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.
Self-Published Games
Kickstarter Calendar
Free Print n Plays
The game is a 2 player head to head card game, with a strong Ancient Egyptian theme, where you race to complete your pyramid and obtain the blessings of the gods. It is currently live on Kickstarter until 3rd July, where people can sponsor a card in the game to be adorned with their name forever. The funds from the campaign will then pay for production, allowing 100% of the sales cost to go directly to the charity.
We are now in the final home straight of this campaign and are working towards meeting our desired stretch goals to end in a high! We would love any support any of you can offer, and there is even an opportunity to sponsor the card with your business name, game name or website rather than your own name! Usually this costs an extra £25 fee for businesses, however for anyone part of this group/newsletter, we will offer this for only an additional £10 fee – state code ATIKIN
We have enjoyed the process of developing the game, and hope to do more in the future.
Currently considering a theme of Kilimanjaro when we return from our charity trek there next year!
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Deluxe games are signed by the designers, numbered and all the ships are laser-etched with their names and ship details.
Eurydice Games are Jackson Pope and Paul Willcox, the designers of FlickFleet and they manufacture the games in their homes in Newcastle upon Tyne and York, UK. All the ships in FlickFleet are laser cut in Paul’s garage!
Mission to Planet Hexx is the perfect gateway game for your new gamer friends or as your “in between” game, for when you need a break from longer, more hardcore sessions.
Using a deck of 120 Hex shaped cards, players cooperatively build a unique Board of space and planets every game, then roll a die to travel around the galaxy, collecting Data, the resource of the game, in order to “pay” to upload different types of cards to their Mission File. The first player to complete his/her Mission File wins the game.
With elements of take that and the literal discovery of your shared universe one Planet at a time, the game simulates your adventure as a newly minted space cadet.
Probably best now to tell you more about Tri To Win! 2-6 players aged 8+ can enjoy 10-30 minutes playing this easy to learn, competitive and fun card game. Which brings me to my exciting, back of the box blurb:
“Welcome athletes to race day! At this very special triathlon you will build your skills as well as contribute towards creating the three courses that make up the race. Tri To Win is a card game where players build their own board game.
Everyone can see the race course, you’re building it as a team. But only you know what skills your athlete has, this means each player is trying to build the course that their own athlete is more likely to win, and leave the others in the dust.
The race course is different every game, your athlete’s skills will be different every game, and so your tactics will need to be as well. Can you build the ultimate athlete? Good luck!”
I’ve started working on my second game and it’s completely different, it’s a co-operative board game for 1-4 players, the art work is also very different as I always knew I’d want a different style to each game I make.
It’s called Malum Hortus and you play as magical nymphs who have been drawn in to a garden by it’s beauty and aroma, but as night falls you realise there’s something wrong. The flowers start to move, you see teeth and snapping vines where once there were petals and leaves… You’ve stumbled into Malum Hortus, the evil garden and now you must find a way out.
I’ve also been working on this newsletter! I really wanted to find a way to contribute to the indie tabletop community and to find a place where we can all share what we’ve been up to with as many other designers and board game players as we can. I know it’s starting out small but I plan for it to grow over time, if you’d like to see what we all have to say next month please subscribe to the email reminder at the top of this page.
For regular updates and other fun board gaming content follow AtikinGames on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
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We have released over a dozen games and activities. Most are math-oriented like “Probability Battleship”, “Pirates vs. Skeletons”, “Hotel Escape”, “Target Zer0”, and “The Royal Three”. Some are science-focused like “The Bone Game” and “Extinction Event”. Others are meant to prompt discussion like “Chess Attack” and “SNORT!”
Although we didn’t know it at the time, we got our start as part of homeschooling our daughter. We’ve always believed in learning through play – and are always striving to keep her learning fun and rich. This means we regularly devise activities and games to play and learn together.
Then we started thinking: maybe we could share the activities and games that we enjoyed the most with others – others who are also looking for something different to add to the way their children or students learn. In fact, one of our first games, “The Bone Game” was designed by our daughter to specifically “help other kids learn the bones of the skeleton in a fun way”.
We hope you will find something to help make learning fun for your children or classroom. Most of all, we hope our games might inspire them to design games of their own!
Visit PlayGames2Learn.com to see our latest free and for-purchase educational games & activities.
[A few of our free print-and-play games]
* Probability Battleship
* Pirates vs. Skeletons
* Chess Attack
* TargetZer0
[Our for-purchase games]
* The Bone Game
* Snort! The Truck-Spotting Travel Game
[We also have printable activities]
* Multi-sided Game Dice Templates (blank & numbered)
* The Human Skeleton Activity Sheets
* Pirate Schooner (3D) Template (coming soon)
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Fake Diamonds is a very simple card game with a bluffing mechanic. It’s similar to Cheat or Coup, but takes place in an underground mine setting. Aside from bluffing and calling bluffs, players can also play different action cards to help them along the way, all of which are things that usually wouldn’t be in a mine, but somehow are.
How it works: Players take turns secretly drawing cards from a pile, known also as The Mine. They will find one of the four treasures each time, either gold, gems, rubies, or diamonds. They then draw a treasure from the middle stash, with the option to bluff about what they found.
Each treasure has a different point value, and at the end of the game, only the treasures drawn from the middle will count. Calling bluffs has rewards and consequences, depending on if you’re right or not, so lots of the fun comes from deciding when to call others’ bluffs. No risk, no reward! After they have done this, players may also choose to play one action card. You can use bandits to steal treasures, elephant spies to find bluffs, and much more. Like I said before, who knows why these things are in a mine, but they are.
With this theme in mind, all the pieces and ideas fell into place. There would be things like treasure chests to give you more treasures, and then Lost Pirates to steal them! It adds to the depth and story of the game, but still keeping it funny and lighthearted. While lying, stealing, and cheating aren’t great things to do in real life, something about it makes it lots of fun in a board game setting! I’ve been creating the graphics myself for this game, and I plan on self publishing through my website. Pre-orders will be available starting in July, so keep an eye out!Read More
The Emerald Flame tells a vibrant story over three distinct episodes, each packed with hand-drawn illustrations, unique components, and original puzzles of varying difficulty, challenging and engaging players of all experience levels. Each of the three chapters takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete, and can be played solo or in a small group. The Emerald Flame Kickstarter campaign is over but the game will be available for pre-order in July. Sign up to be notified when the store goes live.
At Geektopia Games, we are creating an immersive tabletop gaming experience and miniatures collection designed for gamers, hobbyists, and horror fans alike. The game is called Fearsome Wilderness and expected to launch on Kickstarter in October around Halloween.
Players take control of 4 legendary folk heroes cooperating to survive in the wilderness and build a log cabin in which to live out their days. The heroes will have to gather food, water, and chop down the required trees, all while defending themselves from various “Fearsome Critters” of American folklore.
We designed the game to be played in a single one-off session or as a campaign spanning 12-24 sessions with each session only taking around an hour to finish. The “Twelve Weeks til Winter” campaign includes 12 scenarios to play out and if you fail a scenario twice, you move on to the next one. This keeps the game moving but also awards less points and will make it more difficult when winter finally arrives, and players have uncompleted scenarios still to accomplish. The game works great with 2-4 players and is a great solo gaming experience as well.
In the game, Paul Bunyan and his friends Babe the Blue Ox, Calamity Jane, and Johnny Appleseed are dropped off at a beach on a pristine lake, but the neighbouring forest is not as they expected. The trees, having a will of their own, seek to defy these heroes of folklore and each day brings winter closer and shelter more crucial. All this and who knows what fearsome critters may lurk in the night.
I’m Matt, the creator of the game (DystopiaMatt on Instagram) and am a miniature painting enthusiast so we’ve been working hard to include miniatures for this game. The game plays great in 2D but we really hope for enough backers to have miniatures included as an optional add-on.
I am also excited to announce that we are working on an RPG set in the same world that you can use the same miniatures for. The RPG will use the acclaimed Year Zero engine which recently went OGL and Fearsome Wilderness is jumping at the opportunity. We’ll reveal more details in the near future.
My favorite part of the game are the nightmares. The game plays out in two phases, day and night. At night, there is a chance for strange and horrible dreams and when this occurs, players will consult the rulebook and then play out whatever nightmarish story is written. Players roll dice and try and wake up to end the bizarre nightmares.
Support Fearsome Wilderness by signing up at our website to be notified when the game launches this October and follow me, DystopiaMatt, on Instagram for a behind the scenes look at the game creation process.
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Benny Sperling
Benny checking in. I’m a game designer, you may know me from previous published indie games including Yakitori, ArchiWrecks, Pocket Pairs, Junk in the Trunk, Smithy, Hot Dog Hooligans, Protect Your Nuts and others. I am working on a secret project that I look forward to sharing more about very soon! You can find my reviews on the link below as well as on The Inquisitive Meeple. Rolling with Benny were my mostly roll and write reviews. You can find me on twitter @benny275
While this may be a feature that turns some people away, I’m proud to say that The Interregnum is not a game that reveals itself fully on the first playthrough. Most players that finish their first game immediately start discussing what they would like to do for the next game. While the actions are relatively simple – during their turn, players will either move Fleets or Build – the game has a wealth of possible strategies made possible by the two opposite win conditions. Players may win by building a vast Hegemony or powerful Mercantile empire.
The development for The Interregnum started about two years ago after many weeks of scribbling down disjointed ideas about what I thought would be the perfect game for me. At that point it was just a small unnamed game to play with my friends. Actually, to be honest with myself, it’s still a small game that I play with my friends – but now it has a name and almost two years of hard work behind it.
To make a (very) long story short, last year we won a design competition at a local board game convention. It was the first real push that made me think that maybe The Interregnum could be more than a hobby project. Fast forward to today, we’re building a review copy and looking at production costs. While the scope of the project has changed, the main drive behind it all stays the same: to make a game that people will enjoy with their friends.
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Our second Kickstarter Moonflight, the Deck Unbuilder is entering the last stages of fulfilment this week, on Pre-order until Monday (with lower shipping prices), Moonflight is a Deck Builder with a unique Un-Building twist which triggers halfway through the game. During the first half cards have typical deck building powers, when the marketplace empties, they spin to unlock card trashing abilities. Players only score the cards in their hand when the game ends, meaning that they need to build to buy scoring cards, and then unbuild to leave just the scoring cards at the end of the game. Take the part of one of the strange and fay Jacks of the dark fairy city of Moonflight, build elegantly and unbuild efficiently to hold the greatest power in the palm of your hand and come to rule Moonflight.
We’re currently putting the last graphic touches (and tracking down reviews) for the Kickstarter of our deluxe expansion for SSO. SSO is a 1-6 player game of sci-fi survival horror, as our first Kickstarter it jammed a lot of gameplay into a small box, but not a lot of components. SSO: Rage of Montalbano fixes that with tracker dials, meeples and an extended and improved rulebook all in a sleeve friendly box capable of holding the entire and future SSO range. SSO uses a modular challenge deck to tell a range of classic stories of desperate sci-fi survival. In the base set face a murderous AI intent on wiping out the crew, the first expansion brings a deranged and homicidal First Captain to the ship, picking off his own rescue attempt. The latest deck infects the crew with alien Parasites capable of controlling the crew’s actions, and Rage of Montalbano will include the deadly and ambitious rival captain Montalbano intent on attacking the ship, along with the new Temporal Anomaly deck where time itself will attack your mission.
We’re also in the final stages of playtesting a new Solo led tabletop skirmish game that we’re producing for a Kickstarter launch along with our equally independent friends at Planet Smasher Games. Perilous Tales allows players to take any set of suitable minis (in case you have any picking up dust somewhere) and play out a thrilling game of pulp adventure with stories of sci-fi and horror derring do. We’re writing Perilous Tales alongside Mike Hutchinson, lead designer on the Osprey games hit Gaslands and the upcoming A Billion Suns. Expect to see Perilous Tales on Kickstarter in August, or download and play the beta test version now at www.planetsmashergames.com
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Swatch, the colour creation game by Minerva Tabletop Games, is coming to Kickstarter on the 4th of August. The game sees 1-4 players taking the role of artists, drafting cards and trading resources to mix colours and create a unique colour scheme before anyone else! Play time 20-60 mins, age 11+.
Sensor Ghosts is a challenging cooperative or solo moving maze puzzle set in space with an AI determined to kill you.
Your task is to safely navigate your ship home, but the AI has messed with your sensors making you almost blind to the dangers that lie ahead. Through careful planning and the odd leap of faith, will you successfully navigate home or will you die trying?
Sensor Ghosts is a game where you’ll need to play it again and again to uncover the strategies that work, but luckily each game, success or failure will leave you wanting more. Sensor Ghosts is quick to setup and play giving you plenty of opportunity to fit games in to refine your strategies.
Here’s what Gav Hudson of Zatu said about Sensor Ghosts in his recent review:
“Wren Games have done it again and done it even better. Packed into a small box is an accessible but deep and challenging game experience. I was surprised and enamoured by Assembly and I adore this even more. It builds on the sleek, unique design and adds a fluidity and dynamism that ramps up the excitement.
Sensor Ghosts might be difficult, but it goes out of its way to welcome you in. And what a game to be welcomed in to. I haven’t owned it a week and have played the hell out of it solo and co-op. There is something addictive about it. It might not be as flashy as many other games, but it has rocketed itself into contention for my game of the year.”
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