The first expansion to QUBQST is close to completion, and will contain the following:

3 new characters

• The CLERIC - powerful against evil creatures such as the undead, able to heal and resurrect dead characters
• The RANGER - can use a bow and arrow to help in other character's combat, sense danger and secret rooms
• The NECROMANCER - able to cast dark spells that raise and control the dead, and sap strength from other characters

3 new creature types

• Giant INSECTS - the giant ant, centipede and spider
• DENIZENS OF THE DEEP - the giant crab, jellyfish and the kraken, with plentiful treasure, but also with the new grab attack
• Wild hogs, giant rats and wolves, which if killed can be used as food

More magic items - the Helm of Seeing, Boots of Speed, Rod of Healing, Axe of Felling, and the Ring of Protection

More catacomb cubes to expand QUQST from 1-3 up to 4-6 players!

Some new rules including alchemy - trade in 5 gems for the magic item of your choice!

What better time than St George's Day to announce a new project celebrating England in all its glory ...

Green and Pleasant Land is a tile laying game based in the fields and woodlands of England, where enclosing fields and placing creatures in their natural habitats scores points - points multiply by enclosing larger fields, with more creatures placed in them.  Special tiles taken at the start of the game guide your tile and card laying strategy - for instance place crows close together and play The Scarecrow tile to score them, place creatures in a line and play The Hunt and score as the horseback hunt gallops across the land.

After lots of cutting and sticking, a mock up tile set has been used for a few testing sessions, and reception has been good.

The final version should have gorgeous artwork depicting the rich and glorious English countryside and its inhabitants!

Hope all you gamers out there had a great Table Top Day 2014!

We celebrated with ...

Looking forward to Table Top Day 2015!

The proofing copy of DragonHeist has been ordered from The GameCrafter, and should be here before the end of the month, so it's likely to be available through The GameCrafter by April!

Final game testing limited the game to 4 players max, as any more than this meant that the Magic Rings exchanged hands so often that no-one got to actually use them, and the chance of collecting all three and getting a shot at defeating the dragon was very slim.

Look out for it soon!

DragonHeist is in the last stages of testing, so what better time to think of new games to design!

It would be great to finish one project before another begins, but the period when one game is almost but not quite ready to roll out seems to be the time when new ideas come pouring out, or old ideas resurface!

It seems like the idea of finishing a game brings about feelings of desperation, inspiration, continuation, a general need to move on and not to stop.  Unfortunately, these feelings begin before the previous game is complete, so in some sense it would be easier to just begin work on the new project before the old one is finished.  I guess (hope!) this is a common feeling among designers - the need to create new before reconciling more-or-less-completed projects.

But in practice this would mean nothing ever gets done!  

So once the amended rules for DragonHeist are printed next week, the final stage of testing will (definitely!) commence, but in the meantime, here is the reason for the new game idea...

Whilst doodling some warrior type characters, some gladiator-esque images emerged, and the idea for a gladiator based game appeared.  Whilst borrowing some obvious game ideas from the fantastic Spartacus (hard not to as this is the defining game in this genre), this game would focus more on gambling, event management, crowd pleasing, in general less on the gory aspects of gladiator combat and more on the run up to the combat, so in essence a Spartacus-lite! (but still with gladiator fights).


More on this as it develops, but here to a speedy (yet full) completion to DragonHeist!


 

A bit of folding and some Scotch Tape and we have a mock up for the DragonHeist game box!

Tarot card sized (a bit under 3 X 5 X 1.5 inches), it should fit the 28 coins, 3 rings, and 7 dice that make up the game.

Testing has indicated that 3 magic rings plus the Dragonstone made for too many complicated options that only served to slow the game down, so the Dragonstone has been removed and its powers combined into the Ring of Protection, which not only protects from dragonfire, but can now redirect it against other players!

More testing planned soon, some rule re-writes, and with any luck it will be up on the GameCrafter within a month or so!

We have a name for our new push-your-luck dice game!  And after Googling it would appear it hasn't been used for a game yet, bonus!

The game is now being tested, and this has resulted in a few additions, most importantly the Dragonstone, a beautiful uncut ruby beloved of the dragon (a red glass gem in the game), which allows players to redirect any dragonfire rolled against other players, to melt their coins!  But it is the dragon's favourite treasure, so if he awakes it is the first thing he will grab.

Also, a new dice, dedicated specifically to the task of combat with the dragon has been included.  This dice is only used if a player manages to grab all three magic rings (Protection, Silence and Invisibility), and then gets a chance at defeating the dragon!  The dragon has three weak points - under the wings, the base of the tail, and if the player manages to hit these weak spots, the last is between the eyes!

Even defeating the dragon doesn't guarantee victory, it still comes down to who stole the most treasure!

Below are the test sides of the dragon dice, three week spots (wing, tail and eye), and three dragon attacks (fire, claw and jaws).

Icons again courtesy of the fantastic game-icons.net

Having decided to use 8" square mats to represent the three floors (basement, ground and first floor) for the House of De'Ath game, it dawned that they could be used for more than just keeping the room cards tidy.

Each of the double sided mats will have a floorplan on it (3 X 4 rooms), showing which rooms can connect to others.  Some exits will be hidden passageways, that only some characters will be aware of, and others will be locked doors, which can be unlocked with keys.  Some exits cannot be used, meaning characters need to plan their journey round the house.

Because the mats are square, each floorplan can be used each way up, and double sided gives another two options.  The three mats can also be interchanged between floors, so if the math is correct, that makes 384 different house layouts!  And that's before the rooms are placed randomly on top, so no two games will be the same!

The player characters are coming along, with a lot of research into the Victorian era needed to make sure everything stays in context, what the main occupations were, what had / hadn't been invented in the 1800's etc.

After much knocking around cards and fiddliness it looks like 8" X 8" mats from the Game Crafter will be the best way to keep the rooms in each of the three floors of the House of De'Ath neat and in check.

It means an extra 9 rooms and 9 paraphernalia (items) altogether as the original floors were 3 X 3 rooms, opposed to the new 3 X 4 layout.  But this gives more room for players to move around independently, as some characters will need to do, and allows for some interesting items back in the game that had to be dropped when the room count went down.

It also means a bigger box, which seems to come in at the same price as the smaller one, which is a bonus!

The only issue is that mats are double sided, and not being one to waste space the rear of the mat needs to be put to use.  Maybe an alternative floor design with fewer rooms, or a different, simpler style game altogether, with all three mats joined to make a 'snakes and ladders' style game where protagonists progress through the house encountering all manner of evil spirits to try to make it to the end alive, or each mat belongs to one of three players, where game parts, including the spirit cards, are used to make a game where players are trying to summon the spirits De'Ath from the house.

Whatever happens the mat backs won't be blank!
 

... a fancy word for 'stuff', and there will be a lot of it in the House of De'Ath!

Amongst the paraphernalia hidden in the house will be items that belonged to the recently departed, that if disturbed might result in strange spiritual phenomena, useful items to help your journey through the house etc, a couple of example cards below:

And after reading a great article on investing players in their characters in games on Board Game Geek - http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/25709/invest-me-getting-me-to-engage-in-a-game - the player characters have started to flesh out.  We have a Policeman, Thief, Medium, Priest, Ghost Hunter amongst others, all with their own sub-missions, skills and talents.  Much work to do!

Another game has made it to the prototyping stage!

This one is a Clang! spin off, involving wizards co-operating to try save the world from huge beasts trying to enter from their dimension, through a portal being opened by a once in a 1000 year double moon eclipse.

Wizards collect the living ooze emerging through the portal, and use their powers to turn it into creatures with which to hold back the beasts.

But if a beast gets a grip with all of its tentacles, it makes it through and life gets pretty tricky!  And as the eclipse approaches more and more ooze and tentacles and all kinds of stuff emerge, making for hectic play!

Whilst looking for inspiration for The House of De'Ath horror card game we found this book in the Pound Store, and it's surprisingly good!

Only a couple of stories in, but one almost (almost!) had a Lovecraftian feel to it.  It looks like most of the stories are set in Victorian houses, and were written in the Victorian era, so loads of inspiration there!

A large number of the Phenomena cards have been prototyped, from the mundane encounters with rats or claps of thunder, through to full blown physical encounters with the spirit world!  Also made a start on the clock card, which is central to the game.  This uses the new circle card template from the Game Crafter, and along with a couple of gems to mark the hours and minutes, will count up your time in the house until midnight, when all hell breaks loose!

Still needs a lot of work, but good enough for testing purposes...

In the mid Victorian era, in a vast country mansion in England, the family De'Ath all perished in tragic circumstances.  The unfortunate series of events began with the accidental drowning of Lord and Lady De'Ath's twin girls, Rose and Ruby, and continued with Lady De'Ath's grief stricken poisoning, followed by the death of Master De'Ath, the murder of Father De'Ath, the suicide of Lord De'Ath, and the starvation of his disturbed and incarcerated sister Violet De'Ath.

The House of De'Ath was left empty and untouched for several years, with locals afraid to venture anywhere near, reporting strange figures at the windows and in the house grounds, and unearthly noises emanating from within.

You will be the first person to enter the house in a decade, and your task is to keep your nerve, and piece together the identity of the tormented De'Ath spirit haunting the house, and by identifying them, ultimately face them and dispel them to the spirit realm.

But keeping your nerve is not easy in a house so steeped in death and sorrow.  As you wander the house looking for paraphernalia and clues, even the slightest noise can set your nerves jangling, and your health will suffer greatly if you lose your nerve.


Below is the basement of the house (ground floor and first floor to go),  with some of the phenomena that can be encountered. Rooms are scary normally, but even scarier if the De'Ath spirit has manifested there (red card sides).


At the moment The House of De'Ath is a solo player game, but as it develops we think a multi-player version may be a possibility. 


More updates soon!

QUBQST has just been published at The Game Crafter!  See it here

A few hours of testing the finished QUBQST product this evening, and a couple of production issues to do with colour have become apparent - orange and red are hard to tell apart, and blue is almost black, so a few graphics changes and uploads are required.  Also noticed an inconsistency between the Quick Cards and the instructions which is easy to rectify.  Good job it is fun to play because I think we will be playing a lot more before we publish!

On the plus side, managed to achieve Elite Explorer status with all three characters surviving, but Catacomb Conqueror status still eludes us!!!

QUBQST dropped through the postbox today, and after a couple of hours patiently applying stickers to dice, it's ready for a few final playtesting checks before publication on the GameCrafter, look out for it soon!

The proofing copy of QUBQST has been ordered, and is currently on the production line at The Game Crafter, due to be with us mid September!  So final checks and any last minute changes aside, it should be available to buy early October - keep an eye out for it!

In the meantime, we are working on a gameplay video to showcase the game parts, and show a game in progress.  Work has also begun on the first expansion to the game!  Yes that's right, the game hasn't even been published and we've had plenty of new ideas for it.

There are three more characters that didn't make it into the main game - the Necromancer, Cleric and Ranger, plus three new Creature Cubes - giant insects (centipede, ant and spider), giant animals (rat, hog and wolf), and leviathans of the deep (jellyfish, crab and kraken), with new powers.  There are likely to be new magic and normal items, and Catacomb Cubes, and with the extra characters, it could be played by up to 6 players!!

Here is a first look at the box art front and back from the main game, which shows a full set of catacombs and the game parts...

After yet another month of testing and tweaking, QUBQST is very, very close to completion!

With 36 dice requiring 216 stickers to be applied, there is a lot of initial set-up, so we have put together a sticker guide.  As this will only be used once, we will make it available free on the GameCrafter website (rather than add this to the game documents which would up the price!).

The game instructions have been distilled to 2 sides of A4, plus further details on the useful Quick Cards for reference during the game.

But the hardest part has been testing enough to get the score ranking right.  There seems to be an average score range, of between 10 and 20, but we are developing a computer program to test what the sensible maximum scores could be.  One of the first outputs from this was that we found there were 60,466,176 different possible configurations for the basic layout of the game!  And that is just the layout, before determining what creatures are encountered!

We estimate another full month of testing before this goes live on the GameCrafter!

Another month of playtesting down for CUB QST and things are edging closer to completion.  Even more make-shift stickers are covering the lovely prototype dice, and several mock-up 'Quick Cards' (below) now help speed up gameplay without having to keep referring to the rules booklet.  Expect it on the GameCrafter before the end of the year!

Clang! recently made the Red Stone Seller accolade on the Game Crafter in recognition of units sold, and it got us thinking how we could expand the Clang! world more ... and an idea for Clang! KINGDOMS was born!

This will be a turn based resource building and battle board game based in the Clang! world, with random world design, and some other nice touches and new Clang! elements and characters.

All very much a rough sketch at the moment, and with several other games in the pipeline not likely to be released for a while, but exciting nonetheless!

After a month of playtesting CUB QST, my lovely prototype dice from the GameCrafter are covered in makeshift stickers and the rules are being well and truly re-written!

Most of the elements have remained as they are fairly fundamental to any dungeon crawler, but there is now more of an objective, a point to aim for, with more flexibility on how dungeon unfolds, and real decision making needed to allocate characters to situations.

A pretty extensive re-write, but it will be worth it in the end!

In the meantime DONK! had been released on The GameCrafter, see it here

After a busy month of playtesting, it's finally time to reveal the identity of the retro-card game we have been developing, based on a 16-bit Amiga computer title from the 90s ... and that game is ... DONK!

What?  Not heard of it?  OK, you're not alone!  DONK! (the Samurai Duck) was released in 1993 by The Hidden, on the Amiga (and Amiga CD32) computer with relatively little fanfare, and to mixed reviews.  Despite being one of the first Amiga games with 50 FPS simultaneous split screen 2 player mode (like the later Sonic games on the Megadrive)

Although it had a slow start, it has evolved a small cult following over the years, with several people saying it was the only game they kept their Amiga CD32 for, and a homebrew Sega Dreamcast version in development in recent years

So back to the present, and this 20th anniversary commemorative card game will be released soon on The Game Crafter!

It plays in a very similar way to the computer game, with you controlling Donk (in 1 player mode - plus Judo Juggs in 2 player co-op or versmode), fighting the evil Eider Down's enemies in the 7 game zones, dodging pits and hazards, collecting power-ups, and trying to find gems to complete the zones, and have a crack at defeating Eider Down himself!

Below are some card pics, look out for it on TGC soon!