Origins!

We had a great time at Origins! Hanging out with friends, pitching games, and playing new ones! We got to hang out with our amazing fellow local game designer friends Tim and Ben Eisner, which is always a blast. We got to hang out and catch up with our friends at Grey Fox, who will be publishing our game After the Empire in the first half of 2019. Josh Lobkovicz, the amazing developer at Grey Fox, graciously took the time to give us some great tips on another project we're working on, but not quite ready to pitch at Origins.

But, we did bring a couple games that were ready to pitch, both of which saw significant publisher interest. You've seen Mountain God's Revenge before, but here's Ryan posing for the camera as we play 3 Ways to Die:

3 Ways to Die (current working title) is a coop zombie map and event deck based adventure game with elements of luck and gambling to keep it interesting! I don't think I've played a game yet where we weren't sure we were going to lose only to narrowly escape with our lives at least once! Each player is generally fighting their own battles and making their own choices of how to best use their resources to stay alive, so the loudest player telling everyone else what to do is not as prevalent here as in most coop games. Evan designed this one with his friend Cris Kelly about 6-7 years ago. We've been having a blast playing it ever since, and Ryan is helping put the finishing touches on it.

Evan got the chance to play the up and coming Fireball Island reboot. The original version helped form some of his lasting childhood friendships (they wanted to come over to play), and is at least partially responsible for his general nerdiness.

If you haven't already seen this, watch us show Mountain God's Revenge to Tom Vasel at 1:22:00. Ryan does the talking, while Evan's injured wrist does the setup!

After the Empire and general new stuff updates

Hi, everyone! We've been having a great time lately playtesting and developing our new lineup of games! We went to PAX Unplugged in Philly recently, which was awesome! We got to hang out with and bounce ideas off other awesome Portland-area designers Tim and Ben Eisner of Weird City Games, with hits like March of the Ants and The Grimm Forest, and Mohammad Ali, another up and coming designer! We pitched several of our new games and had significant interest from publishers. We are in early talks now with a publisher to work with us on what we're tentatively titling Mountain God's Revenge! It's a heavily themed abstract strategy game that will eventually have awesome art, rather than white hexes with black strips and red dots.

What about After the Empire? Yes, that's still our #1 board game baby! It was tentatively slated for a quarter 2, 2018 kickstarter by Grey Fox Games, known for awesome games like Champions of Midgard. They recently sat down to plan out their production calendar for next year and after deliberation have decided that to do it right and make After the Empire the best game possible, that timeline will be pushed back to quarter 4 of 2018 or early 2019. Obviously, we were very anxious and excited for the upcoming kickstarter, and this wait will be difficult for us. But, we are also excited for making sure After the Empire gets done well and is as amazing as possible. We have full confidence our friends at Grey Fox will do an outstanding job. So, we are truly sorry for the wait, but we believe it will be worth it!