My studies were the inspiration for the game theme. I am an aerospace engineer and I love everything about space and aeronautics. The first drafts began by anticipating and imitating the same technological challenges and problems that real life Space Programs had encountered for example: the difficulty of dropping the module accurately on the intended target position, The design of a ship that was well-equipped, enough to survive in space more than two turns and to create a realistic movement system that was both authentic and playable. 

That’s right, this game about space exploration is actually designed by a rocket scientist! 

The post Damian Korus – Exploration Kickstarter appeared first on Next Player.

Floyd Lu and John Brieger’s game – The Refuge: Terror from the Deep takes you into treacherous waters with a 2-6 player competitive dive and a 1-4 player solo and cooperative dive. Now available to back on Kickstarter 

Compete with rival divers in a frantic race to the escape pods, or work as a team to solve challenging objectives before the Kraken overwhelms you. Whichever game mode you choose, you’ll be one of six unique characters in anmmersive, cinematic experience that takes you head to head with an angry Kraken! 

John “We’re really excited about bringing this game and this world to life. There aren’t a lot of people making adventure miniatures games that are under an hour and affordable, and we think players are going to really love it.”

Where does your passion for board games come from, were they a family tradition or is it a more recently acquired hobby? 

John – “I grew up playing all sorts of games with my family, who are intensely competitive gamers. I’ve always loved games – and some of my favorite childhood memories are sitting on the floor during family vacations playing card games. I started playing hobby games with Magic: The Gathering in 2001 and haven’t stopped since!”

For me, it’s great to see that boardgamers come from such a variety of backgrounds and lifestyles. Gaming was never a part of my growing up, but has been a big part of my adult life as it allows me to escape the everyday stress that comes with life in general. It also allows a level of connection that we can’t get through anything else, play is definitely a massive part of mental wellness and community building.

What were the unique challenges of designing a game that has both competitive and coop modes? Where do you get inspiration from? 

On Terror from the Deep, I worked very closely with Floyd Lu, who designed the original Refuge: a Race for Survival. Together, we built out a whole world for our divers to inhabit, and used that to drive core gameplay. Competitive gameplay was adapted from B&B Games Studios’ 2016 release The Refuge: a race for survival, so we had a solid starting point. The most challenging point of crossover was the character abilities, which we spent lots of time playtesting to make sure they felt awesome in competitive and cooperative dives.

For the cooperative and solo dives, our overall vision was that we wanted to bring a kind of monster-movie adventure to your table. So we used that as kind of a North Star to guide us when we needed to make design decisions.  I watched a lot of horror and action movies and tried to figure out what story beats we wanted to translate to the tabletop. A typical play session might see you get down on the ocean floor to conduct a science experiment, discover a secret shipwreck, then get devoured by the Kraken and cut your way out from the inside!

Where do you see yourself or B&B in the next 5 years – are there more plans in the works or focusing on Refuge at the moment? 

I just finished working with B&B on another title releasing later this year from B&B – Folded Wishes, and am really excited about continuing to collaborate with Floyd on future releases. We have some amazing things on the horizon.

If you were to recommend one top 100 game on BGG what would it be and what is one ‘hidden gem’ of a game that you love? 

Of the top BGG games, Concordia is a masterpiece of elegant design. I can’t get enough and highly recommend it to to everyone. (Ed – This is seriously making me want to buy a copy of Concordia, even though I have numerous others Euros!)

My current favorite “Hidden Gem” is the Korean speed game “Layers” by Happy Baobab. It’s an incredibly fun, vibrant game that you can play with almost anyone.

Make sure to check out The Refuge: Terror from the Deep now on Kickstarter!  

The post John Brieger of B&B Games Studio appeared first on Next Player.

Where did you get your start in the board games industry, are you aiming for this to be your sole job or is this a role that you would like to keep in addition to other roles?

I first entered the industry when I have successfully funded Cauldron: a board game of competitive alchemy on Kickstarter more than 3 years ago. It was really a labour of love for myself and a group of friends who provided invaluable help doing art and graphic design. We were thrilled that the game found its audience and that were able to successfully get it to almost a thousand backers. It’s been such a great feeling that I never looked back, besides – the board game industry has such an amazing community that it’s a pleasure to be a part of it.

I wish I could answer the second part of that question with any certainty. There is so much riding on ability to provide for a family that even with the incredible success of Unbroken – it’s a tough decision to make. The goal of doing board games full time is such an attractive ideal for me because I would love to be invested in my job so fully, but I have always been a fan of small responsible steps to get you where you’re going. So, for now I think I am staying put in my day job and enjoying the games business as a fulfilling side venture.

Unbroken was a standout of this year on Kickstarter, what do you think that it was that drew people to the game in particular? Do you think that the solo component has a lot to do with the success?

I think there were several reasons for the success that Unbroken enjoyed.

The decision to commit to the solo-only mode is the biggest factor. I mean, Kickstarter is so saturated with a multitude of all kinds of games these days that the number one requirement for success is the ability to stand out. And solo-only was definitely an underdeveloped niche with a big unmet need.

I’ve spent a lot of time on social media groups discussing different solo games that people enjoyed (and contributing my own experience as a passionate solo gamer of course). There is just really a big desire to have more of this kind of gaming and to not have it as a tacked-on solo mode or a jerry-rigged way to play something solo that really should not be.

Unbroken never settled for its solo nature – it celebrated it and was built entirely around that premise. I think this well-defined unique vision helped it stand out.

Another factor, although less important than the solo component is the fact that Unbroken takes 20-30 minutes to play. It offers a lot more than it asks for from the players. Talking to people about solo games I felt such an overwhelming desire of being able to fit more gaming into one’s life and not everyone has 3 hours to burn on globe-trotting in Eldritch Horror. There is a reason people still love Friday after 7 years – it’s a tight design that is super easy to bring to the table. So, I made sure to position Unbroken as a game that you will always be able to play and that won’t contribute to the pressure of unplayed games judging you, sitting shrink-wrapped on your wall of shame.

Nice art and affordability helped too :).

What was the process for Unbroken for you as a designer, did you come up with a theme first or did the theme fits the mechanics? Do you have a formal process for design/development?

I am a huge fan of the work that Ignacy Trzewiczek does both in terms of designing games and teaching others to do so. In his book, Board Games That Tell Stories, Ignacy lists a concept that I really took to heart in my own creative process. It’s not theme first or mechanics first. It’s the experience that you want the player to have. You have to settle on that and then layer everything else on top of that core, making sure that everything that you add contributes to this central vision. That’s the philosophy I tried to pursue with Unbroken. I wanted to tell a story of survival and staying strong despite being in terrible circumstances. I wanted to impress that dungeon-delving is not cutesy fun and real sacrifice and failure always loom. So, I tried to make sure that every thematic and mechanical decision that I made creating the game helped this vision and I am very happy with the result.

I certainly do not have anything close to a formal process – while there is a flexible central mathematical system holding everything together, there was a lot of tweaking as I went, especially as I have received some exceptionally useful feedback from the solo player community. It’s very much touch and go for me with periodic checkups on whether the game performs as I would like it to and making adjustments to refine it.

As my collaborators in Golden Bell can attest to – some of the tiny mechanical tweaks were being made just before submitting the game files to print, so it’s a constant living process. Just need to know when to say stop and move on – can’t spend an eternity chasing elusive perfection.

You mention your son, Alan, on your website are there any games that you play with him, or are looking forward to playing with him?  

Oh boy, I can write a whole blog post about my experience with teaching Alan games and enjoying them with him. He has taken very well to the gaming hobby – he was playing Hoot Owl Hoot before he was 3 and moved on very quickly to My Firsts of the genre staples – Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Stone Age – all of these have seen a lot of play time at our table. Alan is such a little nerd that he even has a favourite designer – Scott Almes, the man responsible for some of Alan’s favourite games – Best Treehouse Ever and Harbour. Games have been a big help in honing his numeracy and literacy skills as well as teaching lots of the social lessons like being a humble winner and a gracious loser (still working on that one). Forbidden Island/Desert series provides us with lots of cooperative adventure and Dixit is a family favourite to exercise some imagination.

I look forward to playing some more advanced and story-focused games with him when he’s older if he’s up for it. I have a copy of Legends of Drizzt patiently waiting its hour. I also think he will really enjoy Lords of Waterdeep in a year or two.

Oh, I also have a younger son, Ian who is 11 months old. We are working on rolling dice in Dungeon Roll without eating them.

What can we expect next from you Artem, Altema or Golden Bell Studios?

I am very excited for our collaboration and I think it comes as no surprise that the most immediate new venture that we have is an expansion for Unbroken that is going to broaden the player experience with new monsters, new characters, new strategy options (magic!) and the much-requested option for a co-op mode combining two copies of Unbroken.

Titled Unearthed Remains, it is about to enter design and development stage and I’m sure my Golden Bell friends will agree with me that we cannot wait to share it with the community and bring it to Kickstarter and eventually to players’ tables!

The post Interview with Artem Safarov – Unbroken appeared first on Next Player.

Steve has been in the RPG and tabletop games field since the 70’s, which if you aren’t good at maths, is a long time to be in any industry especially one which often ebbs and flows with public interest and engagement, so I ask Steve how he stays fresh in the industry:

 If it ever stops being fun, I’ll quit. So that kind of longevity is self-selecting. I doubt anybody does this for 35 years “because they have to.” I like playing games, and even more than that, I like making them. And I like all kinds of games, including computer games – my regret is that I’ve never been able to get really into that field. Maybe someday!

I don’t know if diversification causes longevity or if it’s the other way around. Certainly the market has changed enough times over the decades that NOT to diversify would have been fatal. One has to experiment, learn, adapt, reinforce success, and pull back on the things that are no longer working.

Release News!

As for the exciting release news, Steve says that SJG has been licensed by Games Workshop to create Munchkin Warhammer 40,000! It’s already in playtest, and doing well – and they are aiming to do at least one expansion set for it. You can find out more about Munchkin Warhammer 40k at the Munchkin website

Games Workshop have been not just easy to work with, but fun, and we’d love to do more with them. “Chaos” is, of course, a new monster type, and yes, there are Ultramarines! We plan to ship this game in March 2019

As far as other releases, I have been head down in the Fantasy Trip project (which went live on Kickstarter recently) and could not tell you what has been released or announced in the past month. I have run across some enthusiastic anticipation of Green Ronin’s THE EXPANSE project, which is also new on KS. And I continue to be impressed by Paizo’s PATHFINDER and STARFINDER lines.

Making games that work

One of the big issues that I have seen coming out of Kickstarter recently is the trend that people think that they can sell an idea, rather than a product. Kickstarter seems to have done away with the idea of research and development and seems to be acting as more of a venture capital fund for some companies to ‘see what happens’. My personal belief is that a lot of failure comes to KS creators because they fail to manage or research the human mechanics of play. Given that Munchkin has a high degree of ‘take that’ interactions and it has been successful over a long period of time, I thought that I would pose the question to the creator himself – ‘How do you make sure that play isn’t too mean?’

That’s one of the big values of playtesting with varied groups. I love games too much to take things personally, but some people can get very personal indeed about – for instance – the kind of foul compounded betrayal that so often comes up in Munchkin. And I want everyone to have fun. So we do try to design some of the potential “mean” out of games, because some people just take things too seriously, and I don’t want to lose their business OR spoil their day!

Given the success of board games and having a ‘Golden Age’ I posed the question to Steve whether he thought that RPGs are headed the same way. He says that he feels that:

“All the factors that have created the current boardgame explosion apply equally well to RPG material, and RPGs, even more than boardgames, inspire their fans to sit down and create variants and expansions” 

What about you, are you a fan of Role playing games and do you see a resurgence in them at the moment? If so, what are some of your favourites to get to the table right now?

Make sure you check out the Steve Jackson Games Kickstarter of The Fantasy Trip which is live now!

The post Interview with Steve Jackson appeared first on Next Player.

Inception of Gorus Maximus

Conor says that he didn’t have a TV growing up so tended to play a lot of board and card games, hence his interest in the industry. He ran a construction company for the last 10 years but unfortunately got sick and during his down time he created Summit and decided to try it on Kickstarter. He says:

“It went well enough for me to create the expansion, and then Vault Assault and now Gorus Maximus. 2018 will be the first year I rely on publishing income instead of construction revenue”

I have to say that this is a great story in the industry, there are so few people who are able to rely on board games as their main source of income and it is awesome to see this happening for Conor. It continues to show that this industry is growing and able to provide livelihoods to people, who in turn can provide incredible games.

Art of Gorus Maximus

The post Interview with Conor McGoey of Gorus Maximus appeared first on Next Player.

The New Zealand board gaming scene has been steadily growing, especially over the last ten years. We now how a number of board game conventions, including Wellycon and Board Games by the Bay, as well as a number of local game stores and board game cafes. I grew up playing a lot of the classics like Cluedo, Scrabble, Monopoly, etc. About eleven years ago I set out to design my own game. Soon after that I discovered the wonderful world of modern hobby games and quickly started designing more in that vicinity.

When I asked Shem about the success of the Northern Trilogy, he (very humbly) replies:

No way (was I expecting it). It was a total surprise when I first Kickstarted Shipwrights over four years ago. The immediate success was all thanks to the never-seen before art of The Mico. His comical, yet gritty style really helped to draw people in. The other key factors in its success is likely the easy-to-learn rule sets, interesting mechanics and of course, the fact that it’s a trilogy.

Now I have to agree, that the art of The Mico was fantastic, however I also think that it was the theme and particularly the game play that people feel for, check out the comments on the original Kickstarter and you will see plenty of satisfied customers and backers that were drawn to the game through it’s simple mechanics.

As for what he is currently working on:

I have already started on the second trilogy, set in the West Kingdom of Francia. The next two games in that series will be released over the following couple of years. Other than that, I have a few games signed by other publishers and some other products that I’m saving for Garphill.

You can find the BGG page for Architects of the West Kingdom here, with art by the Mico and the reputation of Shem’s Northern Trilogy, I dare say that this will be an automatic hit when it is released.

If Shem was stuck on a deserted island with another designer, a game and a prototype kit, he says that the other designer would be Sam McDonald (his co-designer for Architects of the West Kingdom) and with whom he has other games in the works with. As for the game he says that, when they aren’t designing and play-testing their own designs, that they would go for something co-operative, like Pandemic.

It’s always interesting to me as  to what games designers themselves would recommend to introducing players to the hobby of modern gaming. For his own designed games, Shem states that he would most likely recommend Raiders or Explorers of the North Sea. For games that are designed by others:

Azul, Codenames, Ticket to Ride, Asara, Pandemic, Citadels, For Sale, Kingdomino – I could go on! Games to steer clear of? I would just say, try not to overwhelm someone who’s just getting into the hobby. Give them time to learn a few basic mechanisms like card drafting, worker placement, action taking, etc.

Garphill Games can be found here

The new Solo variant pre-order for Raiders of the North Sea – is right here

The post Interview with Shem Phillips – Garphill Games appeared first on Next Player.

Jamie is a talented artist and is now in the play-testing phase of his new game, making the rounds of conventions like the UK Games Expo and has been involved with board games for the past 10 years after he rekindled his love for playing quick board games during lunchtimes at the indie video game studio he used to work for as an artist:

So after all this immersion in the industry, what are some of Jamie’s favourite games?

Not in any particular order, but games that have either been a regular feature on my table, or new surprises: Gloomhaven, Scythe, Mage Knight, Blood Bowl Team Manager (regular features) and Roll Player (the new surprise that I want to return to my table). As you can see I love fantasy games, theme is really important to me, but the strategy and the game play is what hooks me in for a return visit. That’s why although there’s a good chunk of dice-rolling and luck in Hero Master: An Epic Game of Epic Fails, I spent a lot of testing time making sure the strategy layer is solid. It’s all about using the right card at the right time and countering your rivals’ plays.

Jamie’s game Hero Master: An Epic Game of Epic Fails has a Facebook Group and you can also use this email sign up form for notifications on when it goes live. We will provide further information about the game itself closer to the launch date.

Thanks Jamie for your time, another recommendation of Roll Player means that my purchase of this game is ever closer!

The post Interview with Jamie Noble Frier appeared first on Next Player.