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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There are 3 ways you can support the Cake of Doom campaign:
1. Back our project – Make a pledge to back our campaign on 10th March, you can choose from just getting the game or having all the add-ons and experiences that we will offer.
2. Share the campaign – Do you know someone looking for a casual game with a quirky theme? Send them a link to our campaign page and see if they are interested in backing us.
3. Like and comment – We are posting pretty much daily on social media, help us to reach a wider audience by liking and commenting on our posts @cakeofdoomgame (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook). We love interacting with you.
In other news, we have recently had a lot of fun at Paradice BG Convention in Worthing. We were absolutely blown away by the fun and engaging crowd of fellow gamers.
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During the day we ran 10+ demos, made new friends and bumped into a few familiar faces too. We were really happy to see how much people enjoyed playing Cake of Doom, in fact a few people gave us a real run for our money!
Finally, we are running a prototype giveaway competition in the run-up to our campaign launch, find us on social media to get involved.
Roll and writes have never been this musical! Learn real chords and a scale. Also press your luck with the audience to score some mega points! Can your licks land you in the rock and roll hall of fame?
Let’s face it: life is short and busy and too many games these days take up too much space on our shelves, our tables and our lives! What’s the point of having a beautiful roleplaying game if you can never get it played? The Score changes all of that. It is lightning fast to learn and play and small enough to fit in your pocket. The absolute GOAT for playing at lunch, in a line at a convention, as a warm up for game night or when one player steps out for a phone call. And yet the games are deep and immersive and always amazing fun!
The Score is a simple package with a huge punch. Find out more or back it now on the link below!
Move Rate 20 Games is also back on the convention circuit in 2023 after a short winter break. Fresh from Totalcon in February, our main event during the first quarter will be PAX East on March 23-26. We’ll be demoing and selling at booth TT35 around the clock, so please pay us a visit if you are in attendance – we hope to have some cool new items to show you. After that, find us at Rising Phoenix in April, Kids Con in May and the granddaddy of them all – Gen Con, August 3-6.
So, in relation to those projects, if you’re interested in the idea of an extreme 90s acid punk style Inq28 referencing skirmish game, then you might like Pukeapocalypse, one of the games we’re working on. If so, why not follow along and see the game’s development with us. I’m curious to see how it turns out too.
In other news, the Roll & Write game I’ve been working on for the last couple of years is now nearing completion. Called Rocky ‘Roid, it’s a 1-6 player game where you have to go out and mine the asteroids and then get back before the market for your ore dries up. One of my guiding principles has been to make it have a bit more player interaction than many roll and writes, though it achieves this through the second half of the game when you are all selling into a shared market where the prices reduce with every sale.
If this sounds like your kind of thing head on over to the (new!) website and sign up for our newsletter – I’m considering a small Gamefound campaign for it in the medium-term future.
Translations: Who had thought what a mad amount of work it is to translate a game. Weāve got all translations for German, French, and Italian done, including initial proofreading, but the hard part has just started. All languages require more space than English hence they cannot be fitted easily in the existing spaces of rulebooks, cards, and other components. So, weāre focusing on the German translation first and optimize everything into the squeezed spots.
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This is like translating the entire world of Castleshire a second time. Weāre hopeful this is all done by the end of March, and then we get our nails into the other languages.
Legendary Edition: Weāre in love with our beautified collectorās edition of Castleshire. Weāve improved our laser-cutting skills tremendously over the past months and got a prototype that appears completely done as if it was a final product (photo). We have cut some pieces for mass-assembling already and we cut thousands of pieces in March. Every box, including their insert trays and dice tower, consist of over 100 pieces, so given we have far over 100 boxes to make, itās going to be a burning March and April for us.
What’s Next: Shipping of all rewards in March and April except for the Legendary Edition which weāll ship in May. It sounds like weāre nearly done yet it feels like weāve just started. Exciting months lie ahead.
On the Zuuli front, I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve signed a contract with the fantastic Popcorn Games to bring Zuuli to Korea! From its humble beginnings as a UK only game it’s extremely exciting to have the opportunity to bring Zuuli to a new audience and I can’t wait to see photos of it being played on tables and at board game clubs across the country. If you’d like to be the first to know when it’s available please do drop them a follow on your Social Media of choice and I thoroughly look forward to our partnership going forward. If there’s any other publishers out there that think that Zuuli would go down well in their country too please do reach out.
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In other news I’ve recently been enjoying producing some 3D stills and animation in Blender for marketing material, with an example being the image you can see for this week’s newsletter. Sometimes getting out all of the lights and cameras for real world photography can be quite challenging, and shooting video adds a whole level of complexity on top of that, so it’s been a nice relief to remove a lot of this overhead by jumping into the 3D world. Another big advantage is that you are only restricted by your imagination so I’m really looking forward to creating more exciting visuals to help best show everything Zuuli has to offer.
āItās All Mine!ā has undergone minor tweaks, I believe the balance is getting close but based on feedback from the convention I have added some End Game bonus scoring goals as well as some In Game scoring challenges that can be claimed by any player that plays the card that sets up the required goal – thereās more points for the opponents doing this than the player of that faction which adds an interesting decision point.
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There are now also some bonus icons for each faction on some of the cards, the relevant faction scores a bonus for each of those that are visible at the end of the game. Again an interesting decision space was created by using a dog for housing and a bird for nature as players find it harder to cover the animals than the plain version of those factions (especially the dog š).
āThreatened!ā received some valuable feedback from a local publisher about issues they saw for the market I am targeting. The simpler problems have been resolved but there are 1 or 2 that will need some serious thought as they are a bit cumbersome for a casual/family but are implicitly tied into reinforcing the thematic elements which lead to serious discussions amongst players.
āRicochet Rouletteā is the soccer themed game we are working on for the charity. It has very little āgameā but a large amount of player interaction such that experienced designers have been discussing tactics for the game despite them not really having an impact beyond what the player believes it has. The name is temporary so if you have a very simple, catchy name for a game about trying to claim your opponentsā āGoalā cards first let us know, all suggestions are gladly welcomed.
(Image shown is from the placeholder mint tin cover of “It’s All Mine!”)
I just finished a ttrpg class through Central Michiganās games course that they hold in conjunction with GenCon. My space-themed card-based rpg is in beta now and Iāll be looking for serious testers soon.
I also got to participate in Nonepub in January, and my game jam design got so much good feedback, Iām exploring it as another option. Please watch my Twitter feed for more details! Holding to the environmental themes I want to build Big Girl Games on, itās a tableau builder where your team is constantly racing human encroachment on native habitat.
āThe Bone Gameā was designed by our daughter to help teach other kids the names of the major bones in the human body. Itās a fast-paced card-matching game that definitely encourages shouting and taking ā all in good fun, but with a point too! š
Matches are made by pairing āpicture only cardsā (that show an unlabeled single bone) with ābone name cardsā (that show a group of bones titled with the name of just one of those bones). You learn to pick out each bone from a crowd.
The ātakingā forces you to scan other playersā cards accurately, and the āshoutingā helps you better remember the bone names for the next game! Reference cards are included in the deck to help get players started, and full-sized versions along with other human skeleton activities are available on our website.
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Check out the full description of the game at TheGameCrafter.com. Then sign in andā¦
Thatās ages away though. Before that, we have AireCon. Weāll have a stand there where you can play Library Labyrinth or try out any of our games on greetings cards. If we get our act together in time there may even be the possibility of MAKING your own game on a card! Howās that for a unique gift?
Hope to see you at AireCon!
Stretch Goals – The Board Game Survival Kit has always been available in these 9 colours: black, blue, green, orange, pink, purple, red, white and yellow. Now, I will also be able to offer: brown, gold, grey, silver, teal and turquoise! Iāve even managed to source new mini tabletop roleplaying game dice sets to match these colours as closely as I can which Iām very excited about!
GameFound – will be the pledge manager for the campaign. If you missed out on the Kickstarter then donāt be sad, the pledge manager will be live in the next 1-2 weeks and you can pre order yours there. Keep an eye on the Kickstarter updates or my social media accounts (@AtikinGames) to be among the first to know when it goes live.
Even More – there are other optional extras Iāve been working on for the pledge manager. I thought it would be nice to have meeple and dice erasers.
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To that end I looked in to eraser clay, which you can buy, shape in to anything youāre skilled enough to manage and then bake in the ovenā¦ All of the reviews I found showed that they didnāt really work as erasers. My solution was to buy good quality erasers that I know work well and make my own colourful cardboard sheaves for them. Itās not what I originally had in mind but I really love how they have turned out.
Iām also adding mini coloured pencils that will fit in the larger tins for roll and colour games. I wasnāt sure about this one to be honest, I thought: āIs anyone going to like this idea at allā. At which point my go to is always a Twitter poll. Twitter seemed to like the idea enough that I decided to go for it. They wonāt be able to fit in all of the kits but I think itās a nice optional extra to provide for those who want it.
Malum Hortus – whatās that? You want to know more about how the evil garden adventure is going? Well alright then! These next two weeks are all about getting the pledge manager ready and making more progress on Malum Hortus before production for the new Board Game Survival Kits begins.
Iām working on improving the writing in the rulebook and upgrading the components in my demo copy before I get on to more in depth art work. At the moment with all of the set backs Iāve had over the last couple of years I feel a little embarrassed at how basic the prototype still looks. I would like to get my copy looking more professional and ready for me to paste on artwork as I progress with it.
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