Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
OGN Ep 25: GameHead Games and Future Releases with Paul Salomon
Join us for a deep dive into the world of game design with Paul Salomon, the creative director at GameHead Games. Paul shares insights on mechanics, themes, and the exciting upcoming titles from GameHead, while also providing tips for aspiring game designers on how to break into the industry.
• Discussion on the importance of gameplay mechanics over world-building
• Insights into hit games like "Honey Buzz" and "Scythe"
• Tips for aspiring designers on feedback and prototyping
• Overview of GameHead's future projects and design philosophy
• Encouragement for audience interaction on game ideas and experiences
https://gamermats.com/pages/about-gamehead
As always, come interact with us online, let us know if you have any feedback, and leave us a review/comment anywhere you get your favorite podcasts!
https://www.instagram.com/operation_game_night_podcast/
Welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast, episode 25. Today, our main topic is we are going to interview Paul Solomon of Gamehead Games. Paul, how are you?
Speaker 2:doing. Hey, I'm doing great guys. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Joining me, as always, are my co-hosts. He's fresh from refining scary numbers, hoping to earn a waffle party. Clayton Gable. How are you doing, clay?
Speaker 3:I'm doing good. I feel like several episodes ago, jared was very vulnerable about his herpes, so I would like to also point out that I've come with a herpes treat today too. Sorry for the viewers. It's been a stressful week More importantly sorry, paul.
Speaker 2:I've got some sort of a throat thing. My uvula is real swollen, so that's the closest I've got. And, clay, I just want to say thank you. I know the work is mysterious and important, so thank you for the work you do on the data refinement mysterious and important work.
Speaker 1:He's fresh from the break room. He had to say he's sorry. 1000 times, jared Erickson. How, how you doing Jared?
Speaker 4:I couldn't be better for. Is this a silver anniversary or is it called platinum? 25 is kind of a big deal, right 25.
Speaker 2:25 is big Wow.
Speaker 1:Quarter of 100. Excellent, we've got a great show for you. Today we're going to debrief our week in gaming. We're going to talk to Paul Solomon about his new position at GameHead Games and some exciting new releases that they have on the horizon, and then we're going to go over the fence and talk about what we've been doing outside of board gaming. So, paul, guest of honor, I want you to go first. Feel free to give a brief intro if you want to, but let's hear about your week in gaming.
Speaker 2:Sure, I'm Paul Solomon. As you guys know, I am a game designer, designed Honeybuzz, stampswap, genotype Periodic, got some more coming up, and now I'm the creative director for Gamehead Games. We'll talk about that a little bit later. I'm also a math teacher. I teach part-time and I do games all of the rest of the time. And, yeah, do I get to talk about what I did in games this week?
Speaker 1:Yeah, please All right cool.
Speaker 2:So every Monday night, basically, I go play games with my buddy Tommy and my buddy Matt used to come, but he got this new, he's like I don't know, he's like in charge of a Costco now. So he works like three in the morning to I don't know what he we've just basically never seen him since. So my buddy pete comes and we played a whole bunch of games, uh, as we do every week. Uh, two-player game, architects of amethyst, which I was very impressed by um, I'll come back to this one here in a second. I played eternal decks, which is a new, like, hold me down. Eternal Dex is a new game from Hiroken, I believe. Who did? Oh, I'll have to remember, but I can't right now Rebirth from Reiner Canizia. Monolith from my favorite designer, phil Walker-Harding, spring Cleaning from John Cox of John Getz Games, aka Getting Games, and the Peach Festival.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you about Architects of Amethyst for a second. Has anybody here played it? No, no, this is a three-by-three grid. Both players have a three-by-three grid and you're going to put tiles there and stack them up and score the state of your board. And then in the center of the table is another three-by-three grid of the tiles you're drafting. And so what you do on your turn is you place a worker on the center board and take that tile and it's maybe one of six types you know that would be in a city and you place it on your board somewhere and then it immediately scores some effect, like it might score the Coliseum scores for how many workers are on the board. So the longer you wait, the better it gets, or how many different buildings you have, or buildings of the same color, etc.
Speaker 2:And you're trying to do a few different things. One you're trying to optimize that immediate scoring, which I really like on games like Castles of Mad King Ludwig, where every turn you play something and you get a reef. I really like on games like Castles of Mad King Ludwig, where every turn you play something and you get a reef. I really like that. But then also you're trying to complete patterns on your board. This is probably why I ended up winning the game is that I just finished a lot of these color patterns.
Speaker 2:But then the other thing you're trying to do, which is so unique and cool, is play tic-tac-toe on the center board. So that's sort of like pushes you to take tiles that maybe aren't the best for you on your own board, but block your opponent in a very obvious and direct way, as opposed to saying, oh, they really need a market right now, I just go. Okay, I need to block that spot, which is super cool, and the the um when you. When you do that, you get your workers back, which is good, uh, but you also get to place a token on an end of game scoring objective, uh, so you don't have any of those innately. You have to hit tic-tac-toes to get that, and it was just uh. It was a really dynamic back and forth game. I was very impressed with it, you know got a three out of three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, this is by the same publisher, at least. That does uh, cosmic frog, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, they do some really weird, unique stuff and I love it yeah, I haven't played that one, but people talk about how goofy and wild it is and obviously I love the theme of these gigantic cosmic frogs which I think they're eating planets, or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're eating planets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty crazy, very cool I also got a chance to play rebirth from reiner knizia, which, um, he's definitely one of my maybe my number two favorite designer all time. Um, obviously a prolific designer, incredible concepts and another mathematician like myself, oh yeah, um, uh, rebirth is really cool and I think it's been described as his take on um uh, kingdom builder, which I played and didn't. Like kingdom builder, you get a tile and you put it down and you score some points. And in Rebirth you do that with a lot more kind of pizzazz and better actions. There's some area control on these castles and you place next to monasteries to get personal objectives, you try to maintain and you try to connect these long networks of farms to score a bunch of points.
Speaker 2:And just really, I was very impressed. It's kind of like a I don't know if I would even call it, I guess it's medium weight, it's medium to lightweight euro, um, but it does a lot in an hour 45 minutes and that is what I love in games is I don't want to sit there and play a game for two hours, but I uh really enjoyed this one and it's a little um, it's a little mean, it's a little interactive in that way, um, but it didn't bother me too much, and maybe that's partly because I was the guy that was taking things away from everybody and um you know, somebody would be in position to have majority on one of these cities and then I would flop down the one and beat them by a little bit.
Speaker 2:Uh, but just a super cool design. That's when I'll I'll be, I'll be playing a bunch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we love that one. We just ranted about that two weeks ago maybe, and yeah, that that was a big hit and it will definitely probably. It'll probably replace cascadero in this house, because cascadero just seems like a little bit too finicky, a little bit harder to teach, like rebirth is so easy to teach. Pick out a chip and put it down in a spot that matches that symbol, like yeah, it got a it got a rachel, run it back, so oh yeah, oh, that's my wife my wife not a gamer left the room.
Speaker 1:I packed it all up because we played it and she came back and was like why'd you put it away? Let's, let's play it again.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's awesome that's kind of like our medal of honor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I bet you guys played the uh ireland side or just the just the scotland we only played the scotland side.
Speaker 1:We played that twice, but I haven't really dug into the ireland side yet yeah, the ireland one you have.
Speaker 2:You have four tiles that you don't get, so that's a little more difference between the players. Um, and then the monasteries are replaced with these watchtowers that have like public effects that you get. And I don't know one of my favorite things in rebirth, which is this goofy tie break. I don't know if you guys talked about this. If you're tied for most points, then it goes to whoever controls the edinburgh castle, and if you're tied, if the tied players are tied on edinburgh castle, it's whoever controls this other castle, and they don't even have to be in the lead for points, so you can kind of like win in the 22nd way, which I like that yeah, yeah, I was, we, we.
Speaker 3:So we just played this last night, loved it. Four players None of us had played it before Taught played in like 45 minutes with four and it felt like it was always your turn. I mean you literally like pick up the tiles, yeah, yeah, until you place it and pick up your next one. It's like everybody else has and it's just constantly rewarding because you're just scoring points and getting things. Oh my God, loved it. But at the beginning somebody was like why is there this like symbol on this one castle here? And I was like I have no idea. And then eventually I was looking in the rule book for something else and I saw I was like oh, that's a very interesting tie breaking scenario.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, great game yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, great game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome. What are you guys playing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, clay, hit me, debrief your week.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so last night we had a game night and Rebirth was one of the games we played, but before that we played the evergreen war farming game, scythe by. Yeah, it had been a minute since I played this one. This was like, oddly enough, when I got into gaming in, like you know, 2017, 2018, this was one of the first games I got after, like a zoo and and I made poor Mary sit down and play this thing.
Speaker 4:It was just a hundred, real quick.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we were in for more than we bargained for there. But the last time I played it was probably a couple of years ago in person, and it didn't go great because it was a spontaneous decision. We had played a bunch of games beforehand and one of the guys just saw it sitting on the shelf and it was like 10 o'clock at night. Some people may have had too much to drink I won't name names but they requested to play this. I gave all the warnings. I was like listen, this is going to be a long teach. I mean, none of you played this before, so bear with me. Got through the teach, tried to play it. Some people didn't understand. Other people, like I mentioned, were having Jared take their turns for them because they couldn't comprehend it. So we made it. We suffered through for like an hour and a half before we finally said, hey, this isn't going well right now. Finally said, hey, this, this isn't going well right now. I knew better when we started it, but we did it anyway. So last night I came prepared, I watched, I rewatched the how to play video, even though I felt pretty comfortable with it, but I didn't want to miss anything and I had it set up before everybody came over and it went pretty smooth. It was. It was a good time.
Speaker 3:I mean, inside it's like a 1920s alternate history where there was like all this technology after the great war and your factions vying for control and fame in this land and, yeah, it's got the constant threat of combat looming. But ultimately it's like a resource management efficiency puzzle type game where on your turn you have this player mat and it has four different sections and there's a top row in each section and a bottom row in each section, and so usually the top row action is something that you can always do. It doesn't cost much. If anything, it'll cost like one coin to take the top row action. That changes throughout the game. But you got things like moving, producing on land that you have workers on, trading to gain resources and bolstering your military. And then on the bottom row, if you have the right resources for that section of the board, you can do things like deploy mechs and you get your mechs out. You can build these structures out on the map, you can enlist and get like ongoing benefits by doing that and upgrade which is one of the coolest parts of this game, I think, is the upgrade mechanism. So on your player mat there's all these. There's six cubes and they start in your top row and they're covering up benefits. So they're like blocking things that you would get. And when you take the upgrade action you can take one of those cubes from the top row making your top row action better, and then you can place it on one of your bottom row actions to make it cheaper to do one of those things deploy, build, enlist, et cetera. So that's super interesting and you're doing this and everybody has to start out on their own little like island because you can't cross the rivers to start. But once you make your mech that lets you carry your people across the river.
Speaker 3:Now you're starting to verge on getting in each other's faces and the game ends when somebody's completed six objectives and the objectives are either get all four of your mechs out, build all your buildings, enlist all four times, upgrade six times. So basically all the things on your player board. You're trying to get through those. You can also complete these secret objectives. You can get two stars for winning battles and you can get a star for getting all the way up on the popularity or bolster track. So somebody gets six stars, the game ends immediately. You score based on how popular you were. You get more points for each of your scoring things. So like how many hexes you control, how many resources you have, how many stars you achieve during the game, so you can end the game by getting six stars and still lose.
Speaker 3:I've done it before. It doesn't feel good, but this is a great game I talked about the last week. Distilled lasted like three hours and with four players, and to be able to play a game that feels as grandiose aside and less time than distilled is just I love that. You know how long did this take you? It took us just over two hours, probably so, and now I mean it was three people that never had played it before. So there was some stopping and starting as we learned the rules. But yeah, it went pretty smooth.
Speaker 3:And yeah, some of my favorite things are the encounter tokens. So there's these like little tokens on the map that if your character goes into that space, you can draw this card and it like has this beautiful artwork and shows this scene and gives you like these three options that usually one's one's like a not popular thing you have to lose popularity, but you can like steal somebody's mech and you get this awesome ability to just throw a mech out on the board without even paying for it, and then you know there's other options. But you get those cards and they have these cool like you feel like you're kind of almost role-playing a little bit in in the in the game, uh. So scythe was great. I can see why it remains a staple in the hobby and, yeah, I wish I played it more.
Speaker 3:I kind of I don't know if mary would be down for it, but I've heard the uh, rise of Fenris campaign is a lot of fun. It might be a good reason to keep coming back to this game, but yeah, just a beautiful production, not a lot of bad to say about it. You can tell it was just designed with so much thought and care about how everything interacted with each other. So yeah, scy sides is a great game, I think.
Speaker 3:I think the movement if I had to, you know, give a criticism is what seemed a little hard for people to grasp, because each type of you have your character moves different than your max, which moves different than your workers, and when you move you can only move. You have to move two different people, one space each. So there's just a lot of little intricacies about the movement that add some complexity and decisions to make, but also seemed a little fiddly to some of the players I was playing with. But ultimately it's a good game. I would highly recommend checking it out. If you like efficiency puzzles, if you like that little, that interaction too, without just being a straight up Euro side, it's great.
Speaker 2:Have you played expeditions, sort of card based sequel to this.
Speaker 3:No, I haven't, but I've played that, yeah, I have.
Speaker 1:I got it at Essendon Spiel two years ago. Yeah, last year, yeah, and I came with the nice little metal minis and everything. Yeah, yeah, super nice, beautiful on the table. Yeah, I really enjoy Expeditions. It's pretty cool Totally.
Speaker 2:So Jamie is a buddy of mine. We both live in St Louis and our convention every year is Geekway to the West and he typically will put games put Stonemaier games there before they're released. So we had a copy of expeditions there with the metal max in the play and win library and it was sort of like everybody was clamoring to get this thing out and I got it out for like half of a play right before the thing ended and I ended up winning the thing.
Speaker 2:so I've got a play and win copy over there. Um, I like expeditions a a fair amount more than scythe. I think the systems inside are really cool, but I just didn't have a ton of fun playing it. Yeah, and I feel bad because jamie is my buddy but I I don't often love, love, love his designs. Um, of course, stamp swap my favorite of course.
Speaker 3:Well, you designed that one yeah, that's true, I mean I'll have to check out expeditions.
Speaker 1:This, this like reinvigorated my my uh passion for the uh scythe universe, I guess so yeah maybe I'll check that one out yeah, the one thing I will say about expeditions is it is more immersive too. Like the theme is there, it tells a good story. I think there's like a campaign version of it. I only played it a couple times, but yeah, expeditions is great. Check it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think there's a campaign, but there's like an expansion that adds a sort of autonomous player that you can interact with there you go.
Speaker 2:That's what it is some other kinds of stuff. Um yeah, very cool system as well. It's like a hand management sort of concordia thing, and instead of having the two layers of you know actions where, if you have a resource, you can do the second layer. Every card has like a worker spot, so you play the card for its innate effect and then, if you put a worker on it, you can do the second effect and you gain these quest cards that require you to go places and you can upgrade your mech for all these cool effects. But it's less worker types, less restrictions, less to think about and just three actions. You either move or take the action of the tile you're on or play a card, and so you move this little marker to one of those and then do the other two and so it's very cool.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, that is interesting. You've peaked me.
Speaker 4:Play's easy to peak, though let's be real, yeah.
Speaker 3:I get excited about games. That's my real yeah. Yeah, I get excited about games. I'm a. That's my fault, no.
Speaker 1:Jared hit me with your debrief.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, I just wanted to warn Paul that I am the more of the party game guy of the group, so I'm busting out monikers for my debrief. Yesterday went to a great potluck, great food. I brought the brownies. There was some delicious jalapeno popper dip. We got monikers to the table. There was eight of us. Gemma was upstairs playing with the princesses and we were downstairs laughing our freaking heads off.
Speaker 4:Because this game is a lot of fun, multi-round where you're trying to get your team to guess the. It's like mostly nouns, right, like different things that you're trying to get your team to guess in one minute and you can get them to guess as many of these different monikers if you will in that minute. And then we played it where you kind of rotate between the people. I think there's lots of different. You know house rules that you can do to to play this. Yeah, there's a little baby jesus. So first round you can use as many words and any. It's a free-for-all. You're just you're trying to get the people to get the catchphrase it gives me catchphrase vibes but then you use those same cards in another round after you've gone through the whole deck and I think you choose five cards per person. And then you do another round where now you can only say one word. So people have already got the names in the back of their mind and now you're just trying to figure out. Okay, I know the answers to the test, but how do I get my team on this one word? And then, when you're getting the hints, you're really working hard to get through it. I liked it a lot. And then the last round charades. You're really working hard to get through it. I liked it a lot. And then the last round charades. So Human Centipede was a lot of fun to try and get people to guess through the multi-rounds. We also had a Mexican wrestler, luchador, so that was a good one. So it's just a lot of fun.
Speaker 4:I've actually played this game they call it something different where you everyone writes down their own things. It's like easy, like family game. You can play with anybody. You write a bunch of things down on little slips of paper, put them in a popcorn bowl and you do the same thing. And it's a lot of fun, especially because you can kind of uh, customize that to like the night. You know, if clay does something silly or the ritz-bitz miracle, I don't know. You just throw things in there and you get people to guess it and it's. I actually like that version a little bit more because you can be a lot more silly and, uh, I have the you know humor of a 12 year old, so I I thoroughly enjoy doing that but, yeah, I don't remember what version we played yesterday, um, and unfortunately I had to leave, but they had dune imperium ready to go to awesome game so these were some big boy gamers.
Speaker 4:Okay, but to appease the crowd we played a little bit of Monarchers.
Speaker 3:How bad did it hurt you to have to leave before going to Iraq?
Speaker 4:Don't worry, I will be setting up a play date, was it?
Speaker 3:your copy of Dune.
Speaker 4:Imperium, no they had their own In the wild.
Speaker 3:In the wild. You've run into wild gamers in Alabama.
Speaker 1:They printed two copies of Dune Imperium. Hold on Unheard of.
Speaker 4:I was beyond excited when I saw that Next time we're going to get Dune Imperium to the table.
Speaker 1:Well, Clay, you can pull me off the stage here because I don't have a whole lot to brief. This week we had a harrowing week here in the Smith household so we didn't get a whole lot played. It was a tough time. I'll talk about it a little later, but I will shout out that they added Dead Cells, the roguelite board game, onto Board Game Arena, and this is a game that I did an unboxing of when I got my Super Deluxe copy a couple weeks ago, and I love the Dead Cells franchise. It's great. It's a video game that they turned into a board game.
Speaker 1:That is a rogue-lite board game. So what you do is you play through a level. It's cooperative. You've got four different characters that you can play, as that specialize in different things. One is damage and one's healing and that type of stuff. One's balanced. And you go through and you fight a bunch of baddies and you open up chests. And you go through and you fight a bunch of baddies and you open up chests and you find a bunch of loot and then eventually it's going to become so overwhelming that you're going to lose and then you start the whole thing over again from square one. But you can keep a couple of the upgrades as you go. It's all card-based.
Speaker 1:The box is well-organized. It comes with this pretty sweet collectible miniature that isn't really used but you can can a nice little collectible for those that are big fans. And so they added part one onto board game arena, which I love that they did that. I'm not sure if it's my favorite way to play because, uh, it's supposed to be iterative. So if I join a game with a bunch of randoms and I'm going through this game multiple times with these random people, eventually somebody's going to want to drop out of that. And I'm going through this game multiple times with these random people, eventually somebody's going to want to drop out of that. And I'm not sure how they handle like people's karma and stuff on board game arena with reiterative games like that, uh. But yeah, if you're interested in the game and you can check it out on board game arena, I definitely want to play this more, especially now that I dug into some of the tutorials and stuff.
Speaker 1:But I mean, just opening up the box is freaking beautiful. It's got all the different biomes that you can visit and the different characters and everything, and they're all tucked away in these nice little individual boxes. So you get to the end of the level. Let's say you beat all the baddies and everything. It'll let you pick which one you want to go to. And then you open up that box. It's got all the individual cards inside and then you just run with that deck and then you run through that level. You keep all your upgrades and everything and you they tuck away in these nice little sleeved, uh kind of character portfolio type things. So you have all your upgrades like tucked away and then you open up the next box and you're good to go. So definitely want to play this some more. It's freaking awesome, travis.
Speaker 2:I have some questions here. Have you played Slay the Spire, the board game?
Speaker 1:I have played about 100 hours of Slay the Spire on my computer. I've never played the actual board game but I really want to.
Speaker 2:The board game I thought was super cool and you know I played it. I think I played it at only at three players, maybe twice Sounds very similar and it's like sort of a deck-building game. I would say it's a deck-building game Very similar to the game, and has a lot of cool simultaneous play and sequencing stuff. What's the gameplay of Dead Cells like? Because it sounds very similar. All these roguelites are very similar. You're going through. Eventually you die. You come back with. So you know what. What's the card play like? How does the game operate?
Speaker 1:I, I. It sounds very similar to slay the spire, because you're playing cards to deal damage to these enemies that are then playing cards against you, and that's where those two universes diverge a little bit, because Slay the Spire, the video game, is basically a card battler in itself. You are selecting cards based on what the enemy is going to do to you to then block or heal or counter or do damage or whatever Dead Cells. The video game is like this frantic hands sweaty on a controller, like running through these levels as fast as you can. These enemies just become so overwhelming it's crazy. So it's really hard to translate that into this card-based battler.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah, it sounds like. It's like very similar style of board game. So it's definitely slows things down a little bit from where the video game is at. But the part, the thing that I love about this franchise is like they are so irreverent of all of the other metroidvania, roguelite games that came before it to the point where, like, they have added in all these other like dlcs and stuff into the video game that are direct pulls from like castlevania and from, um, what's it called?
Speaker 1:metroid metroid and all these other things. They are very irreverent and they continue to add to this game and make it great. And this game is kind of like. It's like a dungeon crawler mixed with slay the spire type combat. So cool. I still love it. It's very cool. It's not quite like a one-to-one comparison, like it is slay the spire but um is there a map like, do you have?
Speaker 2:do you have troops on a map and they're targeting you and moving and stuff, or is it just a little more?
Speaker 1:not quite. No, it's more like um. It kind of feels like one deck dungeon a little bit, where you're like sure, this is the enemy I'm up against. Now this is what they're gonna do. I like that, um, and yeah, the cooperative play of it is kind of cool. You can help each other out. So I haven't played it, uh, with more than myself. It's just me that's busted open the box. So, uh, definitely interested in trying it multiplayer and running through a couple of times, because it's a little limited to just keep doing it over and over yourself so, yep, some of these minis look awesome.
Speaker 1:They're incredible. They're incredible Some of the sculpts um in the game. You play as like one singular guy that just like dies and then you get reincarnated back through these. You're basically like on an Island prison type thing and as you run through these different levels in the prison, you know, you know the toxic sewers there's
Speaker 1:like worms that exploded like bomblets and stuff and that's cool, yeah. Giant scorpions that shoot poison at you and stuff. So all those enemies that you love from the game are in this card game, and so it's kind of cool to see how they translate those types of actions that you're familiar with from the video game into card based battling.
Speaker 2:so have you guys played ftl faster than light on on the computer? Yes, yeah, I've put a lot of hours into that and that's my favorite look rogue like and my first design project was to try to design a deck building version of that and and it was bad. I mean, my students enjoyed it, but obviously I had no idea what I was doing and I really want someone to do that. I think that warps edge from renegade games kind of does the closest thing to that and has a really, really cool system.
Speaker 2:The thing that's so hard about designing one of these roguelikes is that you have to have a series of encounters that ramp in difficulty so that you have a. You know you need a small enough loop that you can have a meaningful battle and build and let that ramp over time, but then you're, then you're playing for three hours, right so? So warps edge lets you have an encounter that takes like 20 seconds and every time you defeat an enemy or evade them, you get a chip into your bag and the whole thing plays in probably an hour. So it's really a clever system. It's solo only um or I. You know you can any solo game you can play with your buddies, but definitely worth checking out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I heard you mention FTL on Amanda's podcast last week and I was itching to ask you about it, because I do like roguelite video games and roguelite board games and it's so hard to do, where it doesn't become stale doing those first entry encounters over and over and over again.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing that so so cool about ftl it's, it's uh, it's sort of like a star wars thing. You have some um, you have like information, you're trying to get to the forefront of the rebellion and you're being chased by whoever and, uh, you go level to level and you, when you encounter these ships, you have a ship with different systems. You know engines, weapons, this and that, and uh, there's cool down times and the weapons are charging and stuff, and you have, um, you have crew, and like you can assign crew to specific systems to like upgrade or like enhance their efficiency. Um, but then also, when you shoot weapons, you can target where they hit and not like. So one of the strats that I like to do is you get these ion cannons that disable one of the systems on the enemy ship and you can just, if you have fast enough ion cannons or enough of them, you can just hit their life support over and over and over until they run out of oxygen, and when that happens you get like more of their scrap.
Speaker 2:It's just, it's so fun to do, and then there's like your hull will burst and you have to assign somebody there. So it's real time. But the cool one of the cool things is you can pause as often as you want and make your assignments and then return to the game in real time. So it's it's. It doesn't have that like real time dexterityity, like ah, sweaty hand thing of like a dead cells, um it's. The one downside is that once you kind of find a path to actually beat the thing it's, it doesn't necessarily feel like a lot of the other paths are viable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's, and it's not a roguelike like it's just you play it and you lose, and you try again and you lose and you don't get any ramping right, uh, we mentioned or I mentioned last week bellatro.
Speaker 1:Have you played bellatro? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I played a lot of bellatro on the switch when we um, when we traveled a couple times, and I think it's an amazing system. Everything about it is so, so fun. I think it's very hard to try to put that on a tabletop and I've played two prototypes from published designers that try to do this kind of stuff okay and uh, it's not easy. I think we're kind of entering an age where poker is going to see a resurgence and that's fun, but, like, the gang was an amazing. You know that's so cool, um, but you know you're scoring I don't know seven million points on a round where previously you were getting two. So how are you gonna do that? You're gonna have point chips that go to billions. You know it's tough stuff and the math.
Speaker 1:That was my big thing. It's like include a calculator in the box with this game, because once you start adding in all those jokers and stuff, it'd be cool if somebody can skillfully do that and keep it clean. But man, I think people are going to try, regardless of whether or not it's good. I think they're going to try and capitalize on this Bellatro wave, because people get hooked on the poker real easy.
Speaker 2:And they have an app now, so it's just kind of hitting a wider market. It's an awesome game, yeah awesome.
Speaker 1:Are we ready to fall in on the mission objective? Let's move out, let's go All right. So, paul, more of you talking, but you gave us a brief intro. You're with GameHead Games. Why don't you give us the spiel for GameHead Games up front?
Speaker 2:Cool. So GamerMats is a I don't know how long it's been around, but it's a very successful company with US production of playmats, or I suppose some of the materials are produced in China but they're printed here in the US, in Chicago. They make all the game mats for Pokemon, organized play in the us, for example, um, and they're connected to pastimes who does very large events like magic cons and all of the magic and lorcona tournaments at somewhere like a gen con. Um, so very successful up to now. And they've rebranded as Gamehead. So, in short, gamehead makes GamerMats and now Gamehead makes games. So it's very similar to what BoardGameTablescom did when they rebranded as AllPlay on tour, uh, which is a really awesome flip and write and I saw that the publisher was board game tablescom.
Speaker 2:I was like something's not right, like this isn't? It doesn't make sense. Like uh, so we, you know, going to all play um, which is something joe wiggins was a part of. Uh, I think that's been the mold for what we're trying to do. And um, I was brought on as creative director to really like do lead the whole charge to make games, and our plan is six small box games around 25, 20 bucks, um, in the same size box. I've got like a, an approximate box here, which is, you know, it's about six inches by six inches by two. Chose that box size very carefully. Two of those will sit side by side in your calyx and six will stand up. So after you get our first wave and our second wave.
Speaker 2:You can have all 12 right there in one cube. And yeah, we're focusing on three different kinds of games. Jared, you'll be pleased to know we have two party games coming out. One of them is a 1-100 player roll and write word game called First Class Letters.
Speaker 2:Designed by Peter C Hayward of Things and Rings and Fiction and Critter kitchen and many, many awesome games. Cartouche, one of my favorite games. That game's really cool. I think people will really enjoy it. It's obviously got this postal theme. Our other party game is a, a game we're calling foolish fool, and this is.
Speaker 2:There's a French game called foo foo foo, which means crazy, and it's published in korea, I think, and this is a really fun. Like you know, if you like drinking games, it's very fun. You flip a card and it says something like from now on, um, at the start of your turn, you must salute the player on your right and left before you draw a card. And um, from now on, instead of the word card, you have to say couscous and so. And then you have other things that say like um, when you pick up a card, you have to say, oh, this card is heavy. So then, very quickly, you're doing things like saluting your neighbors and then picking up and saying, oh, this couscous is heavy. And uh, as soon as people make mistakes, they lose one of their tokens, and once you lose all three, you're the foolish fool and the game ends. So it's just really fast and fun and we've actually taken the core game from France and the expansion and put them both in the same box. So there's a ton of value there. It's 108 different cards, very fun. So that's a ton of value there. It's 108 different cards, very fun. So that's our two party games. And let's see, we're going to have two casual games.
Speaker 2:I've got one to show off here. This one is Corgi Pile Up, designed by me and Steve Ellis. This is kind of a reimplementation of Cucumber. Also, the Gudetama card game. It's very similar to that and I'll show you some of the art. It has fabulous art by Sai Beppu that shows cutie pie corgi pups piling up. You've got two of them there and then five of them. They start making these pyramids and there's eight, and one of the best ones here is the nine. It's got a little corgi butt on it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and uh some of these cards have special powers, um, because they're triangular numbers. To get into the math here a little bit one, three, six, ten. So if you play one of these they'll have some special power for the round, because those are like perfect pyramids of dogs and um. It's a really simple, fast, casual trick-taking games. A game everybody plays a card, or somebody plays a card and then you have to climb up the pile up, which means you have to play a higher card, increasing the pile, um, and that'll continue, or you have to play the lowest card in your hand. So there's some control over you, over your hand, and some that you don't have. And your last card you play is the one that you score. So only the last trick counts and you'll advance your marker up this corgi pyramid and the game ends when somebody falls off the pyramid and goes back to zero and at that point the highest score wins.
Speaker 2:So you want to get up there but you don't want to fall off the pyramid and goes back to zero and at that point the highest score wins. So you want to get up there but you don't want to fall off the pyramid and you're not sure when somebody's going to fall off the pyramid and so you might get up to 15, hoping that the game's going to end this round.
Speaker 2:Somebody's going to go over and I'll be there. But if they don't go over now, you're stuck at 15, and you're probably going to lose in the next round. But if you can somehow climb every time and hold on to your one, play that on the last turn. Then you can score zero or any played card. So there's a lot of cool little twists in it. It plays probably in 20 minutes and it's a a little random, but so fun and fast that you'll probably want to play again is the queen involved, I mean the late, the great late queen elizabeth she's not in there.
Speaker 2:We probably should have put probably should put a little something in there, a little nod to her, but we didn't it's, it's fine, I was just yeah I understand.
Speaker 2:Um, our other casual game is venture angels uh, designed by bruno fai duty. That is up on board game, geek, if you want to pull that up. Uh, this is a super, super cool fun game. Venture angels it's kind of a bluffing game, um, it's a quick, it's almost a bidding game. Venture angels uh, each round you're going to flip out some like your angel investors. You're kind of like sharks from the shark tank and these funny projects will be up there, that like computer for dogs or human cloning or stuff like that. And you have these bidding chips with some value and you see, like that robot butler needs eight points of funding, and so players play their chips around the table face down, and then they're revealed and anything that didn't fund is discarded. You have to get at least to its funding level, um, and then, of the ones that were funded, if there's one that's higher than all the others, it's overhyped and it's actually goes away. You can't have it.
Speaker 2:But then, from the rest, whoever's the lead investor gets that thing, and that is whoever put the most funding investment into it, and the tie is whoever went first. So you get these tiles which might be worth like 10 points, but you only score your highest investment in each category, so you have to diversify. Um, it's really fun, it's very quick and, uh, that's what I I super love. I think it's it's in our casual line, which is it's for um, families or kind of new gamers, but it's. It's one that I think you know hobby gamers like all all four of us will really like. Yeah, that's super cool, and it's got art by Ian O'Toole.
Speaker 2:So there you go Exciting thing, so that's an art direction by Vincent Dutre, the very famous artist. Then we have a thinky game line which is really directed at the hobby gamer. Specifically, we have Trinket Trove, which has art by Sandara Tang and Manny Vega graphic design. This is about collector critters living in the margins of the human world collecting things like let's see, I've got some examples. So you collect like a thimble and you use it for your pot and then on the side here over here you can see if you have one you get five points, but if you get two of them it's 35 points. Let's see what else we got. We got gems which they kind of use for illumination, and there's this number at the top says that there's six in a full set of gems but there's 12 of them in the deck. So if you get all the way down to the top it's 125 points, which is a lot in the game.
Speaker 2:If you get to 200, you're doing pretty good. The feather little known, I guess not that little known. My wife and kids, their last name is feathers, so I try to put feathers in my games when I can. I've got a little feather tattoo here.
Speaker 2:And another one there with some feathers on it. See, we've got a couple more the bottle caps. They use bottle caps as bowls in this world and the mirror is a little locket and that is a wild. It can just copy whatever you want it to be. Um, it's very cool. It's sort of like inspired by the rats of nim uh. So we have miss brisby, who is named after the uh rats of nim character. He's originally called frisbee in the game, I mean in the in the book. We have oh, where's that other one I got to find? Well, we have a Nimbus who's kind of like Nicodemus from the movie. We have a character called Bernard, which is a nod to the Rescuers. It's kind of like Secret World of Arrietty. I'll show you a couple more. We have Patches, who's a beautiful little mouse. We have some chonky boys. We got gouda, oh. And then templeton the rat is, I think, a nod to uh, what I don't remember.
Speaker 2:Templeton from oh babe or something, or charlotte's web, I think yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, so that's, that is, trinket trove, which, uh, is very fun to play the set collection game. You put out some trinkets from the night and you're trying to collect those sets. But in order to get those sets, you bid for draft order with cards from your hand so you might offer up a gem and a thimble to other players, and whoever offers up the most cards gets to go first, and in the case of a tie, it's the total value here. Um, but then those cards become something that can be drafted by other players. So, um, really cool, sort of a little bit like fantasy realms.
Speaker 2:And our other thinky game is, oh, an amazing trick-taking game. No loose ends. Um, I don't have the final art here, but I'm getting the like printed prototypes in a week. Um, super, super cool, and I'm going to show off a couple things coming in the future. So, yeah, another, um, speaking of future, another trick-taking game from taiki shinzawa with a time travel theme. So this is going to be called trick to the future um, just some spec art and um.
Speaker 2:We'll see how far we can get without using that uh, ip, um. These are the card backs and this is based on the seven, second seven segment display that's shown on the um flux capacitor and inside the delorean uh, so it's a trick-taking game. The suits are past, present, future and beyond, but beyond is the trump suit and the cards are, um, these seven segment displays, but each player has a number of fuel rods that they can use to travel time.
Speaker 2:So you can take this thing here and if you put two of these segments on it, two of the fuel rods, you can change it into an eight.
Speaker 1:That's very fun.
Speaker 2:And you could take a seven, and if you want to lose a trick, three segments will take it down to a zero, for example. That's that alone is very fun. A couple of twists here is that each trick you win is a time travel journey that you go on. You get two points for going on a time travel journey. Every spent fuel rod that you collect is another point, but you need to be able to get back home. You have to save enough fuel rods to get back home. If you have less fuel rods than tricks one, you get no points, dang, and if you have exactly the right amount of fuel rods left, you get double points. So, um, it's a super cool and unique trick taking game. I've said this other places. Taiki shinzawa is the master of these card games and I'm so lucky he did two with us. We're we're working on who the artist is going to be here. Uh, hope to have kind of this 80s vibe getting close to some references without um getting sued by uh fox or whoever owns that.
Speaker 2:And then the last game I want to talk about here is a new party game we've signed from Scott Brady, who did Boop and Hughes and Cues and other awesome games. This is a groupthink game about size. It's called Outsized and everybody has one of these and you have a card that says something like what's the size of a fish, and so everybody secretly takes this thing, and they go like, okay, a fish is about that big.
Speaker 2:And then you take these things and you put them on someone's finger They've got a little ring on the end. And then you check them out and whoever is outsized at the top and bottom takes a strike and everybody in the middle stays alive, so after three, strikes they lose and everybody else gets and it's really cool you have. Some of my favorite cards are things like how big is a leprechaun? You?
Speaker 3:know, because there's not a right answer.
Speaker 2:So it's like trying to think the way that other people think um, interesting, so so, so fun. So they have a look at the six that are in this first wave that's going to release um, probably gen con, but depending on how fast production is, we might have copies to sell at origins. Okay, um, and then wave two will maybe come six months after that.
Speaker 1:So I are going to be available on the website.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these will go first at conventions and the website likely maybe in June or so and then we will go straight to retail and distribution. President of the company. Used to be on the board of Gamma and owns a retail shop. Uh, we've actually prepared. Let me go grab this. We prepared these, um, these retailer kits that are really cool. So if you're a retailer out there, bear with me, I'll be right back okay these are so unique and just interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like mechanisms, like yeah, love it, I'm excited about all of these.
Speaker 2:All right, fellas, I'm back. So we have a retailer display here that retailers can buy like 50% off, and it comes with 12 games in here, two of each of the six in this display and it'll say game head here and things about what they are. And then it also comes with another 12 you can put on your back shelf. So this this, by the way, fits right in a college cube and um, really excited about that.
Speaker 2:So I think it's something that, um, a lot of companies they you know, when they're starting, they go to Kickstarter or they come to market and they say like, hey, here's a great game that you should buy and there's a lot of great games out there people should buy. But we're trying to come to market and say, hey, here's a great company with a line of games that you can understand and sell to customers and stick this thing on your counter and when they're making their sales, say did you hear? You know you like party games, games, did you hear about this one? It's 20 bucks and hopefully, um, people will be excited and snag some of these things I'm going to buy all of these.
Speaker 1:These sounds legit.
Speaker 2:We're so excited about these cool thanks awesome.
Speaker 1:Uh, can I, can I ask you about your personal approach to game design? A little bit, totally, because you have some classics that you've designed. You have a background in math. How do you, how do you go about your designs? Do you focus on theme first? Do you have like classics that you've designed? You have a background in math. How do you go about your designs? Do you focus on theme first? Do you have a math problem in your head that you need to get out on paper?
Speaker 4:But in a board game format yeah yeah, what's your favorite math? My favorite math.
Speaker 2:I've spent a lot of time. So I was kind of doing mathematical art for a long time. So I studied symmet doing mathematical art for a long time, and I so I studied um symmetries, um in different dimensions, and I studied like tiling patterns. So tile placement games are are some of my favorite uh. In grad school I studied uh algebra and topology, which is sort of like I don't know, pretty abstract stuff, but it's also about shapes and surfaces. My wedding ring here is a Mobius strip Probably not going to be able to see this, but it's got a little twist in there.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's kind of my favorite kind of math. I also just like recreational puzzles, cool little questions. I like a question where you understand it right away but you don't know how to solve it right away and it gives you a chance to create a little solution rather than just being told like here's how you find the Y intercept and now do it. I like problems where you get to be clever and creative. So my approach to design is a great question. To design is a great question.
Speaker 2:I, um, I do tend to start with a mechanism, because that's the thing I most enjoy in games. Um, like, when I play I don't know a game like fantasy realms or something, I barely look at the art, like I know that it's a, a whatever, and sometimes it makes sense, but I'm I'm looking at points, right, I'm using makes sense, but I'm looking at points, right, I'm using the names, but I'm thinking about points and systems and efficiency. But I do love when the art makes sense and when the theme makes sense. And one of the things that bugs me about trick-taking games is like, often the theme is like whatever. We're playing cards and there's a Trump suit for some reason, and that's okay. So when I design for honey buzz, for example I love tile placement games I wanted to start with taking some of the stuff I knew from mathematical art and trying to like innovate on tiles and have a new tile system.
Speaker 2:Um, and the tile system is based on rhombuses made of two equilateral triangles and those can tile the plane in a lot of different ways. And looking at the game, at the finished game, you go no, it's not, it's a game about hexagons, right? So originally it was going to be these rhombic tilings where you know they can kind of all point in the same direction or they can all point at a single point or there's all these different potential connections. And my idea was let's have the way you finish these little points, determine, like, what type of building it is or what type of resource it is. And originally we were just going to like put a tile on top of that or like a circle disk. And originally we were just going to like put a put a tile on top of that or like a circle disc.
Speaker 2:There's something in math called truncation where, like, if you take a triangular pyramid, a D4, and you just do a little cut on the corners, you get like additional triangles, and you can. You can rectify that and have a certain shape where you have like hexagons and triangles, or you can cut all the way till they meet, like sand it down all the way till they meet, and then you get a d8. So, um, so what I did was I sort of truncated the uh tiles so that it could make a little space for that tile to fall into. Um, so all of that so far is like just mechanics, right, it's just coming up with a tile system, yeah, but as soon as I had this concept of like, now they is like just mechanics, right, it's just coming up with a tile system.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But as soon as I had this concept of like now they look like hexagons and you're putting something in there I just put it out on Instagram, like what does this make you think of? You know? And people were like a tortoise shell or you know, a honey, um, a hive, a beehive. And as soon as I attach to a theme, I uh, I need it to make sense, like I won't just slap something on there, uh, which is funny, because I sometimes I sometimes see that, uh, you know that criticism on like a review is like the themes just slapped on. It's like you have no idea how much that's not true, um.
Speaker 2:So when I started with honey buzz and I decided on bees, I just did like a ton of research about how honeybees work. Like at my school we have, um, a bee colony and a club that harvests the honey and stuff, and like blue metal, blue ribbon, winning honey. And I talked to the, the head guy and sort of said, like what makes good honey? And he's like, well, it's all about the humidity, and you run fans through it to try to get the humidity to the right thing. And I'm like, well, what do you? He's like you want it to be exactly this number, and so I was building systems around that and like the way that the what the drones do, what the worker bees do, ultimately didn't make a good game right. So, yes, I'm trying to incorporate that and make it make sense. But in development you refine it down to something that plays well, and it was very late in the development that we actually honed in on what I think is the core piece of the game, because I think the tile system is cool. That's where I started.
Speaker 2:But the core neat thing is that it's a worker placement game but you don't place for actions, which is a common confusion. You place for action tiles and those action tiles might trigger. They also might trigger on later turns. So instead of looking at the action spots and going, okay, this turn I need to produce honey, so let me go to the produce honey spot, you start by looking at your board and saying, if I need to produce honey this turn, which space can I close, because I've already got most of the actions I'm going to use. And then, when I close it, what shape do I want to make? And then what action would be good to supplement that with? And then what action would be good to supplement that with and is it so? You know, I try to make like the problems I was talking about that are sort of like easy to understand, but kind of this tough puzzle, tough like nut to crack. I I want my games to do the same thing, where it's like it's easy to teach. Honey buzz has five actions in it and the the turns are place bees and put the tile down or just call your bees back. So it's really simple and the objective is very clear get the most money. But actually solving the puzzle allows you to be clever in the way you put combos together. Um, so that's it.
Speaker 2:My my favorite designer, as I think I said, is phil walker harding. His games have such elegant systems and a couple competing objectives that you know I just love the way he works and I got pitched a couple games when I was at Elf Creek from him and didn't get the opportunity to sign them. And now I just send him an email every month and I just say hey, phil, like, yeah, hit me up again, like let's do one, you know, yeah. So there you have a little overview of the thing. Yeah, clay.
Speaker 3:I thought it would be appropriate to raise my hand, since you're a teacher, noah, speaking of Phil. What is your favorite Phil Walker Harding game? Can you narrow it down to one?
Speaker 2:I will tell you that over there I have a 2x4 Kallax. That is just every Phil Walker Harding game. There's a couple that he made in Australia that you really can't get, but yes, that's over there. I've got all of them. A couple I don't like but I keep them. So here's kind of the top tier.
Speaker 2:Imhotep, I think, is one of the best intro games you know, gateway games ever made and I adore it big, big time. Uh, baron park is one of my favorite tile placement games. I'm sure it's my favorite polyomino game ever. And here again it's like you have very simple systems and simple competing objectives get that tile because it's worth a lot of points, but get this other tile because it competes on these race objectives, but also cover these symbols so that you can get the tiles you need. But also finish these mats so you can get bonus points and just like again, the turn is simple, like, place a tile, do the thing. So Baron Park, I think, is genius. The expansion is very cool, but you've got to be careful or you're going to get totally smoked. I think Neoville is one that really flies under the radar. Monolith, which I played last weekend, is awesome, awesome, awesome. Llama Land is kind of the end of this trio of Baron Park games, kind of like Baron Park, gingerbread House and Llama Land. And Llama Land might be the best of that. It's a little less interactive but you're stacking these tiles a little bit like Acropolis, and then when you complete these orders like you get a certain number of resources to get a llama you actually put the llama on your tiles and it sort of blocks off the stacking. Cool, um.
Speaker 2:And then maybe the other other couple great ones. Uh, gizmos is an incredibly fast, awesome engine building, yeah, and it's like he took splendor and was like let's make this, let's make this fly and be powerful. And talk about going back to FTL and Warp, whatever I called it. I can't remember that solo game. Warp's Edge Talk about a fast loop of getting your engine up and what it can do in 45 minutes is really cool. Yeah, other ones there's so, so many. It's very, very rare that he has one. I don't like he has a, a, really one of his first games, super simple, a two player, three by three, like grid superhero battler, which is like a mini version of oh, what's that game? I can't remember. It's like a mini version of oh, what's that game, um, I can't remember. It's like a minis game, but just with cards, and uh, it's, it's awesome. You can draft these guys and get different sets, and I think that's called a pack of heroes. So, phil, the greatest, the greatest.
Speaker 1:I'm looking that one up yeah.
Speaker 3:Dang so so you said Kinesia was your second.
Speaker 2:What? What does Kinesia do wrong or Phil do right? That that separates the two in your mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3:I think the short answer is it's a percent of success. Okay, that's probably true.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think Kinesia has just so many designs out there and some of them are fine. Some of them are retreads of old territory that are, you know, ok, they're like, but the thing that I love when I play a game is like, I think the highest Well, this doesn't sound right, but I think the highest compliment I can pay to a game is like god, I wish I had designed that, you know, I just wish that that was something I came up with, because it's perfect and phil hits that more often with something really clean and simple and I just I think kenizia's bigger designs are probably amazing, but they're not usually my weight. That I like, you know. Rebirth I love. I probably wouldn't like tigris and euphrates, right, yeah, so, um, but he has these really clean, elegant systems that, like lost cities is amazing. That was one of my early games.
Speaker 2:Um, and we are actually, uh, talking about wave 2 games here. We're going to release an addition, a reimplementation of Vampire, which is a game of his, I think, from 2000. Super awesome, almost like a Rummy variant. This one's going to be called. Well, we don't know what it's going to be called.
Speaker 2:Originally it was going to be Wizard 101. It was going to be set in a magic school, but whatever the name is, it's going to be kind of magic-themed. There's six magical forces you're wielding. There's fire and lava and water and plant-like kind of life and aromancy, where you're sort of Midas touch, turning things to gold and shadow wielding and you try to collect these big sets in your hand, a little bit like ethnos Actually. You draw, you draw two cards off the deck. You get to keep one, but the other one you discard to the middle of the table, like in its set and its set color, and you're trying to build up sets so that you can play this thing and get a ton of points. But you only get to kind of do each color once in the game. They give you these bonus actions, but the cards you put in the middle of the table are available for other players and so instead of drawing cards off the deck they can just take. I'll take all those shadow cards and then play those shadow cards for, um, you know, big effects.
Speaker 2:So, and that's one of my favorite things, this game is like this building value where other people you know, leaving something behind makes it more enticing to you and it's like is now the right time to grab that or not? Um, and actually this is something I just talked about Um, I don't know if you guys know the decision space podcast. I recently joined that as a regular host. They talk about decisions in games and a lot of in-depth design stuff. They just recorded their 200th episode and we talked about our favorite types of decisions in games and one of mine is like is now the right time? And uh, that game does? Uh, does that very well. The art is by jackie davis. She's insanely good and uh, people are gonna love that art.
Speaker 2:We just gotta find a name yeah, that's awesome that'll be an on thinky line for wave two yeah, very cool, all right.
Speaker 1:So somebody wants to get very quickly. Somebody wants to get very quickly. Somebody wants to get into game design. They have, like this idea that's burning in their brain. Yep, how do they go about from idea to play testing with whatever scraps of paper and cardboard they have laying around, to I'm going to go get a publisher and get this out there. Like what does that process look like?
Speaker 2:Sure, I would say first of all uh, don't start with the idea that you're going to kickstart it. I think it's. You're going to like making the game and you're not going to like making the company. So a kickstarter is a lot of pain for a lot of people. So I, I recommend absolutely uh, get some paper out, write things. You don't need to write a rule set. You can keep it in your head. Get people to play it and expect the first many play tests to be bad.
Speaker 2:Try to find a little kernel of what's good in there and build around it. The question that I always ask, because I get pitched a lot of games now I did it at Elf Creek and now at GameHead. The question I always ask myself and then put to the designers is like, what is the game? Uh, what is it about? And in honeybutt, like, what are the hooks? In honeybuzz, it's a worker placement game where you draft action tiles and the shapes you make are the resources and when you finish you get these actions right. Um, in stamp swap, it's a game about collecting stamps and trading them with other players. Um, and in in mhotep it's you get to put these stones down, but you don't necessarily get to choose where they go, right? Uh, you need to be able to clearly communicate that.
Speaker 2:And if you start your pitch with a long description of the world, um, you're probably missing the fact that it's not an rpg, you know? Uh, I think people sometimes make the mistake of world building instead of game building. And? Um, just try to find the piece. That's fun. Do a lot of youtube, you know. Watch jamie stegmaier talk about how to make games and prototype.
Speaker 2:Um, join your local game designer meetup, if there is one. Get on facebook, talk to people and, and don't be too precious about your design. No one is going to steal your design and the best way for everybody to know what's your design is to tell everybody about your design. And then people will go, hey, that that was clay's design. Like, what are you doing? Um, just doesn't happen that much and um, just again, don't expect it to be good.
Speaker 2:Real, real often I worked on honey buzz for probably two years before it was signed and then another two years in development before it was really good, and then you know it's been a lot of time now. Um, it's been 10 years probably going. Um, so, yeah, there you have it. And then you know, get on, uh, cardboard edison, pay for the compendia, find the publishers that are interested in what you have and email them. You can email me at paul at gameheadcom or info at gameheadcom. And here's my big pitching recommendation Send an overview video, a two-minute overview video. It can be of any quality, I don't care if you record it on a toaster.
Speaker 2:Just tell me what the game is in two minutes, because when I get an email email, if there's that video, I will click it and watch it and I will probably reply in 15 minutes and if there's a rule book or there is a long sell sheet, it may be three months before I have time to read it and actually process it. Right. If there's a pnp, I just am not going to print your game, probably if I don't understand what it is. I just have not enough time to play test and it takes me 30 minutes to print and cut your game. So they have it.
Speaker 4:Short overview video I think I'm gonna start uh. Just stop sending emails in my regular life, I'm just gonna send little uh reels to my, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, send a little real youtube short. Yeah, awesome. Well, we have been running a bit long, so I think we're gonna skip way, exactly yeah, send a little YouTube reel.
Speaker 1:YouTube short yeah, awesome. Well, we have been running a bit long, so I think we're going to skip the over-the-fence portion. Sure, paul, give us one last shout-out where people can find you and find GameHead Games.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm going to do is I'm going to shout-out some of my buddies. I want to shout-out Jake Friedman and Brendan Hansen. Pete Wissinger, my co-host on the Decision Space podcast Check it out. The 200th episode is going to release Wednesday. It's so cool.
Speaker 4:Dual centurions.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Check it out. Then I've got my buddy, pete Wissinger. He's a designer pal. He's got a game called Crits and Tricks that is going to launch on Kickstarter soon from Inside Up Games. I helped develop it. It is so neat. It's a trick-taking game where the cards don't have values, they're like D&D classes and the numbers come from RPG dice that you play to try to complete quests and side quests Super awesome. Check those both out. And my buddy, taylor Reiner, who worked on a trick taking game with me. He made Sears catalog and he's got more coming out. Check out his YouTube channel Taylor's Trick Taking Table. If you want to find me, email me Paul at GameHeadcom, find me on Instagram PaulSolomon27 or BlueSky and, lastly, follow GameHeadGames on Instagram Paul Solomon 27 or blue sky.
Speaker 1:And lastly, follow game head games on Instagram and blue sky Awesome, thank you. This has been an awesome conversation, but let's wrap. Today we did it, mission accomplished for operation game night. I have been Travis, he has been clay, he has been Jared and he has been the one and only Paul Solomon, thank you so much for joining us Paul.
Speaker 2:Thanks guys Really appreciate it, you're awesome.
Speaker 4:Thank you.
