It’s been a busy spring so far, and we are excited to finally start getting our game into the hands of our backers! We are still on target with our reward goals and have sent out the first of our rewards.
We hope you enjoy the Sticknia game along with the PnP version of Runes & Bones. The Orcish Wisdom is guaranteed to be eye opening for your Runes & Bones fun! We are plugging away building the game and can’t wait to send those out to everybody.
While we are working on Runes & Bones, we are also forming a Game Designers’ group to help support each other through play testing, sharing information, and good old fashioned gaming fun! They will be held monthly at rotating game stores unless we find a store we want to call home.
Our next meeting will be on May 4th from 1-4 at Total Escape Games in Broomfield. We hope to see some of the people we met at the Un-Pub conference in Denver a few weeks ago and will be starting a group on both Google Groups and Meetup.com.
The address for Total Escape Games is:
6831 W 120th St
Broomfield, CO
We are looking forward to building our group, meeting new gamers and game designers, and sharing experience and supporting each other alone the way. Consider yourself invited if you would like to come, and please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.
It’s been a busy spring so far, and we are excited to finally start getting our game into the hands of our backers! We are still on target with our reward goals and have sent out the first of our rewards.
We hope you enjoy the Sticknia game along with the PnP version of Runes & Bones. The Orcish Wisdom is guaranteed to be eye opening for your Runes & Bones fun! We are plugging away building the game and can’t wait to send those out to everybody.
While we are working on Runes & Bones, we are also forming a Game Designers’ group to help support each other through play testing, sharing information, and good old fashioned gaming fun! They will be held monthly at rotating game stores unless we find a store we want to call home.
Our next meeting will be on May 4th from 1-4 at Total Escape Games in Broomfield. We hope to see some of the people we met at the Un-Pub conference in Denver a few weeks ago and will be starting a group on both Google Groups and Meetup.com.
The address for Total Escape Games is:
6831 W 120th St
Broomfield, CO
We are looking forward to building our group, meeting new gamers and game designers, and sharing experience and supporting each other alone the way. Consider yourself invited if you would like to come, and please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.
We apologize that we haven’t posted any updates recently, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Corey was hospitalized a couple of weeks ago with blood clotting issues and has been laid up in the hospital until Saturday. He is home and on the mend, but it’s going to take some time to make a full recovery. As of right now, we don’t expect a delay in any of the rewards. The pdf’s will be our focus the next week or so, and the first round of games is still on schedule. The card games are complete and will be delivered on time in May and the first set of May’s games are also nearly ready to send out. If anything changes and his condition worsens in such a way that your rewards will be late, I will make sure to let you all know.
Thanks for your support, and feel free to contact me with any questions.
We celebrated our first successful Kickstarter project last night with wine, food and friends.
As I write this post, Corey is cutting and shaping runes in the garage. We are actually having to weed out the bloody runes from the rest of them so we aren’t sending any out with spilled blood. Who knows, maybe that would make them more appealing? Corey isn’t the only one spilling blood for the love of the game, our friends that volunteer to help are taking their share of injuries, too. All for the love of the game! On the days he is building our game, he comes home dirty, bloody, and happy. His hands are chewed up and his nose is caked with sawdust, but he smiles all night.
We may spend several months making copies of Runes & Bones and focusing on our education materials, so don’t look for new projects before June! In the meantime, we will keep our blog updated with other gaming related topics and send out monthly newsletters to keep people posted about our projects.
Our online presence may be spotty in the next week or so, however. We are not only building the games, we are expecting a grand child. She is due today and we can’t wait to see her!
Be patient with us the next few weeks and know that we are making runes, sculpting bones, and spending time with the new baby!
Our latest game, Runes & Bones, has seven days left to close. We have been very happy with the popularity and success of this project, and have been spending every spare moment making games. Ok, confession time… Corey has been spending every spare moment building the games, but now is where my part comes in. I will be helping him sand, burn and mark the runes and then my favorite part – the bones!
To make the bones we take an enormous bucket of Sculpey, roll out and shape the clay bones, and then bake them in the oven. I can do that all day, it reminds me of play dough, and who doesn’t love play dough?
Ok, not a bucket of Sculpey, but we are going to find one!
We are excited to hear whispers of an Unpub Game convention coming to Denver the first week of April and are already planning our games to bring. Unpub is a group of game developers that do nothing but network, share advice and experience, and play test new and exciting games. The developers group we are forming will kick off the week after Unpub, and we hope to meet many local developers at the convention that share our love of game creation.
A rare glimpse of Wasad Qa, Spirit Talker, in his natural environment..
My loving husband’s alter ego, Wasad Qa, is now joining our game company. Our first Wasad Qa video is now on our Kickstarter page, but you can watch it here.
There is no better way to spend your days than doing what you love, and those words were always hollow to me before launching this game company. Success is not what brings happiness – happiness is what brings success.
Our latest game release, Runes & Bones, has been a huge success. Our request was $500, hoping to send a few hand made copies out into the world. We are currently over $3000, and nearly sold out of every set.
This week has been a flurry of updates, stretch goals, and reaching out to other companies to partner with. We have included a new digital game called Sticknia, which is a hoot to play!
In addition to Sticknia, we added a deluxe version of Runes & Bones, leather bags, and personalized runes.
Thank you to everybody who pledged their support, and we are excited about where this game is leading us!
If you haven’t already, please swing by our Kickstarter page and check out Runes & Bones!
Runes & Bones have been sources of power and divination for Tribal Orc Spirit Talkers for countless generations. As the wisdom of the few remaining spirit talkers fell to the blood lust that consumes the race, the Runes and Bones once used to guide the strategy of the warriors now serve only to entertain them. What once was an honored system of divination, now serves as a campfire game for Orcish warriors everywhere.
Corey and I have spent many hours over the last week hand crafting our newest game, Runes & Bones. It is now live on Kickstarter. We launched our game this morning, and we met our modest goal by noon. As hand making these versions of the game are time intensive, we are making a limited number of copies with the goal of getting a few copies in the hands of players. It is our hope that with the game in the public, we can receive reviews and feedback and be more prepared to launch the manufacturing campaign this year.
We made our goal before noon, and are currently at 166% funded.
In our video, we show the process of making this game by hand. It’s a lot of fun, but a lot of work. It’s a good thing we love what we do!
We are overwhelmed with gratitude and excited about the interest and enthusiasm for our game and our company. We cannot thank our backers and supporters enough.
Please check out our game, if you haven’t already!
Genghis Con was held in Denver this last weekend, and we have been excited about it for months. We were online, pre-registering our games the moment pre-registration opened. Thursday, the day we were to attend, I came down with the flu.
No big deal, I thought. I can miss the first day and I know I will be well enough to go tomorrow.
I was wrong. I missed the entire conference, and have to wait until Tacti Con this summer before I can attend another. So, I am writing this post from inside a lion, and it’s very dark in here.
Luckily, Corey was able to attend without me. He met a group of gaming friends and everybody proudly sported their Goblin Awareness T-shirts while they went to different games. Our campaign to raise sympathy for the poor caves of goblins may just be working! In case you missed our campaign, here is the video to educate you!
Corey wrote up an article for me to post on our blog and fill everybody in on what a great time it was. Ladies and gentlemen, here is a word from my husband!
Here is a recap of my fantastic time at the Genghis Con in Aurora:
Friday– Anticipation of the event woke me up well before dawn, and no amount of willpower could put me back to sleep. Making the best use of my time not sleeping, I took a final look at the rules for Goblin Pit Fight and Runes and Bones, the two games I previewed at con. By 6:45 in the morning I was on the road to the con with my friend Ron.
That morning I played in a game with three high school students from Roosevelt High School who were part of a game club. The club sponsor and Science teacher brought them to Genghis Con on a field trip. I remember having to skip school to make the first day of Gen Con, and these kids get to call it a field trip. Props to Mr. Wells for seeing the educational value of games and giving up his weekend to sponsor this event for his students.
Next, I played a wonderful game that is out of print called Master Thieves. The game involved an intricate puzzle box where players tried to place and find gems within it without setting off alarms or spilling gems out of the bottom. If you get a chance to play this game with 5-6 people, you won’t be disappointed.
I spent the afternoon playing our two promotional games and meeting people. My head didn’t hit the pillow until well after midnight.
Saturday – Saturday was equally exciting. I met the folks from World of Dice, who loved our Goblin Awareness T-shirts. We will be talking to them about collaborating on future projects with some possible stretch goals or something.
Saturday night I played in the best Paranoia game I have ever played.
Sunday – Sunday was mostly a promo game day, though I did sit in on a promo game from Rio Grande games, Spin Monkeys. It was the most accurate model of bumper cars you could expect from a board game. I felt like the kid whose mom makes him stay at the edge because I kept getting caught in the corner and bumped against the wall. The game is based on rotating your car based on cards with degrees of rotation on them. I think it would be a great game to teach the degrees of rotation because you play cards from 45 to 360 degrees to choose where you’re out of control Monkey drives his bumper car.
I came home close to 7 Sunday night and, thankfully, yesterday was President’s Day because I needed the recovery time.
Overall, this was a fantastic event and I am counting down the days to Tacti Con!
I was struggling to come up with an idea today for a game post, all I can think about it the Con we are going to tomorrow! Corey told me, “Go to Games For Change, you can find an idea there.” Always full of ideas, isn’t he?
Well, this time I listened to him and found a very cool game I am dying to play – Fibber! Fibber is a strip guessing game where you try to determine whether a politician is telling the truth or lying, and keep your shirt on in the process!
This game is a HOOT! Though the goal of the game is to remain clothed… There are other, more personally revealing, reasons for playing the game. (See what I did there?) Here are the key points the designer is driving home:
1. Promoting Self-Reflection
2. Crowd-sourcing Deceptive Statements
3. Recognize your bias towards a party you want to believe.
Fibber is a Game About Political Deception a political “strip guessing” game where players try to determine whether the candidates for the American presidential election of 2012 are telling facts or fiction. The goal of the game is to raise self-awareness and personal fact checking in a world inundated with misleading political ads, social media, and personal bias.
Fibber was created by Seek Change, an organization dedicated to using technology to advance self-empowerment and personal well-being.
Even though the elections are over and there is no reason to get all fired up about who is saying what, I still want to play this game. Let’s just hope I can win!
I was cruising through Kickstarter’s “Recently Launched” section when I ran across an interesting game.
The game is called Mystic Realm, and it is a combination of magic cards and a strategy game. Here is the description in the creator’s words:
“Wielding Destruction, Protection, Storm and Neptune Spells, while countering with Death, Life, Love, and Healing Potions. Enter a World where the Dream Catcher lives. Follow advice from The Lady of Fortune. Travel the Sands of Time to Collect Crystals and Orbs, all needed to complete your Final Quest.”
The game looks cool, and we are going to buy a copy. I love the artwork and the idea behind it, I think it sounds like a great time! But what I found the most intriguing was his bio:
“Hi, My name is Dan Leighly, “aka” MontanaDan, I am retired, living in the State of Montana, with my beautiful wife Deb. I build Ventriloquist Figures part time, and run a Ventriloquist Blog. I love playing games, and over the years have I have come up with a lot of ideas, so I decided it was time to put some of them out there for others to share. I have created several other games available at The Game Crafter. I am also an Author of several books, an Artist, a Musician, a Metaphysician. I am the father of 3, a grandfather of 3, and I love to cook, because well, I love to eat. Check out montanadan.com sometime, to find out more about me. Dan”
He reminds me so much of, well, us! We aren’t retired, but we also live in a beautiful area and my husband has been building games his entire life.
As I was reading his bio, he linked to his site here. I found something I thought I would never see in my life – a VENTRILOQUIST BLOG! He doesn’t update it anymore, and I wonder if that was his decision, or the dummy’s? We will have to stay tuned to find out!
So, if you are looking for a cool game by an awesome guy, please check out his Kickstarter page and pledge your support.
If you don’t, make sure you check out the blog. Dolls, clowns and dummies have always terrified me, so I may be sleeping tonight with one eye open. Let’s hope they pass me by because I am supporting their cause!
Gamer to Entrepreneur 