Unpub Regional (South Jersey) Recap!

Saturday was the first Regional Unpub event, a large gathering of game designers showcasing their games in South Jersey of all places! While it was about 25 minutes from my home, it felt like it was right in my backyard. 

I've been to the big Unpub events in Delaware and the smaller minis in Pennsylvania, and this one was a solid mix of both. There were about 20 or so designers on hand with a huge variety of games. I saw some kids games, a space mining game, a horse-racing game, a realtime war game, a My Little Pony game, and many more. In typical Unpub fashion, I was able to show off my game a little, get solid feedback, and play a handful of really cool games.

I wish I had more pictures, but if you head to the Cartrunk Entertainment Facebook page, there are a ton (including the one above of my daughter Elle and her game Ponyland).

Web of Fortune
Why not start with my own game? Well, chronologically it was the first that I played. I set it up and immediately had a few players.

Web of Fortune is a press your luck, roll and move game where players trek their way across a giant spider web, gathering gems and avoiding the spider's lethal limbs. It's very simple and can play from 6+ but probably shines with 8+.

I was a little hesitant about bringing the game because it was sitting with a big end game issue. There was basically no end game trigger and the game ended when all gems were collected. This led to a few other issues with the game slowing down and becoming anti-climactic towards the end.

Thanks to the wonderful players at Unpub, I figured everything out. I'll be fixing a few things and testing everything out again real soon. Thanks to everyone who played and to Charlie Hoops for running the KidZone. (There were little certificates for each kid that played your game!)

Phobos

One of the games that I really wanted to play was Brad Smoley's Phobos. It's his space-mining, tile-laying, tight little masterpiece.

The game has a bit of a Carcassonne feel to it, but only in the tile laying and unit placement. Placing units is similar to the majority rule in the fields in Carcassonne without the limitation of exclusive placement. This makes the game very competitive and very exciting.

Along with placing tiles and units, players can move their units around, but only through areas that they have a stake in. So it's very important to make your paths, and if you are lucky, create some handy shortcuts. That was my method, which didn't win me the game, but it was a lot of fun. It lasted a little under an hour and felt just right. The entire time you could see the end game clock ticking away, along with all of your ambitious plans.

This game was the standout of the event and needs to be published. In the meantime, I'm tracking Brad down so I can play again.

Star Dice
I didn't get any pictures of Matthew O'Malley's Star Dice, but they were very cool. Ships w/ directions, blasts, asteroids and a few other cool items. It reminded me of X-Wing, but if it were a 20 minute dexterity game. WHAT???

You roll inside of a designated play area, choose a few dice to re-roll (not asteroids), and then set aside anything other than asteroids and ships. If you rolled blasts you can use them to flick towards other dice, knocking them out of the galaxy. Some ships can flick from multiple areas or multiple times. It had a touch of Kingbrick to it as well (dice-flicking) but captured a little bit of that X-Wing feeling (space battle) without the feeling X-Wing leaves on your wallet.

I played with Matthew and my 5 year old daughter Elle, and Elle beat the both of us. Lots of fun.

Kasta
This may have been the only abstract game at the show? It was Rey Alicea's Kasta, a very nicely made wooden box/dice game where you have to remove dice away from a pool of dice in the center of the table. It's tricky because you can only pull dice that are on the edges, and you will take one and give your opponent three.

The goal is to get rid of as many dice sets (4 of a kind, 4 in a row, etc.)as you can, because when the game ends your score is whatever you have left. And low score wins, so you don't want anything left.

There are a few bonus moves that you will need to do to win the game. You can always start your turn flipping a die or discarding a die. This was very powerful, almost too powerful as a free action. Especially for a mathy player. I'm only semi-mathy, but it helped me win by a good amount of points. Even with that said, it gets tense in the last few rounds when there are only a few dice on the table and you (and your opponent) won't likely be able to get rid of them.

Tessen
I've talked about Tessen before and it's got even better since the last time I played. Tessen is Chris and Suzanne Zinsli's a realtime samurai battle game that is over before you even know it. It's quick and tense and has been picked up for release by Van Ryder Games. I played a few rounds and even tried out a possible expansion card that totally changes the way you think about when you score your cards.

Animal Run
Kevin Kulp was also in the KidZone with his game Animal Run. I've worked alongside Kevin on this game a few times and it's really shaping into this fast-paced game where players try to predict the road that their animal is running down. A correct prediction gets a better place in line, and a better place in line gets you more gold. Gold is in the form of cards, which will win you the game. I'm going to keep working on this game with Kevin, so I'm sure you'll hear more about it.

Ponyland
My daughter Elle took over my table for most of the day with her game Ponyland. It's based on one of her favorite Strawberry Shortcake games and she'll want me to point out that she "made it in a day" while it takes me "a year" to make my games. She had players and everyone was having a good time until she got a little moody (she's 5). She'll probably be back at Unpub with some of her other games sometime soon. She has a card game in the works and a board game based off of one of her favorite movies, The Rock-afire Explosion (crazy, right?).

Wartime
I managed to squeeze in a few sessions of my Unpub favorite, Wartime. It's a sand-timer based Wargame, where the timers act as your cooldown time for all attacks and movement. But you have more units than sand-timers so your choices are tough, and you need to make them really quickly. The game lasts no more than 8 minutes and is always a treat. I also successfully won by making it all the way across the board for the very first time. My strategy of just running has finally paid off!

Maximum Throwdown

We closed with a round of Maximum Throwdown, my card-throwing battle game that debuted at the big Unpub in January. It wasn't registered this time, but it's quick and I had a few requests to bring it. As you can see, I'm still playing on the old abstract prototype but I hope to have a fancy-art version soon enough. Look for it this summer from AEG!

Check out Unpub.net for information on attending one of these events. They are always a great time for designers or attendees. I can't recommend them enough.

How To Throwdown

At the recent Unpub 3, I had the opportunity to shoot a quick Intro / How To video for one of my games. I figured that everybody has already been introduced to Pixel Lincoln and ZombieZone, so I took the opportunity to Throwdown a little with John Moller and Brian Elligson. 

If you're curious how the game works, check out the video where I explain the various icons in full detail (kind of!) and we even throw a few cards around. Also be sure to visit Unpub.net for more of these "Video Moments" from the event.

TGC Pro Boxes!!

I was super excited to see that The Game Crafter started offering Small Pro Boxes this week. These are the first fully-printed, full telescoping boxes that they've been able to offer to game creators. It's a huge move forward for the designer community and like many of my favorites before this, I immediately started working on some designs to try out the new products.

I'm still working on the layout/design for the box bottoms (which I think is the hardest part to create), but I'll share the tops here. I'm ordering today and cutting it close for Unpub... but if they arrive before the event, I will be sure to bring them. Not only do I need something to hold my games (they are currently in a Hula Hippos box), but I know others will probably want to check out the new boxes.

Here are my layouts with some of the fold lines still showing. Keep in mind these are quick roughs just for prototyping.

These boxes hold up to 128 cards or less cards and some components. They are perfect for some of the games I'm working on right now, but there is one exception. They cannot fit the sticker sheets in the shop, and a few of my games will use the sticker sheets. Hopefully they can find a workaround for that soon enough.

Also I'm excited to see what follows the "Small" Pro Box. Will there be medium and large? Great moves forward, all around.

More Unpub Challenge

My entry to Bryan Fischer's Unpub Challenge design contest is rolling along. I have been tinkering with some design ideas and trying out a few tweaks here and there, but mainly we've been working on art and character concepts.

It's a realtime dice brawler, similar to video game multiplayer fighting games... and in those types of games, there were lots of characters to choose from. Right now we have 4, and we already have 3-4 more in the works.

Seeing these characters come to life has been so much fun, especially with Marty's artwork taking everything to the next level of excitement. He's been at the top of his game with these.

I'll post some more card images and some playtest photos over the next few days.

Unpub Games - 2 of 3 ZombieZone Version 2.0

The second game that I am bringing to Unpub is a new version of ZombieZone!

ZombieZone is my head-to-head asymmetric battle game of humans vs. zombies. The Preview Edition made its way to a few events and recently ended its 3 month run at The Game Crafter, and now I'm taking all of the feedback and moving towards the next version of the game. Luckily, most of the feedback was really good. Father Geek gave us a great, gamer-defensive review back in October.

     Posted on October 24, 2012 by  Father Geek

If you are looking for a quick game of zombie survival that is easy to teach, well-balanced, and perfect for those times when you just want a quick game€, do lock your sights on ZombieZone. While not the most complex of zombie survival games on the market, it is certainly no cakewalk and was found to be much fun to play. Full review at http://fathergeek.com/reviews/zombiezone/

The current version is a 12 space x 12 space gridded board where the humans and zombies go head-to-head similar to chess or checkers. 

In the new version, the board breaks apart into multiple pieces so that you can play the classic gaming style, or you can create your own map before playing the game. Along with this, I would like to introduce additional map pieces and additional character types to give a ton of variety to the sessions.

Here are some rough ideas that I'm planning for Unpub.

First up is the modular board. Here is the standard board, broken into pieces and assembled a little differently. You could simply twist and turn each of the corners and keep a standard square OR you could stagger them a little bit.

With this in mind, I would like each of the pieces to be double-sided allowing for more room to mess around with harder areas, changing the landscape of the battle. And with this in mind, we could introduce all-new scenarios. 

This could have a new tile type that is a Dropzone. Each turn, an unarmed human could be dropped there to battle off the oncoming wave of Zombies.

Then we could have quick and brutal battles on just one square. Like this one:

I've also thought about introducing additional tiles into the game. If we can make it all on thick chipboard, we could consider extra pieces like the one below.

With a few of these, you can make tight corridor areas that are tough to pass. 

And finally, it would be great to be able to remove some space from the game board. I've been trying to think of how to handle the overhead view without making it look like a black hole / dungeon. Here are some rooftops for now.

I'll be making about 6 different double sided tile types as well as a few of the little corridor areas to try out at Unpub. I'm also bringing some new character tiles, which I will share soon enough. And if that isn't enough, I have a slightly lighter, trimmed down version of the game, that takes the basics and makes it a very accessible Zombie checkers type game. I'll post that soon too.

If you've played the game before (or not!) all feedback is very welcome. Even if you just want to say that you hate zombies!

Unpub Challenge

Bryan Fischer, game designer / publisher (Nevermore Games: Chicken Caesar, Mars Needs Mechanics) and Darrell Louder, game designer (Compounded) came up with a great idea for an unofficial design challenge that ends at Unpub next month in Delaware. Sometime at (or after) the event the designers will each get a chance to see each others games in person and try them out. This has given me the creative spark I was looking for, and also is detracting me from a lot of other work that needs to be done before Unpub, but whatever... You should make a game too!

Here are the details from Bryan's site (http://fischer.tumblr.com/post/38952460903/gdc):

We’re having an unofficial UnPub3 Game Design Challenge! By “unofficial” I mean it has nothing to do whatsoever with the official UnPub3 event. Basically, a few game designers are creating games quickly (deadline is UnPub3 in January) using very limited quantities of components. We will meet up at UnPub3, likely in the evening, and play these games and award a winner. You are invited to take part!

The Rules:
Your game must be a complete game playable by 1+ players. It is limited to containing up to the following components, but no more:
20 cards
4 dice (d6)
15 cubes
Rules
30 minutes or less game time 

The cards need to be a standard size: Euro, American, or a mini-version of either. No giant sized cards that double as a 20x10” board, cheater. The dice need to be six-sided, but may contain blank sides or have custom symbols. The cubes should be standard cubes, about 8mm or so in size, whatever colors you want. The rules should be printed out, but don’t worry too much about diagrams unless they are super necessary. Pencil drawings count! This is all about the gameplay, which btw has to be 30 minutes or less.

Rules update: At least one sets of components (cards, dice, or cubes) must have multiple uses in the game.

The Spirit:
This challenge is about the fun of designing a game with limited time and materials. Notice the bolded fun because you should definitely keep that at the forefront of your mind while making a game. Make it strategic, make it funny, make it whatever you wish, as long as it is fun!

The Venue:
Like I wrote above, this is an unofficial challenge, aka, it isn’t associated with UnPub3 in any way. We’re figuring out where/when we’ll play the games and enjoy our creations and will get back to that soon!

And here is a little about about my submission...

It's a currently unnamed realtime dice fighting game. As you may know, I've been playing too much Playstation All Stars Battle Royale lately, and I'm a massive fan of Super Smash Bros. So, in trying to capture the speed of those types of fighting games with dice, I made it so all players play at the same time. 

Players will both roll one or both of their dice over and over, trying to get combos that are higher than their opponent. Once a player has a die combo that they are happy with, they will yell "hit!", and the opponent must leave his/her dice on the table as-is. A quick evaluation will show if the hit succeeds. Each player has a red and black die. Both dice will each need to be higher than both of the opponent's respective dice. If so, the defender receives a point of damage. And if not, the hit fails and the attacker receives a point of damage. There are also blocks (any die with a result of 1), healing (both dice with results of 1) and special moves (specific die rolls that always win).

Once a player receives 8 hit points, they have to flip their player card over to the Last Chance side. Once flipped, they have 8 more hit points left before the game ends. And now, they receive a Fatal Flaw, which makes it harder to land the best hits. 

Those are the basics. There are still a few flaws (ha) that I need to work out. But it's quick, light and we've been having a lot of fun with it here in the last 2 days. Hopefully people will enjoy it (unofficially!) at Unpub.

Here's an image for now. Marty Cobb (Pixel Lincoln: The Deckbuilding Game, Paper Route) is killing it with the art. And I have been killing myself with the layout. 

Congress of Gamers 2012 Recap

Congress of Gamers is a small(ish) gathering of board gamers in Rockville, MD, just outside of Washington DC. It's just under 3 hours from my house, so I took the long solo drive down to see what it was all about. I really had no clue going into it because 1) Like I said, it's small(ish), 2) It's only been around for a few years, and 3) Their website is a little rough. Just finding out the location requires the user to channel their inner internet detective.

Even walking up to it, I still had no clue what to expect. The event was in a Senior Center, which sounds like it'll be a one or two room building, but this was bigger than most high schools. Tons of themed rooms, with tones of things to do. It made me want to skip 30 years into the future just to have the possibility of hanging out at one of these places.

But I was there to play games. The main room had a whole bunch of people playing Power Grid at once, with a silent Board Game Auction happening along side of it. Instead, I spent my time in the Unpub Protozone, a room for established, and up-and-coming designers to demo their new and unpublished games. The mood was very upbeat and creative in there, with a lot of great minds huddled around each game. I only played a few, and photographed a few more, but overall had a great time.

ZombieZone

I was one of the first designers to arrive, so my first few games were play tests of my own game, ZombieZone. It's a 2 player head-to-head battle game, currently in beta testing.

We played the game about 8-10 times throughout the day, with most players getting in more than one session, which is always a great initial compliment in these testing sessions. Everyone seemed to be having a blast, with it being the loudest game in the room (at least until Pole Position got rolling) and the anonymous user feedback forms proved that everyone did enjoy themselves.

My goal with the game right now is to finalize the basic units and start introducing new ones. The balance leans a little bit to the Zombie side right now and these sessions have helped tighten it up. You can pick up a copy of ZombieZone at The Game Crafter, or print your own at this link: http://buttonshy.blogspot.com/2012/10/zombiezone-full-pnp.html

VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game 

With VivaJava just shipping out to its Kickstarter backers, getting a chance to play TC Petty III's dice version of the game was an unexpected surprise. I knew TC would be in attendance (as he was co-running the event) but I had no clue such a prototype existed. I think this was the one of the first public tests of the game.

So what can I tell you about it? Well, it's basically VivaJava lite. Just replace the beans with dice. If you've played VivaJava, you'll recognize all of the familiar mechanics. There are the blends (and even the epic Rainbow blend), the research (which modifies your die rolls instead of your bean pulls). Players can bet on other blends, and also obtain more/better dice.

If you haven't played VivaJava, the prototype might take a little more explanation, if only to bring in the coffee theme. Players will roll dice trying to make their best coffee blend. A blend is similar to a poker hand, with 3 of a kind beating a pair, and 4 of a kind beating 3 of a kind. Only one blend can be in play at once, so a better blend will dethrone the previous leader. Points are scored throughout the game, with the most coming in after successfully surviving a full round as the top blend. The alternative to blending is to research, which gives you special abilities once you reach certain checkpoints on the blend board.

As a fan of VivaJava, I was instantly hooked on this. And as a fan of great mechanics, I think most would also get hooked in. The only thing missing from VivaJava is the social side to it… but this is smaller, lighter, and quicker. It really captures the brilliance of VivaJava, with dice.

Walls of Light

I didn't expect to get to play Walls of Light. This is Jesse Catron's Game Crafter game about stained glass windows. Probably one of the most extreme themes (extreme, as in far from the normal, not to be confused with an EXTREME! theme) I've played in a while, and it meshes really nicely with the mechanics.

In the game, players are completing windows by playing transparent tiddly winks on top of each other to form various colors. When two colors form a third color, a player may earn extra points (as points are calculated by the amount of different colors in a single window).

The game is very inexpensive and you can get a copy at The Game Crafter for just $9.99. It's light on components, but the quality of the design makes it feel like it should cost twice as much. I ordered my copy and I'm looking forward to playing again.

Salmon Run

I've talked about Salmon Run a few times before. It's a very solid, customizable, deckbuilding Salmon racing game, and it's currently nearing the end of it's very long Kickstarter run. You can still pledge for the next 12 days.

Each time I play, I enjoy the game more and more. Even this time, I lost terribly, but still had a great time. Gryphon Games lis doing an amazing job with the production mock ups, but I will miss the art and appeal of the prototype. Look at that 3D rendered bear!

Compounded

I didn't get to play these last three games, but everyone seemed to have a great time with them. I can vouch for event co-organizer, Darrell Louder's upcoming Dice Hate Me game, Compounded. It's solid. Absolutely solid.

Pole Position

I didn't get the names of the designers of Pole Position, but they came in asking if there was space to demo their game, and they quickly had everyone in the room playing their horse race / auction game, ALL AT ONCE. It was crazy how it took off, and sustained that momentum all day long.

East India Company

The final game that I missed was Paul Owens' East India Company. I was told that it was THE game to play at Congress Of Gamers, but it didn't make the table the day I was there. I got to chat with Paul for a while (great guy) and he let me take a few shots of the game. Hope to play at an upcoming event.

And that was my day at the Rockville Senior Center a/k/a Congress of Gamers. A nice, small gathering of great designers and great games. I say it was small because there were only a few dozen people in the room throughout the day, but that was plenty to keep the games going on a consistent basis. The silent auction was worth it too. I didn't get anything because I saw it too late, but I know someone bought Power Grid with 2 extra maps for $20. That would have been worth the 3 hour drive alone.