February 2025

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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It’s been a very busy few months behind the scenes, culminating in another awesome weekend last weekend demoing and selling FlickFleet at the National Space Centre museum in Leicester, UK. In the background, I’ve been working on the next FlickFleet Gamefound campaign, which we’re hoping to launch this month, assuming I can find the time to complete the page graphic design! As indie publishers, I have to do this in my spare time around a family and full-time job, so my self-set goals are often unachievable! The new campaign offers discounts on FlickFleet and all five existing expansions, plus the new one which features brand new ships. Plus heavily subsidised international shipping. The new expansion expands the two alien factions introduced in FlickFleet: Xeno Wars, with at least ten all new ships. Backers will get to vote on which ships are added to the new expansion for free every time we hit a stretch goal.

Sixth FlickFleet expansion crowdfunding soon!

Oh I’m so very glad that you were able to take some time off and help manage the store while we’re on our journey. After last years rush to get Perilous Pond done for our backers we’re really looking forward to some time just relaxing and going to conventions again. Last year we only managed to attend AvestaCon since production was our first priority.

This year we hope to be able to show Perilous Pond and Bushido Duels at several conventions and geek-markets across Sweden! Everything isn’t planned out in detail yet but we know we will be at LinCon since we’ve got a Kickstarter-backer picking up their game there, so that’s a promise.

Glad you would ask! We’ll be packing all the necessities! In this trunk over here we have everything we need to display the games. This lovely soothing green cloth to dress the table and the roll-ups showing the games. We have two demo-boxes of the games along with a pair of boxes purely for display. And the most important items, the roll-ups! Announcing our presence and allowing visitors to glimpse these splendid games from far far away!

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And as always we have one travel chest worth of other games with us, just for us to play in the evenings. These are social events after all and a chance for the Frozen Maze crew to meet in person and just have some fun!

Thanks again for minding the store while we’re on our trip. The customers are all very nice and the register is basically automatic so just help pack up the games when requested and feel free to rummage through the cupboards and the tea-library!

I’ll make sure to write the occasional Post card!

The Frozen Maze shop

This past month we’ve been developing a new game as part of our pipeline for the coming year – Horses for Courses! Inspired by classic horse racing card games, this print & play gives more strategic choices for enthusiasts. The game can be played with as little as a standard deck of cards and some paper, or backers will be able to access a custom board setup and additional cards to use with their own deck.

Our Kickstarter campaign for Supervolcano will be launching soon – you can check out the pre-launch campaign now. The game is a light-medium weight Print & Play for ages 14+. There’s a solo variant as well as competitive and co-op game modes included in the base pledge.

In the game, you play one of a number of power companies, contracted by the government to tackle an impending threat from a vast Supervolcano. Each player plays simultaneously to establish power plants and harvest super heated steam from deep inside the volcano.

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Players must balance the challenges of building their operation and local populations, whilst keeping the magma chamber pressure under control. Fail to meet your quota and the resulting eruptions and quakes will see those precious populations disappear!

You can also purchase/download our existing games on our webstore at teleporthole.com/shop including Attack of the Intergalactic Gherkins, Voids, Anxious Unicorn’s Poop Gold, Tails of the Sea and Ghoats (free).

Supervolcano Kickstarter

Howdy troopers. Belated happy new year to you all. I have a fair few updates to deal out, so let’s get right into it.

UK Games Expo 2025 – I will be attending the UK Games Expo 2025 to showcase Black Metro once more. The difference this time being that I have physical copies of the game to sell. I exhibited at the expo 3 years ago with a prototype which received great reception from those who demo’d the game. I learnt a lot from that experience and my opportunity to put those lessons into practice will be coming soon. If you’ve wanted the opportunity to see what Black Metro is all about straight from the source, this is it.

Black Metro AI Mode – I have been hard at work developing an AI mode for Black Metro. Below is a small sneak peak at the AI mode opposition expansion that is currently in development, with a plan to release sometime in Q3 2025, initially as a PNP expansion.

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“The overlord has many tricks to keep the pressure on. He always retains possession of the relic, so each round the players must be careful not to lean too heavily into any particular strategy, lest they risk detrimental impact from an event! The Astral Tower’s defence systems have been primed, turning the district into a battlefield where the overlord has stationed his forces. A new, secret upgrade has been developed, bringing forth a devastatingly powerful unit, the likes of which have never been seen before. That is but a few things to anticipate when taking on the overlord!”

From a thematic standpoint, AI plays a large role within the world of Black Metro. I interlink Black Metro’s game development with its storyline. The two drive and influence each other. So when I decided to make an AI opponent for the Black Metro board game, I also decided to tie that into the storyline’s future, where the main character faces off against the AI.

Black Metro Deep Dive – With all this talk about AI, it makes sense to utilise AI functionality to help showcase the Black Metro universe. I have been playing with Notebook LM to see whether the AI would be able to learn Black Metro and explain the game.

The first day, I did around 5 test runs, but no matter how much I tried, the AI could never get everything right. On subsequent takes, it would get one thing wrong, that it got right on a previous take and vice versa. Having said that, it still managed to get around 90% of the information correct, which is hugely impressive given the quick turnaround of around 5 minutes or so for the AI to crunch the data and spit out each deep dive discussion.

The interesting thing happened when I returned the following day and ran another simulation. It took almost 10 minutes for the conversation, but it spat out an almost 30 minute deep dive convo while retaining a similar accuracy. I get the sense that the AI had time to crunch the data behind the scenes overnight, and was therefore able to provide a more cohesive and in depth conversation on the following day.

So with all of this conversational data, I decided to spend a near full-on two days editing it all together to create what is honestly a pretty solid deep dive conversation into the Black Metro universe.

There is no chance humans could accurately go into such detail about the Black Metro universe in such a short time span. This AI functionality is extremely powerful and it is still in its beta testing stages!

I hope this update has sparked some excitement in you. 2025 is going to be a big year for Black Metro. Thank you for reading.

Black Metro deep dive

In case you missed it amidst the holiday hoopla, PostCurious has teamed up with TED Games to create Pandora’s Legacy, launching this spring on Kickstarter! This game is an innovative experience blending jigsaw puzzles, escape rooms, puzzle hunts, and legacy board games. Click the link below to follow the pre-launch page and get notified when the campaign goes live.

Production on our most recent Kickstarter project, Ministry of Lost Things: Lint Condition, is going smoothly so far. The mass production copies have been approved! Manufacturing is on hold for a holiday break, the games will be packed and prepared for shipping shortly after. We’ve also already begun work on Ministry of Lost Things: Case 2! We’re still in the very early stages, but we’re very excited to start piecing it together.

In need of more game recommendations? Periodically on our blog we highlight a handful of tabletop and digital games to spread the word about interesting experiences and support other creators. Our latest post features a roundup of our favorite experiences we played in 2024. Some games that made the list include The Medusa Report, Squirrels Gone Wild, and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Check out the full list at our website.

Follow Pandora’s Legacy Kickstarter here

I’ve been busy working on the Poll & Write USA layouts recently, which I know are eagerly awaited by backers! With final illustrations in, rules finalised and the layouts nearly complete, it’s quite possible it’ll be ready to go by the time you read this. Poll & Write USA is a streamlined version of this print-and-play game, optimised for two players in a competitive head-to-head battle for the presidency. You can place a late pledge on Kickstarter (see link) to get it!

I’ve been playtesting in London and Bristol this month, and I also joined a political games group, the members of which had already played Poll & Write 2024 (the UK version) and given me some fantastic feedback. “We absolutely loved it. This is the sixth political game our little group has played, and it’s the clear favourite so far.” (Jim Williams on Bluesky.) Feedback like that is incredibly gratifying – so this is your reminder to let designers know when you enjoy their games!

Poll & Write USA (Kickstarter)

It’s getting exciting over here at Atikin Games, Malus Hortus has a launch on the horizon. The final blind play test went well, it was a great experience to see how someone might read and interpret the rulebook when reading and playing on the fly, there have been a lot of improvements to the rulebook since then, largely the order and layout of information. Now previewers are being lined up with preview copies heading out around mid to late February and I cannot wait to see what they think of this game. It’s been a while since I talked in detail about Malus Hortus so let’s go for it.

Malus Hortus is a gorgeous garden by day. It lures unsuspecting victims in with beautiful sights and floral scents, only to turn evil at night. The game sees the 8 main flower enemies turn from lovely little blossoms to bone chilling behemoths, searching you out to drain your magic and keep you weakened as a long-term food source.

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It is a 1-4 player cooperative game that sees you playing as nymphs trying to escape the garden. There are two phases to each round, during the day you will play rune stone cards to take actions in the garden and move, save critters and also use assistance from critters to help the other nymphs in the garden. Magic is a shared resource and conversation about actions that gain or use magic as well as other aspects of the game make this a nice cooperative and interactive experience, with a good amount of chat about what to do next.

At night the flowers move and attack, there are night cards to draw at the end of each night that contain story text and that will have an effect on the garden and state of play, either immediately or on the following round.

Last month I mentioned I was hoping for a launch date in March or April, I worked out that the earliest possible date would be in April (based on a lot of work and home commitments). Therefore, I’m happy with saying ‘Spring 2025’ for now and not trying to rush anything.

Thanks to those getting involved with my updates on my new office taking shape, I am writing from there right now and although there still needs to be a lot of organisation in the future, it is wonderful to have a workspace that is mine again.

Malus Hortus preview page

Dissent Games has an entirely new and unexpected project this month — a puzzle game about voting! The game is called “25 Days Until We Vote”. It’s a project supported by the Electoral Commission, which is the independent body regulating elections in the UK. (Most other countries have an Electoral Commission, and what exactly they do varies a bit).

Anyway, our game is aimed at young people who are voting for the first time. What might they see in a polling station? What happens to a postal vote? How do you register to vote? All these questions and more are answered as puzzles. “25 Days Until We Vote” fits into a single deck of cards, and can be played by one person, two people, or even a large group!

If you’re in the UK, and you would be able to play “25 Days Until We Vote” with at least one person aged 16-18, then please get in touch. We have some absolutely FREE copies to hand out. We’ll even pay for the postage!

Find out more

We’ve been really busy at Huff No More the past few months since we successfully funded our first game Sakana Stack on Kickstarter. It was amazing to finish our campaign over 200% funded! Since then we’ve had the busy job of preparing the files with manufacturers and lots of testing of the new rulebook. We are now in mass production and looking forward to getting Sakana Stack out to our backers as soon as we can!

We’re also delighted to announce that due to the success of Sakana Stack we have also been able to produce an additional game. Flower Cards is an interpretation of traditional Japanese Hanafuda cards inspired by British fauna and flora. Flower Cards includes 48 unique cards with the artwork hand-drawn by Joss and we are including an online rulebook for two of the most popular Hanafuda games, Koi-Koi and Hachi-Hachi, along with a variation of Rummy. We’ve had so much fun playing these games and have already had some brilliant demos recently at Handycon.

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We will be launching a pre-order store in February so if you missed out on the Sakana Stack Kickstarter and also want to get a copy of Flower Cards you will be able to pre-order in advance of release very soon.

2025 is going to be a really exciting year for Huff No More and we can’t wait to get back out into our community and play some games with you! You can sign up to our mailing list at our website to get the latest Huff No More news first.

Huff No More website

Happy New Year to all of the Atikin Newsletter fans! I hope you’re all enjoying 2025 so far.

On the Unfringed front I was hoping to be able to share some exciting news in this edition but sadly I’m a little behind schedule. However, I can say that Game #3 is progressing nicely and after 20 versions and a ton of playtesting, it’s starting to shape up into something that I’m happy to sit alongside Zuuli and Molehill Meadows.

For those of you heading to Airecon up in Harrogate, I will be publicly demo-ing for the first time, so please do swing by Demo Table 1 to give it a play or even just pop by to say hi! I’m very much looking forward to this but also looking forward to just being back at one of my favourite conventions, and hoping that this year I will have a bit more time to play games with friends in the evening.

Not much more to share for this letter but hopefully next month I’ll be back with more details of Game #3 so stay tuned.

Unfringed sale now on!

February is going to be an incredibly busy month for us here at Stop, Drop and Roll as we prepare to launch our Backerkit campaign for Why We Fight on March 13th! But before we become entirely swamped with campaign prep, Rhi managed to design and submit an entry to the 36-word game jam on itch! ‘Grave tales’ is a micro, solo journaling RPG that uses a single D10 and a few questions to discover the stories left behind in an old English cemetery. It’s available for free here: stopdroproll.itch.io/grave-tales

Why We Fight will be launching on Backerkit alongside a host of other awesome people as part of Backerkits Pocketopia event, and have teamed up with the wonderful team at Scryptid games. Once our campaign has launched, we will be offering a joint reward for anyone who backs both Why We Fight, and their game, Assemblage. This reward is going to be a one-shot adventure that combines core components of both games, and we can’t wait to share more details on this exclusive reward with our followers throughout February!

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We’re also attending Airecon, where you’ll be able to join us at our demo table and try out Why We Fight for yourselves! Create a Crew, receive a Mission, and head out through the wastes of the old world to plant the seeds of a brighter, solarpunk future for all. Learn about your Crew with emergent character creation, and see how their hopes and desires empower them to overcome the challenges they face, with co-operative focused gameplay rewarding creativity and working together. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on!

Follow our Backerkit for updates

The Naughty or Nice Christmas Lights Competition Kickstarter ended in December, and we had a blast creating it for our very first Kickstarter! The game will be up on DicePen, PNP Arcade, and GameCrafter shortly! In the meantime, we are toying with a ‘creative and relaxing draw and color with similar mechanics’ game involving spring and flowers! Is this a game you would play? We look forward to mentioning more about this idea if we get enough interest! Please consider rating the game on BGG and help us get the word out about our game! Please consider posting some pictures of the game if you played it during the holidays! Are there other versions of the game with different themes you would like to see?

BGG game profile link

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