Pretentious Board Games

I was asked recently by Marc Di Stefano if he could use some quotes from me in his current kickstarter campaign. This will be the fourth time that I am quoted in a kickstarter campaign :). He also offered to send me a copy of the game that he is kickstarting, and since it arrived yesterday I played a few more games of it ( ChibiMob ) with Alison last night. We first discovered this game during a design contest (probably last year?), and have played it on and off since then. We were supposed to only play one game last night, but but we ended up playing more. I thought that I would write up a review of the game (I just backed it on Kickstarter , so this seems like a good time for a review). Overview: Chibi Mob is a light-weight* strategic card game with elements of drafting, hand management, action point allowance, something like deck building, and a small amount of 'take that' in the last few turns. *This game feels like an incredibly weighty light game. There are not ...

I have have been able to play 3 more games of Jurassic Space since I last posted here. The game is progressing along nicely, although it still needs a lot of work. I am about to start doing more research so that I can make the plant growth smoother (right now you plant large monocultures of plants, but really I want to have a way that you can build ' guilds ' of plants, and then just have them grow all together.) I also intend to replace the map of the solar-system with a randomized map. In other news, I have been getting a good amount of orders for twist counters at my storefront website (linked in the upper right). I am working on making smaller counters for people that are interested in smaller counters, and also making the dual counters smaller (because most people will use them as a score tracker in my opinion, and so they will only need to print 10 numbers on each to reach 100)

My new game is currently called "Jurassic Space". It is a concern balancing drafting game where you build an ecosystem on a space habitat and then transport it to a planet that wants the resources. I have been working on it for two weeks. Friday I played my first game of it, and since then I have played two more (one was a 3 player game, and it works with three players). Here are some cards: And the map: I need to write down my rules so that I can record how it changes during the creation process. I hope to play a game of it at the Sandy board game design group meetup (if we have the time). We are meeting tomorrow. For anyone who is interested, the group is here .

I went to the board game design group meeting last Wednesday. We played three games. The first game we played was Sorcery, Inc. It went well, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We played with my new cards (The ones that I added art to recently). Ryan said that he really liked the main mechanic of the game. :) The second game was 'Snake Wrangler' it was a press your luck dice game, and it went fairly well (though we changed some rules during the game.) The third game was Near and Far (A new game by Ryan Laukat (in the same world as Above and Below)). It was really fun. Probably the best game that Ryan has made (in my opinion). It was a RPG/adventure game where you have a guy that gains magic artifacts, traits, and fame. You have a different fame score in each civilization (the humans might like you and the hog folk might hate you) sort of like Grand Theft Auto 2 (which I played once in my teenage years). Being the most well liked person wins you the game, and probably...

I had a crazy idea the other day, and had to try it out. My 'Sorcery, Inc.' game is quite hard to understand for most players (even people that play a lot of games can't seem to figure it out), so I thought that artwork would help. For the background of the card I had an idea of a circuit board magic circle, which I couldn't find any examples of on the internet. I thought it was beyond my skill level, but since nothing existed I started anyway. It is still in the beginning stages, but I am quite pleased with how well it has gone so far. Soon I will print them up and bring them to the Sandy Board Game Design group to see how other designers like them.

My first kickstarter campaign was successful. I am currently trying to fulfill things, but that doesn't mean that I have had no time for gaming :) I played some Dominion yesterday at lunch (I lost by 1 point because my treasure maps took too long to collide) We also played a game of Dead Drop (which was pretty fun.) Sunday night I played 5 tribes for the first time, and I liked it quite a bit. It had randomness and strategy in the right proportions. Alison said she would enjoy playing it again. Once I fulfill this campain I intend to buckle down and make cards for MOAR MOAI! and for Polynesia. I might get crazy and make some for Sorcery Inc too. Who knows?

A week into the kickstarter campaign and I am 600% funded. I honestly didn't expect it to go this well. I did spend some up front time advertising it among certain crowds, but I have gotten more people than I can account for. Additionally, I am quite surprised at how many people were willing to pay extra money for counters of a different color. Perhaps I should have opened up more slots for that, but at the present time I would rather have a very successful campaign that I fulfill quickly than a campaign that gets me a lot of free filament and takes a long time to fulfill. I have started printing bases for the rewards (Since those don't depend on the choices of the backers - all bases are the same). I can print 21 in about 2.5 hours, so I expect that I will be able to print all of the bases before the campaign closes. I think that this will make me able to fulfill faster than people will expect. I hope that it makes people more likely to back my projects in the future. ...