#49 - Would Allplay Publish This?

Music. Hello, and welcome to Fun Problems, the problems of fun. I'm Peter C. Hayward.

I'm AJ Branton. And we have with us today a special guest, who I will not allow to talk. We are doing the first of our publisher series. This is a series we've been wanting to do for a while, where we get on the coolest, hottest publishers in the whole industry and basically ask what they are looking for. And we play the game that we talked about on that episode where this is how I get a little game signed.

I ask publishers what they're looking for and really narrow it down with a series of questions in a game. Our first ever publisher guest is Joe Wiggins of AllPlay. How's it going, Joe?

It's going great. I'm really excited for this. I think 10 minutes before this podcast, he asked me to be on, I was like, are there any notes? And they're like, yeah, but we're not going to show them to you. So I have nothing in front of me.

I'm just sitting here waiting to be asked questions and hopefully not say anything that will get my company to go under we wanted to start with joe for two big reasons uh one is that you are the publisher i collaborate with by far the most you have you've we're about to hit double digits i think in terms of game science we're at nine games that's ridiculous i mean we do publish like 20 games a year so

like nine games over the entire catalog isn't that much but still it's like that is a lot of peter. That is a lot, I think, for any publisher and designer. And I think it shows we work well together.

The second reason we wanted to get you on is because you actually host your own podcast, which I really enjoy. And I thoroughly recommend anyone who listens to this podcast also go and listen to it. Joe, what's it called and where can people find it? It's called The Bits with Joe and Nick. And Nick is the owner of Bytewing Games. And we work together a lot. And we often will have conversations where we just talk about nerdy publishing stuff.

Stuff and we just were like what if we just like recorded these conversations and maybe it would help like small aspiring publishers or like people that wanted to self-publish a board game to like understand the ins and outs of actually publishing a board game and so that's what we did we put microphones in front of our mouth and basically have those same conversations with like 10% more structure i i really think of it as like the sister podcast

this one not not not that you've approved that or anything like that but like i think if you like this podcast you will definitely like the bits with joe and nick i really really strongly recommend it has a similar vibe has a similar conversational thing and is also one of the big focuses of this show is just like pack as much information in without all of the you know the what was the first board game you played joe so we're not going to ask you that

the last thing i'll say before we jump into it is that there is.

Construction happening at the apartment below mine so i'm going to be muted for a lot of this and aj is going to take the lead so i'm sorry joe i know you came on to talk to me because you don't get enough of me in your life but i'm gonna throw over to aj as we begin it's a lot less bias because i think aj have you ever aj have you pitched me games before i have once yeah okay and i didn't sign it so i think this is a far less biased interview coming from aj than coming from peter who at this

point is probably relying on me for a very lion's share of his annual income.

There's actually one question that's kind of ruined because you work so much with peter we'll get there hey sorry just to be clear am i meant to be getting paid for the all play games i was not aware of that i thought this was like just a charity thing okay i'm gonna go on mute and aj is gonna launch into our questions sounds good so the first question is what game in your catalog are you the most proud of oh boy i i really i i have to this is such an annoying thing and again

i i was not prefaced with these questions at all so now i think that there's something going on i should buy we did not write these questions for joe these are our these are our all publisher questions it just happens that and joe we'll give you a free pass here what is your favorite or the most proud game that isn't peter's i but that's not fair that's not fair because then i won't be able to to talk about that my favorite all play game is things in rank.

When Peter showed me that game, and it was such a weird, I'm sure Peter has probably told the story of that pitch meeting on this show. I'm not sure. But he was pitching me another game that another publisher signed, and he was like, this is an all-play game. And I was like, this is the furthest thing from an all-play game. And the pitch meeting ended like five minutes in. It was just like, no. And Peter was like, okay, well, can I show you just something else I'm messing around with?

And I'm like, sure. And he showed it to me and I just went, I will take this, right? This is mine now. Thank you very much. And it was because I saw the game and I was very enamored with the ideas of it. And that was at the time called Vendo. And Peter gave me that game and I thought it was such a fascinating idea.

We collaborated, we came up with the name of the game. It took a long time with the artist, but we hired an artist who was willing to iterate on multiple different drawings until we finally landed on this like kitschy dr seuss like artwork style that just was so good i can't tell you how many dozens of different materials i sampled to get rings that were the right size went into the box compactly but then we're also not going to like fold and like like they

they form a circle very easily when you put them on the table right and everything that we did across the entire packaging and everything uh even writing a dr seuss limerick for the back of the box to explain it to people i think overall things and rings is a in my opinion near perfect product and the thing that i am most proud of that we've put out to this day that's awesome uh we accidentally skipped the opening which is uh just just give us a brief overview of all play what what

you do what you're about what your what your vision statement is all that kind of thing. Okay. Hi, I'm Joe. I own AllPlay games. I guess they'll edit this and put this at the beginning. Me and my partner, Chad, own AllPlay. It used to be called BoardGameTables.com. We have since rebranded to AllPlay, and I think most people now know AllPlay, the brand, very well.

We make boxes, we make games that fit in very specific box sizes with very specific price points while not actually formatting to any specific genre or type of games. We do lean a little bit heavily. We love our trick takers. We love games like that. But overall, like we are not pigeonholing ourselves into a type of game. That being said, all of our games generally are going to play under an hour,

have a very easy to learn rulebook with a quick setup time. Our brand when it comes to game is accessible. Accessible strategy is what we're looking for. And what we're trying to do is make games that do one thing very well. And I think overall, you can kind of conceptualize what AllPlay does as we want to make games that people actually play.

And I know that there's a lot of gamers that play all kinds of games, but like I have so many giant campaign Kickstarter games that like I back and I never get to the table and it's four years and they're still sitting on my shelf unplayed. And I like to make games that people are actually going to take to people's houses and play with them. Or when they have people over, they go, oh, let me show you this, this game.

And so that's really where all play tries to be. our entire mission statement is we want to be a company that makes game night happen for you because we make the tables, we make the bags that you carry your games to game night in, we make the type of games that you're going to put down on the table in front of your friends, and so as a company, that's kind of what the mission statement and what we try to do is, is make.

Accessible strategy games that look good, play well, have good components, yada, yada, yada. I mean, none of that's particularly like all play branded, right?

At the risk of going off topic, I have to ask, what went into the thought behind the rebrand? Because I will say, as a retailer, I had so many people come in and say, what a stupid name. And do you know which publisher name they remembered? Yours. Every single time. You would always be the one besides maybe Stonemaier and maybe the one other company that they would always know the name of. And so I thought that was, you know, maybe a little on the nose, but I thought it worked great.

It did. I mean, at the beginning, we only made tables. And so boardgametables.com was an SEO play, right? When your company is called boardgametables.com and people type in board game tables into Google, like it's nice to be the first person that they see, right?

But as the company has grown, when I came on board about three and a half years ago at this point, Like one of my earliest things that I needed to do was figure out what this company was, because that was one of the confusing things is we made tables and we're also making these shelves. But we sold these bags like crazy and these play mats that people love. And also we are publishing like all these games. There were seven games in the catalog when I came on board as well.

And we're like we would go to conventions and people would come and demo and look at tables and stuff like that. But it felt very like, what is this company? Like, what is this company? How do you conceptualize it? Right. And so one of the things that we, I wanted to do the moment I came on board was we need to do a rebrand. And so we worked with a branding agency to figure out what we're going to do. Our original idea was like, let's just go to BGT studios or BGT,

right? Like there's so many three letter acronym. Yeah. Yeah. CGE, AEG, right. There's so many like just three letter companies that we're like, ah, we'll just do that. But then we're like, nah, let's try to do something. And so we worked with a branding agency and honestly, we came with this idea. Like one of the things that I conceptualized was like, how does all this tie together? And like I said earlier, we're a company that wants you to have game night and we want to facilitate that.

You have a nice table to play your games on. You have a great bag to carry your games to game night. You have the games that you're going to put on the table, like from, you know, start to finish. We are the company that can make you have an amazing game night experience. Right. And so going into that, we were working with our branding agency and they pitched us at the beginning. They came to us and like, all right, here's our pitches, right?

Because branding agencies do all this like mood board. What color do you like more? What does this symbol say to you type of stuff, right? And they came to us with like the actual pitches and their first pitch was so bad that we thought that they actually wanted the second pitch to be the one that they picked. So they showed us something so bad because they were like, you're going to be threefold gaming. Right.

And they like unveiled this logo and this thing. And they're like, because you have furniture and accessories and games. And I remember I still to this day, I'll never forget this. My partner, Chad, who started the company, leans over and goes. We can't have a triangle as a logo when everything we sell is a square. Which I thought was just such a great like thing to say. And we also just hated threefold in general. We're like, so we literally, we legit were just like, what else you got?

Yeah. And have we wasted our money here? Yeah. And they actually showed us all play next and the logo was purple. And so we made some adjustments to like some small things, but they showed us all play. And we really like the branding, but like, like anything, like when you're looking at something for the first time like that, you're like, I don't know.

But like within 24 hours, we're like, no, this feels like a brand that can grow and there's no stopping it because the number one thing we didn't want to be is we did not want to be what we called nerdy word games, right? Where companies will just pick a nerdy word and just put games at the end, like Ogre Cave Games or Fairy Ring Games. That's just how most publishers just name their game companies. They're just like, a nerdy thing, games.

And we just didn't want to do that. I had a Facebook post go viral maybe five years ago because I was just like, hey guys, I'm starting a new game company. It's called Adjective Animal Games. And so the comments was just full of every single game company. That is Adjective Animal Games, Adjective Animal Games. I love All Play. I think it's a great title. Also, I love your games, obviously, and I love your shelves. Behind me in every episode are the All Play shelves that I just keep on adding

more and more into my apartment. There's more over there. There's more in the main room. I love them. So you obviously mentioned things in rings, which is very flattering, but I wondered if you'd mentioned River Valley Glassworks, because I feel like that is also very sort of emblemic of all play while being very different to things in rings. Do you want to speak on that a little bit?

Yeah. So as far as like River Valley as a product, River Valley was a very special thing. And in fact, I definitely poured more blood, sweat and tears into River Valley than I did into things in rings. Because once we figured out things in rings, it just moved.

Right. right whereas and wound it up and just let it go yeah whereas like with river valley like i did things like because it has the tiles that you pick up and move and this like really smooth like movement of the river where because like the original or as we developed the prototype it was all on paper and so like taking the things off and like sliding the paper and then sliding the paper forward was like such a frustrating thing in the

development process when it was a prototype but then when like we had this tile system where we're like we're going to pick up a tile, move it to the back and they're all notched so that you push it forward and the whole thing collapses just like one smooth motion and just, and it's such a satisfying thing to do where I actually Googled, like, what is the average width of a woman's hand so that I could make those tiles the right size so that it wasn't like.

Oh, I don't want my big meaty hands to be like my, my hand is not the hand that might be handling these all the time. Right. I didn't want somebody that had smaller hands than me to be like, oh, it's so awkward to pick this up. I was like, I want these tiles to work for as many people as possible. And if a tile is smaller, it's easy. It's just as easy for me to pick it up. But if a tile is too big, there are people that have smaller hands.

So I was like, I don't know, like, like I had so many people pick up the tiles and do the movement and go, was that satisfying? How did it feel? What do you think? So like there were ergonomics that I was testing when it came to River Valley glassworks, you know, shape differentiation. I think when people first saw the game, they're like, I will 100% be able to like tell what pieces are in the bag. I'm like.

No, you can't. No, you can't. And so I've actually with people been like, I want you to pull 10 pieces out of the bag and take as much time as you want to feel them and, and tell me what pieces that you're pulling out of the bag. And nobody has ever been able to do that. So like, like there were so many things that we tested when it came to river Valley to make sure that the game like worked well and was the type of game that we wanted it to be,

which is a quick puzzly abstract type of game. And I think that it succeeded quite well.

So things and rings comes into this size box and then river valley glassworks is right behind joe there uh is in a box it's is it about twice the height is it a little over um see like this is the thing you're like oh that'll be a quick interview but there's there's so much like like peter like they're like you're gonna learn so much of interesting facts here i don't know i this the size of this box is perfectly formatted to fit in a ups medium shipping box

so that when we ship it out the packaging is free because that just gives those boxes to you so at the beginning of the company when we were just selling our games online through our web store anybody that ordered one of these games we don't have to pay for boxes to ship them out because ups just gives us the ups mediums the small ones are the same thing but those fit in a ups bubble mailer oh gotcha amazing so uh all play has the has the smaller box has the larger

box and just recently i've started doing the the tiny box which you can again see behind joe if you're watching the video panda panda so things that rings in very valley glassworks are sort of i'm going to say your flagship sort of products like not quite but in that sort of realm has your scope changed much since then are you guys looking for different stuff now than you were 18 months ago. I, when people always ask me, they're like, what kind of games are you looking for?

I always tell them, I was like, show me something unique and show me something good. Right. Because like, I don't know what I'm looking for at all play. I think if you played the entire range of all play games, you're not going to find a super consistent through line other than the fact that we don't publish euros. Like we just don't do euros. Like we have like sort of euro we adjacent games, but we have never published like what I would call a traditional euro.

Right. You've done some Canizia games, which are sort of Euro-y. Euro-y, but the ones that we do are not even Euro-y. Through the Desert's an abstract, and Money is a card game. We're going to be putting out High Society soon. That's a card game. So overall, I would not consider any of the Canizia games that we've done to be a Euro game. The most Euro-y game I think that we've done is Habitats, which is just a tile-laying game.

But, but yeah, so, so we don't do euros and we don't do long games and we don't do heavy games, but like what we're looking for is something that excites us, something that we think is going to be exciting as a publisher to put out something that we can see in the market succeeding. Right. Like, I think that one of the things that we did very early on is we signed Kabuto Sumo.

And I think Kabuto Sumo is very emblematic of like a type of product that could have just been a throwaway dexterity game with a publisher, but with the right care and attention and production, it can turn into a very successful product, even though it is not a wide scoping type of project. Like Dexterity games in and of themselves are niche games, right?

But I think Kabuto Sumo sells itself very well with the toy factor that we added, with the componentry that we added, and everything else while still fitting into a nice, compact, affordable package. Okay, one more question, we'll move on to the game. And by the way, I mentioned your podcast earlier, you also discussed this game, I think in your first or second episode, the game where I asked what games would you or would you not have published?

So this was the first time I'd ever done it with you since then I've done it with a dozen publishers. I think that was the first time I'd even done that with you. And so that meeting was pivotal in my career and clearly had an impact on you as well. So one thing that I've noticed when pitching to AllPlay is that bits are very important to you. I mean, your podcast is called The Bits.

Is it a requirement for a game that you're looking at signing that you can do something cool with the components or is that just an added bonus? I mean, I spent six years in manufacturing, right? So my background is I spent six years working at Panda Games Manufacturing. So like, like I can just look at a game and know how much it costs. And I can also, one of the things that if you, you probably go to Kickstarter page and see it, but Peter, you actually know this.

One of the things that is like so cool to me is like how to do something very cheaply.

That is really cool. so for a game that we have coming out very soon called waddle there was this horrible ergonomic issue with the game where this score track of like moving these pieces constantly in order to know whose turn it is and who has passed and it just becomes this really like frustrating thing to do in the game and like we we just sat on this problem for a while like how do we fix this how do we fix this how do we fix this and i was going to do a river valley thing where

i kind of had penguins that were notched that you could push them and kind of make like a little train of them. And that was like my idea. And I was like, ah. And then all of a sudden I was like, what if there was like a track that was tilted with marbles? And the way that we accomplished that was like two tiny pieces of cardboard to make a little stand so that the cardboard piece that the marble sit in is slanted. And then marbles cost like two cents.

So like for the total cost of like 15 cents, I made this amazingly component centric turn order track that basically does the turn order for you. When you take your turn, you lift your marble and all the marbles slide down on this little track. And then you either put it at the back or you put it onto the other thing. And I thought that that was such like being able to come up with such a clever idea.

But knowing that it's not going to cost because there were other ideas that were pitched that were like, yeah, but that's going to cost like $1.50. And our total cost for this game has to be $2.50. So I can't eat up literally 75% of the cost of the game in a turn order track. So being able to like, like, like do stuff like that. Now, is it a requirement?

That's where a lot of designers would be like like thinking that that would be it but like that's the thing is like that's my job like that's my job right bytes is another one that we often look at right but it's pretty that game could have just been little colored discs in fact it was the original game was called big points it was not widely released it was a very old game but it was called big points and it was just a pawn that moved across colored discs and there were no powers or anything

like that and so big points was the game that we were like looking at and the idea of these three-dimensional food components that like honestly to this day i'm surprised more publishers have not tried to copy what we did with those punchboard tokens because they are so tactically, fun and unique in a game and did not add that much cost to the total of the game while still making these components so much of a standout part of the game that people are like fascinated by the component tree.

And so when it comes to that, like we like to make games that have a really, I guess I'll give you my rule. My rule when it comes to games and people will generally say like, man, AllPlay has really nice productions. They'll also say our stuff doesn't fit in the box. And I just tell them that they're not trying hard enough. But people will often be like, oh man, like your games are so nice. But honestly, what we try to do, Is we try to pick one thing in the game and make that special.

And I think that this resonates a lot is you, I just, I'm not trying to rag on a game. Don't, don't, don't, don't make me like, don't take this as me like attacking another publisher's games because I'm good friends with these guys. But I just unboxed a deluxe edition of unconscious mind like a month, month ago. And everything in that game is like deluxified to the max, right? Like every single component that by the time I was done, I was like. Like, it all just felt the same to me.

Right. There was no like standout thing, right? Where what I feel like when you kind of open an all play game, we try to pick one thing and make that the really cool deluxe bit. So like with River Valley in the retail edition of it, the really beautiful, colorful bag filled with the beautiful acrylic pieces. That's the thing that people are like, whoa, look at this is amazing.

Right because they could have just been colored discs right but instead they're these special unique things and so we always try to pick one thing about a game and make that the star so that when people play the game they go man i really like this thing in this game right with the with mountain goats it's how big and chunky the goat meeples are right and how like how big and tactile they are and people like go to that game and they go i love these little goat meeples right yeah

and And when you pick one thing about a game and make that the standout thing, I think overall you do the game a service because it feels almost more deluxe than a game where everything is deluxified. And just to be clear, do you not want the publisher coming? Sorry, the designer coming to you with that? Or are you happy if they're like, hey, look, and you could make this pretty? Or are you just like, hey, this is my job. Just let me let me do my magic. I mean, yeah.

I don't mind it. Like, I don't mind it. But at the end of the day, like, I feel like that's where the publisher is best suited to make those types of decisions for the game anyway. I think that there's a lot of publishers that or a lot of designers that are like precious about things that are like the theme of the game or the components of the game or the idea of, you know, this one particular mechanism in the game or whatever.

And one thing that I always try to tell designers is I try to involve our designers a lot in the processes of our games. I can confirm that is the case. And I tell designers or when they sign with us, I was like, you can, I tell a lot of designers when they sign with us, I was like, you can be as involved or as uninvolved as you want. Like, just let me know. Like, cause I, I made a game with John D. Claire and I think I bothered him. Cause I was like, what do you think about this artist?

What do you think about this? And I think he finally sent me a text back and he was like, just do whatever is going to sell the most games. And I was like, oh, okay. You don't care. Okay. Message received, John. That's not a detriment, but like, like he, he just didn't want to be that involved. Right. Where I've signed games with like first time designers who are like, oh, what about this? What about this? What about this?

What about this? And I tell them, I was like, I am like, I want you to be involved and I will take all of your feedback seriously, but I am going to be the ultimate one that makes a decision. And anytime me and a designer get into a situation where we are at odds and disagree with each other, I always like to remind them, I want to sell more copies of this game than you want me to. So trust me that I'm going to make the right decision to sell more games.

Okay let's get into it i'm gonna give you a nice gimme joe would you have signed if someone came to pitch this obviously this is a world where this isn't already a published game and someone's just bringing you a prototype and it doesn't have the final bits and you know you don't know that it's going to be a hit here's a gimme for you would you have signed micro macro city yeah i think i said that's the one that we mentioned in my podcast like i'm enamored with

that game and i would i would literally give one of peter's kidneys to have that in the all play catalog you can only offer that twice joe there's a limited a limited supply though okay so this is this is one that i asked you for real three and a half years ago whenever it was three almost exactly three years ago azul is that an all play game in your mind oh yeah it definitely could have been like

absolutely Like River Valley Glassworks is very much like trying to do a very similar thing to Azul. And if Azul had not ever come along, like I still think River Valley Glassworks would be a game that we were excited about and signed. Now Azul coming first, like absolutely, like that's a really clever design. I enjoy Azul quite a bit. But as far as like that game in and of itself, if it had come to me, I think I would have saw, even if it was again, Again, everyone knows what that

game looked like when it was a prototype. It was just colored like discs, right? And you just did the same mechanics, but it was just colored discs, right? And it's like, oh, this abstract game. But I think when you play a game like that, you can feel like, oh, this feels really good when I play it. Like this feels good. And that was the vibe I got from River Valley. I was like, man, this feels clever.

This feels good. And I think Azul would have felt good as a prototype, which is what I'm generally going to be looking for in a game like that. So yeah, I would have signed as well. Here's the first real one, because I do not know the answer to this, and this would be very interesting for me to learn. Would AllPlay have signed Camel Up? Assume you're familiar with Camel Up, because it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm very familiar with Camel Up.

So I will say, number one, AllPlay has been looking, and I know there's a lot of designers that probably listen to this. AllPlay has been looking for a racing game for a really long time, but we hate most of the ones that people show us. But Camel Up is a fun kind of racing game.

It has a betting aspect to it that's also fun because we love like a little economic in our games hmm i think i would have i think i'm going to say yes i think i would have signed camel up, okay so again the the point of this game from the design perspective is just to just try to work out where the bounds are now all plays weird because your bounds are much wider than publishers but there are still somewhere also very strict too yeah that like in some ways we're very strict

and in some because like there's publishers out there that do like like oh you publish some games or you you you're working with ag sometimes peter that they they've done love letter and edge of darkness right like like so like when you talk about a publisher that doesn't have any bounds i'm like you know i look at what we do and i'm like i feel like we're way more finite than they are uh here's here's one that aj put on the list and i wasn't sure if uh it would be helpful is Final Girl.

Now, this is interesting because as of time of recording, you guys have not actually released any solo games. You've released games that can be played solo, but no dedicated solo games. So the answer is... Can I take a little bit longer with this one? Yeah, sure. Okay. The answer is... It's your time. I would not... The floor is yours. The answer is no, I would not have signed Final Girl for a couple of reasons.

I think the game is quite intense and quite long for what it is, which people love it. I'm not dragging on Final Curl. I'm just saying for what it is, I find for the all-play catalog, it's a little too invested. I also would say that the theme is not something that we would have considered. And I will also preface that by saying I only follow one type of movie. I used to be a big movie buff. I don't have time for movies anymore. but I still watch most horror movies that

release every year. I love horror movies. It is my absolute favorite genre of movie ever. I love all types of horror movies. I can talk horror movies all day long with as many people as want to. So I love horror as a genre, but I, for the all play aesthetic, I, we were, we've pushed the boundaries and we've kind of like widened our elbows from this like extremely family friendly brand that we generally have.

And like, we're, we're, but like, it's so dark that I, I don't think that we would have like crossed that barrier. Now, I guess I'll give you like a sneak peek or whatever, but we actually have signed our first solo exclude. Like it is there's going to be a two player mode, but it's very different than what the core of the game is, which is a solo game. Right. We've signed our first solo game and it's going to be coming out next year in 2026. I am in love with this game. I think it's phenomenal.

I think it is really clever. And I think it is like, if you say final girl is over here, when it comes to like dark, intense, like, this game is the, this game is the antithesis of final girl, right?

It is cozy. It is puzzly. It is serene. And the artwork has, Oh my God, I'm working with the most amazing artist.

I'm working with this artist who is creating this, like miyazaki-esque world for like these like people because the game final spoil it right the game is called enchanted ivy and you are the proprietor of a magical bed and breakfast in this like studio ghibli style world and you are building an inn and you are drawing like people that are staying in your inn out of a bag and you have to build the inn out of these tiles while grouping the ivy that's on them and then

putting all of the people in the balconies of the room and each of these people scores differently. So you might need this person to be all isolated by themselves, but this person is a painter. So he wants to see people in the foreground and the background to score the maximum amount of points. So it's this very like puzzly tile length type of game where you're kind of drawing these things and looking at them.

Oh, okay, let me do this. Let me do this. And it's literally like we've signed a solo game, but it is the exact opposite of final girl.

So it sounds very old play yeah okay now in a very different direction here how about brass the number one rated game on bgg no absolutely not no absolutely no. So and to clarify based off what you've been saying, that's due to complexity as much as it is to the fact that it's just so many components and so many like you were you were the thing I always tell people is I was like, I can make any game a $40 game, right?

Like, because our maximum price point is like a $40 game, which like we've broken that rule a few times and sale legacy is coming out soon. And that's not going to be a $40 game, right?

So like we've broken that rule a few times but in general like if we did brass it would need to fit our constraints of what a game is but like it's not just that like there's always a way to make a game a 40 game right that's it's so the components don't have that much to do with it but in general i think brass is way too much overhead for what our brand of accessible strategy is and then i also think that brass is way too long for what we're trying

to do so i think the complexity level of what brass represents as a game and really as a genre is just too far outside the scope of what all play would ever consider as a viable thing and a deal that isn't signed yet but we actually do have like a game that people that like brass love this game and we're trying to get a deal signed to actually make that game because it's been out of print for a really long time and i can't say anything about it because the deal isn't done

and i don't know if it's actually going to go through but like people are going to be like that is an all-play game and i'm like think about it think about it and they're like you know what that is an all-play game good job i've got one i'm going to explain the the reason for this one specifically after the question and honestly i might have asked you this three years ago uh skull. I am not. I don't think I'm the biggest fan of Skull or the type of games that Skull is.

Yeah, I think I appreciate Skull. I think I appreciate Skull, but I think if Skull was shown to me as a prototype, I would not have seen it as an all play game because I get it. And I think the production that's been done on Skull is fabulous and fantastic, but I don't think Skull is a game that we would have done because I don't know if it would have come to me as a product that I would have had the love to look into what the vision could be, right? It's such a pub style, silly game.

And like I said, that also isn't accessible strategy.

So the reason i asked uh specifically that one is because i i have a way of splitting up game mechanics into above the table and on the table above the table is when like you know you're looking in someone's eyes and be like are you lying to me resistance mafia coup that kind of thing i feel and i'd be happy for you to disagree with me that all play games are typically on the table and you know things in rings has elements of like oh would peter put this here but

as a rule skull is almost entirely above the table and i would say that all play games are almost entirely.

On the table i would say that that would be an accurate statement i would say that there are some edge cases where it like pushes a little bit but i would say overall that that would be an accurate assessment of that like social deduction is like a tough one like i don't know i'm not saying we would never sign a social deduction game but i'm just saying like i don't know that social deduction is something that we're like actively excited to publish games in that genre right i

feel like every time you draw that line someone brings you a game where you're like you've done it like i don't think you would have said we'll definitely sign a solo game or we'll even sign a party game two years ago and now you're like we used to say that one yes we used to say we don't do party games like i used to tell people we don't do party games because most of the party games that people show me are oh we each pick a thing and then we argue over whose thing is better like oh

is a pumpkin pie yeah is a pumpkin pie better than a ghost right oh well let me make my case for pumpkin pie and then somebody is better than a ghost yeah.

Yeah but halloween is better than thanksgiving so yeah i think modern party games that like the thinky party games are current now i i would say party games is my favorite genre now and if you'd asked me 10 years ago i would say i do not like party games full stop okay so i all often tell people with party games i'm like there's there's two levels to party games there's social and then there's strategy and i think party games are somewhat social, somewhat strategic.

Right? But it really depends on where that line falls. Like things in rings, people call it a party game. And I think it is a party game, but it falls very heavily in the strategy side. Like it's not that, it's social, but not that social. It's much more strategy-based, right? Whereas I feel like even fiction, people would call a party game. And I also have like a couple of really fun definitions of what I consider a party game.

But fiction, I would also call a party game, but it is fully strategic. It's not that social at all. It is a strategic game.

You're working as a team okay we're going along so let's do some quickfire ones based on what you're just talking about wavelength i like ito better and i would have published ito so i think i have to say yes like ito is wavelength the card game if you've never played ito but like so like because i'm like oh man i love ito and i would 100 publish ito i guess i also kind of have to say i would publish wavelength cool aj what you got sky team it

seems like it would be a good all-play one so i'm curious i think yeah yeah like absolutely like we actually did sail the same year and that was a weird year for us because the year we came out with an amazing two-player cooperative game was the year the biggest two-player cooperative game of all time came out so my entire year was going to every award show to for the nomination to clap for sky team as it stole my award yeah decrypto while we're talking yes 100 percent thousand percent

i would love decrypto over here at all play in fact i've taken so many pitches from the designer of decrypto uh i haven't found one that's like like like actually landed for us yet but like i am 1000 like a decrypto like fan and i love in fact the reason i did a message from the stars is because it was so similar to the vibes i got from decrypto while being like i was like you know so i I don't care if it's going long. I'm going to just keep.

As long as you're not. We don't take a lot of your time than we have to. We know we do two hour episodes. We won't do that today, but we're rushing on your behalf. No, don't, don't, don't, don't speed on my behalf. I'm fact, let me just like really quickly, just take a quick second and look. Yeah. I don't have anything till 3 PM. So I've got an hour and 15 minutes. Like I'm just going to, I'm enjoying myself. So that's fine. Rock up. Okay. So. Okay.

A message from the stars i i when i first signed it i was like so you know how like code names came out right yeah and then decrypto came out and it was like what if we like removed a lot of the fun of code names and added more of the thinking of code names right right like like that's how like if i had to sell that's kind of what decrypto is right like it's like oh it's like code names but like less fun more thinking right a message.

From the stars was like what if there was no fun and all thinking which is a terrible pitch for a message from the stars but at the same time man that is like a game that i would sign and honestly what we did with it was really phenomenal and it's been super successful because i think there are a lot of people that are like yeah code names is fine but then they play the crypto and they're like oh i really like getting into the puzzle of this and i'm like what if it was only the puzzle this is

this is published under a sub-brand no play no fun no play all all think yes uh aj what you got seven wonders duel oh this is a good one no really oh i was not expecting that yeah i would have thought so as well no no seven wonders what's the thinking there seven years duel yeah a bit and in fact you want to know something wild i would have published seven wonders i would not have published seven wonders duel that is wild that's because on on

paper i would have put that as an all-player game like it's it's thinky it's smart it's two-player only but i don't think that's a limiting factor for you no it's not a limiting factor for me yeah i think it's just it feels too. Combative in a way right like when i play seven wonders duel it feels like extremely combative right there's very much like a zero-sum game that you're playing in seven wonders duel and a lot of denying that happens in Seven Wonders Duel.

And I think a lot of people can appreciate that, but I don't think that the vibes that it brings to the table are what I associate with all play in general.

And so I like, and I also prefer the mechanism of sharing in Seven Wonders rather than the denying in Seven Wonders Duel, because there is some denying in Seven Wonders, but you're really more focused on your tableau while thinking a little bit about what you're passing to the other person right like once per game in seven wonders you're like i cannot let you my neighbor have this thing so i have to take this thing but in seven wonders duel half the game is i can't let

them have that so it's it's the okay i get what you're saying it's interesting because in terms of like combative two-player games you know abstracts way up there for me and you originally approached me because of that time you killed me because it's an abstract but.

It has story and it has weird time travel, etc. So why would that one, or would you have signed, I don't a thousand percent know that like that time you killed me, but like approaching you because of that time you killed me is different from going. That's a game that I want to sign. Right. I think like, like, again, that's also the game that more or less put your name on the map.

Right. As somebody that, you know, is putting out games. And I also thought Pandasaurus did a really good job with like the way it was formatted and presented and everything like that. So like, like that time you killed me had a lot to say for a product that wasn't just, is this a good all play game? But for a game that has innovative mechanics or unique approaches to design ideas was more the catalyst for, oh, this person might have some stuff for all play in the future.

Come to find out this person is literally just like trying to like slowly take over my company. I often i i often joke around with people that peter was so bad and i know that peter has said this so like i don't mind saying it but peter was so bad at publishing games that he basically sought me out as a shell corporation to start publishing his games through.

Okay so but based on based on what you said this seems like an easy answer but radlands uh the the roxy game zero it's a hit and so this is so weird we have a head-to-head two-player game coming out but it's done with nine card decks which is really cool right so like it's like i've been saying that like this game that's coming out it's called for the emperor is battle line meets love letter which is man like like such a fun little like little pitch for a game right is like what if love letter

and battle line had a had a baby right and so i i've signed this game it's in our tiny box line but radlands is such a bigger robust thing right and it is a two-player dueling head-to-head game where you're drawing cards out of a deck and it's like while you might look at for the emperor as like a distilled version of what a game like that could be it gives immensely different vibes when the game that i think of for the emperor is is how do i use these nine cards

cleverly as opposed to radlands where it's like can i outplay my strategy against you i've got a two for for you shot and totten or battle line and.

Hanamikoji so it's funny because like yes and yes because hanamikoji is actually probably the most similar game to what i've been talking about for for the emperor like for the emperor that i was just talking about it was very much based on the dna of hanamikoji and battle line is an all-time favorite so that's interesting because Hanamakoji is like the whole game is denying your opponent the thing that they want right which was what you said

you didn't like about some wonder stool if I'm correct.

Yes but i also think it approaches it in a very different way so it's less about presenting choices rather than denying choices gotcha just to get meta for a second this this is why this exercise is so valuable we first talked about this on an episode i called unhelpful advice because i was like just have this conversation with a bunch of publishers which most people can't do it's very unhelpful advice but like even though obviously worked with all play nine times now but even just

doing this again i'm like oh this has made me think about like your company in different ways we're gonna do two more let's go with and i think this was also and i would also say this like i'm not interested in signing like two-player conflict-driven games but that two-player conflict-driven game was special so i that's the thing it's about threading that needle it's about like you're not interested in this but there is a hole in in the defenses that yeah and i'm not interested in solo

games but the solo game that i'm doing i was like i will do this solo game absolutely does.

That mean i'm going to do a million solo games in the future absolutely not i might not ever find a solo game that does for me what that game did but i am excited for just like like all play has a never say never now granted we're never going to do a four-hour civilization ever right right but we have a thing where it's like never say never because we will find a game that kind of like like oh we don't do this and we don't do that so we try not to pigeonhole ourselves but

at the same time like i'm also like aware of like i've taken 50 pitches for like this type of game we're not gonna we're and i've taken none of them right that's what led me to say a very specific design aesthetic they're interested in and genre is almost irrelevant to that design aesthetic and that as you know i love working with you guys it was it's what makes it'll play one of the most interesting because i think you and i and we've discussed this many times have very similar

brains like we both get tickled by the exact same kind of puzzle and so when i'm like i like this puzzle and i present it to you like i also like this puzzle let me put it on a shelf. So me, there's kind of a funny saying. Are you guys familiar with Dan Thuritt, who runs the website Space Biff? So me and Chad, the other owner of AllPlay, have a very funny saying in the office that we go, the only people in the world that actually know what an AllPlay game is, is me, Chad, and Dan Thuritt.

Because it is because because it is an an anomaly right like because we're like well what about this but you just said the opposite like like because it's like what is an all-play game it's a vibe right like an all-play game is a vibe right like like i can play something go this is an all-play game like we're about to do a game that ended up being a 16-page rulebook in merchants of andromeda right it was just on kickstarter it's like like a you hear all play in 16-page rulebook Like you go,

that's ridiculous, right? Now, granted, the rules are very simple and I can teach them in like less than 10 minutes, right? It's not that heavy of a game, but there's so many examples that needed to be given for how things score and are structured that we had to keep adding more pages to the rule. Which is also atypical for you guys. Like that is unusual. But the rest of the game, there's a screenwriting podcast I listen to called Sitcom Geeks.

And one of the hosts said something that stuck with me forever. He said, the reason people give you for denying a game is not necessarily the reason.

The reason honestly is it just wasn't good enough and good is obviously subjective but like if we give you the most all-play game in the world the rest of the stuff almost doesn't matter because it's the most all-play game in the world the you know that's so funny that you say that because i've gotten to the point now with designers where i try to be like not brutally honest about how bad their game is if i don't like it but brutally honest about like i'm not interested in this game because the

one thing when designers show you games is if like when i first started looking at games for all play i i used to do this thing where i'd be like like i was very nice and i was like and i'm not mean now but i used to be very nice and i'd be like oh you know this is really cool and you know i think it needs work here and here and here so like definitely blah blah blah like and to that designer he's leaving that meeting go oh cool if i change this

and this and show it to him in two months he's gonna sign it so now i have to be like hey thanks for showing me this this is not a good game for all play that being said i can give you constructive criticism about what I think about the game, but just know this is not an all play game. Right. And I try to do that like more because I don't want that.

I don't want to waste that designer's time or my time giving them any kind of false hope that like show, show this to me again and I'm going to sign it. Right. But at the same time, I'm like, like a lot of times the feedback that publishers give should just be like, sorry, I don't like your game.

Like i peter actually showed me a game peter showed me a game at tantrum con just a few weeks ago and literally peter designed it to a brief that like we were talking about like he kind of was like oh you want this and this and this and this and i played it i was like i just don't like this like i like i'm not like this isn't fun this isn't enjoyable and i i can understand that if peter was frustrated at that point to go but you said you wanted a game that did this and i designed a game for you

that does this and i'm like yeah but i don't like it like i probably told you this quote in the meeting which is it's another screenwriting thing the executive says i. Asked you for a brown suit and you brought me a brown suit and it's a great brown suit and the moment i saw it i realized i wanted a blue suit all along no one's at fault there. It's just how the creative process works yeah okay.

And also i've signed nine games with you so you can only be so mad at me right oh i i yeah i i do this i have no ego attached to me this i want to be a screenwriter so all of this is just bonus for me okay so i think this one was in the in the meeting three years ago cascadia no i would not have published cascadia really no i like the flat out team and i like randy a lot and i don't think cascadia is a bad game but we publish habitats and sometimes people are

like oh is habitats any good i'm like it's the better cascadia but like cascadia's puzzle doesn't scratch any type of itch that i have like i'm not saying it's bad it's wildly it's wildly more successful than any game i've ever published right i want to spill the jars you know how many people have done that like 30 or something right so like it's it's it's great it's it's phenomenally phenomenal it's very successful but like it the puzzle that it presents is not a puzzle i've had

cascading on my shelf ever since it came out i have not pulled it off since like the first time i've played it and i have no desire to i mentioned earlier oh sorry the construction started aj you ask the next one will i be okay sounds good i like habitats more as well but i i we have a game coming out very soon called odd land it was on a kickstarter last october and i actually. Found it what was the second best game on the kickstarter.

Okay but for a long time we have been calling that game card scadia because it's basically the same puzzle as cascadia but it's all on a shared board right with like but like it's seven turns right so you're not spending an entire you know it's seven turns you play a tile you play an animal and you're all on the same thing and so it is like distilled yeah it's like everything that you might want from that puzzle of cascadia but in this like very intense visceral

package and so i'm really excited for oddland to come out and see how people react to it because i'm also in love with the art that we put on the game too it's such a fun quirky uh game i mentioned earlier that joe and i have the same brain i love the flat out guys i love their team i love.

What they're doing none of their games connect with me and i wish they did because on paper a hundred percent of the games should connect with me a hundred percent of the time and yet i just i just bounce off them i i can't even explain why they're just like they're missing like spice or something for me and i love the aesthetic of them i just can't play them speaking of like games that flat out has done that i have signed a game that's very similar is like chomp is like point salad but you

actually do something instead of just put the vegetables in front of you right it's like goals on one side but on the other side are like these dinosaurs that you're forming in herds and they're like my favorite thing about chomp as far as like games that do something well right is it does that point salad thing where you are drafting cards that have goals on one side but then something else on the other side that you're scoring

points off of those goals with and that's point salad to a t but in this one you're forming this like dinosaur land where you're grouping these herds of dinosaurs together but my favorite thing about that game is you make all your decisions. And then at the end of the game, there's this cascade that happens where it's like, all right, it's like an order of operations thing. And I love it where it's like, all right, tar pits, kill dinosaurs, carnivores eat food.

If there is no food, they eat the herbivores, any herbivores that are living eat food. If they don't have food, they die. And so like the whole order of operations is like, all right, this dies and this dies and this dies and this dies and this dies and this dies.

And you go, oh, I didn't do that very well. did i sort of like far away has that same sort of like oh man okay aj what you got race for the galaxy yes really oh man this is this is blowing my mind that one i guess i guess it's icons but you've told me in the past and i think i can share this you don't like text on cards and that feels like a text on cards game yeah but i think it can be done a lot better i i think race for the galaxy suffers

from terrible graphic design that no one has ever put the effort into making better. Honestly, Race for the Galaxy, a good player aid and better graphic design, a great graphic designer and a great player aid would make that game so much more playable. Have you guys ever done a deck builder? Are you interested in deck builders? Or is that like... We've looked at potentially doing deck builders. Okay, I would have signed Dominion. I mean, Dominion's a masterpiece.

I would have been ashamed had you not signed dominion yeah like like dominion is a game that we would have signed like 100 like not even being like today would you sign it yeah 100 i still like dominion i think dominion coming out today would still be as big as dominion oh wow like that's my hot take like i still think like i think if there had never been a dominion and let's say marvel legendary was the first deck builder that ever came out right and then

you know all of these other deck builders came out came out essentially i think somebody could put out dominion and people be like what a fascinating streamlined because one of the things that i love about dominion is that you go all right we played this game of dominion now i'm going to take these two decks or cards out and put these other two cards in whole different game yeah and that's the beauty of dominion that i think a lot of other deck builders don't do thunderstone again.

Fine game but i'm still just going into a cave and fighting monsters right now i'm using a lightning axe instead of a flame sword right because i changed out the weapon or whatever and like it does that right but like dominion the whole game changes when you're like oh we're gonna take out these two types of cards and put these two types of cards the whole engine just changed right yeah and and i don't think other deck builders do that right you

play marvel legendary and you're like okay we're not fighting magneto this time now we're fighting green goblin and we changed out rogue and spider-man and put in, you know, Cyclops and whatever. Daredevil, you're still playing...

You're still playing marvel legendary right like it's like okay well the power sequences are a little bit different and now i can like draw a couple extra cards because of this ability from this card like like you're still playing the same game but dominion doesn't do that and that's why i think dominion could still be as big a hit as dominion if dominion had never that's so interesting so many of my games that's the goal vegas stripped from all play there's x casinos based

on play count five or six, and the different casinos you play in different combinations, they really mix it up. The game that you were being pitched when you said, this is not for me at all, and instead signed things it brings, I don't know if you know this, was a co-design with AJ.

Battle Bugs is sort of the working title, signed with AEG, and that one is the whole premise is like you switch it out, but that one was very head-to-head, and it was very wanted expansions, and you were like, none of this is for me.

I think that's a big thing that hasn't come up so far in the conversation, but you don't really have series of games you don't like release a game and then keep releasing more and more content for it at least so far right i do not like hungry franchises i would say the most that we've done is like kabuto sumo we have done two core boxes of kabuto sumo three expansions and like seven promo wrestlers right so kabuto sumo is the hungriest franchise that we have and honestly it's not

that hungry like it's like like there isn't like people that are like more kabuto sumo more i mean there are but dozens of them right you didn't you didn't build it for those people you didn't build it to like incite that reaction which is what battle bugs is very much meant to do yeah and that's the thing is like i don't like a hungry franchise i i assume this is a yes but just to just to tack on to race of the galaxy res arcana same designer kind of aesthetic i think

a better game what joe you blow my mind talk me through this difference i, this this is a genuine reaction this is not a bit for the podcast i don't understand.

I played it once it didn't stick oh res arcana is is top five game for me i would strongly recommend playing it again it's so good i love it it's it does a lot of stuff we talked about you only have eight cards for the whole game and the eight cards that you get make each game different so it does that tightness that you're talking about with the emperor game it's it who published res arcana was that gray fox oh it's an excellent question that i don't know the answer to res arcana

i think it was like the first gene or something wasn't it i don't think so i think it was uh sandcastle games oh you're right yeah that's that's all they've done wow i did not know that i love res arcana okay so joe our wrap-up questions are you taking submissions very very key thing we do 20 games a year like i like i don't like hungry franchises but i'm a hungry publisher i hate like you're so i mean i don't have room for hungry children yeah i i have.

I mean, if I don't get the games I need, I'll just, you know, see what Peter's doing, you know, like I told me once in a phone call that you just like keep a slot or two aside for me. It was very flattering. Yeah. How can people submit? How can people submit? I love taking submissions. I love being pitched at conventions. At most of the major conventions that I go to most of the major conventions and I set aside specific time for people to be able to pitch to me. Right.

I do require that I'm sent a sell sheet in advance. That being said, I need to see if we've actually set up an email for like where to send submissions, help at all play.com. I'm sorry. Help at all play.com is where you can send game submissions and those will get forwarded to the right place. But we should set up like a submissions or like games at allplay.com just to have a collection of where we go.

That being said, I always take, like before I set up an in-person meeting, I require a sell sheet, right? Because I can very easily tell if your game is just not for us off of a sell sheet pretty easily. And I can't tell a hundred percent if it's like yes or no, but I can tell like if it's an absolute no, right? Like I can look at your sell sheet and I can go two hours.

No, like no, like I'm just not interested in your, you know, you got tracks on your board and all kinds of like Euro-y things and it's a two hour play time. Like, no, like let's not waste each other's time. Right. So I can often like look at a sell sheet and just know if I'm interested or not interested as a publisher. Yeah. Don't also, I'm not interested in your tile laying game about building a park because I saw 50 of those last year and I didn't like any of them and yours isn't better.

So I'm sorry. That's, that's more my joke with other publishers of like how many, like when we when we take when we go to like pitches we're like oh how many tile laying games about building a park did you look at yeah uh sorry i just if you're making a tiling about building a park i'm sure it's the best best best tiling about building a park that's ever been made so keep working on it okay so other than sell sheet any must haves or must not haves

either for the game itself or the submission process i mean you said not two hours not about building a park uh must have a sell sheet anything that like stone my for example has a strict it must go two to five ideally what and they'll do the solo mode anything like that i i guess the the simple fact that it has to fit inside your biggest box but it's not terraforming ours the components can be condensed from what people were imagining originally yeah

but that's not their job that's my job if i like a game enough i'll figure that out gotcha like i said any game can be a 40 game like any game could be it just takes creativity and then anything that do you want to say to the designers who are interested in publishing in pitching to you or to anyone listening i would say that um. If you're designing a game that is inspired by other games, that's not a bad thing to do.

I often, one of the things I'll often ask in a pitch is like, oh, what games inspired this? Right. I also hate the answer of like nothing. This is completely unique. And I'm like, really? Okay, buddy. But also like, like be aware of what your inspirations are. And that's really good, right? It's good to be inspired by designs and to iterate on what other designers have done. But be very aware of that, right?

Because it is very much like lets publishers know where the game that you're working on sits in the market. Now, that being said, push the boundaries, right? Like, like make something that you don't know that somebody would publish, right? Make something, sorry, make something that you're inspired by. One of the games that has come out recently that I'm like, like frustrated, right? Frustrated me. Cause, cause, cause I'm like, I've looked at 50 tile lane games about building a park.

I've looked at 17 trick taking games where you're collecting resources and filling contracts. It's all like, like, I can't tell you how many people are designing the same stuff out there. Right. But you know what i played last year and i just i sat there just fuming mad is i played, drapolter by oink games and i go why did no one come to me with a game where you're holding these objects in your hand and like trying to like knock them out in like this like like like and.

Like no one has ever pitched me a game that is that interesting no one right no one has ever come in front of me and put out this like big map of like this where's waldo art and go okay so we're solving crimes because if they had ever done that i would have gone signed right now like here's your contract right and i do find interesting games i think all play has done a lot of really clever, interesting games, but I am looking for designers that are pushing the boundaries of games, right?

And that's not to say make it longer, make it bigger, make it heavy. Like I'm saying like push the boundaries of games, micro macro and drip holter. I guarantee you the, like so many designers or, okay, another one, the gang. I think the gang that came to my number one game of last year, the gang, the gang, I think that most designers have literally had the thought of designing the game in their mind.

They're like, oh, what if there was a game that did this? And they immediately throw it out and go, that wouldn't be good. Right? Like, if you're a designer and you play that game, you have to be mad by going, why didn't I think of this? This is so good. Right? This is so good. Right? But people aren't showing me those types of designs. People are showing me another polyomino game, another tableau building game.

Another this type of game, right? Like do something that is just out of the box, right? Like somebody had to design these things for the first time. And most of those games have gone on to be massive hits in the industry because they're pushing the boundaries. And so that would be like my advice is like, if you want a publisher to sign your game, you might have to find the publisher that understands what they're going to do with the product.

And I think a lot of publishers don't know what they're doing with products. So, you know, that's its own challenge. But like, if you find a publisher that understands what to do with the product and you show them something that is innovative and novel and unique, they will make it a success. I think that, I think like things and rings is like a story of that type of success, right? Peter was literally like, I don't know if this is a thing.

Like, I don't know if this is a game or not, but he showed it to me. And I said, I literally like in that meeting when I'm taking this, right?

Because I not only saw what it was, but i saw the vision of what it could be and things and rings is a very very very successful product and so i would just say like push the boundaries like if you have an idea that's like maybe like follow through with it because it might be one of the great games that comes out next year i love that i love that so much that's that's genuinely like listening to that i'm like oh man i've got a big pile of game ideas that i was like ah that's maybe too

hard or too weird now i'm like i'm gonna i'm gonna pull this out thank you joe so much for your time we really appreciate it thanks for kicking off our new publisher series and i'm gonna once more recommend that you check out joe's podcast and obviously his enormous collection of games that he publishes but probably more relevant to the podcast listeners is the podcast the bits with joe and nick on youtube yeah we'll put a link to that in the show

notes and we'll put a the email that he gave us for submissions in there as well yes and if that changes joe you're saying maybe you'd add like a submission portal if joe lets us know we'll edit that in the show notes as well yeah cool thanks joe really appreciate your time and i will see you in like four days time yeah absolutely all right thank you bye everyone piano plays softly. Music.

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