https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1396674461 Our last spotlight focused on the devilish Crullford Fiend mod, but today's feature is a decidedly gentler experience - Ruben the Claw Troll. The original Ruben mod was an encounter chain focused on spending time with an adorably mischievous baby claw troll. A sweet and elegant exploration of the bonds that form between people and their pets, its designer, Cheeseness, has since adapted it into a separate challenge for ease of consumption. It was easy enough to grab Cheese and ask about the inspiration behind Ruben, as he handles our Linux port and can generally be found making himself useful in our forums or our QA processes. Cheeseness: I've always found the claw troll cubs depicted in the Fallen Treasure card art to be adorable. I put together some custom emoticons for the Hand of Fate Discord server, which were well received and prompted me to make up a boisterous character to go with their joyous little faces, which drew a little inspiration from a yellow labrador that my Dad got after I moved out of home. He was a good boy with a big heart, who sometimes didn't quite know his own strength or understand how things like doors worked, but always wanted to help and be involved with whatever people were up to. Over the years, he became something of a celebrity, and at one point my Dad received an invite to a function addressed to "Frodo and Henry." While testing the HoF2 mod tools, I started to put together a Ruben encounter based on one of Frodo's many shenanigans from when he was a puppy - mysteriously showing up with stuffed toys that nobody could work out the origin of. Why did you decide to make an encounter chain? Frodo passed away several years ago, and as the first Ruben encounter came together, I realised that there was some value in writing down these stories somewhere before they start to fade from my memory. It was my Dad's birthday in April, and I worked hard to get as many of the encounters playable as I could before then. He got to be the first playtester of the Ruben chain and that was a moving experience for both of us. I've written elsewhere that it's important to make sure that good times and positive memories aren't lost to grief, and making the Ruben chain was part of that for me. My reasoning for releasing Ruben out as an encounter chain rather than a focused Challenge was a combination of emotional impact and pacing. Our small friends are with us as across significant portions of our lives, and getting to know Ruben one encounter at a time across many runs felt like a better fit for attempting to convey some of what it's like to have a pet in your life. I think this mirrors what we see with the companion chains in Hand of Fate 2, where we get to know Mal, Col, Estrella and Ari over time. With a chain, there's more opportunity for memories to be formed and for players to take a break and reflect on their experiences. Did you find your design changed when you made the Challenge variant? From the beginning, I'd always planned to created a companion mod for The Ruben the Claw Troll that allowed playing through the chain as a linear Challenge. Mostly this was to test the mod dependency functionality, but I also think that while it's not the intended experience, it could be a nice way to make the story accessible to reviewers, streamers, anybody who wants to get to know Ruben but doesn't want to play Hand of Fate 2, or players who've already completed the chain and would like to replay it. From a design perspective, I didn't feel the need to make any deep reaching changes. Most of the changes I made were small things aimed at preventing the Challenge from interfering with chain progress and helping the chain flow more nicely when packed into a short experience. I added some interstitial encounters between each of the main Ruben cards to indicate that time is passing, I also removed the options to skip Ruben encounters, and prevented token unlocks so that the chain's final reward can't be acquired unless you play it properly. The Challenge also doesn't give you an opportunity to get the Eternal Hope blessing... What were the biggest challenges you encountered while making Ruben? The Ruben the Claw Troll chain is primarily text/story oriented, and I wanted to find ways to mechanically highlight moments and provide a sense of stakes/rewards without resorting to combat or adding required equipment. I tried to make good use of each of the different gambit types in ways that resonate with what's happening at the time. For a precision gambit that can occur at the beach, I tried to make the pendulum targets give a sense of waves with their movement style, or when trying to rub down a shedding Ruben so that he doesn't track carapace flakes all through the house, difficult chance cards reflect how wriggly and unpredictable that process is. Writing Ruben was emotionally intense as well, and definitely more draining than most of the other writing I've done in the past couple of years. It was hard (but rewarding) work. In hindsight, is there anything you'd do differently? Not really! Aside from not having as much time as I'd have liked to devote to working on card art, I'm pretty happy with how it has all come together. Is there anything you want to see added to the modding tools, or to Hand of Fate 2 itself? We've been talking about maybe adding some shortcuts for pendulum target alignment/distribution, and I'd love for us to be able to allow for custom trait, challenge and info prompt icons. Beyond that, reverse centaurs? What advice would you give to people wanting to get into modding HOF2? The modding tools can be a bit confusing at first, but they can be a bunch of fun. If you find yourself stuck or want to bounce some ideas around, hop into Discord and have a chat with the modders and developers (including myself) who hang out there. What's your favorite HoF2 Challenge? That's a tough question to answer! All of HoF2's Challenges offer a different angle on how Hand of Fate 2's core mechanics can be expressed. As I sit here and look through them, I can't settle on one. I can't even settle on two. I've given up on trying to narrow it down to just three, so I'll let Ruben decide. I love the Sharptooth encounter and used that card's art as a placeholder for the Mayor card in the Ruben chain, so let's go with The Hermit, which constantly has players weighing up the risks and rewards of exploration, presents the Empire as a tangible threat for the first time, and offers some clues for the overarching plot and continuity of Hand of Fate 2. Thanks, Cheeseness! To spend some time with this gentle creature, head over to the Steam Workshop page and subscribe to Ruben, available as either an encounter chain or a single challenge!