth’s moon was formed, it forced Mondas onto a course away from both the Earth and the sun, making the conditions of life impossible - or at least human life.

In order for the Mondasians to survive they needed to adapt, and they eventually became what we know as Cybermen.

The Story of a Cyborg

The main problem for the humans from Mondas was that evolution couldn’t keep up with the fast changes in their environment. The scientists of Mondas had to rely on their knowledge to survive the dead and cold surroundings, so they upgraded the human bodies.

The scientists removed various organs and replaced them with technology and plastic.
To survive the bittercold reality, they removed the Cybermens’ emotions, as they would complicate their survival.The Cybermens’ ultimate goal is to upgrade every human to become like them.

Cybermen In-game

In the Doctor Who: Worlds Apart game, the Cybermen are part mechanical and part organic. They are all “the same” as their personality and character traits are deleted along with their emotions.

The way the game portrays the Cybermen is inspired by the scene in Doomsday (2006), in which a Cyberman gets upgraded to the new Cyber-Leader via a simple and quick download. Therefore, we have chosen to create more generic non-Companion Cybermen, for example a Cyber-Guard and a Cyber-Warrior rather than actual Cyber-companions.

Still, there are some exceptions: The Cyber-converted Bill Potts withstood her Cyber-Conversion and retained her emotions and opinions in the episodes World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls (2017).

You will be Upgraded!

“Upgrade” is a subtype to the Card Type called “Attachments”. Attachments are cards that represent weapons, technologies or wearables such as the “Dalek Gunstick”, “Chameleon Field” and the “Eleventh’s Fez”.

These Upgrades and Attachments have good synergies with the Cybermen, as the various leaders of different Cyber-fractions can distribute their knowledge to other Cybermen. The Cyber Leader and Cyber Controller both have positive synergies with Upgrades and can create a strong Cyber-Army to victory.

Old tech

The cybermen cards have great synergy with Attachments which add complexity to the Cybermen. The cards in a Cyber-deck have a purpose and must be played in the right order to give the Cyber-army the best outcome.

Cards such as “Disarm” and UNIT Cards with the Gather Intel-keyword, are great opponents against the Cybermen since they strip them off their Upgrades and use them against you. As Kate Lethbridge-Stewart told the Cybermen in London in 2014: “Sorry, you left this behind on one of your previous attempts.” (Death in Heaven, 2014)

“You will become like us”

The Cybermen are interesting in many ways. Dr. Kit Pedler, the creator of the Cybermen, created this species as a reaction to contemporary perception of biology and technology, but also to the ideas and beliefs of the future of the human race.

The Cybermen can make you reflect on how humans might end up in our future, considering the biotechnological improvements already made.