Today we are doing a year in review of Decking Awesome Games in 2020. We are going to discuss our upcoming games, our current game Dice Summoners and the future of Decking Awesome Podcast.
Transcript
hello
and welcome to the decking awesome
podcast my name is owen and i’m joined
by the awesome kiera and brian
hello hello and today we are doing a
year review of decking us games in 2020
we’re going to discuss our upcoming
games our current game
dice summoners and the future of decking
us and podcasts
just a heads up the sound will be a
little bit different for the next few
podcasts
we’re all locked down in our houses so
we’re recording the next
few episodes in zoom it looks like this
could continue for a while
so bear with us this of course is
following on from the podcast we did
about how to get the best out of your
sound when you’re doing a podcast
sometimes you’re just going to bang out
and i’ll zoom recording
it’s very true so let’s kick it off with
the work we’ve been doing behind the
scenes in our upcoming games
if you want to get involved or hear the
latest news for upcoming games we
definitely recommend
subscribing to our newsletter we don’t
send a whole lot of emails on those
newsletters but when we do it’s for
kind of important stuff dag.irish is the
website
the next upcoming game that we want to
discuss is one that we always love to
play
and it’s pretty close they’re creating a
final prototype and this is the awesome
save princess snowball so sis what is
save princess snowball well
save princess snowball is a cooperative
puzzle game
a real life escape room but made into
cards we really
love this type of game we played them a
lot it’s about
bringing a group of people together
playing something
together to reach cooperatively your
goal it’s a card game so it’s quite
small
and portable and the point of save for
the snowball is to save your bunny
rabbit princess snowball
who has gotten herself into trouble and
you
as her loving owner have the job of
trying to
go find her and save her from wherever
she is
the team is quite light-hearted because
i don’t know if many of you out there
play escape room games
but they can be they can range in team
from quite lightly quite heavy so we
love to play
escaping games together and with other
people and
friends and friends with kids what we
found is
some of those dark themed escape from
the murder in the polar vortex or
something yeah yeah
it can be quite dark so what we’re doing
is we’re trying to create light-hearted
but still
thrilling escape room game so kind of
going for the
anything that we can bring in to create
a sense of urgency
without it being like a murderer is
chasing you with a big knife
so it’s a little bit more lighthearted
fun it’s usually a detective kind of
games those escape
like you know i get a christie kind of
version on the train or like your tomb
raider going up walls trying to do stuff
i love cooperative puzzle games they’re
so great to have this kind of shared
experience with people
you know some of them kind of last
certain periods of time it’s always like
a really engaging moment where all
people from
with different skills kind of work
together and do puzzles in their own way
and try and figure things out it’s
really fun
and we thought that bringing an element
of your pet
rabbit is has disappeared like everyone
loves their pets
who doesn’t love their pets and that
gives it a nice compelling reason to to
play and
we love just playing together so it
works
but it’s not just geared to kids though
it’s it’s still accessible for
adults like you don’t feel like you have
to gather children around to play the
game
there are still some good puzzles in
there and especially if you don’t know
any children don’t just gather random
children to bring
into play puzzles with yeah so
so i think some of the puzzles probably
couldn’t be
solved by kids to some degree so you
kind of need the whole family
it’s to get kind of variety of people i
guess and just have
no limits on what that variety is if
it’s
you have decided that you want to play
with your parents
or your grandparents who knows or you
just want to play with your friends
and keep an open or a game where a lot
of people who don’t play
board games it’s also a nice board game
for
people who wouldn’t normally play board
games and people who haven’t tried
escape rooms
one of the big things that gets me with
the like little escape room games and
things like that
you know you you play it once and then
you’re tearing up cards and you’re
cutting bits and pieces out
and then the game is basically just
going in the bin after you’re finished
playing
this one you don’t have to you don’t
have to chop it up you don’t have to
throw pieces out you can pass the game
on to other people as well can’t you
yeah so all the puzzles are reusable and
replayable
so you can just hand the box over to
somebody else and
have them you play true without having
any difficulty
and the cards are easy to put back
together because the deck is is just a
deck of numbered cards yeah i think yeah
all the history i have with playing
corporate puzzle games there’s kind of
like
a few different kind of genres like uh
one of them is the sherlock holmes
detective agency one
where the plot and the writing there’s a
really compelling story where
everything kind of goes in and there’s
some cool kind of components like the
newspaper and stuff if
anybody’s ever played that game it’s
very kind of good and a kind of a rich
storyline
and then you have the other one which is
the escape room games which tend to have
because there’s not as many components
and it’s kind of a smaller game there’s
not as much of a compelling story
and i’m really glad when we’ve seen the
playtested different prototypes we have
the sacraments of snowball
that has an engaging kind of story along
where you’re actually caring about the
characters and you’re playing with the
people and what’s happening
as well as it being very challenging
kind of puzzle-rich environment
because usually with these kind of small
box games it’s kind of like just a
series of challenges
and then you either finish it you don’t
but the story is always something kind
of
abstract that you can’t really sink your
teeth into but no i love this kind of
compelling story so here why would did
you make this game
that it specifically say princess
snowball rather than some other kind of
board game
because i really love escape rooms and
puzzles and
when i’m solving puzzles in escape rooms
and
that’s when i’m really like wondering
about how they came up with it
and so i started this out by just trying
to figure out how you would make some
unusual
puzzles in a board game and how you
would bring that in
and i think it just became i developed
it more and more and like you said
we had played a bunch of really well
reviewed escape room
in a box games and we had a really good
time and they all had really compelling
stories and then we played a few that
weren’t as
well reviewed and we found that the
stories were kind of
choppy and like that whole
rich storytelling environment and that
love of puzzles
really was something i wanted to bring
together and and we geocache a lot so
so you’ll find that like some really
good geocaches
in the world are like ones where you
have to do physical things in your
environment
to get the answer to get to the geocache
itself
and that sort of stuff makes me feel
like i’m a real adventurer
and then i wanted to be a hero so that’s
why
you have to save a bunny because who
doesn’t want to be a hero
i love it yeah and what’s the current
state of the game because
i know i played some uh versions of the
game
i know recently you’ve kind of played
other ones i haven’t got a chance to
see so what’s current state so right now
we’ve had quite a few
we’ve been through quite a few
prototypes the idea behind going to so
many prototypes even though
the game is quite uh simple in mechanics
is to find out what puzzles work and
don’t work so
we’ve been through i think like i think
about 10 times been over
through this process and during the
pandemic
had a lot of difficulty so it slowed
down a great deal
the play testing process but we have
kind of a refined prototype at this
point we’ve managed to bring people
together
willingly within support bubbles and our
family groups or
at social distancing so it’s been it’s
been hard to get up but we’ve managed to
it has meant
pulling in more family to play tests
than ever before
because they would be people we’d meet
with normally so they’d be part of our
when we could have two or three
households over they were the only
people that we could
we could uh play test with and they’ve
been really really good for feedback
and trying to get a diverse range of
people playing it
and so that’s given me a kind of an idea
of how long the game plays for
and then you know when people get tired
because escape room games can be quite
mentally exhausting so adjusting how
many puzzles are in the game
at the start i wanted to get value for
money putting the most amount of puzzles
in the game
but actually people find it quite
draining after a certain amount of time
so we’re
we’re still i think we owns help as well
trying to tweak that
so that there’s a right amount of games
to
last to the end of a session or like
right amount of puzzles that’s the end
of the session
without deterring people or people
thinking it’s too short and they’re not
getting value for money
that’s a that’s a really tricky problem
to have because everyone
acts in a different way everyone has
different kind of energy levels when it
comes to this kind of stuff
and also you don’t really know if you’re
tired until it’s too late
so yeah i think trying to figure out
that time is always kind of tricky
some escape rooms i think are too long
some like escape from board games
and it’s tricky to kind of get that
balance especially for everybody you
have to kind of deal with every
type of player i’ve seen you you’ve been
playing testimony people who played lots
and lots of escape rooms and escapement
board games
and also with kind of new people who
don’t really know anything about puzzles
and getting that kind of diverse thing
because people who are new to it
are very kind of engaged usually with it
people who played
skateboard games before they’re not
really engaged unless you have kind of
challenging
new techniques or methods so yeah it’s
pretty cool
yeah i found that like i mean i jumped
in on one of the kind of later
prototypes on us
just so that i’d be looking at it with a
fresh set of eyes
and me who’s played however many escape
rooms and however many little escape
rooms in a box
i found it like suitably challenging
like it’s a good mental workout but also
it’s achievable like it’s a fun game to
play who did the artwork of
this prototype you know that was me
i don’t think it was i think it was
actually me
[Music]
you did the artwork but i reviewed it
for grammar and when it comes down to it
what do people like more
grammar or art i think you’ll find
there’s museums all over the world
dedicated to proper grammar
one of the more famous grammar museums
in paris anyway
so yeah i own did a really good job of i
had
the puzzles done in a lot of different
mediums and definitely different art
styles just to try and convey a puzzle
and own went through it and did a really
good job of bringing it together
and you want to talk about the process
on on that yeah sure yeah so like
obviously this artwork i did and it’s
not going to be final artwork it’s
this is just so that people get a sense
of the team and
the style just so they’re not looking at
black and white pictures
they can actually also get clues from
images
so yeah it was it was kind of a we’ve
dealt with artists before so i was kind
of just pretending to be one of the
artists that we usually deal with and
we’re trying to you know talk to kiara
about
what she wants what she wants to kind of
relay and then creating that kind of
kind of straightforward network and then
we’re also working with doing the
instruction manual and the box
as well so it’s just that kind of
process of kind of iterating over the
artwork and stuff like that is great
because then once we do
hire someone professional like designers
and artists and stuff
we can just we know exactly what to give
them and we kind of have a fairly good
idea and then we can tell them
what’s kind of needed and then where
they can kind of give their artistic
influence
and kind of show themselves off and so
we always always have that flexibility
and i think if we want to progress to
play testing
to a broader group of people we kind of
need
to have a little bit more consistency in
the game and i think that
having even if it’s not final an artwork
style consistent throughout the game
just makes a big difference in people
feeling like it’s a real game
that they’re play testing because it can
be hard especially with a diverse group
maybe a lot of people who haven’t played
board games before
trying to show them that it’s a
prototype and that they’re not thinking
about the final thing
it actually makes it a little bit easier
if there is a rough artwork style on it
because
they understand better where it’s going
yeah and especially when you have the
clues in the images
because you can have a cl you can draw a
sketch of a clue on an image
and then when an artist comes in and
they do it that clue can either become
more obvious or less obvious and you can
totally change the balance of the game
because you want to give the scene you
want to kind of
build up the challenge and step it up
and if you have certain drops where like
a challenge is really easy or challenges
way too hard
they can feel like annoying where’s your
gonna gradually give it to them they can
climb a mountain you can’t see it but
i’m using my hands a lot
that description that’s just mountain
climbing hands
mentally mountain climbing you know
the final thing i guess we worry about
and you do have to worry about this
occasionally
for the prototype is how much money
it will cost to make so we need to be
competitive in
quite like an inexpensive market there’s
a few expensive
escape rooms in a box and they are
high-end ones but they’re not
necessarily ones that
the people who are trying to dive into a
genre will buy
because there’s such a high threshold to
them so we’re trying to
aim at the entry level ones and there’s
a lot more
large manufacturers of those already in
the market
so we’ve tried to come up with solutions
for the puzzles and ways to have puzzles
where we’re
we’re using things that could be
manufactured relatively cheaply to keep
us competitive
so i think that when you get to that
point in your game and you’re starting
to look at each component
and analyze whether it can be made i
feel like
that’s a lot closer to final
manufacturer so
um we’re hoping that this coming year
this is when we’ll be able to release
the game
i think the way that say princess know
what has done is a really cool way in
solving that problem that these small
escape room card box games have
of you know how do you tell if someone’s
you know succeeded and
someone that’s failed with a challenge
and how do you kind of progress it so
that the person
it’s not obvious to the person where
they’re going which cards big
kind of stuff so i think it’s a it’s a
really great solution that
yeah we can’t wait to show people all
right so we’re going to move on then to
another game that we’ve done loads of
play testing on we love playing it
it’s fun each and every time you pick it
up and play and it’s bubble butts
so brian what is bubberbots a bumperbots
is a game you’ve probably heard us talk
about or if you follow us on social
media you’ve probably seen a lot of
bumperbots is a worker placement game
with a bit of a twist you’re you’re
people are used to work replacement
games where you know you place out your
worker you get that resource you earn
the resource you buy something with us
however bumper butts on titan has has
kind of chaotic workers so
you know you’ll tell them go off and get
me some gold resources there
and they’ll go yep heard you loud and
clear move over to the rice and get some
red resources for you perfect
so you’re because you’re building a
habitat on titan you’ve sent these
little robots ahead to gather resources
and build domes and
everything so that when the humans
arrive you know they can walk straight
into this ready-built world for
themselves
but because you’re communicating from
earth to
saturn’s moon of titan the signal can
break down a little bit
in communication so you want to send
your bots out to together as many
resources
for you as you can but you know you’re
going to have
your bots wandering off in different
directions because they didn’t get the
signal properly or
you’re going to have other teams who are
trying to build domes as well
their bots might come in and just bump
yours straight out of the way
and you’ll end up somewhere you may not
want to be so you have to balance
kind of balance the look side of getting
the resources you want
with maybe a bit of strategy because you
can stack the bots so you can end up
with
taller and taller bots that you know
because they’re bigger
bigger antenna they receive the signal
better so you stack three bots up on top
of each other
they know what they’re doing they’re
getting the signal crystal clear from
earth
they’re going and getting your resources
and because they’re so big they’re not
as easily bumped off
so aim of the game is to have as many
domes and as many colony points as
possible
before time runs out and the humans come
around to to land and live on the world
with you
but you know titan is a titan is a
chaotic place itself so
you end up with changing landscapes
throughout the throughout the game so
there’s a storm that’ll move across the
board changing the face of the
of this planet as it goes meaning that
bots might be dragged around
through different gravity wells and
storms and vortexes i mean
these might work to your disadvantage or
they might work to your advantage so if
you’re being pulled towards a vortex
you know maybe you’re moving towards a
better resource so you can
you can use this to get the best
resources you can or
you may end up trying to get something
good and end up having your butt
completely destroyed in the vacuum of
a vortex yeah i think i love the idea of
a chaotic worker placement
we’ve played lots of kind of work
placement games before where they had
some chaotic element to them
you know some are kind of balanced like
stone age where you can kind of you’re
not sure what how many resources you’re
going to get
but you uh you’re not going to get
something and then other ones
where it’s just it’s just too kind of
random and i know
just from hearing you describe a brand
it always sounds to me kind of
too chaotic too random but when i played
the prototypes and stand up and play
testing of it i always found that it was
the balance is really good it’s actually
trying to
ensure that there is kind of some sort
of randomness to
how you know workers are placed out and
what happens and the different
things that people that players can do
but because it’s all kind of balanced
in a certain way it ensures that you
know people
there’s no like fully predictive kind of
actions you can do
you’re always taking a chance at
something but it’s not you’re not going
to like totally go off the wall
so yeah i love i love how kind of
controlled this chemic
work placement prototype is but i also
love the fact that you know it’s a
chaotic work replacement because
you know people don’t want to split
things that’s not very solid here they
want this kind of interaction between
players they want this kind of
i’m not really sure if their tactic is
going to work you know hedges
kind of style play yeah i like that
there’s multiple tactics
in the game i think that the variety of
having people who can just be completely
dedicated not deferring from
collecting resources they know they have
a shopping list effectively
and they can play they can attempt to
play that style of strategy and see how
far they get what the people are playing
with
and then somebody else can just be like
i just wanna really
totally enjoy the chaotic mechanics so
i’m gonna play to that style of things
i’m gonna bounce around i’m gonna fight
with the storm i’m gonna take on
take on the big players and usually a
balance
can work but i like i just like the
variety in
in there yeah so there is a lot of as
you guys say there’s a lot of kind of
chaos in the game and randomness but
there’s a lot you can do to mitigate it
and to improve the strategy
if you want so i mean you can get
features to let you reroll dice
every player has can get custom bots
that let them kind of control the board
or control other
bots you can stack your bots up so they
have a better chance of getting the
resources you want
but even if you get bumped off or you
miss the resources you’re
looking for and you end up on something
else there’s such an
option of domes to build that you know
you might
you might build a different dome than
the one you were trying to at the end of
your turn but
it will mean that that dome generates
resources for you or
it gives you one-off bonuses so when you
come back around next turn
you know you have a better chance of
getting your resources or your
better chance of building the dome you
want so you know
there is chaos but you know you can
twist it into strategy if you’re
if you’re clever enough with us i think
the uh the whole domes add another layer
to the game which really kind of focuses
it a little bit more
because you know your first round is
very compelling everyone isn’t
at titan and they’re trying to you know
gather resources together stuff
and then you have this storm that’s
going over it’s a very kind of
interesting compelling kind of
mixture between the players and what the
domes do is they kind of
add this progression to the game that
means trade the rounds as rounds go
further further along because you become
more and more powerful but you’re also
going down a specific path
of power whether that’s more bots or
like you know more domes or some sort of
resource management
it means that you’re going to be
choosing different actions inside the
planet and other people are going to see
that and there’s going to be a lot more
mixture and
as you progress the challenges
challenges the choices you’re going to
make are totally different
though the domes are a really cool idea
that really helped
kind of bring the whole game as a
unified whole
yeah yeah so that’s a little bit of kind
of engine building to it as well so
you know you’re building these domes and
the domes themselves are generating
resources for you or maybe they’re
generating more bots for you to
place out or maybe they’re just
generating points or
generating vortex tokens that let you do
a whole pile of extra
features in the game or maybe they’re
just earning end game points for you
so there’s a lot of strategy built
around the randomness so you know it’s
not just a chaotic game completely
but you are working with chaotic workers
i imagine it’s like
trying to make a film with children what
does they don’t work with children and
dogs
this is uh but this is it’s really good
fun someone once described it as a game
that’s
really fun but may lose your friends if
you just commit your time to bumping all
of your friends
into vortexes i mean they get a bonus
for it
you get the satisfaction of bumping them
into vortexes everyone wins
yeah i think this is before there was a
catch-up mechanism for people
who got pumped into vortexes but yeah it
is it is compelling but you’re not gonna
be if someone keeps bumping you in
to a vortex you’re not guaranteed to
lose there’s definitely this kind of
element of you know still being in it
and still you know having different
choices to make
so it’s a quite big box isn’t it sort of
when i do
prototype i always played i think it was
six players
a whole bunch of resource stones and the
game so it’s a big
game right yeah so we it’s geared at the
moment
for a a two to six player game that
will probably take about an hour and a
half to play but i mean every player has
20 of their own little bots and there’s
you know however many resources in the
game and everything like that so there’s
lots of pieces to it
and all the cool little stackable bots
and custom pieces and everything to it i
think it looks really good
like the artwork at the moment is still
a little excel sheety
but we haven’t haven’t settled down on
the final final prototype yet so
i don’t want to slap a coat of artwork
on it and end up having to change a lot
of stuff and
go back and redo it all so we’re getting
close to a
final version of it we’re just trying
out a different version of the domes
where
like one is cards that the players will
take for themselves
and the other is a kind of tech tree
where multiple players can build but you
can’t build the next level until you’ve
built the
level below it kind of thing so those
are the two
we’re we’re working with at the moment
just to see which one which one works
best
as i’m sure as you all know all being
stuck at home the most difficult bit at
the moment is play testing so
getting people to safely try out these
games and find out which one works which
one doesn’t
is is proven the biggest challenge for
us at the moment but we’re still hoping
to
to have a prototype finalized and ready
to go by the start of convention season
this year
crossing my fingers that you can’t see
on a podcast touching your fingers for
an existence of a commenting season as
well oh yeah yeah hopefully the
convention season exists this year
let’s not talk about that so stay
positive
the current state of the game is quite
good because there’s obviously there’s
lots and lots of play tests and lots of
prototypes that are out there you
mentioned the fact that there is
no artwork there is there is some sort
of artwork that’s not like professional
or anything so what what kind of
could you say about the current
prototype are we close to a final
prototype or how are you feeling
yeah yeah we’re pretty close i mean the
the board
the playboard itself is pretty solid you
know there might be a few tiny tweaks to
it but
there’s always going to be a few tiny
tweaks to every game the
bots and their interaction the bumping
and stuff like that is all great
the custom bots might need a little bit
of balancing because
some of them are a bit overpowered and
some of them are a bit underpowered
but we’re trying to look it away where
you know players can kind of pick and
choose which ones they want so
depending on what style of game you’re
playing maybe you want to go for one of
the
over or underpowered ones or maybe the
overpowered ones can be
cancelled out in some way so i mean
we’re pretty close with it we just have
to
do a final bit of tweaking on us the
storm and all of that
is is all really good just the last
thing is really going to be
the dome system so the domes themselves
aren’t changing just really how
players earn them whether it’ll be a
take a card
and it’s there for yourself no one else
can have it or whether it’s a
you know like a tech tree where multiple
people can build up the different
branches
and it just depends how in what
directions you build as to whether
you guess you know up the top of the
tree or whether you branch out and
diversify
a bit more play testing and all going
well we’ll have uh we’ll have a good
idea on what works and what doesn’t on
that one
i can’t wait that’s so cool yeah there’s
so many cool ideas inside
uh i can’t wait to see what comes up
next let’s move on then to some
uh updates from dice numbers this is our
game that we’ve released
and there’s some cool new things that
happened in 2020 with it we were
nominated
in the emerald game awards and which was
really cool really fun we all watched it
stream live
and watch the award ceremony it was
really fun there’s so many cool
games in 2020 and it was great to see
board games represented
lots of cool developers and companies
and all sorts out there
and yeah well done to radiant online
battle arena that
won the game awards this year uh or that
category our category anyway
it is a great game came out around the
same time as ours but delighted to see
such a good game win us even if we
didn’t yeah there’s all the ones who won
the awards were
definitely uh deserve it it was really
cool i can’t yeah i can’t wait for next
year
there were some funny technical glitches
this year but i think that was just
you know about to happen when it comes
to uh streaming online
for the first time ever everyone moving
from physical award ceremonies to online
awards ceremonies
nothing’s ever going to go perfect but
the guys did a great job with us
it really went well yeah deuter thing
for dice owners is we released our game
on board game arena
so anybody can play online you might
have seen it if you saw our
website we have a little link now on the
board game rooney it was
a very technically challenging project
to do
but i actually just released that couple
of days ago
and neil currently has no bugs so not to
say that there’s no bugs but notebooks
have been found
and we’ve we’ve resolved a whole lot of
things so it’s it’s still in beta at the
moment but we’re expecting it to go live
at some point but anybody can play it
it’s just a beta sticker on it
doesn’t mean much like owen put in so
much work it was
fabulous like he was working in daytime
coding and then in nighttime coding on
this it was
all of his life for a little while so i
think so much work went into it that we
decided we were going to do a podcast
later on the year about it so
if you are ever interested in getting a
board game on board game arena
we’re checking that out later on this
year i didn’t really have much else to
do
to be honest
and leave your house can’t do anything
why not program a board game into a core
game
it is it is the community is so nice and
boring i have to say like i’ve played
board gamer
before and and but now i play a lot more
obviously now that
i’m on developers on it but it’s great
to see so many people playing from
all over the world obviously the fact
that everyone’s in their house helps a
lot
but there’s massive amounts of people
playing dice owners it’s great to see
all the numbers all different types of
languages
as well because we can’t obviously
translate livestock without doing
language runs and manufacturing but it’s
great to see like you know japanese
uh language and then someone playing in
the japanese like that’s just
awesome if you want to check it out
definitely check your news google
for game arena and then search for dice
numbers and you’ll see it there
if you can play it for free obviously
you don’t need money when we have a
little post on how to
if you go to our youtube channel you can
see a little post we have on getting set
up and playing it
online in the next couple of podcasts
we’ll probably be doing a board game
where i’ll dig into the technical aspect
of it just in case
there are people who want to know and
also who want to kind of do it
themselves
or like if you’re a programmer who loves
board games
and you don’t see your board game on
board game arena odds are
it’s just waiting for someone to
implement it i i’ll get into a further
into that podcast but it’s a pretty good
podcast i’m sorry
save some stuff for this i i’m very
interested in this because it was a lot
easier than i thought but also a lot
more there’s a lot more differences than
i thought
really cool experience uh from a from a
technical point of
view so yeah check it out definitely see
what you think so owen you have been
busy for the last few years on getting
this podcast up and running
and doing great things here so what kind
of updates can we expect from the
podcast
from that we podcast we love tinder i i
love doing this podcast i think
uh it’s really fun we do too just
yeah yeah we’re not just here against
our whale
yeah we had because obviously there’s a
lot of podcasts out there but we
wanted to have this monthly one where we
could show irish board game designers
and kind of talk with the community talk
about the whole
process and can i get more not get more
people into it just show people what it
is
about it and then help clear up things
from people we really thought it was a
kind of way of helping people
and also there’s cool things you wanted
to be discussing
very interesting topics and just kind of
bringing bringing everybody from all
over
the world to kind of see what it’s like
as an irish board game designer but we
have come up with two new
styles of podcasts and obviously we have
lots of different kind of topics
on board game podcasts okay for a
technical podcast
board game design stuff there’s there’s
some dungeon dragon stuff
all sorts of other kind of varied topics
but the ones we
kind of want to focus in on are the
debate style podcasts because you might
have seen a previous one pandemic
it wasn’t so much a debate style podcast
because we all looked at them
and we wanted to get a little bit more
of a voice a little bit more of a
challenging opinion and so we’re we’re
picking games where
there isn’t a unified opinion as to
whether this game is good
yeah different games that i’m dying to
play but
the others hate the style or vice versa
and
we have we have some cool we have some
cool uh ideas for four games we’re
generally picking ones that are kind of
popular well-known but also kind of
we’re doing a very
quick run-through of head player but
it’s generally games where one person in
the group
loves the game one person a group
doesn’t want to play the game
and our version of the group just has a
mixed opinion and
it’s a debate yeah we’ll see how that
goes it might go terribly this this
could be a horrible plan
but um i think yeah educated debate
styles of like listen to people’s
opinion
and trying to make counterpoints there’s
a lot to be said for uh
having a kind of a fair style debate
whoa whoa i never agreed to fair
this as far as i’m concerned it’s who
can yell the loudest
hi i’m going to crush this i’m
definitely
yelling to you yeah come on come watch
the car crash because it will be
terrifying the first one we’re not going
to be too harsh on the games obviously
we’re still going to
represent the games but we do have kind
of opinions on mechanics
you know good design and bad design
decklist though it will either work out
amazingly or we’ll not want to talk to
each other anymore
in our last podcast yeah
yeah we also want to talk about updates
you know technology games updates and
more
on the channel and that’s just because
you know we’re developing or prototyping
more games
we’ll get to the stage where we’re going
to show these games off and kind of tell
people about them and kind of get people
involved you’re actually listening to
one of these
update podcasts right now
and this is the kind of place where you
give your feedback you discuss the
community
so if you have any any sort of things
like that on this episode or anything
you’ve heard
definitely you know reach out to us we
can discuss it and
we would love to hear your opinions that
one is probably not it’s probably going
to be maybe twice a year
or maybe certain events happen
throughout the year that kind of
yeah having it having it monthly would
be a bit weird since the last one we’ve
written this month’s worth of updates
yeah yeah well i do like the idea like
the idea of a year in review
just because you know sometimes i forget
what happened in like march
uh 2020 20. decades ago
eight years ago i was so much younger
so yeah uh there are some other updates
so here you can talk about it we were
doing two online board game conventions
a little bit strange this year obviously
we went to two online four game
conventions yeah they were uk games expo
and gaylcon
yeah so we really wanted to get involved
in the board game online scene as there
was no board game in-person scene
and a few of the big events were still
held online
i guess because they had the organizers
and the resources to do it
uk games expo was a really fun one so
everyone knows like dk game deco massive
event
a lot of people attending a really
positive group of people who organize it
who are friendly to deal with so we just
want to be involved because
we’ve known these guys for years and
they are always so welcoming that we
definitely still wanted to stay involved
we twitch streamed how to play our games
and our latest prototypes
that’s all up on our youtube channel if
you want to check any of them out or
want to see
what we mean now the prototypes would
have been the ones from
earlier in the year rather than late
later in the year but still if you want
to get an idea or
are a visual person check that out there
wasn’t many people to interact with as
normal
so we found it quite hard to get that
kind of momentum we normally would
i guess there’s always a lot of small
independent board game
developers at uk games expo that’s what
makes it a really interesting event you
get a lot of unusual
like when we’re there we buy a lot of
unusual games you get a lot of like
little indie developers that you hadn’t
heard of
and you see them as you’re going around
unfortunately the online format isn’t as
easy to travel between stands so
we did reach out to a few people and we
had a good few people
in and out of our twitch streams and
chat with us
but it wasn’t probably the same as the
physical event so
i think the main stage is still got good
good momentum but
hopping around probably still needs a
little bit of tweaking
however the guys were really friendly
and we watched the mainstage a good bit
ourselves
and when we weren’t running the twitch
stream and had a really good time so
i’m really glad we attended probably
made us think a little bit more about
what people are actually looking for
at these events as well so we’d probably
do a kind of a modified version of what
we did if it’s running online again this
year
because who knows what’s going to be
happening by uh by whenever it runs i
don’t know is it
is it back to may next year actually
they sent out a few
emails but we haven’t even gotten to
planning our our year ahead yet so uh
we’re looking in for it though so we’re
booked in so
we’ll be there whether it’s online or
whether it’s in person we’ll be there
absolutely really and we love attending
like nothing’s going to change that so
let’s see how it goes then the other one
we attended was gayle khan
gerkon is the it’s got to be the biggest
irish
gaming convention so it covers
role-playing games
as well as board games and they had this
year they had panels as well
so kind of a little bit like the uk
index forward there’s kind of streams
and panels going on
and they have their renowned charity
auction as well
so i was volunteering as staff at that
because
after the uk games expo we didn’t know
how we were going to
deal with online conventions and we kind
of wanted a little bit of a
time to see what other people were doing
and to do some research on it
so instead of deciding to attend as
like a shop or a retailer we decided to
i
i wanted to help out as staff and also
just to help out
an irish convention is like stuff we’d
like to do anyway
so i really enjoyed volunteering at it i
uh the people are lovely and
the convention itself was was really
well well run
considering they had never like no one
this year had run online game
conventions before
it ran fabulously and there was a lot of
work put into the background to make it
a really good convention
we will continue to either attend or
online attend online gail clinton
brilliant and we definitely want to stay
involved in that and i think they’re
hoping to have a much bigger board game
contingent next year as well
so all going well you’ll see a lot more
a lot more board gamers to go alongside
the
uh role-playing games and the miniatures
and everything it’s very exciting
looking forward to see
how much that keeps growing over the
years yeah and i i
would like to stay involved in
organizing it as well i think it’s a
it’s a real rewarding opportunity so
hopefully they’ll accept me as staff
next year it’s a really good convention
so
that was how we tried to keep some a bit
of momentum in our public facing style
of things but uh
and we didn’t quite get the amount of
play testing in that we would have liked
for our new games
which has just meant the lead time for
our newer games it’s just taking a
little bit longer than uh
than the last time it’ll be great to go
back to gaelcon i’d be amazed if they
have you back after that stunt with the
goat on the fountain but look
the less said about that the better
but uh yeah we i mean this year as well
we saw a whole lot of uh dnd played
because we were able to move on to roll
20
and basically stay with some form of
social interaction without actually
being together i suppose thanks to own
for running curse of stride we finally
got it finished
our three-month campaign that finished
two years later amazing
yeah so i mean if you’ve listened to our
previous podcast you’ve probably heard
us talk about
curse of strat but that was an amazing
ramp up and finish and own ran a
fantastic campaign after even organizing
one shots ourselves
you know the one shots are a nightmare
to try and plan everything out for
i have no idea how you ran the entire
stride campaign
yeah it wasn’t it wasn’t going to take
that long it was supposed to take three
months
everywhere online said three months
it’ll take a year and uh
i assume three months if you just 24
hours a day kind of continues
i don’t know i don’t know we played a
lot we played a lot like
once every two weeks maybe it was really
cool interesting campaign lots of cool
moments um but there’s so many quarter
cool campaigns we did
that kind of helped us you know stay on
track like we played obviously all the
starter sets
played lots of kind of one shots and
then lots of other smaller campaigns now
we also like you know we’ve read books
for future ones we have to kind of hook
up the courage to do a bigger one again
but who knows when that’s going to be
and we’d love to start when we do it
right in person but for now we’re doing
one shots obviously trade this entire
time
you know as we’ve all actually the end
all three of us here we’ve come up with
ideas as to how to make
the dm’s life easier how to kind of make
dvd adventures easier
and we also kind of some of us are
interested in writing a lot as well
to create like long story elements that
kind of bring in cool new ideas that we
kind of want to see in d d
like the best thing about d d is that
you can take purchase red
and then you can just make it your own
and add in what you want
so when it comes to td we we have
started like work workshopping ideas and
adventures
that kind of sharpen our teeth on
writing that allow us to tell the
stories that we want to tell and then
kind of
show off the ideas of like social
interactions and kind of
characters and plot lines that we think
are kind of compelling
that we don’t really see much in d so
these are obviously still
workshop phase it’s still kind of a
draft but it’s great to see
uh like small kind of exciting
adventures that still take place
we might see them in the future who
knows yeah and we love to tell an
interesting
unique story and for some reason we
always get the ideas in our head that we
can do great ones
so keep your eyes out they’ll be amazing
so much like a million times more than
those are those
easy dnd ones that have only been around
30 years developing
yeah we can crank it out in a couple of
months
cursive gym
curse of brad it’s just a really
annoying guy in your office who drives a
merc and tells everyone about it
constantly
damn it brad uh yeah we also uh some
more updates that we have from picking
up some games
is uh with a shout out to the graphic
designer of dye summoners kate
her company maker design one female
entrepreneur of the year
in 2020 which is yeah
congratulations to case phenomenal
achievement for her especially
she’s been in business only a handful of
years and to i mean she’s just gone from
strength to strength to success to
success and
female entrepreneur of the year was a
phenomenal achievement for her we’re
delighted for and so proud of her
so definitely go to her for all of your
design needs
probably company based rather than board
game based but amazing either way
i feel so i think lockdown has kind of
been hired
on everyone kind of all over the world
you know
maybe you’re super productive maybe not
so much
but we hope your 2021 is filled with
vaccines conventions
holidays friends and four games i really
hope it is
i would love that i’m not just in your
dreams
all going well we’ll be looking forward
to seeing all of you in
some form of normality back us
conventions and play testing and
gaming sessions and everything later
this year
so stay safe out there and if you can
try to keep yourself healthy and well i
think that our next few podcasts are
going to probably be
on zoom the irish government seems to be
saying lockdown is not ending anytime
soon so settle in for uh
for the long haul for this one yeah it’s
just like two two more podcasts maybe
that’s three yeah
don’t worry about it all right so that
pretty much wraps it up then for
a year in review for decking awesome
games 2020.
uh if you enjoyed it share it we’ve been
checking out some games
thanks for listening see ya thanks guys
bye
