Hey guys, and welcome to episode 158 of Maple to Maple. Today I'm talking with an indie tabletop publisher out of the UK that has been sharing a really transparent look at what it's actually like to design and publish games right now. If you've been following them on Instagram, you've probably seen just how hands on and personal their journey is, from early prototypes, artwork, play testing, production updates, and the inevitable highs and lows of indie game development.
Their latest project is Time Troopers, a solo campaign deck building game that sends players jumping through history on dangerous missions to protect the timeline. It's ambitious, narrative driven, it's clearly a passion project, and a true favorite of our friends from Get Into Games.
In this episode, we're going to dig into the experience of designing Time Troopers, what it's like being an indie publisher in the UK, and how they balance their creativity, constraints, and the community while bringing any game to life. Today I've got Lee from Mullen Arias Games. Lee, how are you? Great. Thank you. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here.
Yeah, I have been hearing about you and your game for a while now, obviously from Craig and Becky from getting the games and she's really been hyping up the game. Yeah, I think Becky's probably our number one super fan, which has been very handy having someone who's so vocal about it on with their own podcast. So yeah, it it's great. And we have a little VIP group as well with on Facebook with quite a few people and and, and she contributes regularly on
there as well. So she's she's a lady of great taste, apart from her choice in husband maybe. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, Craig, it's, you know, what are you going to do? But thanks for thanks for coming on and and being willing to Share your story. I'm really excited. Hey, tell me a little bit. I want to start a little bit about you and your personal journey. 2 questions that I have. First one is it was the very first board game you ever played
as a child. And then second, what was the board game that got you into the modern hobby that eventually LED you to becoming a designer? So, yeah, I think it's quite a boring story, same as as everyone else. I think as a child we played lots of lots of games. I can't remember the first one, but it was always like an operation and unfortunately Monopoly and and the Trivial Pursuit in the USI think you call it sorry, over here we call
it something else. Yeah, with that, with that device that you pop in the middle as well. So yeah, tons of games. But one of my favourites was who was Hero Quest. That was kind of the the transition into rather than just playing on a wet Sunday afternoon, all of a sudden that was something that you could proper escape the world and throw yourself into as a child. I remember playing that thinking games will never get any better than this. This is fantastic.
Yeah. And my first foray into kind of painting models with correction fluid and and and things. As well. In terms of how I became a modern gamer, obviously as as I as I got older, I played a lot of sports and kind of moved away from, from games a little bit and then back to to college and university. We would play a lot of Risk and, and kind of games and then got back into it that way. And so I was always interested in it but had no money being a student.
And then after graduating, I played with my friend Mark and he introduced me to Catan, which of course is a very easy gateway game that everyone plays. And again, I was like, oh, this is great mind. Just takes you right back to being a child again, that kind of cooperative element of you all being around the table and fighting to see who was going to
be the winner. And then the more difficult games I tried, the the more I got into them, probably accumulating with me playing my first Gloom Haven campaign. And from there, I kind of thought, yeah, this is fantastic, it's not going to get any better than this. And so yeah, that that was kind of how I got into it. And then it just got stronger and stronger from there, really. So at what point did you decide to go from being a gamer to a game? Like diving into game design?
Like how long has that process been for you it? Wasn't, I've done forecast before. It wasn't a deliberate decision. So I worked, I had a very corporate job. I, I worked in, in health, in healthcare industry and I was a finance director travelling backwards and forwards to the US and, and other countries across Europe. And I was away from home like 3 weeks out of four. And then that kind of takes its toll on you after after a long time of climbing that career ladder. Sure, yeah.
Yeah. And then in 2020, I was due to move to, to the US to Chicago full time. And this pesky thing called COVID started to happen. And we were told though it'll be, they'll be over in a couple of weeks, don't worry about it. So we were selling a house and everything else. And then obviously it didn't
happen. And it, and it as it, as it transitioned it, it kind of stopped me from from moving to the US. But what it did do was change my aspects, my kind of thought process about what I wanted from life. And I was lucky enough to think to myself, OK, I'm going to take a break from the corporate grind and just take some time to myself and think about what I
want to do away from this. And in the background to that, we'd gone on vacation quite a few times to a place in the UK called the Lake District, which I was explaining before. It's it's at one of our national parks, similar to to Yellowstone, but not as grandiose. But we just loved going there and me and my wife. And so I just for fun, really designed a game that out of beer maps that we could play in the in the pub. And so the dog was sat down and we were drinking wine and
playing this game that I'd made. And then people just kept coming to the table saying, excuse me, what's, what's this game you're playing? And I was like, oh, it's just a game that we've made-up. And they're like, could we sit and join you? So I was like, yeah, OK. And so for my wife's birthday, I kind of surprised her with a prototype, which which I hadn't locked up and made. And then the next time we went, we had lots of people around the
table. And all of a sudden I thought there could be kind of a gap in the market, a very special niche in the market for this game. So Fast forward four years and it's in supermarkets all up in that area of the, of the world. And it's in the gift shops and everything else. And, and we've sold, you know, thousands and thousands of copies of that game. And that was kind of my introduction into, into the gaming world. But I had no kind of formal training in, in what I was
doing. It's a very basic game if if you're a player. But what it did do is give me an introduction into, yeah, this is what I want to do with my life. And at the same time I was enjoying more and more playing games and with my business and finance background, the kind of the things which I think hold some people back from designing their own game, Like what do I do about tax? I do, I've set up my own company. You know, how do I find a manufacturer?
I I already had all of that experience. So it wasn't, I think as as scary for me to do the business and the admin side. So, yeah, I suddenly thought that that could be there could be a career in this and that could be a company I could set up. And so we did. Yeah, that we kind of dived head first. We were into doing a Kickstarter as well and everything else. And I think it's a good job. I didn't know what I was letting myself in first. I might not have have have done it.
And I think I was incredibly naive. And then I look back at some of the mistakes we've made, which just cost us a lot of money and a lot of time. But it's it's a learning curve. But what the one great thing I would say that if you would say what's the best thing that's happened to send me out of this is my quality. What was the best thing that ever happened to you out of this? You're such a good interview.
I think my quality of life is better, but also the people, the community and the kind of the customer base and the people you interact with, the suppliers, people like yourself. And the kind of industry as a whole is so much friendlier than that kind of cutthroat corporate world that even like chatting to other indie publishers, everyone's helping each other. And that just wouldn't happen in the in the business world.
So it's stressful, of course, but it always feels like it's a community that I'd never thought existed until I got into it. And I thought everyone is so great in this community. And don't get me wrong with still the odd comment from Kickstarters and things which which which upset me. But yeah, I've listened to your shows and that it's so positive. People are generally more positive in this industry than
other industries. I've heard that a lot from both publishers and designers, like there's a lot of support as opposed to other industries, people like yourself who came from 1 industry and entered this one. So it sounds like the take away is you could be on vacation where no matter what, it doesn't matter where you are, you're going to find inspiration to design your own game, right? Like I think. So yeah, not not in your own
game. Like there'll be people listening who are good at graphic design or good at artwork or good at music. And if, if this is an industry you're interested in, then just pursue it and send some, some, some work to some people. And if you think it's something you want to do, then then do it. Life's too short not to at least have a go. I think a lot of time people are a little bit embarrassed. They think, oh, my work's not good enough and you don't have to give it a go.
So, so why not? Why have you got to lose? Yeah, there it is, guys. Lee Miller just told you life is too short. You don't have anything to lose, so go for it. I mean, no truer or inspiring words have been said, so I love that. Thank you. That's, that's good.
And, and all the people we've worked with as well along the way, a lot of then it's like they're like first time in doing something like we've, we've signed games to our, to our label and it's like we have two first time designers who have signed with us. And we have, you know, new artist Tim Mcclay, who does the music for, for time Troopers. It's the first time he's ever composed his own music scores, which is good for us because it means we're getting very cheap.
Right. But also it's something people are grateful to be given the opportunity to to do these things as well. And so again, it plays into that community spirit of we're all trying to build something altogether. Right. Hey, so since you brought it up, let's let's talk about that. You, you commissioned a soundtrack for Time Troopers and you can listen to it on Spotify. Tell me about that process. What? First of all, why bother, right?
Know what? Not every board game designers like I need a soundtrack for my board game. So I guess that's the first question. And then what was that process like? Yeah, so the decision came about because we on a Sunday, I get together with with people from the company, but also my friends as well. And we always listened to music like we were playing the Witcher board game. And so we were listening to like bar music from from that
soundtrack and everything else. And, and I think a large percentage, I think it was like 70% of people listened to something when they're when they're gaming and that and that's great. But then I was watching a scary movie, waiting for the, like, jump scares. And I thought, imagine if you were playing a scary board game and the publisher was in control of when the jump scare music came on. Because like, we were playing a game called Subterra. I don't know if you know, it's
like a little white. Yes, yeah. And so we used to make our own sound effects when someone would get trapped by gas or whatever it, whatever it was. And so that was in my thought process as well. And so I, I'd always had music in the back of my mind, but I didn't know whether it would work on a board game. So Fast forward to when we did Time Troopers. And because it's a solo game or you can play cooperatively as
well. But when we started the design process, it was going to be a, a solo game. And so I wanted it to be a completely immersive experience, because if you're playing something solo, you can put your headphones on and listen to music.
But what I wanted was not just to listen to other people's music, but I wanted just to be in control of what music you listened to. So that if the mission I knew was going to get harder and harder and harder, we could build the tempo of the music to become more kind of intense towards the end. And we were in control of people listening to that. So the first time you played, you wouldn't know that. And so it would completely immerse you also the the kind of cultures of time troopers.
So you're travelling to all these different eras in the past. As you say, the music when you're in ancient Japan and the music when you're in kind of the Mongolian Empire and, and when you're in Egypt needs to have different instruments. It needs to have a different tone and everything. So what I didn't want was people listening to their own music and then, you know, the theme tune from Happy Days was on while someone was was fighting sunrise, which which could happen.
So it kind of became a what if project. But as you say, not everyone listens to music. So it had to accompany the game. It couldn't take over the game. So we couldn't have instructions in there, we couldn't have anything else. It just needed to be something which gave you an extra level of immersion. And Tim Clay, who's a music producer and, and works with us on the stand, we would reached out to him, say, how would we go about this? He said he would give it a go.
And he did like a little 20 minute sample for us. And so we said, yeah, can we have 26 of those? Well, each one lasting 45 minutes, please. And when he picked himself up the floor, he, he, he agreed, yeah, that that process has very much been give Tim the missions because not only does it have to have the right instruments, but have to have the right feel. So some of the missions will be
battling. So you want, you know, to hear clashing swords and you want to hear wardrooms and things in the background. But then some of the missions, like in, in Egypt, you have to sneak past guards into a tomb. So you've got kind of this eerie, you can hear the flames licking and it's an eerie under score. We gave Tim 3 or 4 different missions and explained to him and sat down and he played the, the early prototypes and then he went, OK, I'll go away and work on the music.
As soon as we got that first track back, it just blew us away. And, and because this is the first time Tim's done this as well, he, he just went the extra mile with everything. And, and so there was I think one out of 26 tracks where we went, this is not quite right. Everything else we were just, Oh my God, it's amazing. And listening to it while you're playing the game as well.
For us, it just makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up when we were playing and then we were getting really excited about it. And so we put this, some of these soundtracks out to our time. Trooper VIPs, what do you think? And everyone's like, this is great. This is what we why don't all games do this? And so, yeah, we kind of unfortunately, I think we've set the bar for ourselves on on what
we do going forward. So yeah, I, you had sent me the link, so I was able to listen to the music and soundtrack and it was and it was, it was cool. However, I have never seen a prototype. I didn't have the game in front of me. So there was no context, right? So I'm just like, so here was my here's my question. I was thinking about this in terms of the tempo, right? Because players play at different speeds, right?
So if I were playing time troopers and I select the appropriate track to go along with it, I know you said like 45 minutes. Like how well is that synced up with the player experience? Yeah, so Tim's done a great job of what the scope we gave to him was. Everything has happened in the 1st 5 to 10 minutes, but nothing exciting has to happen in the 1st 2 minutes because players are reading how to set up the rules, they're reading the game. They're they're getting everything set up.
So you want to be immersed immediately in the in the context, but what you don't want is to miss something exciting. What Tim came back to us and said was players shouldn't even notice that the music's on. So they shouldn't be listening to it saying, oh, I really like that part of the music. It should just be happening as they're playing the game.
And so he has this, he did a very good job of playing the quiet notes as as musicians call them, which is, which is allow the game to settle and allow it to be subtle. So the first 5 minutes kind of welcomes you to the world. And then because it's a 45 minute track, it's on loops, so it will be like, it might be like a 10 minute crescendo and then it dies down and then a 10 minute crescendo again.
So that if you finish the game after 30 minutes, you've still experienced the same music than if you were playing after 45 minutes, if that makes sense. But there's points in there which are unique because no one will ever finish the game in 20 minutes. But then after that, at any point, players could finish if they fail or if they look into a great draw or, or set of circumstances.
So yeah, he he did a good job of keeping the theme going without people thinking, oh, I want to listen to the music, so I'm going to keep the game going, if that makes sense. So it's meant to accompany what you're doing. And it includes the immersion. If I, if I was to just listen to it as a standard on track, which, which obviously I have done quite a lot there. There's a lot of kind of just echoing notes and enormous quietness because it's, it's on
in the background. Whereas the Viking, one of the Viking missions for a good five or or 6 minutes, we'll just have like the sound of sea spray because you're making decisions. You're not actively sat there going, oh, I wonder what happens to the music now. So it's, it's a very good skill that Tim had, which was it should just be in the background. It shouldn't dominate what's happening. Right, right. I love that. That's really exciting.
So now that we've now that we've sold this game to everyone based on the fact that there's a soundtrack to go along with it. Because right now all we know is you've got a soundtrack, you've commissioned that it's solo, There's some deck buildings. I mentioned that in the intro. Let's actually talk about the game. So I actually have a copy here as well and Becky will be very jealous because anyone that's can can see this. It's just come finished copies
of of just starts to arrive. So yeah, Time Troopers is a solo cooperative deck construction game where you are playing as a squad of time troopers who are going back in the past to steal artefacts. These artefacts are from different eras, so it could be Cleopatra's bracelet or it could be a jade carving from Mongolian times. These artefacts are rich in a dark energy which we don't understand today, which is very handy because I don't have to explain it. But in the future they can use
to power the time game. The time time gate is essentially important because there's only two time gates. 1 is in use by us, the United Nations of time. And the other one is in use by a gang called the Scorpions. And they're kind of the baddies of the, of the game. They're made-up of future conglomerates who don't want to change time because they're quite happy with how the future's turned out and, and they don't want to change it because they're, you know, all rich oligarchs and, and
everything else. So so you can be playing, you can be going back in time to ancient Egypt, stealthing through a tomb and playing your your cards to do the actions. Then the locals take their turn, so you would play your cards. If you think of it in terms of like a Marvel Champions or an Arc of Horror, it's very similar to that kind of of play the way you have a turn and then the locals have their turn. We call the locals, which are the locals at that time.
But also with any flip of the card, the scorpions can jump through the gate. And then not only do you have to defeat the locals, but then also the scorpions and your mission parameters change. So you might have to do something then before the scorpions do it. So they're trying to steal the artifacts as well. Sure. So no two missions will will play the same because of the amount of cards we've got.
There's 470 cards in the deck, so there's a lot of game going on. There's side quests as well, so you can achieve. So when you're playing a mission, you can choose to do a side quest. And we have a ton of unlockable content, because who doesn't love unlock cards, right? Right. Come on. And so you can unlock extra weapons, you can unlock characters, you can unlock events, or more efficient, the time dials which controls how
much time. Time is a currency in the game so you can use it to re roll dice as it rewind time or you can. OK, I like that. Well, you can use it to see into the future because at the end of every round, there's three possible timelines and you turn over three event cards and then you roll the timeline dice to see which event phase you follow. And again, if you don't like the result, you can spend a time token to rewind time and re roll the dice.
But if you spending your time to do that, you're not spending your time to do actions. So you have to be very conscious of what you're doing and you're drawing 4 cards and then playing 4 cards. So it's, it's a, it's a good combination of which characters you put into play because they all have different abilities, like some of them are good at sneaking and stealing and some of them are good at combat. And different missions carry different things.
So there's 26 different missions and each one lasts 45 minutes. So we have a whole book of, of, of missions. So there's a lot of game going in into that one kind of box that we're, that we're selling. And it comes with the big playmat as well. When you, if you, if you go to game found and have a look at it, you'll, you'll be able to see all of the information. But yeah, it's, it's a huge game. It's taken us like 3 or 4 years
to get to this point. As you can imagine, I'm very passionate about it, which is why I'm. Well, of course. So you you mentioned that it's it's a solo and cooperative. So yeah. So talk me through that because I understand a solo game, but I'm like, you know, it's my wife and I, I don't play solo games very much at all. But it sounds like from what I understand is like my wife and I could play this game cooperatively. So how would that look differently from playing it solo?
So it would be the same. So what we did was we were trying to make a solo game in in the UK, we call this the Love Island Test. I'm not sure if you get Love Island in the US. We were looking for a game that you could set up in 5 minutes, play in 45 minutes, and then pack it away in 5 minutes while someone else in your house is watching TV that you don't want to watch.
So we thought there was a scope in the market for a board game that players wanted to play whilst someone else was, was spending an hour for ATV programme. You didn't want to play so you could play it on Wednesday night. So it's, it was a solo game that would fill that void of waiting for your next game's night. And also something that would bespoke to you. So we could both play this as solo players and have completely
different journeys. Like I could say, oh, wasn't it great when you unlocked a samurai sword and you would say, I never got a samurai sword, I got a Viking shield because we made different decisions and the book is like a choose your own adventure as well. So you, we, we would have
different experiences. So how it would work as a as a, when we were play testing it and putting it in front of people, we would get people like Craig and Becky and other couples sit down and we'd say, OK, we'll do a demo for both of you. And then we found that they were having conversations like, oh, well, if we unlocked the shadow, then Shadow is very good at stealing. So let's unlock shadow now and then we can keep her in the deployment zone.
And then someone else was saying, yeah, but if we do that, we won't have enough money for a reroll. So it kind of became a cooperative game as much as they were talking through the decision making process, talking through what cards to play, talking through the journey. And because the mission book has an side of intro and out infill and exfil text, it's got it's a story driven as well. So then we also hit upon by complete, it wasn't by design.
I don't want to claim the credit for it like a father and son who said they would do this instead of a bedtime story because they would read the you read the infill text and it's like the beginning of a story. Then you play their mission and then when you finish you read the the end of the story and then you turn the page to go to the next mission or you make a decision to go to the next mission. Now the rumour is the rumour though.
I I know you said you're not taking credit, but the rumour is you did that on purpose. I'll, I'll, I'll take the credit. We did it kind of, it was a happy coincidence that that's how it worked. And so then we started to market it as a solo and solo cooperative game because everyone we spoke to them was going, oh, this is not a solo game, It's a Co-op game. And we were like, well, we designed it as a solo game.
But the more play testing we did, the more we would get couples doing it or, or like a father and daughter or like 2 friends even saying, Oh yeah, we would just like buy one copy and play it together. So by by accident, it became a, a really good cooperative game as well.
We even had a a teacher because there's a lot of obviously historical data in here and it's all accurate or as accurate as we can make it. And so we even had a teacher saying, a history teacher saying I might let like four or five of my class play this because it would it's it's fun, but they would learn at the same time, right. It's like an end of term kind of reward or something. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's it's kind of good because it expands the market.
But that's how you and your wife would play Co-op too, OK. You'd read the story together and you would make decisions together. OK, so nothing mechanically changes in whether you choose to play with someone or solo, It's the same exact, OK. Exactly. It's the same game. We we had a couple of strangers playing together because we were double booked for one demo and one person took responsibility for the locals.
So it's like one person took took the decisions for the bad guys or we're doing the dash balls for the bad guys and the other person was doing that. But of course that's that's personal preference. If you're playing it solo, there's no mechanical difference whatsoever. OK, all right, well now see now that that's that's a heart warming and positive to hear because when I first heard about your game, I was like, this is a solo game. It's never going to hit my table, right?
But I like that there is that cooperative nature. And then it came out through the play testing process. So with that in mind, was there a moment during that process of play testing where you started to notice this trend? Did you have to make any tweaks or changes to the game in order to accommodate that cooperative nature, or were you able to just keep going with productivity We. Didn't make any changes to the, to the core game, to the kind of playability into the mechanics.
We didn't. But what we did have to do then was kind of think about especially children because what so, So what we did go back is originally we thought it would, this was going to be more of a sci-fi kind of adult game. And throughout play testing, we, I think we underestimated how smart kids are these days, right? So what we did was go back and look at the wording, especially in the instruction manual and kind of make that count as many words as we could. So think about how to get back
to basic language. But in terms of the core game, we didn't make any changes at all. We didn't, we didn't need to. There was some some cards which had some some gory element to it, which we then decided to remove based on on feedback as well. We were like, I don't think you need that. It's a good game without kind of the blood. And that would rule out me that was only like 1 card. So we took that out, but we didn't have to change the mechanics because it just works as it was.
So yeah, this story mode as well. We then made more choices like in terms of like, so once you finish Mission X, what do you want to do next? Do you want to go and fight dinosaurs or do you want to go and see what the gladiators are up to? So we put more choice at the bottom so that if people were playing it cooperatively they would have to make decisions together rather than just turn the page and play again.
So I've heard a lot of you've described a lot of historical settings that are in the ancient world, both Asia and Western Mediterranean. How much history is covered in the missions? Like how far, how close are to modern times does it go? And we have 8, there's eight different time zones or 8 eras around this. And so each one has three missions. So for instance, if you go to Egypt and the first mission might be you go through the gate and you have to find the temple.
And then the second mission would be you're in the temple and you have to defeat the guards. And then the third mission might be you then have to steal the amula and fight the scorpions. So it's kind of a narrative driven those 3. So there's three in each of the 8I. Let's not forget any of these now. It's so so we have the Viking era, we have ancient Egypt, as we said, the Mongolian Empire, the late Cretaceous period, which is dinosaurs obviously of.
Course. The Roman Empire, the Aztecs and the Conquistadors, you jump right to the middle of that battle and Edo, Japan and the Samurais. And then the final one is the future. So that one takes place in the future, which is where the Scorpions and the Time Troopers fight in the final three missions. But you can only defeat them if you've unlocked all of the right criteria from the other missions. So the better you do in the lead up to those last missions, the easier it will be.
OK. All right. So it sounds like there's a lot of opportunity for expansions in the future. This always comes up, it's always a thing. And we're asking people in play testing. So yeah, we've we've got there's a lot of history in the world, right? So we've. There is.
We've got a lot of scope to to do more if there's if people want it. We've left space in the box deliberately so that you can sleeve the cards, but also so like we did do any expansions, you could just drop it straight into the into the box without needing more. So we have thought about that in the future. If you read the story, which I can't tell you too much about, then there's there's potentially a story to do that as well.
Yeah, we, we've been fooling around with some things we could we could do, like the Ice Age and Saber toothed tigers and, you know, lots of things going on, lots of history which we can touch on. Right, Yeah, because I noticed like the the medieval world, there's not even mentioned. And I'm like, oh, you could. Yeah, there's a lot that. Was listed as well, You know, what could we do?
That was a medieval world, Joan of Arc, of course, that was Africa, which we touched on, which we could do. We toyed around. He was doing a moon landing version, so there was a mission on the moves. So yeah, there's tons of stuff we could we could do. Of course, going back so far in history, it means you don't have to worry about copyright and other things as well.
And also we tried to deliberately stay away from anything which was too likely to upset anyone from a cultural perspective or anything else as well. So we stayed away from like walls and things like that and obvious areas. But yeah, there's still a ton of history. We could do more. So I'm thinking about other board games and game designers who have set their their board game is set in a historical time
period, right? And I'm just thinking about, and maybe this isn't a question so much as a suggestion. So yeah, I'll, I'll work it through and we'll see what you think. So, and of course, this is going to give me an opportunity to talk about my very favorite game of all time, and that's Obsession by Dan Halligan, whose game is set in the Victorian era.
I was thinking, could you work with Dan or other publishers and like pull so that their board games, their material were in these missions in future expansions? Like, is that something possible? Is that something you, you know what I mean? That would be really cool, yeah. I think so. And it depends the artwork. So, so the artwork we have, this is, is probably the best artwork we've ever done.
And what we had to do was, was do it in eight different blocks because we wanted the artwork to be a different style for each. So the short kind cards would be like Japanese ink and Blossom, which are in there. But then the dinosaur cards, obviously we want it to be more dark and kind of the dinosaur hidden. So yeah, we've used a big art team for this. But the graphic design on the cards are phenomenal. Rob Ingall, who does the graphic design has done our awesome job on that.
Pierre, who was who led the art team did a great job. So I think the the artwork in board games now is is key because that's the first thing people see. So you can't see a mechanic. Oh right, the artwork grabs someone and then the mechanics keep them there is is what we is what we kind of our philosophy. So if people are walking past the demo table at Gencon or where where it is, there's thousands and thousands of games. So you need someone to walk past and go, Oh, that looks cool.
And then if it is cool, it keeps them there. If not, then they'll go away. But if you don't get that initial hook, so it is, it is something we could possibly do with that as a, as a hook is to use artwork from, from other games and other styles. Once it's established. Another area, we another era was kind of like the Renaissance period and, and kind of Da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci and all
that kind of era. And there's a there's a there's a few board games that have got some really cool art around around that as well. And an obsession would be good. Try and spread the errors globally apart. Unfortunately, obviously there's a lot of history. Well, not unfortunately that's that sounds bad, but. There's a lot, I know what you meant. There's a lot of history in Europe and not a lot of history in other continents for us to share around.
So we may have to do something with Australia as well. So maybe Easter Island or the OR the, yeah, something like that. So there's, there's tons we can go at. It's it's great. But yeah, I'm always on the lookout for great artwork because I think that's the that's the thing that draws people in. Right. No, I totally agree with that. I was also thinking about Thomas Oleg's game Galileo Galilei, which took over the world last year, which has some really
unique artwork as well. Like, how cool would it be to pull in that style of artwork, those characters and, you know, interact with them in some way in a mission, in the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time travel, Time travel. Is that something that you're just a big fan of? Was that like a, was that because, you know, time travel's divisive? People either love it or they hate it. I kind of go back and forth. Is that always something you had an affinity as a fan?
And you're like, I want to do a game in time travel. Like talk to me about that. So I like the escapism element of of of gaming on the immersive experience you have. And I've played a few solo games. Well, when we started designing, I guess there were very few solo games around. But more and more now it's it's become everything has to have a solo mode, whereas this was designed as a solo game. And sometimes the solo mode sucks because it's just an add on to say that it's a solo.
I'm not mentioning any games. So the time travel element came because it's something which to start with, I like the historical escapism. And so we were going to design A Viking game and then we're kind of like, oh, there's tons of Viking games. And then it started out as a concept between Mark Palette, the designer and I of saying, wouldn't it be great if you could design A game where you
took control to play a game. You took control of the Vikings and I could control of the samurais and then we could attack each other and then, and then that transplant transpired into, Oh well, what, let's build like 8 or 9 different armies. So you could have Mongolian empire and I could, and I've got Archers and you could have a different. So we, we, we kind of spitballing around that escapism. But then it just became, well, well, in what context would they be fighting each other?
How could we get this to work? And so we came up with a time travelling idea. And then as we were just spitballing this, it just what we wanted to do then was kind of, Oh yeah, rather than make two people fight each other, let them be the good guys and and we can and we can go from that. So time travel was the convenient vehicle for us to immerse players in tons of different environments and worlds that we thought were great and that we wanted to play
games in those eras. So we have Viking games and we have games about samurais, but what we wanted to do was play like 3 missions and then go, OK, that's enough, let's move on to the next era. OK, that's enough. So time travel, I think we didn't set out to build a time travel game. We built out, we set out to build a game and tons of different eras and and and immersive experiences and time travel was the vehicle to do
that. OK, so how much research did you have to do in time travel to make this game work mechanically? A lot. And not, not just, not just from us, but also in terms of getting a like a cultural advisor to, to make sure we weren't doing anything, especially around something which could be sensitive. So we, we have a, a mission around the, the Aztecs and the, and the conquistadors.
And so we don't, you jump into the middle of this battle and say 1 mission you're fighting the Aztecs and the next mission you're fighting the conquistadors. And in the next mission, you're fighting them both together while they're fighting each other. And so we were very careful. Not well, we did the research and obviously we know what happened, but we were very careful to kind of not point out some of the genocide and other things which is going on because it's it's kids are going to be
reading this. But also we didn't want to get in trouble with anyone and upset anyone. So it's a game. It's supposed to be fun. But at the same time, the last thing you want to do is, is, is offend anyone's reading up about some eras. We made missions for some eras. And then the more we read about it, we were like, we we we can't do this because if we want this to be a proper experience and we're going to have to put the
historical facts down. And the historical facts are just not conducive to a family sitting around playing this game. Sure. Yeah. So we so we took some content out and but some of it, like the late Cretaceous period, was just annoying. I I really wanted T Rex in the game. And Mark really wanted velocity Raptors in the game, but there was an inconvenience that they didn't live on the same continent or in the same time. So we got that whole screw, screw it, no one will know.
And we were like, yeah, well, we kind of. Somebody will find out and get mad at you. Yep. So we had to choose an either or to make that work. And yeah, but in researching the game, like the, we call it ancient Egypt, which cause Cleopatra is, is, is in the game. But actually then when we looked at it, we realised that Cleopatra lived closer to us today than to when the pyramids were built. It's like 2500 years BC. So there were little things like the more research, we thought
this is a really cool fact. So we've put those facts on cards in the game and, and historical information about the area you're playing in is in the book as well. Just little tidbits that we that we pulled as we were, as we were going through. Like I always assumed the Romans wore the red, a kind of fluffy centurion helmet. And then as we were researching it, we realised they never wore red. It was purple because purple was kind of the, the, the, the colour of, of, of Caesar.
And but it was incredibly expensive to make things purple. Little things like that. We would have to go to the artist and say, can you make it purple? And he's like, oh, no, Centurions wore red. And I was like, yeah, can you just make it purple? Can you make a purple cloak for us instead of a red one? So things like that slow the game down. And I doubt 99% of the people will care. But doing the research, we, we know it's there and then we, we
know it's, it's right. But that's that's probably errors in there we're we're not aware of because it's a game at the end of the day, it's not a historical thesis. Right, right. The challenge? The challenges for you and your listeners is to find some historical inaccuracies. Also want it to be accurate, not just because we want accuracy, right?
But I think you had mentioned it, you had teachers, they could use it in the classrooms by being attentive to the detail, by being accurate teachers, educators can use them in the classroom. Which then leads to more sales so that they can be used in the classroom and more exposure. So yeah, you know, there's a business component to why you want it to be historically accurate. It's more fun as well if you if you unlock these kind of Nuggets as you're going along and things like that.
So yeah, it's it was pretty good. Absolutely, absolutely. OK, so you've got more Inarius games. I wanted to ask you this. Talk to me about the name of the company. I feel like there's AI feel like. Not really. There's we set up the company obviously I explained about the Lakes game. So it was myself and my wife originally. And then I have two brothers who one's quite handily a graphic designer and the other one is a great salesperson.
And so the three of us and my best friend Mark were the ones who set the company up along with my wife. So four of us were, were all called Miller, which is my surname and Molinaris is Latin for Miller. So we went with, so we went with Molinaris games. It's it's as boring as that, I'm afraid. I have a degree in Latin and I do not know that, so that's pretty darn interesting, to be fair.
It's the question we get asked the most at Commons and exhibitions is what can I can we just ask why I'm on? And also it's really hard to spell. So the amount of times people have tried to like e-mail us or find our website and it's spelled wrong. So if I again, if I could use my own time gate, I probably would have called it something else. I also see that you've got two titles that are planned to be released this year in 2026. Is that right? Can you talk about them at all?
Yeah, we we have a new prototype arc today, which is before the rain. So I don't know how much you know about this this game, but yeah, we're we're going to bring before the rain outs to to do kickstarts campaign in for probably April and then it will be available at the cons in the summer. So before the rain is well, it looks beautiful. I don't know if if people can see this or not, but it's we used Hannah Bailey, who's a famous illustrator who did games like planted and other games as
well. And so it's a push your look game. So what you're trying to do is you are a hive of bees and you are going to collect as much pollen as possible. And so you would play a card from your hand, and I would play a card from my hand and you would have a pollen count on it, one to five at any point. Instead of playing a pollen card, you could play your Hive card, which means you'd take all of those cards and all those points. OK.
But at the end of every flip of a card we also turn over a weather deck and it'll be sunshine or rain or storm. If you ever have 3 rain out then the rain washers will pollen away and you can't collect any cards. So it's a push your look against both your opponents and against the weather as. Well, nice. So it's a really easy to play card game as I've just explained, dead easy to play. But of course the push your look element means you play over 3 rounds.
So if after the first round you're behind in points, you can push your look a little bit more in the second round and third round. There's also different flowers, so there's 5 different flower types and each one you can collect pollen, score bonus points and things like that as well. So really easy to game. So we've got that one coming out in the spring and we think we're going to do very well with that because it's a very easy to play small box game, which is beautiful and easy to play.
And then we have another game called Little Frankenstein. Was that the one you were referring to? No, I didn't know the titles. I just saw that right before the recording. I saw you had two games coming out and I was like, oh, I got to ask him about it. Yeah, so we have a, it's a cool little game. This is a bit of an exclusive because I've not talked about
this to to anyone before. In around after the end of the summer for Halloween, we have a game coming out called Little Frankenstein where you have to, it's a set collection game where you have to collect body parts of monsters to build your own Frankenstein's monster. So we will have things like the Swamp Thing and Dracula and mummies and zombies and evil robots and of course, Frankenstein himself.
Absolutely. The artwork is kind of anime cutesy style, really vibrant colours so that kids can kids can play as well. So you'll be dealt cards and it's a choose one card and pass them around and kind of drafting and collecting cards. But there's also power ups, things like swap the body part for someone else's body part or just love things out. So really easy to play, fun game. I would take the type of game that you would play at the start of a game's night.
But again, we're trying to tap into a niche market of a game for Halloween that we don't think there's that many quick games that you can play with, with the whole family for, for Halloween. Yeah, we're excited about that because the mechanics are really easy to play. But again, the artworks great. We've we've hired an anime artist and it's it's fantastic. Yeah. We'll share that. I'll share a couple of those pictures with you and you can share them online if you if you
like. That'd be absolutely, yeah. They're with along with time troopers there. We try and do two or three games a year and they're the three games we're doing in 2026. OK, so I'm I'm curious about especially so AI and AI art is it's a very hot topic right now. How easy or difficult is it for you and Molinarius as a as a whole to find artists for these titles once you're ready to go? Is that relatively simple or is it a real challenge or Yeah. I think it's easy to find artists.
It's it's hard to find great artists who not that aren't talented, but who understand what you're what you're looking for. So I'm, I'm a terrible artist. So I tend to just like scribble on bits of paper and then say this is what we're looking for. But in this it's a bit old fashioned and a bit 90s, but I I like to create like a mood board
or something like that. Sure. And send it on to the artist to say we kind of like this vibe and this thing and but you know, it's very important that the artist always puts their own spin on it and their personality comes through. AI artwork is a big no for us. I understand why it's there. And when I say it's a big no for us, I think that's a world of difference between using AI or using stock images for prototypes and things which you
are you are doing inside. So if me and four or five of the team working here on Time Troopers, you don't want to go and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on on artwork and then go actually that doesn't work scrapping stuff again. So we will just go and grab images of like The Witcher or something which copyrighted or so we could have inadvertently have grabbed an AI image because we're just grabbing images off online. But that's only for the
prototype. We never put anything commercially out there that has any AI artwork in it for two reasons. One, there are too many good artists that need help and our support in the industry. And we're a indie publisher, so we're never going to be rich doing this. We're not Asthma Day or, or anyone else. But what we can do is help the community around us. And that includes artists and musicians like TM. We could have just used AI and
downloaded some music tracks. So it's important to support the community. And I think the wider gaming community like yourself and, and listening to some of your podcasts previously appreciate that people like cool art and they want to know who the artists are. And people like to know that it's not AI art.
And I think there's still a push back for if there was games that come on to Kickstarter or, or, or game found at the moment as soon as it's, I know one came out quite recently and it was, it was just full of AI artwork and, and it just got kind of review bonds and, and things like that. So the community's not ready for it. And I think that's because most of the people who are into board games are creative people and, and they understand it's important for us to support artists.
So it's easy for us to find artists in that way. And it's just the communication piece I think is the is the hardest piece to get through what we're looking for. But that's what I was. So I've, I've talked about, I've featured, we've talked about this so much on the podcast about the community of gamers, the community of content creators, of designers and publishers. I don't know much about the community of artists specifically for board games, right?
Like, is there a deep, robust, vibrant community of artists that do a lot of work for board games that if someone were designing their first game, could easily plug into and find the right artist for their game? I. Think this is where the beauty of of having friends in the community help. So I'm on a discord group with a lot of UK indie publishers. We actually have some Canadian and American people in there now as well.
And so it's relatively easy for me to jump online and ask another 40 or 50 publishers to say hey we're doing a game about beehives. Does anyone know anyone that's really good at watercolor art? Because that's the style we're looking for and and we share resources between US. And so like most industries, word of mouth is very important because I could go online and search for a watercolor artist and I'd I'd be lost in, in a sea of searches.
So having other people recommend you is good, but also you can give people a break and try. So things like Fiver, perhaps some sites like that aren't necessarily great for artists. I understand that. But what you can do is send a requirement to six to seven artists and say we're looking for a watercolor beehive to six artists, can you give me your
image? And then the one that's the best you can then go, OK, great, we've got a project that you might be interested in. So you're giving 6 people a shot at it. Yes, you're paying them for the artwork to do that. But at the same time, once you find someone that's really good, you can then work with them for the entirety of the project. And then you start to go back to that disco group and say, Hey, I've got something who's really good if anyone wants to use them for a future project.
So it happens by chance. We also have people to come up to as a convention and leave us artwork and leave U.S. business cards and things like that for for art as well As for games and for all sorts like translation services into different languages and things like that. So because we're a small company, we like to give people are shot, even if we've not worked them before. But once you find someone great,
we stick with them. We have the same graphic designer that we've used for every game so far. And we and we have artists that we've used on three or four games. Even though the style is different, we know that they can adapt to what we're what we're looking. For sure, sure. Well, well, thanks for that because I was, I was really curious about the art, the community of artists in board
gaming. And so that's a piece that I, maybe I, I have inadvertently underrepresented on my show and I'm always looking to expand that out and be more inclusive. So I think thanks for sharing that with me. So tell everybody where they can find you, Molinarius, where they can find time troopers on all the social media platforms and yeah. Sure. So you can you can head to molinarius.com and download that great music we were talking about earlier.
And Troopers is currently in the pledge manager stage on Game Found. So that will be fulfilling in around 30 days time from now. I think. So, yeah. So you could skip all the boring waiting and just jump straight onto Game Found, put your pledge in and get your copy so you're not waiting a long time like other people have been. And yeah, that that's kind of we're at Modern Art Games on Instagram as well on Facebook.
We're not sociable enough to to do all of the kind of packs and everything We're we're still working on that sort of stuff. But yeah, it's I would say more on rs.com is probably the best place to go. Well, fantastic, Lee, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story. I, I know I'm, I'm now I get the excitement. I get it. So Becky, when you're listening, I understand time troopers. Super, super exciting. Guys, don't forget to like and subscribe.
Please send me your comments. It's been great this year so far. It's been a great start. Those comments really help me keep my energy level up to keep providing you with the same level of content. And as always, be kind to each other and let's play more games. Games.