#62 - Audience Sell-Sheets 3

Music. And welcome to fun problems the problems of fun i'm peter c hayward i'm aj brandon and today it's just the two of us and no one else no one else is on this show i will not i will not stand this alex erasure i think i think you are already our most frequent guest star but you're back for more yeah i like to say long time caller first time listener.

Because we are doing more aj we're doing more aj oh my thought we were friendly family from this show.

What are we doing today, AJ? Today, we're going to be talking more about cell sheets. We're going to be doing some community submitted cell sheet reviews and we're bringing Alex on because Alex has been a scout for Pandasaurus. So he has a lot of experience looking at cell sheets and we're very curious to see how our views on cell sheets line up with his and get a different perspective on the show because obviously everyone's heard a lot of our perspectives.

It's cool to hear somebody else's. Yes, and especially because a lot of our thoughts are theoretical or gut, whereas Alex, literally his job was going through cell sheets and determining which hits that Pandasaurus would publish, which he did for two years, three years? How long were you there for? Three years, yeah. Three years. Before we jump into it, Alex, any general thoughts on cell sheets that you want to share? Yeah, well, so I know we're going to, it looks like it's already pulled up.

It looks like we're going to start with looking at one of mine. I just want to say I don't consider myself an expert at making cell sheets. I think I'm going to have decent feedback on what publishers are looking for when they see them. I don't think I'm good at them, so feel free to tear mine apart.

I don't also make sell sheets for every game I make. You're in the same boat as me. Yeah. I do what you do now, too, right? You design for a specific publisher, and if that doesn't land, then the sell sheet is to go wider. But it's not always my first step anymore.

Okay. AJ, Alex, everyone. this game is called imperial garden alex would you sign this.

No i would i would say this is probably kind of generic looking no, honestly though probably not i i like i said i don't think i love my own sell sheets that much so this is a game that was signed it's it had like a very loose japanese garden theme that they stripped away when they when they published it right so it it was a game where the sell sheet was enough to get a you know a play test scheduled and then that led to hey you

know i i think i can say this is a game that was signed with derrington press so they're the the, auxiliary company to critical role it's coming out at gen con this year and it is called solar gardens now it's like a solar punk kind of you're building a rooftop garden that's sort of clean energy you know, I saw the physical prototype for this at Gamma, so I'm pretty sure it's public. They're showing it off. Cool. I saw the physical printed version.

This game was pitched to them actually by an intermediary, Eric Slauson, who is a friend of mine and also a designer and editor. He had a connection to Darrington and he said, hey, I'm pitching them some stuff. Do you want me to throw in any of your cell sheets?

This was one of them. It led to a play with them. and then one interesting thing about daring 10 is they really struggled i think internally with being able to see it as a different theme like in their heads so they asked eric and i to go.

Make basically an entire second version that was solar punk which we did and then they saw that and they were like oh this is what we're looking for um so so i think we've talked about that in a previous episode sometimes publishers just can't take that step and you have to do it for them and that's a big thing with cell sheets especially and and honestly it was it's a light enough game that we were willing to bite that off that's not something i would necessarily be willing to do

all the time for every publisher it's there's there's so many reasons that a game can get a no that to put in like hours and hours of work and like you know we for one specific publisher yeah game crafter copy and stuff to send to them like that was a lot of like upfront trust that it would actually land i'm sure part of it too is that you weren't you weren't super attached to this theme you went like it has to be this theme you're like oh yeah that is a better theme not at

all it was just a placeholder which so let's just jump in and talk through it so imperial garden two to five players 20 minutes ages eight and up welcome to katsura imperial gardens in kyoto in this light tile drafting and placement game players have a four by four grip on which they assemble their gardens each tile has unique combination of elements such as flowers animals paths koi ponds etc that award points according to placement and or quantity tiles are chosen by an

innovative pick or push mechanic that gives players the opportunity to balance the allure of points in their hand against the thrill of gambling on getting. The perfect piece to make their garden stand out from the rest and we've got. The components and the designers yeah and an image down the bottom of what the. Game looks like i think at the end of the game that looks like, looks like correct so aj i've i've played this a lot and alex has designed this a lot so.

I i i have some sell sheet thoughts which is that i i don't and i think alex would not disagree with this i don't think this is a particularly effective sell sheet i think that the game is fun and the the mechanic is innovative i've played it but as a sell sheet this this seems relatively generic i would want to see more about like you mentioned there's an innovative pick or push mechanic i would want to know what that is and how it works because to me that's sort of

the the way into this game being different from the rest, That's my number one note as well. It's the show, don't tell. Right now I'm hearing there's an innovative mechanic, but I don't get to see what the innovative mechanic is. I do get a little taste of it in that it's, you know, pick or push, I assume push your luck to be able to get a better tile or get more tiles.

And that could definitely be an interesting spin on what's otherwise looking like, you know, moderately common light Euro game where you have a mechanism A for gaining resources, mechanism B for deploying them onto a spatial puzzle.

But yeah i agree with peter i don't i think this also leans more into the like descriptive not not excitement sort of thing i i i feel compelled to mention that joe's main comment in his episode was he's sick of tile placement park building games which this very literally is all right how about we move on to some other people's and alex did you have any thoughts if you were redoing it today is there something you do differently you know i will say one thing that

i do in all my i know we're only looking at one of mine today but one thing that i i do do in all of my games when i make a sell sheet for them is i have like a splash image up top with a title treatment which you know even if if we don't like the bottom 70 i do think that that is is nice just to give it like kind of like a full art thing somewhere on the alex sent in three i just want to do one because it's it's the opener but you use the same structure on each of them too which i think

is is good if you're if you're a publisher looking through five of them at once you're not trying to find like where everything is it obviously makes things easy on your end i worry a little bit that it doesn't give you enough opportunity to do what we talk about a lot which is like step one step two step three like that that how to play on the sell sheet i think is one of the most valuable things you can do so there's pros and cons having a sort of template like this.

One other thing I did want to note is down at the bottom next to my name, I put what other games I've designed. And so some of my other sell sheets that are co-designs, I do the same thing for both myself and my co-designers. I think if you aren't, you know, Elizabeth Hargrave or Matt Leacock or something. Which so few of us are.

But you do have another published game or some other thing you can hang your hat on it's it's good to put that in here so that if a publisher is just flipping through it they're like oh they made this other game or you know i know they're good for it someone trusted them enough to publish you know for sure all right aj hit us one that we have not seen yet okay modern tile a competitive strategy tile placement game the board is your canvas but

also a battleground where strategy meets artistry that is awesome i have long wanted to make basically exactly this game so good good way to sort of hook me just with that little description there oh really i i don't i don't get that at all i'm too literal i'm like what do you what does that mean what does that look like so so part of it is the context of i can also see the board you know but this is just at a glance before

we've sort of gone into anything so do you want to describe the board and the stuff that you can see. Sure. So I can see there's a wide abstract square grid with different colors in sort of abstract splotches. I'm so intrigued why this appeals to you. I don't get this at all. So the idea of an abstract strategy game that as you play it becomes an abstract painting. Oh, okay. I understand now. Thank you. Alex, you want to read the game mechanics for us?

Sure. Game mechanics. Place one tile in your turn according to rules derived from color harmony theory. That's very cute.

Add token to claim patches of color, scoring points for each tile in the patch when it closes area majority with the player having more tokens on a patch scores as a player interaction section positive each tile has two colors which may benefit you and your opponent take that slash defend connect two patches to share slash takeover points black to a block to defend i thought it said black to defend like it was a chess game i was like what uh block to defend and

as a pablo picasso quote good good artist copy great artist steal there's a stargazing 2004 which i assume is just a joke on like that's what that art is called an actual painting i assume so i gotcha because on on the top right it has joe jack and jill tiger 2024 acrylic on canvas so i'm guessing and then says name the masterpiece on a museum oh there we go thank you i missed that it's it's a object, hierarchy thing strategic depth expand your patches risking takeover

versus close off patches and recycle your limited supply of tokens avoid interaction playing slow and safe versus connect others patches with higher scores and risk alex what's your gut say give us your scout opinion on this would you want to play a game does it make sense to you any notes you're our guest we want to hear your brain thoughts. I guess at an initial glance, I'm not incredibly excited to see more.

I don't have an appeal. The theme does not appeal to me, I think, as much as it did to AJ. That said, I don't think it looks like it wouldn't work or that there's anything wrong with the game. It's just, you know, it's a low to medium amount of interest for me. I will say one thing that I just having looked through this now while we're talking about it, it seems like they've got two example, you know, here's what the game looks like at the end pictures.

And you know i'm not a modern art critic but they both look really samey to me and so i would wonder how interesting would this be to play more than once in terms of what the end result is if that's a big selling point is that it makes a painting yeah you've played blockers right alex yeah blockers is an example of like if you don't know the game the board always looks the same at the end if you do know the game you're like oh my goodness wow like it's it's so different and so,

i i think you're right that as a selling point these boards aren't interesting but as a player i could see them being really like oh look at that big splotch of blue in the middle that's so different to the other games i've played so i don't i don't see i'm just repeating what you said i don't know if that's a useful selling point aj what are your thoughts yeah i think on second blush looking at the paintings there it's not like i don't look at that and

say oh that looks like an abstract painting it kind of just looks like random colors whereas i was expecting, when i when i just first read the tagline and in the corner of my eye i could see the painting I was kind of expecting something with a bit more structure to it, something that looks more like a thing. And like you said with blockus, in blockus, there's colors that weave in and out of each other in more specific ways because there's a rule structure that creates it.

Whereas in this one, it sounds like it would do that from the rules, but then I'm looking at these ones, and it seems like they're more atomized, like the sections of each one are more self-contained in some ways. And I feel that the sort of core that I'm hearing here is it's effectively, you know, an opportunistic tactical game where someone leaves an open edge and you can exploit it. It's very similar to many, many tile-laying Carcassonne-esque games.

You know what's funny? This sell sheet at no point says abstract. I was about to say something like that. I feel like an interesting hook would be it's an abstract game that's abstract art. Yeah.

My my big thoughts firstly that this theme anti connects with me because i am just way too literal i think we've discussed this a bunch of times where it's like when you're making art you and other painters aren't on the same canvas competing for space that's that's not how it works and i understand that games don't have to be literal but like from that first sentence the board is your canvas but also a battleground i'm like

that's that's not how that's not how any of you know that that old commercial like that's not how any of this works i just i can't that that's such a turnoff specifically to me i'm not saying this is going to be true of everyone but like if you play a prototype me you often hear me be like but why does why does this thing do this and it just it bugs the hell out of me i am pretty sure you have one of those example photos it's a shirt though i feel like

i feel like i've seen you wear this game before uh and then my second one is this sell sheet as a whole and and please disagree with me if you're seeing it where i'm not doesn't give me any strong hooks like i don't know why someone would buy this game i think the intention of the hook is the finished painting at the end but as we already said like that's not really coming through here.

And so I think there are enough abstract games that are like color competition that I just don't, I don't feel like this stands out. Yeah, the, the way you place tiles looks pretty straightforward. So I would want to know more about what it means that the rules are derived from color harmony theory, I guess, if that's an interesting hook to how you're placing them.

Because it looks like you're just matching colors right like it's hard to tell so maybe it's expanding on that to kind of you know say why it's not just you know matching an edge or something i will also say having a section that's the mechanics that seems like semi turn structure and then having a separate section that's like how the player interaction works i was about to call that out yeah i feel like they've repeated this information

it feels very show don't tell Before we move on, the last thing I want to point out is down the bottom, in the center, there's a little logo that says, play test did it break my game? I bring this up because we've never seen this before. Is that a thing that would sway you? Do you care about that? Is that a good use of space, a bad use of space? What are you thinking? It's not something I've heard of, so I wouldn't move the needle for me.

Actually, I just noticed something, too. Because the time, player count, and age was at the bottom, we completely forgot to mention those.

Oh, yeah. So it's ages 8 and up, players 2 to 4, time 45 minutes.

That is long seems really long for a game like this good call um aj any thoughts on break my game i have no thoughts on break my game okay so i would probably just cut that i just i just don't think it adds it like what what this is signaling is i play tested it and you shouldn't need to tell us that you play tested your game that you're pitching even if it's with an external organization, yeah okay what do we got aj's stuff with a smiley face how lovely.

You don't have to blur it tag you're it nostalgic fun in a small package ages eight plus two to four players 20 to 30 minute play time this before we even start reading this has done some really delightful things with like font and colors like there's splashes of primary colors it's got a very kid like sketchy feel even in choice of font uh it is a little bit hard to read but i think that might be more that i'm reading it over an internet

connection than an inherent problem but if you guys disagree no i agree i think this visually is capturing me right away right i i like the font choices i like the the kind of cartoony nature of it it makes me feel like i should read the, sections of it sort of like comic panel style to see what's happening it's also very low on text which which we generally like aj you want to read this one quick teach with clear words and icon No, click cards, cards.

So immediately we've run into the font problem that I was talking about. I think, honestly, this would all be fine if all this text was about two or three times the size. It just needs to be blown up because there's so little of it. You can have it take up more space and be more...

More big-like, as we say in Australia. I'm going to say right off the bat, too, it's saying explicitly that it has clear cards and iconography when the picture that they used for that one is so zoomed in to all the components. It doesn't look like it's clear. I'm sure if it was much more zoomed in, it would be clear, but there's definitely a mismatch there. The image on the right helps a little bit.

Unless this is a game that's being pitched as you're buying the art with the game, it having clear cards and iconography wouldn't, really affect my decision making because we'd be replacing all of that anyway i i would say this this is firmly in the show don't tell like if if a tile only has one symbol and nothing else you don't have to tell me that it's a clear card if a card just as this one does it says stream and has a picture of a stream and nothing else great i can tell how

simple that is by looking at it you don't need to say look this card has very little stuff on it just show me the cards and i'll be like oh wow this is really elegant and clean and not not complicated and even the quick teach like if it's a really quick teach then you can teach me on your cell sheet yeah use that space to teach it so next one is go ahead peter no i was gonna say the next one is program roots and change moves on the fly that's

interesting they kind of tell us yeah it kind of tells me we've talked about this before it kind of tells me the exact wrong amount of information, sure i think based on their their diagram i can hazard a guess which is saying that But if your first card that you've programmed is stream, then from where you're standing, you can move to any of those three streams. So it's sort of flexible based on what you've picked, yeah.

I think, just to throw this out there, I think their first image is so busy because it's fully zoomed out.

I think they wanted to show all the components, but I think for a game, is this aesthetic and this simple i'd almost just completely kill that first every you know show everything thing that the components down at the bottom handle that yeah and then just have the example on the right side blow it up a little bit actually let's dive into that very briefly there is a common piece of advice when you're making a sell sheet to show everything like have a shot of the whole game alex when when

you were scouting was that a thing that was a was a deal breaker or a look for a must-have or a don't care or other for me it's a don't care i i can i've looked at enough of these that i know what the component list is going to translate to from like an msrp standpoint if it looks really good out on the table then it's a selling point if it looks like it would be a table hog or or it looks kind of ugly you know in terms of how much space it's taking up

i think it's a counterpoint so you might want to avoid it just because it could be a negative but i i mean it's advice that i follow when i make sell sheets i do try and show a picture of sort of everything full game on the table but i don't know like if we talk about my sell sheet right like i was showing what one player's board looks like i wasn't showing all four players full floor on a table and the things in the middle aj what were you saying right.

I was just saying that i think if we cut the first section then we can split up the second section to two parts so it's step one program out your card step two you can make adjustments to those or you can use them flexibly like i say we like we uh we are making this.

It's just a habit of always co-designing always like okay how do we solve this problem right tense moments of running and tagging i feel like if the game is called tag you're it you don't you don't need to tell me that you're running and tagging those are the only parts of tag.

Yeah if i didn't if i did interpret the way the programming works correctly i'm pretty sure you have yeah then then what i'd like to see maybe is sort of like a one two three with two players on the map where I flip a card and move, then it shows what my opponent does to try and chase me, and then it shows what I do to get away from them or something. Plus, I'm reading the sell sheet again, plus slide and swing moves have thematic patterns.

Aj alex i keep saying aj so you're still talking to aj this alex you're an interloper get out alex is this a you want to play pass what what are you thinking as a scout at this stage.

If this was brought to me if this was sent to me by a designer ahead of either a pitch meeting or a convention meeting on tts or or at in person i would say yes this is something i want to play if it was a because it you know it looks like it'd be like quick to learn i could it looks like you'd get the gist off like three times yeah if this was a cold call submission just like coming into my inbox it would depend on what my company was looking for this is not something kandasaurus

would have published so i would have really the needle there interesting as i i would want to play this because i i if if it's as simple as i'm imagining which is literally and again i'm having i'm having to do a lot of inferring here which is not necessarily a bad thing one person is it they're trying to chase everyone else you're programming cards you get the flexibility of movement that seems simple enough that i'm like i i want to play it i want to see if it if it delivers on the promise the

the first image has a whole bunch of stuff on the outside like these little square tokens that i just don't know what they oh i think yeah i don't know what those do and so it again it's it's sort of giving me like the wrong amount of information where i feel like i can play the whole game from this but then you've given me a thing i'm like that doesn't fit into my mental mod the the 15 square scoring tiles i don't know how this game scores and i don't need to but it seems really clean

and elegant and then you add in scoring and i'm like what how. This looks like a game that could be put on TTS very easily. And if it is already on TTS, I would like the sell sheet to say that. So because for me, a lot of times. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. And when I was shouting, if there was a game that I was on the fence about, but I could play it digitally, I would.

It's a way lower threshold for what. If I'm on the fence about a game, I generally lean towards not having the designer mail me a copy. Right. I have other things that I'm more hyped on. But if it's on TTS, there's no burden there. I don't feel guilty about making someone produce and ship a prototype. This is why we want to start having guests on here, because I would never have thought of that. AJ, I don't know if this has crossed your radar before.

So when you say you want to say it's on TTS, like a sentence somewhere, if the screenshots were clearly TTS, what are you looking for? Yeah. Do you have the pirate game sell sheet that I... Not handy. Okay. It's in my email, I think. Sure. That's a different Alex. That's not me. Oh, right.

Anyway like yeah i just one of my games that i have a cell sheet for that we can look at later it had a physical image of the game and then off to the side it also showed it sort of you know top-down table view on tts laid out with underneath like you know available to play on tts, that's fascinating i would never have thought to put that in a cell sheet that's so interesting it's this might just be like you know post-covid advice but when i was at pandasaurus

it was the three years basically immediately following covid so the vast majority of the pitches i got were virtual and it was also harder to do playtesting in person so the ability to play something digitally meant a lot versus needing to have a physical copy sent and then play it with that is that is fascinating so i think our broad in agreement notes here cut that first image make it clearer what you're doing and otherwise i think this is really

cool i would i would want play this for sure yeah i want to play this just me personally yeah i have a red flag that neither of you guys brought up which is just with the concept of playing a game of tag in a board game.

In tag you have one person who is it they have a clear goal chase other people the other people have a goal run away from that person if on a board they are significantly closer to one person than the rest of the people they're probably going to chase that person the rest of the players might have nothing to do that's very interesting like well this this is why i was saying a i'm intrigued if it works and and that that's sort of what i meant when i was like this this

concept is cool but if it if it's not fun for most people it just doesn't work and b i think that's what these square scoring tiles are for but i have no context for them outside of that yeah it's hard to tell it kind of looks like that the bottom left image was saying you want to go from a slide to a tree maybe, yeah it's it's it's very unclear okay let's move on to golfer.

Competitive competitive golf trick taker all players control the same ball trump suit based on ball position least tricks taken wins i am not a trick-taking man i've obviously played them i grew up playing 500 which is the best trick-taking game and no americans know it so my life is misery aj you even i assume you're not trick-taking just based on everything i know about you this is one.

Of those rare rare things that we overlap on alex are you a trick-taking person i am yeah okay cool not like heavy into it but i i don't dislike it as a genre like i play i i don't dislike it it just has to really do something to oppress me i play a lot of bridge i went to the indie game market at dice tower west and it's a bunch of people selling like literally homemade games which is a really cool concept and.

I think like 70 of them are trick takers like that is apparently the space that a lot of the people in the indie game design community really live in and so i bought one or two i haven't played him yet but it's it's such a fascinating little area duration 30 to 45 minutes play account three to five ages 10 plus we've got four steps which i like straight away and little text and diagram so build the golf course together from starting hand oh i like that yeah that's

a good hook right off the bat that makes me want to learn more lead player aims to control card values played that is word salad to me maybe that's clearer to you alex if you were to the tree taking space no it's it it appears from the diagram and what's below it in the image four that there's some kind of physical component that is like a ruler that measures oh i see and okay so i don't think we ever discussed this this is a downside of of using an ill like

of using graphic design to show how your game works and also graphic design to highlight things i just a hundred percent assumed that was an overlay like like the arrows are clearly not actual physical arrows i just thought that was too but i think you're right so that that's sort of simulate the golf swing i guess or something like that play into the trick and avoid winning winner takes the trick and hits the ball oh i just realized least trick

taking these least tricks taken wins for a golf game that's very cute winner takes the trick and hits the ball except. Okay. I don't think this sentence makes sense. Alex, can you have a crack at reading this? Sure. So if this is tied to number three, so three is play into the trick and avoid winning, except when the last trick that hits the ball into the hole to decrease the number of tricks taken. I don't know exactly what that means. I think it's actually tied to four.

So you take the trick, but if you win the, oh God, that's the sentence.

If you win the last trick that hits the ball into the hole to decrease the number of tricks taken, there's like seven clauses there that are very loosely connected yeah so my i think i think we would all agree with the note of like maybe maybe rewrite that my big my big question is it seems like it's a lot about that last round where you where you're trying to like hit it exactly in my my question is what, what does it matter who hits the ball where it

goes in the previous rounds i feel like this sell sheet is kind of telling us procedurally what you do but i don't have a clear heuristic for like what my goal is on those turns see i i read it as lose trick lose trick lose trick what's that you've messed that up and won a bunch of tricks it's okay you have one final shot to reduce your score oh okay so it makes sense to be that it's also i'm trying to figure out if it's a. It i don't think this is right but for whatever reason it's making

me wonder if we're each playing a golf course where like you're trying to be low and everyone's trying to stop you until the final hand so like we each get a turn being the main player well it does say least tricks taken wins so it's ultimately about each hand not going to you so then what does the what does the ball exactly mean yeah there's a lot of so so the the ball at the end oh you mean what the ruler thing, well what is the last turn what is the goal of that so the last turn is let's

say let's say i've won every trick i've played really badly and i've won six tricks and you guys have won none. Let's say you've won one and two and I've won six the last one if you nail it then you can subtract a number from your score so it's a way of coming back it's a catch up mechanism that means you're never out of the game yeah exactly it's a shoot the moon, I think this sounds, I don't know, I'm not a trick-taking guy. I don't think I've ever designed or published a trick-taking game.

I say, I don't know, as if you could surprise me and be like, ha-ha, Critical Kitchen was a trick-taking game all along. So for me, this is a pass, but I think that's a genre thing. I know that this is a thriving genre that people are excited for. Yeah, I would say that the idea of building your own golf course with the cards is interesting enough to me that I would want to play this. I would definitely want to play this.

The confusion there isn't like, oh, I'm turned off. It's like, I'm confused.

I'm frustrated because i want to know more because i'm interested right yeah i could easily like if if the actual trick-taking part of it is pretty generic and rote i don't think the gimmick is enough to make up for that but it's definitely enough to make me want to find out if the trick taking is fun yeah i think the step two is the thing that adds some spice and flavor to the trick-taking where the lead player can control the card values played by the i don't know how it works but i.

I feel like this is probably a very solid interesting trick-taking game which is just not for me which is the whole point of this podcast is and it's specifically making me happy i would definitely echo aj's it like right off the bat comment about changing the font that was i don't yeah the title font golfer was a loopy calligraphy font that was very hard to read oh we didn't mention by the way um all of those sell sheets are going to be in the show notes with

contact detail scrub so if you're listening to the podcast version of this you can now pull them up and and have a look at what we're seeing um and obviously on youtube you can just look at what we're seeing and i'll be retroactively adding them to the previous one oh thank you very nice of you the artifact.

Exploit alien technologies in a tense and dynamic positional game okay before we even go any further a tense and dynamic positional is positional game a term i just don't know is that clear to you guys or is that no i don't know what that means i can i feel like i can infer from context that it is some amount of like don't you say positioning don't you say positioning well we're on a map and and where we are relative to each other affects what

we can do i could just describe like a hundred different kinds of games yeah it's not a it's not a it's not it's not an established term is known enough that it can carry its own weight and so again even before we go any further i would probably want to like work out what your game isn't and say that and if it doesn't have an established genre maybe don't sell it like it does aj you look like you disagree no i'm just don't mind me carry on i got two to four players ages

12 plus 20 to 45 minutes that is a wide player range what does that tell you time time yes there's a wide yeah two to four that's crazy no one in our industry has ever done that before alex what does that uh 20 to 45 minutes tell you yeah so i'll say as a scout the unless the play time was wildly off base for what i would expect a game of that weight to be i didn't put too much stock into it i feel like.

Designers myself included sometimes tend to be not great at estimating times and also you're not sure you know how to convey it if it's i don't.

Know say 12 minutes per player or something and that's the range that they came up with that's what i'd assume based on that range that it's it's player count dependent i think we've talked about this in previous episodes but obviously a sell sheet is for selling selling selling and more than just selling it's about like conveying what your game is and i feel like 20 to 45 minutes does a very poor job of conveying anything about your game like dynamic positional game i

think does a poor job 25 25 minutes instead what i would do and i'm not sure if this and alex shut me down if you disagree is i would be like what what tone do i want to set with that time and say that you're right it's not going to be accurate no time on any box is ever accurate the stupidest example is scythe where he just added up all the playtest times and and averaged them and was like yeah it's 112 minute game or whatever it was it was 72 minute game which means nothing go ahead

aj i think what i would do is i'm guessing this is a player count thing because 20 minutes for two players 45 for four it sounds to me like this game just scales poorly in terms of the time with multiple players it just strictly adds more that that exact amount of turns to the game so i would just say 10 minutes per player which feels a little bit cleaner yeah i would say something like that okay alex i was gonna say looking ahead it seems like the way you win is by like it says

connect four spaces to win right so it could just be if you play well you can pull it off significantly more quickly than if you don't play well.

Purely in terms of signaling i would just pick a time that reflects the tone that you want to set and say that or aj's point about 10 minutes per player is also i think really good i think alice's points for garbage no i i do i do think unless unless your game really really really has a wide range pick a single time and list it and then it's up to the publisher how they want to list it yeah i think i think that's a good point peter like just convey the gist of it if this game is

a light snappy game say 20 minutes if this game is a you know think your game put 45 45 map yeah if it is really wildly that different like you have no idea every time you sit down you know i was i was uh playing a prototype the other day and it was literally i think 10 minutes to two and a half hours it's almost never gonna be 10 minutes it's like but it can be like change the game people uh i i'll push back on that that time you killed me is an abstract strategy chess chess is is i mean chess

is an old game that no one's pitching but Like that time you killed me works like chess in that you can win in like seven moves if you just completely outmaneuver your opponent. Yeah. I'm pitching around a game right now that I can't mention because it's got IP attached to it, which is also like an abstract strategy game where you can win very, very quickly. And then you just play again. Like the average game is 20 minutes,

but you can win in three minutes. And I don't think it's a flaw of the game. It's just the nature of... What's Shot and Totten, the Reiner Knizia game? One of my favorite games of all time. If you play that really effectively, you can win in like five moves. I don't think it's a flaw of the game, but I wouldn't put that on a sell sheet. Is Shot and Totten a two-player game? Yeah, Battleline. I showed it to you.

Yeah, I was thinking that was the one. Yeah, but so every game you just listed is a two-player head-to-head game, which for whatever reason I think makes a wide range of time outcomes feel more digestible to me than if you sit down with a group of four people and say this game is going to be, you know, 10 to 2 hours.

Yeah. It also depends on something like setup time. You know, if it's a card game, you shuffle the deck and then you're good to go. In chess, granted, you have to put all the pieces out, but oftentimes people have chess that's just set out ready to go on like tables and stuff. Good news, AJ. This game is fast to set up. Yeah. I thought that too. Alex, you want to read it from the top? Sure. Okay. So, each turn, add a tile to the play area, opening up new knowledge, resources, and features.

Wait, wait, wait. I think that's opening up new knowledge, resources, and features. New knowledge, resources, and features. Place a researcher on the new tile and move a researcher to enable you to exploit the available opportunities.

If you're able, tap into... were you stopping me yeah i think i will so this is this is a lot of i want to say like salesy language like if you're buying a car they don't say that the car goes 60 miles per hour i mean hopefully it goes faster than that instead they'll be like yeah you know the the speed will allow you to explore the world like you know they go very flowery that's what i'm for this is very flowery language so like add a tile are you joking or are you serious oh i'm

serious okay add a tile to the play area opening up new knowledge like the fact that it opens up new stuff is sort of it's very tell don't show like you're you're telling me like the consequences of these actions in a lot of words so move a researcher to enable you to exploit the available opportunities that's flowery language. That's very, like, every time you move, it opens up a world of possibilities for you.

And I'm like, don't try to sell me the game in your sell sheet, which sounds contradictory. Like, just show me how it works. And I will conclude from that. I just don't agree with that at all. Good thing we had a tiebreaker this episode. Actually, while you two were going back and forth, I was thinking I'm going to be Goldilocks here because it's neither too flowery or not flowery enough. Well, the average of that means you did the perfect job.

It's not that it's overly flowery, I guess. It's that it's not telling me as much as I would want it to for that number of words. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's very woody.

In a way that doesn't add anything that that's what i think of as flowery language so like this could be each turn add a tile place a researcher cool yeah that's fair alex gonna continue yeah if you are able tap into knowledge resources to claim a space on the project board and use the powerful action that unlocks including access to replicants power reactors black holes and alien slime which are each color coded with different little things i i actually really like the color coding yeah no

i think that's yeah i would need a little bit more to know exactly what that means but i the fact that it's telegraphing that there's sort of different suits of some yeah is interesting that's great connect four spaces on the project board to win but your limited supply of researchers means that tough choices have to be made and how to deploy them the game is fast to set up and quick to play but with agonizing decisions where every move could help your rivals

you know what it is i've pinpointed my issue yeah i'll see you go first well i was going to say i feel like this is the third or fourth time they've mentioned tough choices and agonizing decisions without actually giving any examples of what those might be so it's really hard to know what, an actual turn looks like we got a request to do a rule book episode which i'm actually really excited for because i love rule books and aj hates them so that'll be a peter that episode.

And I've worked out what my issue with this is This whole thing reads like The summary at the start of a rulebook. Not a sell sheet. Like the summary of a sort of rule book is just to give you an overview of what you're doing so that the following instructions have context. That's what this feels like. This is like, Hey, you're going to be adding tiles, which open up stuff. They're going to be placing researchers. Here's roughly what they do. You're going to be doing this.

And like, cool. That's great at the start of a rule book, because I know that directly following that is how it all works. A sell sheet almost wants to be the opposite. A sell sheet wants to be how it works in a way that gives you like the information. Does that make sense?

Uh, not, not, not, not that all sell sheets have to teach you how the game works but my ideal cell sheet my platonic ideal of a cell sheet is on your turn at a tile place a researcher and from the diagram of the words i can be like oh and that means i can do this whereas right now i guess we have the goal of connect four spaces.

But i i don't know what would i i literally have no idea what would stop me or make me be able to connect four spaces here yes so like from from the visuals here i'm not even sure if it's like an area control game or not it seems like you do something on the first map that allows you to place something on the second map but it's not clear oh it's not clear if those things can move around or and the second i think the second map

it's like you're that's where you it's like a tech tree but also the win condition so you're like unlocking technologies right that's the project board yeah right and so is it like a tic-tac-toe thing where i see where you're going and i just block you or is it some other method of... I'm not sure exactly how you're getting the four in a row I guess. I'll tell you I feel like this is, this seems to me like a cool game with a weak sell sheet. I think that the hook to me is this area control game.

That you're doing all this tile laying and all this little stuff, this ties into the second thing over here. And the second thing over here has multiple ways of feeding back into the other one. If I do something on the first board, it gets me on the second one, that unlocks new abilities for the first one and gets me towards the win condition.

That sounds like a nice, tight, cool thing. And if I see 20 to 45 minutes, that sounds like I've played other big, heavy heroes that take two hours to that kind of thing. I'd be much more interested in seeing how they can do it in a much snappier package.

Definitely has my attention but i think like i agree with what everybody's been saying that it's not very clear exactly all the information that we want to be clear this this might be me fixating but i have a very different interest level in this game if it says 20 minutes or if it says 45 minutes like to me those are two wildly different pictures and i'm not just trying to like back up my earlier assertion i'm literally i was like would i play this and

i glanced up at the time and i was like i don't know like i don't like it was 45 minutes i have a different thought of whether i'd play it than if it's 20 minutes and the other thing is that i'm very stupid i didn't until you guys pointed out i didn't realize those two diagrams are very very different boards and then rereading it it does say play area and project board i think that needs to be a hundred times clearer like i feel like that's your central hook and

what aj summarized is a really good way of putting it sell me that don't don't bury that and we have to dig it out ourselves like some kind of alien researchers sell me that right from the get-go and this is a subtle thing but i'm noticing down in components it says 36 domino tiles and now that i'm looking at the picture up top again i can see that these are you know two two zoned tiles right where like half of it's different than the other half yeah that

on its own makes me slightly more interested in this because i like that puzzle of like okay i'm going to place this in a way that does two things at once right. Good cash. I missed that too. I will say just as a general thought overall, I often would get sell sheets when I was being pitched games that if they were science fiction themed or something in that realm, they would use this font. I'm not a fan of sort of like space type. It's like, it's like an old school CRT monitor digital font.

Yeah. And so I, I don't know that, that to me was always a turnoff.

It's not that I couldn't look past it, but I'll just throw that out there that just, it's not the most you know clean readable font 2025 i think we'll agree that this is a far better game than sell sheet from what we can tell uh aj i know you're you're our time factor at the moment you got time for more yep let's do it historia monday a civilization game in an hour now this is by the this is by alex uh not not guest star alex but alex who did the previous game

as well one to four players 60 minutes 12 plus spread over the world map building armies oh so this, I'm a writer, so I'm obsessive about language. Spread over the world map could either be a description. You know, the jam is spread over the tablecloth, or it could be an instruction. Spread, you know, this over the thing. So I read this as a description of like, it's spread over the world map, whereas it means like, hey, you, spread your troops over the world map.

Very minor thing, I'm obsessive. Spread, God, that's really annoying me. Disperse your troops over the world map, building armies. No, spread over the world map, building cities, workers, armies, and wonders.

Over three ages of history initial thoughts i like that i like the initial like top top third visual right i i like the subtle background and i like the i like how the game looks on the table this is a case where i think having that full shot of what it looks like set up is a good point because it's you got this really nice hexagon board with a circle inside of it and everyone's cards are sort of i assume everyone like different players cards are arranged around the outsides with a

lot of stuff going on on the map it makes me feel like it would look really good on the table yeah civilization game in an hour is also a it's it's almost actually the opposite of what we were talking about last time it's a very strong we know what we are selling and it is exactly this and i'm like i would want to play a civilization game now that sounds great i play innovation and i like i like that the play time in the top right also says an hour it's good.

I want i want to stop there because i feel like this is going to be the bulk of like what either turns you on or off as a publisher. I'll keep going, but I feel like this is essentially the sell sheet, and then the rest is, oh, this caught your attention? Keep going. So in terms of information hierarchy that I know AJ likes to talk about a lot, very, very effective. You've given us the bullet points, you've given us the summary, and now there's more information if you want it. Right.

Is this something you guys have talked about in previous sell sheet episodes where I'm not reading it as a publisher, I'm not reading a whole sell sheet and then at the end deciding if I want to play it. I'm making that decision the entire time that I'm reading it. For something like this, I've made that decision in the first third. So, you know, unless the like the next two thirds were like, you know, you get to be the protagonist, Adolf Hitler, as you, you know.

Unless unless they unless they unsell me on the game, I'm I'm already in. Right. OK, well, let's discuss that briefly. Is is there benefit to doing more of the sell sheet then?

Not us. I mean, like as the creator, would you want them to stop here or have like three bullet points or is this the correct choice to have three blocks of text i think it is the correct choice in the sense that like if you recommended me a book from an author and said hey you know read the first page you'll want to read more like that's great and that might be very true but if i then turn the page and it was blank i would be like

well i mean wait a second it has to be like you have to do the second two thirds but the first third is doing the heavy lifting here well i I guess to dive in, and sorry to get so deep in the weeds, but that's kind of what this whole podcast is about. Right now, they've got three blocks of text that we haven't read yet. If that was five bullet points, I think that would be the same thing, but less exhausting. I don't know. AJ, do you have thoughts on this?

I think just saying it's a Civ game in an hour doesn't give me enough. Like, it gives me enough, like Alex was saying, to be like, yes, that is an effective hook. I'm interested. But I still want to know, like, okay, how did you pull it off? Like, for instance, Tapestry fills itself as a Civ game, right? And it's like, I don't feel like that's a Civ game. It doesn't scratch the edge. So when I see a Civ game in an hour, I want proof that it is going to give me

the feel that I'm looking for in that time frame. Gotcha. Move around the tank. Oh, go ahead, sorry. I was going to say, I think in the way we were describing, you know, like the tag game or other lighter games, like they can basically teach you the game on the sell sheet. I know just having read that it's a civilization game and it takes an hour. I know you're not going to teach me the game on the sell sheet. You can give me cliff notes, but I'm not going to learn the game.

So I'm not looking for that. I, I purely like me personally, when I was scouting the thing that appeals to me right off the bat and what doesn't care about the rest of what's it is the product. And we've talked about this on, on other episodes together. Like I'm, I'm product first in a lot of ways and seeing what that looks like on the table. There's not a lot that comes to mind of other games that look like that. Yeah.

That, that to me is the hook that what the, what the finished product would look like, not what the gameplay is at this point, because I know that I'm going to need to play it to find out if it's at all interesting or not.

Right. right i am going to read the rest but just just alex and andrea who submitted this like a plus this is a great sell sheet i think this is probably the best one we've seen today move around the technology track to take actions using science resources to boost or access block technologies that appeals to me a lot i love a tech tree i love a tech track i love i love all that gather and purchase resources with workers and traders to build wonders which give you special abilities and

scoring i think i've talked about this before um i used to play a lot of age of empires and wonders were my favorite thing that whole game so this this sell sheet is for me defend your territories and attack your.

Enemies with armies so that you wield military power or boost your forces with mercenaries with coin oh man i want to play this yeah this is great yep and so all three of those like even though i didn't need them like you you have finished selling me on it and now i'm i yeah oh sorry there's one more paragraph you play as adolf hitler in this spreadsheet game you literally need excel to play this game amazing he's double sold now he doesn't even work for pentasaurus he's still

going to sign the game i'm also looking at the components down at the bottom and everything within that seems very reasonable for yeah you know what i'm seeing and how i would position it so all right aj thoughts on this one i don't think anything that hasn't been covered looks pretty good i think maybe i could trim back a little bit of that text i feel like it's it's getting a touch verbose for yeah agreed but one thing i'll say is i i don't know latin well enough to

say this i'm assuming historia monday means history something i don't know what the monday is there's actually a famous poem about it his historia monday was born on a monday. Do you guys do you guys know solomon grundy if not that joke that makes no sense i got the joke but okay since i don't since but you weren't laughing uproariously so i assumed you didn't get it yeah since the title is not an obvious what does it mean i would either want a different title or a little like, you know,

underneath saying like what Historia Mundi means? Just because I'm curious. I didn't call that out because I figured people who are really into Civ, it might mean something to them. To me, it means nothing. But the dorky name that I would be looking at is can we say something like 60 years and 60 minutes or like something to emphasize that Civ in an hour. But if Historia Mundi means something to people who are into Civ stuff, It is Latin for world history, Just put that in brackets.

That's not going to sway the needle for... No, not at all. But seeing it makes me curious. I feel like titles are the most changeable part of any game. Yeah. AJ, you want to do more or you got to run? What are you feeling? I can maybe do one more. You want to do one more, Alex? Oh, yeah. Let's do one more of this Alex's because he's been waiting a while. Oh, okay. Before I read a single word, I love this. I love this graphics.

I love this layout. it's just it's like at a glance it's clearly a party game it's clearly a word game it's clearly simple enough that they're going to try and teach us on the sheet like this this is this is a winning cell sheet for me i'm a particularly party uh guy i don't i don't have to read anything on the cell sheet just at the glance i'm like i know what this is.

Already yeah very very effective signaling um now there is again before we start reading there is one thing that that turns me off this can you guys spot what it is is it the time again it is the time aj do you want to read this sheet for us secret word six a cooperative hidden word party game two players or more 10 plus for ages 20 to 45 minutes the exact same time as what are you doing alex not not this alex other alex alex this alex what are you doing how are you how's things

i'm good now for for me that this time range is more problematic in what appears to be a party game yes 45 minutes for a party game is is insane yes yeah the other game that did not offend me my sensibilities this one i would want to know more specifically why it could go up to 45 minutes because that would that would put it past its that would overstay its welcome i think and i'll tell you this my big red flag with that is does it take up to 45 minutes because

if you're playing with is it like a super thinky one like to crypto level where new players are going to take 45 minutes to play what should be a 20 minute game if you're experienced like is it going to run into those same sorts of issues. And again, I love, I absolutely love Decrypto. Yes, we are Decrypto fans here. So I quickly looked at the Board Game Geek for Decrypto. And it's interesting, the Board Game Geek for Decrypto says 15 to 45 minutes.

That is user submitted. That is not the publisher selling you on that. And that's actually a really good example of what I was talking about earlier. And that Decrypto can be over in two rounds or theoretically, you know, two rounds minimum. And it doesn't break that game. I think we all love that game. I'm trying to see what it says on the box. And I unfortunately can't find a good angle of it. My copy's all the way downstairs and i'm too lazy yeah i'll find it while you keep reading.

All right work so one thing here is information hierarchy is kind of messy am i supposed to read work together first am i supposed to read one player first i'm just gonna pick a direction and start going sorry i'll interrupt uh decrypto says 30 minutes on the box which i think is the definitively correct decision the reason i actually pulled up decrypto before you even mentioned it was because i was like what is the longest party game i can think of it is decrypto and

they don't put 45 minutes on the box and i think if they had that would have affected sales it can go for 45 minutes but it averages at 30 minutes you can reasonably expect a 30 minute game that's what you put on the box that's what you put on the sell sheet yeah because if i sit down to play the game and it takes 10 minutes longer than the box said i'm not going to be upset at it if it takes you know five or ten minutes less i'm not going to be upset if i picking a game and i see

well we have about 30 minutes and this game says it could be up to 45 then yeah actually what you said is the thing like when this says 20 to 45 i'm mentally adding 10 minutes on either end so even if you are accurate i'm assuming you're not accurate and expanding it so i'm like this game could go for an hour you didn't say that but that is what i'm reading yeah yep i think that's totally fair if you bought this game and it said that on the box you would expect your

first play to go over an hour with learning it and all that exactly work together to discover all the secret words before the time runs out. I don't know if you need to say that with what you have. Yeah, it's a hidden word party, a cooperative hidden word game. Well, it implies there's a timer. So that's true. Maybe. One player is the messenger. The messenger has a hidden word. And this looks like it's ride. Yeah, I was just going to.

Yeah, I think it's ride. I also just want to pause to say I don't like that those nine blue, green, and red icons are in the middle of that thing. One, because it breaks up the text. And two, because there's no context for what those symbols mean right now. In fact, just glancing at the rest of the sheet, I don't think there's ever any context for what those mean.

You can learn a little bit about the green and red from that green sticky note oh right but but that's not benefited by having it there it's not that's not telling me anything right now so i would i would nix that on the flip side he's done something really clever here which is a hidden word has a blue background and a line connecting it to the like graphic of the of the messenger with a face down hidden word i think that's really sharp that that's like a plus level,

sell sheet UI as far as I'm concerned. Right, and looking ahead, it looks like they do the same thing with the public word. Oh, yeah, that's great. Yeah. Okay, so the messenger has a hidden word. Each round, they give a single word clue. This clue helps you guess both their hidden word and one public word. So it looks like there's five words that are face-up to the players. They're going to give a clue, and that clue will relate to a public word and to their hidden one.

So in this case, I was just going to say it having read ahead now, I think ride is the clue they're giving and we actually don't know what they're hitting. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Which I would like if this cell sheet is teaching me how to play the game, I would like it to tell me what the hidden word is. You know what I would have done here? Where it says each round they give a single word clue. I would have had the speech bubble coming off that and saying ride. Right.

Yeah, the information I agree is very messy. I don't want to have the word ride popping up way before you get to the point where... The context of it, yeah. Yeah. And again, just to throw in a compliment, they've done hidden word in that blue font that they're using consistently hidden word. I would probably have done a background rather than underline. It looks like a URL right now, but I like the idea of that a lot.

I wonder if you nix the bubble with the blue, green, and red things, you put the messenger on one side, the five public words on the other side. You have the text point hidden word to the blue question mark, public word to the pink bicycle. And then you have the clue that's given be pink and blue in some way, either like with a gradient or every other letter or something, implying that that clue is telling you about both things.

Right. I would also, and this takes a little bit more graphic design work, but right now there's just like bubbles for the public words.

And then there's was a rhombus is that the right word for the hidden word i would make it's a card in perspective yeah yeah i would want them to all look oh i see it's a player shield they see it behind their player shield that's what they're looking at but yeah i would just have the hidden word be clearly a face down blue card and the pink ones be face up pink cards and then the ride can still be the speech bubble and that would clear things

up for me i see now what you were doing but it wasn't clear immediately yeah guess the hidden word from these clues so i think the reason they didn't give us the answer i can't remember which of you said that is so that we can play the game which i appreciate because i if you give me a bunch of text i scan it and read it all at once it drives aj bananas or impresses him i can't remember i can't work out which he'll send me like a note that took him two

minutes to type up and i will read it in five seconds because i speed read so if the answer was on this on this sheet somewhere within five seconds of me looking at the sheet i would have seen the answer so i would be unable to play yeah so so let's play it so the the clue is ride and the five public words are peel banana crawl sticky bicycle and then there's current clues strong chestnut colt and then ride i'm running to an issue where i don't understand what the public words are doing.

So I think the idea is that they're giving you a clue that ties into their hand word, which you have known nothing about, but also with something public. So you use the context of the word that they just said out loud. Oh, it's a way of limiting. Okay, I see now. Yeah, there's one bit we haven't read. Earned guesses by picking the correct public word or lose a life. So we have to pick the public word or we lose a life.

So they have to clue us into one public word while also cluing us to a final word, which is really clever.

Alex and i are actually working on like two games that have not overlap with this mechanically but live in the same brain space yeah i'm thinking like a ram alex obviously yeah what i'm wondering now is if what that green bubble is saying is that the public words are changing each time and that the hidden word staying the same because i'm thinking the hidden word is horse right but strong oh yeah cult don't really apply to bicycle no but each each time they pick a public word that you have

to guess, or maybe they get given one. They have to give you a clue so that you guess the right public word, but they're also building up a repertoire towards the hidden word. So strong, I don't know what strong would have been, but chestnut would have probably been like peel. No, no. But what I'm saying is I think I could be totally wrong. I feel like it's, you put out five public words and I'm trying to get you to guess a specific one. And I give you a clue that hits that and my private word.

Then the five public words go away and five new ones come out and i have to do the same thing again so i don't i don't think these the first three clues are applying to peel banana crawl and sticky like i think i think that's cycling in some way as as a developer i think they should i think the cycling is actually a bad mechanism but.

I haven't played the game so it's hard for me to be too picky but i think you're right i think horse is the right answer i want to rewind a little bit here remember when we first read off the work together to discover all the squirts before time runs out and alex said that indicates there's a timer there is no timer listed in the components it is just a like metaphorical time runs out for how many clues you have so that's something that you may want oh interesting yeah,

i suppose that makes sense with the idea of there being lives you lose if you get it right key features plays at two players that's i think that's a big selling point for a party game easy teach scaling difficulty i don't know if those are i guess they're features whatever, i got really grumpy at myself for some reason no easy teach i guess.

Easy you know what it is easy teachers the show don't tell like the fact that you could teach us on the thing it makes it an easy teach i i don't think you've you've, I feel like there's a little bit of room to grow in terms of how effective the sell sheet teaches. We had to make a few inferences, but I do think that the fact that we could literally play it from the sell sheet is a great sign. I would play this. I would play the hell out of this. Yeah, I want to buy this.

This, to me, seems very SoClover-esque. SoClover is one of my all-time favorite games, and this one feels like it's doing enough different. It still has the cooperative element where you get to discuss with other people. It does sound like you might have some downtime while you wait for the person to come up with a clue, but it seems like it's not too much mental effort that they get put under.

Some games like Landmarks that I also really like are word games where the amount of pressure put on the clue giver is so high, it can sometimes lead to some downtime. It sounds like that's not going to be a case here. And yeah, being able to scale two plus, it looks like it could just scale to infinite, right? There's no reason you couldn't have a number of players. That's a huge hook. I would put that down. Rather than saying easy teach, I would say plays a number of players.

They've sort of said that in the play account it's just two plus it's true but i think it's worth highlighting i would say two to ten plus that's the code names box and that's what we did with i think french toast and something else i've worked on where it's like look it plays two to ten plus and that tells you yeah you can play with any number literally any number whereas two plus you mentally add an upper limit right yeah i

think i mean like there's there's cute ways to do it i don't know if it's good or bad but you could say like two to infinity or what is that welcome to do one to one to a hundred yeah yeah like it's yeah which yeah i think two to two to ten plus is good yeah um yeah actually we uh i'm trying to remember how we do it oh that's right yeah i've got a solo game with smirk and dagger coming out and we're doing one and then like plus which is

not that it plays it's a solo game but you can play as a group he really wants to emphasize that because of his cozy audience like you can sit down with your spouse and play it so we're saying one i i he wanted to have one to two and i was like i don't want one to two because it's not a two-player game but one plus i'm okay with especially because we're going to stay solo on it so yeah i think this is i think this is really solid i think this and the civilization

game are my two favorites so well done well done this alex i assume you're the same alex there's only one alex yeah i like that sell sheet i think the issues were more in layout and less in content the content was pretty good i agree. Cool. Alex, we've asked you as our guest to bring a publishing tip, how to get your games published. What do you have for our audience today?

Yeah, well, since I didn't have anything in mind when we started, but since both of you seemed surprised by it, I guess I'll reemphasize the point.

I think it's really valuable to have a digital implementation of your game that you can offer to publishers because it's infinitely easier for me as a publisher to hop on a 30-minute call with a designer virtually and play their game with them than to have them send me the prototype, learn all the rules myself, take it to a game night, and then potentially mess something up or have to set things up. And then if it's not a fit in the first 10 minutes, then have to mail a prototype back.

I would say that that's a huge selling point for me that the game exists on TTS. I think we asked you this on the doomed episode that never aired, but because that never aired, no one else knows the answer. What's your take on people sending in a video? Like how much do you prioritize that as a publisher?

As a scout? question yeah i as a scout i would say i don't want you to just send me a video i had that sometimes where i wouldn't get a sell sheet i would get a video and and that to me was it's not a replacement it felt like i don't know like you walk into your living room and someone's standing there like jumping out at you or something i don't know like i want to like read the thing first have a few questions in my head and then watch a companion video to answer

those questions as opposed to just being smacked in the face with the video i've got the metaphor for you it's like someone calling you instead of texting you as a millennial yeah for sure i like that um.

Yeah it's like weirdly like personal it's like oh we haven't even like typed at each other yet i have to see your face like no yeah i think a video is useful especially if the feedback you've gotten either from people playing your game or on your sell sheet is that it is oh oh the second you explained it i i got it right away like i i didn't understand it reading it but. You know, 20 seconds of you explaining it to me, I got it, right?

Like if there's something about the game that would really benefit from you being on a camera, you know, shot of the table saying, this is what is happening. Right? Like that, a tag game, right? Like just- Yeah, that would have been great to see a video. For a game that light, yeah, like you could have- And that visual, yeah. 60 second video showing like two players revealing their cards and moving around the map chasing each other.

Yeah, I want to play that game. And that seems really cool. And also for party games, honestly, like the one we just looked at like that's if you can get a nice video of like your design group playing a party game that's always nice i have a game coming out from moments are it's coming out next year from all play called triangulation which is my favorite design i've ever done sorry co-designers i like this game how dare you and that

is actually one of the few games that i made a video for because it just it taught is a party game that just taught so smoothly with the video if we ever do an episode on videos i'll share that one aj how do you feel about you and i having fun and alex having no fun well that sounds great because if you get to ask him for a publishing tip maybe i ask him for a fun question oh okay well you talk amongst yourselves for 30 seconds i i will i will say that i wore this

short i was short i wore this shirt deliberately and you will learn why in about eight months yeah no no further information do i get to know after the Nope. Nobody knows. All right. Tell me about your favorite vacation you've ever taken. Ooh. This is an unfair one, Alex. You've set me up because you and I and no one else went to Disney World.

At the, God, end of 2023, 100 years ago, it was me, my girlfriend, Kristen, my son, Henry, Alex, his, I don't know if you say girlfriend or like mistress or whatever, Nicole, their two kids who i love and they're like nephews to me our family friend allison and then a bunch of other people who i don't know if they want to be named or not but like it was it was about what 15 of us or 10 of us or some crazy number we all got together and went to disney world and we had

a we had just a generally great time but b we very cleverly i was very proud of this this is my idea we did two days at disney world then had a day off in the middle and then did two days at disney world and i really think that made a huge difference in terms of meltdowns over the trip over the five-day trip there were three meltdowns and only one of them was kids i was gonna say i think you only threw two tantrums that whole trip yeah,

no the adult genuinely the adults on that trip had more meltdowns than the kids.

Um but that was a fabulous vacation my profile picture on facebook is me and henry hugging the pixar ball because i do youtube videos about pixar and my house is just full of photos from that trip i i just had a wonderful time favorite vacation of all time how about you aj you going, yeah i think for me it's the chicago trip i went to when i went down for a friend for the wedding yeah yeah because it was great because you know my friend was

getting married so i was fun i hadn't seen him in a long long time so it's great seeing him we went down as like a road trip with some of our friends who we also don't get to see too often so got to hang out with them the whole time did a bunch of touristy stuff and i normally hate traveling so all vacations like have to go through that sort of filter but this was probably like the most fun i've had traveling because it was just with friends there was

no kids involved so it was like very relaxing and then it was just i feel like part of it's we just really like chicago and we liked all the i love chicago and until about two years ago chicago was my favorite city in the world la only overtook it because i started hiking here and the hikes here are unbeatable they're incredible.

Yeah so that disney world trip was a good one but i have to pick something different, you're about to go on a trip right is that what inspired this like in an hour you're leaving on a vacation yeah tomorrow tomorrow my family and i are going on a cruise so that's very exciting so yeah that's probably probably what inspired it i think i'm gonna go with so my wife and i have two kids.

The oldest is five and a half. And we had our five year wedding anniversary about a year and a half ago. And we had not basically had any trips to ourselves since our first kid was born. Right.

So, you know, it's kind of like five years of never being away from the kids for more than one of us being away from the kids for more than, you know, 20, there's always one of us with the kids right and so Peter and the aforementioned family friend Allison came to our house stayed here for a week took care of our kids while Nicole and I went to Jamaica for our five-year wedding anniversary and went to like a sandals resort and just like did absolutely nothing for a week except like

relax and remember how to be adult humans and that was great and as good as the trip was it also made me feel very loved because Peter and Allison and we're willing to do that. I have a question for you, Alex. Yes. Jamaica? Yeah. Incorrect. The correct response was, no, she went over on record. Do you guys not have that joke? Oh my God. That's like the Jamaica joke in Australia. Anytime anyone says Jamaica, you have someone go, you know what,

though? Now that you're saying it, that does sound like how you would say it with an Australian accent. Jamaica? It must be an accent joke. I really never even, I've lived here. She did it all in Australia.

Jamaica i've lived here for 10 years and about every three weeks like clockwork i find a new thing that's australia exclusive amazing no that that was a wonderful time i really loved coming and taking care of your kids i love your kids alex i love them and i like you so it's a good arrangement for all it's awesome aj how do we end this podcast by saying goodbye alex bye, Bye. Bye. Bye. Music.

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