Welcome to the Indie Tabletop Newsletter, hear from independent tabletop games designers about their current and upcoming projects. Take a look at the games we’ve already self-published and our upcoming Kickstarters, maybe even get yourself a free print n play game. Learn more about this newsletter here.
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Ho-ho-oh-no! the world has ended, A small, just for fun, TTRPG for you and some friends to have a gaming giggle with at Christmas!
In games of Nuclear Winter Wonderland the players all take on the roles of Christmas elves or ‘Santa’s little helpers’. The elves play out a salvage expedition where they make their way through the ruins of the World-that-Was to find enough salvage to take back to the workshop. The elves will however need to use that same salvage to fashion the things they need to keep the horrors of the wastes at bay. It will need to be a careful balancing act of resource management and stockpiling to be successful.
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The Game will be self-contained within a book/booklet/ ’zine’ (whichever word best fits is up to you).
It will feature at least 24 full-colour pages with fantastic art and all the rules you will need to play pretend at being a team of Christmas elves.
Delve deep into the nuclear wasteland looking for salvage to build toys and invent some ridiculous stuff along the way.
For me, Standing Stones was a game that came out of an idea when I was looking for something other than dice or cards for a roll and write game. I was talking to Odin about this and he had made a suggestion about dominoes. I ended up running with the idea as I was thinking about how Dominoes are often used standing on their ends as a dexterity device. Which then sent me into thinking about the Standing Stones all across Scotland which were highly decorated with pictographs.
This became an exploration that deepened my love of history and seeing ways to bring to light the lesser known bits of history that I find fascinating.
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The Picts (named by the Romans) were a fascinating Iron Age people who building stones and decorated them. Similarly monolithic to Stonehenge or the Moai. They were also involved in some of the first piracy by boat. We see the failure of walls by the Romans several times during this historical period including Hadrian’s Wall. The Romans were gradually moving back that border because of the Picts and similar Celtic groups who wanted the invaders out. This could be a neat idea for someone to work into a COIN game. That kind of gives an idea of where this game headed. It’s very much a Euro style game with the players working against the game system to gain some sort of bonus. It also has this semi-cooperative element of sending your family member to visit some other families and do work for them. I hope players like what this game is and like what it’s about. It certainly won’t be the last Domino driven game I plan to make. So if you get a fancy set of Dominoes (or even a cheap set!) there will be other games down the line that use them also.
Also, if you are interested, you can check out our full game on Tabletop Simulator. We have released it onto the Workshop on Steam. So if you are interested in that and would like to check it out, we are going to provide a link for you.
We are getting closer and closer to our launch on February 2nd. If you want to make sure you are kept up to date with the game as well as a few surprises that will be coming before the Kickstarter, please sign-up for our monthly newsletter, join our Facebook group, or any of our social media accounts.
The first was the title text. For most Item cards, the title looked great, but when the name of the item was particularly long, like “Night Vision Goggles”, the only way to fit it all on one line was to reduce the font size or condense the letter spacing, neither of which looked very good in my opinion. Letting it flow into a second line didn’t work well either, since the title was center aligned and two lines started to look crowded against the white oval in the background.
The second issue was much smaller but centered around the flavor text. Mostly I felt that it was a bit too large, and I wasn’t sure if the font itself worked well with the title font of the card.
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Well, I am by no means a graphic designer, so it took a lot of time, but I think we finally have a card design that fixes those issues! The main difference from the original is that the white oval in the background was changed to a trapezoid. Because the left side of that shape is shorter than the right side, it works perfectly to make the title left aligned and gives it enough space to allow for two lines without feeling crowded. The new title now has larger, bolder font, and still feels like it has more room than before! And for the flavor text, I was able to decrease the size slightly and find a simple font that’s still very readable.
There might still be a little tweaking to do, but from here on out, I think any changes made will be so small that most players won’t even notice. I’m quite happy with the new design!
Our next game, Song of Tales has been through its first round of Beta playtesting and there’s been a major re-design, which is always a good thing. Its currently on TTS, but since its in the middle of a re-design I’ll not put up a direct link until I get the new version up, maybe next month.
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We’ve also signed up Anca Gavril, the artist from On Tour and Q.E. to work on the box, card-backs and rule book artwork which is pretty exciting, we’re really getting a whole team of artists on this project now which means we keep seeing new cool images. If nothing else its really fuelling us to make the game live up to them.
In news of the far future, we’re pretty sure that our next two games after Song of Tales will be the small pocket game Turing and the full release Art Heist (that name is a work in progress though), so keep tuned for news about them. Hopefully 2021 will be a full calendar with Song of Tales in the first quarter, a project for a second print run of SSO and a little humble project for Turing.
Dogo Dash was 199% funded on Kickstarter on the 19th of November 2020 and will be available for sales in 2021. The game is the first release from Talita Rhein, game designer located in Berlin.
The game has 57 exclusive illustrations that emphasize the uniqueness and diversity of all of us. Rather being a humanized animal characters or just people doing the activity they like the most.
If you are interested in learning more, subscribe to the newsletter and stay tuned about the next steps Dogo Dash and Talita Rhein will take!
Last week Theo Paphitis – the successful entrepreneur and business mogul from BBC’s Dragon’s Den – announced the winners of his Small Business Sunday (SBS) competition, in which he rewards small businesses doing great things. The Dark Imp was one of the six winners!
Here’s the winning Tweet: “@TheoPaphitis I help parents create an irresistible offline world that rivals the online one. I design board games that engage even the trickiest teenagers. In Doughnut Dash players program thieves to steal doughnuts from a factory & from each other! #SBS” We also included a picture of Doughnut Dash, complete with some mouth-watering doughnuts!
As a result of the SBS win, we’ve had quite a bit of press coverage. Every year, Theo Paphitis runs an event for his SBS winners. We can’t wait to meet him in 2021!
New Notepad Games in Development – Mini Town, our first ‘notepad game’ has been so successful, that we’re planning on developing a little range of these games.
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The next game in the series will be Palatial, which is currently with our graphic designer, who is working her magic… You have inherited a palatial stately home, but sadly it’s in a terrible state of repair. The house is falling down and the grounds are being reclaimed by nature. You must tackle this fixer-upper before you can move in. Protect the historical features and cover up the worst of the blemishes to gain the most points.
Following Palatial, we’ve got a series of other mini roll & writes which are all at the early design and playtesting phases… a word game, a modified tile-placement game, a push your luck game and a set collection game. Watch this space.
This year has been a challenge in so many ways. But while adapting to on-going restrictions & other issues, we kept busy working on educational games & activities to make learning fun.
In the first part of the year, we released a half-dozen games and activities:
• “Chess Attack” – a game from my youth where chess pieces have to fight for the right to win a combat
• “Snort! The Truck-Spotting Travel Game” – a game from our daughter’s youth where we would try to spot all the different trucks we could while singing ‘Trucks! Trucks! Where are you?’
• “The Bone Game” (PnP ed.) – a special print-and-play of “The Bone Game” for all those families trying out distance learning / home schooling for the first time
• “Project: Risky Decision” – a game from my training days for introducing the concepts of risk management and mitigation on software projects
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• “Probability Battleship” – a sudden inspiration at the time when everyone seemed to be talking about roll-and-writes
• “Pirate Ship Paper Craft” – an activity to make a 3D ‘board’ for “Pirates vs. Skeletons”, but it is also fun in its own right
In the Fall, we debuted Captain Flim Flam and his mini pirate crew for #TalkLikeAPirateDay. I have a feeling we will see them again, from time to time. 🙂 We also got a little ahead of ourselves and threw together “Miser vs Miser”, inspired by the characters from the 1974 stop-motion animated special, “The Year without a Santa Claus”.
But for a large part of the year, our attention was focused on completing “Pirate Pursuit – The Spanish Treasure Fleet”. This game and “The Bone Game” were the two ‘flagship’ games that launched PlayGames2Learn.com just 2 years ago. But it had taken a backseat to the many other smaller games we have released since then. Now we were going to finish it.
Pirate Pursuit – The Spanish Treasure Fleet is a family-friendly game filled with educational content related to infamous people, historical events, world geography, and naval vocabulary during the time of the Spanish Treasure Fleets. Play as pirate hunters, chasing the crafty pirate across the sea – or play as the pirate themselves, trying plunder the Spanish treasure fleet before the pirate hunters can answer too many questions about pirate lore, and capture you!
– See pictures and learn more about how to play at TheGameCrafter.com
We were lucky enough to engage the artistic talent of Jon Merchant, and with his help we were able to release #PiratePursuitTBG at the end of October. It is the biggest, most beautiful game we’ve made yet! We just love it!
Now, as we head into December, we’re taking a bit of a break from all our game design efforts and are making plans for what’s next. Of course, we already have a lengthy todo list, but…
The Board Game Survival Kit will come in a mint tin with these basic components: 1 meeple, 1 pawn, 1 cylinder and 2 D6 dice, all in the colour you want to play as. There are many extras I would love to add to these through stretch goals like a standee base in your colour, a laminated dry wipe player card, the option to choose between “I play [colour]”, “I win as [colour]” or “I lose as [colour]” and much more! I would also love to do a deluxe version with a mini 7-piece dice set that would fit in the mint tin.
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There will also be the chance to get a Kickstarter exclusive personalised copy with your name on the tin! If this sounds and looks like something you would want to back on Kickstarter please sign up to my Kickstarter notifications on the Atikin Games homepage.
I’d also appreciate hearing what else you would like to see in the kit, so get in touch! There’s also a kit for the person who always says “I’ll be any colour” in a rainbow tin and the only guarantee is that every item will be a different colour (except the two dice which will match).
Mini Memory Mischief fulfilled yesterday, 191 packages left my home and are going out to 14 countries around the world and I couldn’t be happier. Some even went out ready wrapped as Christmas presents, speaking of which both Mini Memory Mischief and Tri To Win would make wonderful Christmas presents and stocking fillers, find them alongside my handmade gaming accessories on the Atikin Games store.
Next games – so now you’re thinking: “of course we’d love those cool accessories but what about your next games?!” 2021 will definitely have new games as well! Progress will continue on Malum Hortus, I really can’t wait to launch it on Kickstarter and hope to by the end of next year. In the meantime, I have a couple of exciting little mint tin games planned, perhaps even 3 games in one campaign, surely that’s crazy talk?! Nope! It’s coming, keep an eye out for it and remember to sign up to my Kickstarter notifications on the Atikin Games homepage.
Thank you all for reading The Indie Tabletop Newsletter, the designer and subscriber lists grow each month and has brought together a wonderful community of board gamers and indie designers alike. Please take the time to subscribe at the top or bottom of this page.
One of the great things about the board game community is how supportive we can be of each other — we share something which brings people together, especially important in these times where we are isolated from one another.
I am thankful for all the wonderful people I’ve met. I shan’t name names here, else I’d be filling up all the space available, but there are many awesome people who make many awesome things.
I am thankful for this internet through which we communicate. Now more than ever, it can help bring people together. There is a downside — it can be fractious and easy to lose ourselves in an echo chamber, but I can only imagine how much more lonely it would be for people now without it. And I have had the opportunity to play(test) games which I would likely not have ever had otherwise.
Combining the people and the internet, I’m thankful for how people pulled together to create alternatives to meeting and playing face to face. I really believe it has helped to keep people sane. From contests, to play tests, to conventions, there have been many outlets for people. There’s a concept that constraint inspires creativity — in some ways it’s linked to analysis paralysis, but the basic idea is that constraints force us to be more creative. This year, the basic constraint has been that of mobility, or lack thereof, and social distancing. How can we do something which is inherently social and yet stay distant? It’s not a new problem — there have been play by (e)mail campaigns in the past, but this year, it has affected far more people and they’ve definitely risen to the challenge, creating creative ways of reaching out to people and bringing us closer together; this newsletter is an example. Another is Meetup Monday – a virtual meet-n-greet which I started on Twitter. I am also thankful that I’ve had the opportunity to learn, grow, and become a better designer this year and to build upon it next year! And the next….. And you know… I’m actually thankful for 2020. It’s shown how we can pull together. It’s shown there are some who don’t play well with others. But it’s also shown how weird and wonderful this world can be — and I bet that wasn’t on your bingo card for 2020. I look forward to many more wonderfully creative endeavours next year!Read More
The Sensor Ghosts app is progressing nicely. Almost all the fundamental game controls are now in place and placeholder graphics have been implemented (need to be optimised for mobile still). We are now looking for a small number of alpha testers and a larger number of beta testers. Alpha testers will have previous experience of bug reporting and need knowledge of the Sensor Ghosts rules as we haven’t implemented the tutorial yet. The beta testers will be a broader range and prior experience and knowledge isn’t required :).
That’s behind us now though and we have shipped all the rewards and built up some more stock so now’s your chance to get a copy of FlickFleet and/or the scenario pack expansion before the inevitable chaos that Brexit will bring at the end of the year.
We’ve also had a few of our backers provide fan content for the game in the shape of new scenarios and a campaign of linked scenarios that map out the beginnings of The Uprising the plucky rebels of the FlickFleet universe.
As Designers we need to learn to embrace the negative feedback. Our aim should be to make our game the very best it can be, we can’t do that if we don’t know what doesn’t work. A bad game is a foundation for a great one. Your game sucks, and that is OK, afterall, The start of SUCk is also the start of SUCcess.
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Recently I have been working on my primary game, Koneko (a game about anthropomorphic ninja cats in Feudal Japan) but have hit something of a creative wall. Faced with insurmountable odds I chose to take another path, one filled with plastic shapes and acrylic paints. Yes, miniatures (minis for short). I decided early on that I wanted each individual Ninja Clan Leader to have their own dedicated mini so I have been working on designing some prototypes and today I would like to show you 2 of them and their character cards. Remember these are only prototypes so both are, of course, subject to change, the card art certainly will be. The specifics of the card anatomy will not make much sense out of context (I will be going over these in detail in the future) for now though they serve as a rough example of what players will be working with. Next time I will be showing a prototype for the player boards and breaking down how they work.
Until then, stay safe, wear a mask, Black Lives Matter.
Top Tale is a family-friendly card game where players tell stories and then vote on the top tale! The recommended player count is 2-10 players, ages 10+, with an average game lasting 30 minutes. The game can be learned in under two minutes, and it can be used as an ice breaker or team builder. The game designer, Peter Seiler, guarantees that you will get to know your fellow humans during gameplay.
Top Tale: The O.G. Volume 1 is the first game in the Top Tale series, which includes 144 cards and an unlock code for the mobile app to allow you to play Top Tale anywhere using your mobile device.
Missed the campaign? Don’t worry, as for a limited time, you can pre-order Top Tale: The O.G. Volume 1 through BackerKit. Expected delivery of the game is estimated at May 2021, with final artwork being submitted now and proofs in the works.
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So with resource gathering as a key concept for the game, I thought set collection would be a good way to go. You’d have to collect groupings of activities and then play them. I also came up with the idea of having powers themed on various alien abilities which would be used to manipulate the game. I wanted them to be used in more than one way, so you’d have to choose how best to use them based on the situation.
From these ideas came the first version of UFO Wave (which at the time wasn’t even named). I printed out white cards with coloured text on, and invited a couple of friends over to try it out. It went ok but we soon all agreed that the game was too simple, it needed more going on with it, more tactical choices.
I felt that rather than just drawing activities, players could see multiple possible activities and have to choose which they wanted to perform. From this came the concept of a scan of the local area, showing all players what activities are available for claiming, they’d just have to be the first to do so. I wanted distance to be a factor too, so there would be multiple rows of cards visible. Players would be able to perform nearby activities but also see what was coming up. I also felt it would be good if players got to choose to play as a particular known alien species, and each could have its own advantages.
But there was a long way to go on my journey of development! Next month I’ll go over what happened next regarding the versions of the game, how it got its name, as well as discuss the initial plans for the art. See you soon!
So, with the arrival of our games we have been super busy distributing 20 Dreams to our Kickstarter backers and pre-order customers. There is something so satisfying about being able to send out the games to our backers, that supported our new venture. And with more people playing 20 Dreams we are enjoying reading the reviews of 20 Dreams, so please keep sending them to us.
With the run up to Christmas, we will be working on promoting 20 Dreams with the hope that we can bring our game to as many people as possible. So, if you are looking for a game that will challenge how well you know your friends and family and even yourself, then try 20 Dreams.
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It’s a fun and easy game to play with endless outcomes that builds emotional intelligence through play. And now that we offer gift wrapping, our game can be sent directly to someone special!
Merry Christmas to all our fellow indie game developers and supporters of this gaming community!
Board Game Events: We have been at Cakes’n Ladders in Auckland and attended a designer night showcasing our flagship game Crimopolis. All our dedicated tables were occupied, and we got a superfan showing up. It is a nice feeling to have people follow you. Event-wise, our highlight was the 2-day event Board Games by The Bay at the end of November. We presented our latest prototype of Castleshire. Everyone who played said they were intrigued by the table presence, and after playing they got hooked by the experience. That confirms that it is worth investing in good components and artwork.
Swatch is a game with a unique theme and an art-inspired graphic style, with gameplay that is suitable both as a filler-length game for modern board gamers and as a game for families. Raising over £10,000 on Kickstarter last month, Swatch is a game that has caught the eye of reviewers and players alike, and is now open for late pledges.
Place artists to draft cards that collect and trade colour tokens, making swatch cards and creating your colour scheme. The first player to complete their scheme with the least colour tokens left is the winner!
Nate Thompson
Hello!Life has been pretty busy lately but I have had a little time to work on Landstorm. One change I’ve made recently has really simplified and removed the need for some fiddly rules. In Landstorm, at the beginning of each turn you receive an action point for each Village and Farm you occupy. This means as you build up your economy and expand your territory you’ll be able to do more each turn. Early on in development I realized that someone could accidentally (or intentionally out of spite or Kingmaking) move all their characters off of their Villages. This means at the beginning of their next turn they would receive no actions and the game would end. From this realization I built on rules, conditions, exceptions on top of each other for movement to keep the game from breaking. Sometimes you assume that certain mechanisms are vital because they have been in your game for so long but it helps to step back and try to find the root of the complications. I’ll admit this took a while for me to see but I finally changed one thing and it has solved so many problems.
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Each player now always has one Capital that is immobile and occupies a Village so players will always receive actions on their turn. This solves several problems and thematically fits in perfectly.
If you find yourself trying to fix rules on top of rules, remember to step back and try to find the root cause!
News: Happy holidays, gaming fam! While work continues on DinoFaeria, I took a little time out in November to create a fun holiday decorating game. Inspired by one of my favorite casual game designers, Bart Bonte (seriously, if you don’t AT LEAST own Factory Balls on your smart phone, go get it!), I made a simple little free print and play roll-and-color game as a gift to all of you.
In Dicey Decorator, you play as an intern at the North Pole. You are trying to create such a dazzling holiday tree that Santa hires you to take over for the sick Head of Interior Design. You can print in both color and black and white, and can use colored pencils as I did, or laminate and play with dry erase markers. Play alone or with as many people as you wish. I hope you enjoy playing Dicey Decorator as much as I enjoyed making it.
Ongoing: I’m still hoping to bring my flagship game, Diamonds for Water, to Kickstarter in 2021. I am always ready to playtest either of my commercial games, both of which are available to play on Tabletop Simulator. Please let me know if you want to play by visiting my web site or contacting me through Twitter or Instagram.
I want every gamer to be able to find themselves in my games, or, better yet, to lose themselves there! I continue to be committed to amplifying the voices of people who may not have felt welcome at every gaming table. Whether faeries or water professionals, my characters are always going to be diverse, and I hope Big Girl Games is one day big enough to publish games by designers who represent that same gamut of diversity. Together we make gaming stronger, better, more just, and more accessible. Have a wonderful December!Read More