¶ TURN 2 - Introducing Brendan McCaskell
Welcome to Whose turn is it Anyway, your board gaming podcast where we occasionally chat to various people in and around the industry. In today's episode, we're doing just that and Mr. James Davey and I are excited to have a conversation with Brendan McCaskell from out of my mind games, also known as OOMM games, to talk about his experiences in the industry leading up to their latest crowdfunding project Stonesaga. So let's not waste any more time and jump over and meet Brendan.
Welcome to the show. Thank you very much for joining us. I've been really excited about this expansion pack episode I'm not gonna lie. So a million thank yous for for joining us this evening or night. Yeah.
Yeah, it's great. Hey, thanks. No, it's It's like noon, just just after afternoon for me. So hey, thanks for having me on. JP and Davey. Excited to be here.
Yeah, we're excited to have you. So for our listeners who may not have come across Brendan, before Brendan McCaskell. Yeah. Who are you and introduce yourself to the show?
Yeah, my name is Brendan, I am from the big country of Canada. More, more specifically, British Columbia. I have been playing games for a long time. And someone new game designer, you know, been doing this full time for I think about three years now. And had my first like, kind of foray into releasing a game on Kickstarter. As a self publisher, I think
¶ How did you get into the hobby?
about five years, five years ago. So I love so many things about the hobby that I love. But you know, for me, a driving driving forces. You know, we were chatting about this just before we came on, but it's just the idea of getting people around a table. You know, where you know, you're laughing, or you're having some shared memories and some shared experiences together. So yes, a little bit about me, I'm sure. Well, we'll get into some some. But
Yeah, we absolutely. Well, what we like to do Brendan on with with kind of our guests on the show is to kind of give our listeners a bit of an insight into you as a gamer. And, you know, how did you get into the hobby itself? How did you explore the world of tabletop? And how did it hook you
Just don't say monopoly? Yeah,
it's usually everyone's thoughts.
Yeah, so no, this super fun question, I would say my earliest memories of like, really fun times playing playing board games would have been around Risk. You know, we're where you set up Risk. And then it's just like, you leave it out for a long time. And it's, you're just playing, you're conquering the world. You're You're holing up in Australia, whatever, whatever it may be. Right?
Try and convince everyone, you can play it in an evening. It's fine. Yeah.
And then I don't know where my dad had it but but we had a copy of Axis and Allies. Yeah. And and so I remember our cousin coming out for the summer staying at our place, we would set up our copy in our den and and just leave it set up for like an entire week, and just be playing like a single game. We weren't playing the right strategies, right? All That Jazz. But, you know, it didn't matter because we were
like, having a tonne of fun. So those were like really two instrumental, like, times kind of getting into the hobby. You know, I remember with with a different cousin, actually, we we we designed a game one summer when I was like, he was like, 12 I was 10 I don't remember what the game design was. But I do remember it was kind of like a dungeon crawler thing. But like, it had like multiple dimensions. And so it's like multiple levels. No idea. I think like chronicles of Drunagor does it
now or something right? So they obviously like stole the idea from 10 year old Brendan.
But you ahead of your time. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then in high school, we actually like I elevated in my nerdiness level when it came to games. We, I got this new friend who was like big into Magic. Big into Warhammer and just also kind of brought a few board games so so we got really went into like Risk was it was the futuristic risk 20 Oh shoot 29, 2210
I've played the legacy one, but that was is
Okay, so there's this futuristic risk with with with like a moon and and you also have these commanders and you can play these like you can play these cards right? So just like elevated the strategy. You know, I was introduced to a few other games like Settlers and Iron Dragon, just just a bunch of these like, kind of games getting into the hobby a little
bit. And I guess that was the beginning is you know, kind of a fun introduction and this kind of things have grown, especially over the last, whatever, five, eight years, there's just been so many new games, so many kinds of fun, fun games coming out, you know, getting into like, something like Dominion, right? Where it's like, Oh, hey, there's this deck building mechanic and then just like you just learn these different mechanics, you kind of gravitate towards certain things.
Being a Magic player, previously, Dominion kind of sits nicely with it anyway.
Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't ask for all of your money. Like, like Magic does.
There's a lot of expansions with Dominion. Still cheaper than Magic. Yeah,
Yeah, you're right. It's true. But you know, for me, it was actually never bought more than the core set. Yeah. The, I think the only like, true deck builder that we have in our house right now is, is Aeon. Aeons End the cooperative deck builder, like, like, love that game.
¶ What games is Brendan enjoying right now?
Been meaning to play that one haven't played it yet. Keep looking at it.
My wife and I, we love Co Op games, and so Aeon to me was just like this perfect blend. It's, it's like, you know, Hogwarts Legacy has some of those core elements, but just Hogwarts gets a little bit boring. Just because the deck building can be a little bit, you know,
There's a limited amount of combos, and it's like, you railroaded into a certain way with each of your characters as well. So I do understand that. Yeah.
Yeah. So that's, that's gonna and then, you know, now like, the, the games I'm, what game it what games my playing. I love, we just finished a playthrough of Sleeping Gods. So that was I was a weird, we, we just kind of cooped ourselves up for a weekend and we played days and, and so that was fine. You know, I love two thirds of it. I was I was okay to be finished with a game when it ended. In some ways, I actually think it would have been a better solo game with the amount of reading that
you had to do. It's very much like a choose your own adventure. I thought that combat was genius. So for me, you know, a direct comparison that and like Tainted Grail, very similar. And I think Sleeping Gods had better mechanics, Tainted Grail a better theme.
So the deal went on a little bit too long with with its lore and everything else. Yeah,
I suppose. Yeah. When you're doing the reading, I found this with some of the stories narrative driven games is there's a lot of reading to be done. The other players kind of sitting there going. Yeah, yeah. Right. And it's not as immersive for them. Unless you're reading it's fine. But when they're listening, it depends on how you take information. And it can be
¶ What's Brendan's favourite games?
a bit like, can we get on with it
Like an app reading it to you
I think there is a Forteller app for Sleeping Gods. But Sleeping Gods actually had a really great thing where it had like this bullet point summary. For for each of like the long text, you could actually just like skim and then go to the summary and it tells you everything you need to know. So it was I liked it. I was like Oh that's good. Yeah,
Sounds good. Yeah. Okay. What What's your if you were to name one game, which is always difficult, someone asked me Yes. What's your favourite? Like right now? Maybe at the moment, right now what is your favourite what you really absolutely enjoying? Oh, man.
So start to sweat. You know? Oh, my God. Which one is it? Yeah, well, it's there's one.
Interesting. So I'm a pretty interesting, probably case, of a game designer. I have one shelf we have one shelf in our house that is allowed to have board games on it. And I rotate through games so quickly. So like, because I buy new stuff. I play it for a couple of weeks. And then I sell it for like 20 or 30 bucks off and then it's just like in and out. Which which which I love. It means that there's not a lot that stays on the shelf. A couple of couple that do we have Terraforming
Mars. That's like, you know, for us. That's one of our top Euro games. We had Ark Nova because the hype was all about Ark Nova. I have you guys played it? Yeah, got it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm curious to hear your thoughts for for me. I liked it. I replayed it. How many times did we play it? Maybe half a dozen times. But there was this something that wasn't it wasn't hitting me the same way. And I think it might have been the final two turns of Ark Nova where you get this like, weird
crossing. And I actually got my first play. I was like, Oh, that's really clever how this game ends. And then the more I played it, the less like satisfying it was. It because it's like it does. It does something like strangely unintuitive.
Player. Yeah. So you get a negative score. You're just like, wait a minute, I've I've just played for what, an hour and a half, two hours and I've got a negative minus 17. Yeah.
Yeah. And it's one of the things where it's like, genius mechanic and how it triggers I think, but like how it shows up in the end. I just it's a weird like, it just falls flat. I think the game is cool. And you know, deserves what they gets back. You know, we I sold it. Sorry.
Yeah. I mean, the fact you said Terraforming Mars, I mean, that's probably one of our group faves
We always replay it, we go back to,
We're always playing. It's always the club. Yeah, exactly
The variation. Compared to Ark Nova, but I think Ark Nova, one of the biggest problems as well is once you get your engine up and running, sometimes the game is over. Yeah. Whereas with kind of Terraforming Mars, you can play with that engine quite a lot. Yeah, exactly. And you can and then sometimes you don't even need an engine to be able to win. Whereas Ark Nova is a bit more finalised with the fact that when the ending is coming, you can see it coming. It's enough that you could do about
it. It's over. Yeah. And it doesn't feel great. And towards the end, you are over that.
Yeah, I think also because you're seeing less cards in Ark Nova. Right that that in itself is because it's not it's not supposed to be a one to one relation with with Terraforming Mars, but it definitely definitely, at first, like, man, there's a ton of cards here. There's all the Tags so you're like instantly thinking, Oh, this is like Terraforming Mars. But it's not. Where you have to be a little bit more reactive in the sense of like, okay, I'm gonna play to
the best of what I see here. Not necessarily like, I don't know, the fun thing with Terraforming Mars is like, oh, you know what? I'm gonna go like, buy or I'm trying to remember. Like the little green tags where it's like the little biology tags. Yeah, the microbes are just like, I'm gonna go hard microbes this game and it's like it's fine. You can do that.
Someone else could hate draft you, as well as Davey
Does does your group play with the with like the negative consequences in Terraforming Mars? Like where you can like screw someone over?
Oh, we do with the asteroids and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah. Do you know those
Those those those are banned in my household. We don't we don't do those things, which is we did them the first couple of times we played and then you've destroyed Yeah, and it's just like, everyone gets pissed off. And it's like, Okay, nevermind.
We used to being mean to each other. I think so. We don't
So, so Euro game, Terraforming Mars, kind of mind to. non Euro game we love Unmatched at the moment. Yeah. Okay. You know, yeah, we've we've loved Pandemic Legacies. So it's been an interesting thing and like, I really enjoy I enjoyed Gloomhaven. Again, there's, you know, there's there's things to like, things I like things I don't like but you know, you know, Gloomhaven for me was was an interesting kind of, like, mash up of things that I didn't
back Frosthaven. Just because it's like, I'm not really, I don't I just don't want Frosthaven on my table for for a year right now. Yeah, you know, maybe
I've already played 12 hours of it, but
Okay, yeah, yeah. You'll you're in deep
Deep in already. Yeah. It's it's expanded on the things that I thought Gloomhaven was weak was like the, the events when they weren't varied enough. And you kind of the whole 50/50 events I didn't like whereas now you've got like four event decks and there's just a bit more story with you can tell he's got some writers. I think that's what they did anyways, get some writers and a lot more with the lore and like the backstory and a bit more build up, which is
nice. But I mean, otherwise it's just Gloomhaven you know, just with revamp
I just burnt out on it, to be honest, like, I went deep, two campaigns running at the same time. Yeah. And, and I played lots and lots of games to the point where I had nights where we as Gloomhaven night, and I was just like, as soon as I felt that way, I thought no, this needs to change. It's not fun. Any this is just setup is the door. Yeah.
So the thing, I saw Josh's little line for me with the flip book, I'm like, I'll wait till the Frosthaven flip book comes out. And then I'll do I detest searching through the titles. I was one of the things like we got Journeys. Journeys of Middle Earth, the Lord of the Rings, Fantasy
¶ TURN 3 - Main Interview - How did you get into the hobby?
Flight. Yeah. So many tile setups, and you're actually setting up throughout a game. And it's neat. I like how the app does it, but it's, it just drives me insane.
Version, doesn't it? It's like you're mostly doing this, like now get tiles one, b two, A C one C? Yes. And then you're searching stack of 50 tiles. Try to find
You have a quarter, you have a quarter. Yeah.
Yeah. But it is it. It's quite incredible to think about, like, you know, whenever someone asks me what, what I do for a living? It's a weird question to answer, right? Like, I make board games. And then I always have to say 'for a living' on the end?
Yeah.
Yeah, I've always kind of like, dabbled in a, I guess, a game creation even. So, you know, a job I had in my early 20s. I was I was a programme director at a at a summer camp summer camp. So like, huge here in Canada. So I worked at this camp, we had 1000s of kids come through, and I would I would run these games for for, like, 300 people on one time. And so you don't really think about it at the time. But you know, looking back, it's like, oh, I'm learning balancing, I'm learning flow.
I'm learning like, okay, hey, this is the experience I want to capture. So this is a game we're gonna make, right? You know, okay, you can actually play something too long. If you play, you know, if a fun thing lasts too long, it doesn't... It's no longer fun, right? And it's like, all these different kinds of like elements. And so, you know, the transition into a lot of like, the game design, creativity stuff was, you know, it was a pretty, I guess, normal
transition. The thing that maybe is less normal, especially when I'm like, deep into play testing, I just, I don't play anything else. Like I just, I don't want to play board games. And so that's like, less, less like, less enjoyable, where it's like, Oh, hey, it'd be fun just to like sit down and play board game, but I'm like, not just been play testing and TTS all day, this this this new, is new expansion, this new mechanic. And so the last thing I want to do is like, learn a new game and
play it. And so that's work
And it is work. So
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But then, you know, I think that goes back into why I've cycled through my board game library so quickly, is because it's, it's fun for me to learn new things, you know, to see what people are doing. And then, you know, move along. Because there's, there's a lot of there's a lot of fun, new things that are happening. You know, I'm looking at, there's like Polygon just released an
¶ The comparison with modern boardgames to couch video games
article on TableTop Kickstarters. And there was 4042, successful campaigns last year. That's crazy. And this, this, this includes, you know, it includes, like role playing games, too, but it doesn't matter, like for over 4000 games, or variants or accessories, like, even if it's like 2000 games, or 3000 is like an insane amount, right? doesn't meet its needs to be a part of it in that sense.
Yeah, I was found with more modern board games, as they have more, they're more akin to like computer games, and a lot of people around our age group used to play a lot of couch computer games, you know, this, and those don't really exist anymore. It's all online. So to get that social interaction, you find that you start leaning into the boardgame side of things.
It's true. I mean, that that's my kind of resurgence into the hobby about five, six years ago was just that call back to playing. I think I said this before, but playing Bomberman for play on the Nintendo, right. Like, just sitting around having a laugh with banter, and just the fact that people get blown up and stuff and you know, it's just it's just the fact you're
sharing that experience. Yeah, and, and just playing I think it was XCOM the board game which I still want admit is the worst game to get anybody into any hobby because it's so stressful. It kind of worked. It's like, oh my god, this is like a new experience. And then you know it's from there you then as you start brand new you're learning all these different mechanics like deck building and worker placement and dice drafting and all these things and suddenly you start talking a different
language. People don't understand you anymore, which is fine.
That's JP I love that. For some reason. I never made the connection between like, couch, couch play and and now board games. That's wild. And you know, I love it because I love sitting on the couch playing Goldeneye with
Yeah. Was Odd-Job banned? Yes, like was only kneel down.
¶ The importance of capturing that "moment" in game design
Stop screen looking like
Actually, you'd stand up in front of the TV of your part of the screen and just be like, no, no.
Or, or Halo Lan parties where we would have one TV upstairs, one TV downstairs, you do something fun the upstairs, people start being on the floor, right?
All those cables running everywhere?
It's, it's no, it's, it's great to think of that's, that's exactly. Like when I go into when I think about any, like any new design or new concept. It's always for me, it's always coming into a place of like, hey, what you know, what's the experience? You know, I would like to capture you know, what is that moment of, you know, you're talking about XCOM, okay, we're, we're feeling stressed. Right? You know, what is what is the moment that that I want to capture?
Right? And those are those are like, fun things to think about. Like so I'm always like that. That's like the first consideration before any like mechanics. Yeah, sometimes sometimes theme and that experience is all tied together. But it's you know, that is always had experienced for me which is so so cool with with games these days.
¶ How did OOMM Games start and how did you get involved?
Yes, it's quite unique point to look at actually. I like that. It makes sense. Yeah, it does make sense like me, I'm always looking at mechanics. I'm always in my head. But really that what's the why be? Yeah, exactly. Well, why
The Why is the feeling I'm supposed to be getting, which is fun, stressed. And it makes more sense and fun. One, whatever your experience should be the top end. It's like why do we go and see a horror film. Right? You gotta get scared, but it's fun to get scared. Yeah, you know. So this the feeling it impacts our view. Yeah, makes it makes perfect sense. So whilst we're on on the themes of games and game design, I'm really
intrigued. Brendon, how you kind of started OOMM games or Out of my mind games, like, what where do you start, you know, one day doing a job at something and then suddenly, you know what, I'm going to create my own board game publishing company. How did it go? How did it start?
No, that's, that's fine. So. So couple things. I'll go back before I actually didn't start in games. Okay. Yeah, so you thought you're talking to the owner of OOMM games. Joke's on you. But, ya know, so, so. So like, five years ago, super interested in Kickstarter. Like I've been, I've had back my first project on Kickstarter, I don't know, maybe a decade ago. So like, early on in the crowdfunding days, I've always been a little bit, you know, entrepreneurial minded and the kind of
creatively bent. And so I've just been, I've been thinking for a long time, what would be cool to do on Kickstarter, like I would like to do with Kickstarter. And then board games were increasing in popularity. And this new game rolled out called PUBG. Before Fortnight there was a game called PUBG. This would be a very cool board game. And then I started developing this game called Last one Standing. And then Fortnight actually came out. As I was developing it, I was like, wow, that's very
fortunate. And then so kind of did all the work except, except the artwork where I where I hired a Russian artist to do the artwork for that because I was very cheap, and didn't have much money. And I found this guy I don't really know where I found him. And did everything else went to Kickstarter. I think I raised like $25 or $28,000 enough to get like a, you know, a print run. So that was really neat experience, but the game sucks. Or at least, at least, at
least I think it does. Looking looking back on it, and I'm like, Oh yeah, that It's like not not the greatest game. But you know, he was doing everything and it for me. It's just a part of experience at that time.
It was your first game and everything then yeah.
You always learn by doing it wrong. You always learn by making mistakes you don't learn if you do everything right. Yeah. So yeah,
I was like totally. And I wasn't even thinking so much about what was going to come afterwards, I was just like, really interested in just the whole process itself. And from that game, I actually got connected to some people in town. And so there's this like, small video game called Club Penguin. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Club Penguin at all
I've heard about penguin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So it was it was actually created in the town I live in right now. By these, these three guys. They ended up selling it to Disney for for a wack tonne of money. And then, like, There's this one guy who started a mobile game studio, a couple games like a venture capitalist adventure, Venture communists that they've made. And then he was just like, hey, you know, it'd be fun to start a board game studio. So he started this board game studio called Win games with with another guy,
Jonathan. And, and after I released Last one standing, they kind of got in touch with me and last, like, Hey, if you ever want to make games, just let me know. That was that was like the weird invitation. Yeah, totally. And so I didn't actually take them up on it right away. It was like, two years later. You know, I had an idea for for Stars. of Akarios which was called
¶ Lessons learned on Stars of Akarios and applying them to Mythwind
Starlight at the time. And I, you know, I went to him like, hey, Lance, you know, I have this idea, like, do we want to fund it, blah, blah, blah. And so then ended up being a new games launch. And we launched kind of right as the pandemic hit, like three years ago. And like, just so that that kind of changed, changed my trajectory. From from that moment, so kind of a weird, a weird way into the industry, but but it's neat, you know, happy to be here.
Yeah. So that's how I first heard about you. Brendan were Stars of Akarios, which was, as you said, called Starlight. So yeah. And obviously, things have kind of gone strength to strength. I mean, Stars of Akarios has a great reception. Right. I think it's an ambitious. Yeah, that's right. Yeah,
Talk about lessons learned, oh, man, learn to learnt a lot of lessons with with with that. It's not not quite as big as the Gloomhaven box, but it's, it's close the size to the size and scope. Yeah, you know, so I was, you know, principal designer. On that game, we got a team to do some writing and bunch of stuff. And so I was doing like project management and design. And it was a lot, like ended up, like, probably biting off a little bit more than than we could chew at
the start. But you know, we made it through and I think we're sitting it's like an 8.3 point four on on on BGG right now, which is, you know, really happy with that there's, it's crazy, right, it's a campaign game really big. It's, you know, for me, it's the, you know, talk about the experience that I wanted to capture I love I love like the, you know, the dog fighting scenes in Star Wars, where it's like, fast and loose.
And, you know, the Millennium Falcon is doing weird barrel rolls or the X wings doing stuff, or like a Starfox vibe. Like that was that was like the, the experience right? And, and I'm, unlike Last on Standing I'm really happy with how like, especially the space, especially the space combat, we went through quite a few iterations on the design. And, you know, throughout we kind of went pretty arcade-y in some of it. Where it's, you know, it's fast. It's like really fast paced.
Like, yeah, so enjoy it a lot. You know, we shipped it, there's there's like, it's a bummer because the rulebook in some ways that the book is the rule books, huge. The scenario book, like 200 pages, and so it was like, oh, shoot, there's like, there's some areas that here and there are there are some areas that we're we're going to clean
up. We're going to do, we're going to do a like a 1.5 edition release here pretty soon, you know, but massive, massive lessons learned as you know, moving into Mythwind, like we you know, we just hired a really skilled technical editor to redo our rule books in Mythwind when you know, it's a bunch of things or it's like, okay, hey, you know what, maybe, maybe I'm not the person to to write these rule books.
That's quite hard, as it's your baby though. Because you've you've been there for the whole whole process, you know the rules best, but maybe you're not the best articulate. Yeah, you know, like Yeah, so it's like they take it from me.
The the guy we brought in for Mythwind his, his name is Adam Baker. He was working at Fantasy Flight. Think he worked there for like eight years. So he was he was their senior technical editor he wrote the rules on the new Descent, on
the new Twilight Imperium. You can you can Google is are you gonna find his name on Board Game Geek he has a massive resume and so so when he sent back his first draft of of our minimum rulebook, I was like, oh, gosh, yeah, you're happy like we're keeping you, we're keeping you again. So worth the worth his weight in gold. But
I'm like, this is a big process of games. Now. It's like the optimise rule books make them more accessible, even though sometimes the rules are more complex. Yeah, if the if that rulebook structured, simply you can understand the game and you can just put it down like hit the ground running
It's a massive barrier for gamers and people isn't it with the rulebook is usually the first thing you're going to pick up after obviously have to punching all the gorgeous bits. But generally when you're sitting down I've got to learn this obviously some people might go to the videos if there's a
¶ The growing trend where tutorials are becoming phased out
produced video for it, but me personally, I like I'm old fashioned. You know, I'm very English. I like to sit there with a cup of tea with the rulebook on a Sunday afternoon and that's my fun, that's fun for me. I realised that yeah, it's not fun for everybody. So yeah, that rule books quite not well structured or it's it's just a big barrier to go over it Yeah, it's it's a hard hurdle but you know, it just depends on your appetite of learning games I suppose
Yeah. And you know, in some ways because of our games you know, kind of appeal towards like the the hardcore of like the the hobbyist market there's a little bit more you know, people come in with this like existing backlog of knowledge right, they've they've played big campaign games like Frosthaven or Tainted Grail or something.
So there's like a lot of different frame of references which is you know, it's an interesting thing because there's there's been a trend in video game design lately of the tutorials are either non existent or like really shrunk down and video games are just asking so much of the player to start, they're just assuming that the player is coming with a certain knowledge I don't know if either you guys play games or you know, played Elden Ring
Yeah, yeah. played all the games
There was zero tutorial in Elden Ring. Like
I've never played a Dark Souls game right. And I had Elden Ring as my first, and I was like, oh my god, this is hard. Getting killed and hammered
Tarkov, that just throughs you in the deep end. Doesn't give you anything. You're like, how do I, you literally just have to wade through YouTube videos for like a good hour before I even start playing?
I'm trying to think of if Breath of the Wild even really had a tutorial.
Had that island though, didn't you start off on that raised island above the plateau. And then it kind of right, you explored that little small area. And then it was like, now the world is yours, you're off
It had a couple of signposts missing.
It didn't really teach you... teach you like the cooking mechanics and all those different things, right. And so there's this, there's been a trend, right, where it used to be an on the rails experience for the first hour for video games. And now it's not. I'm like, wow, board games. We're a couple of years behind. And so we're getting these kind of on the rail experiences for the first hour or two, which I think we need right now for a lot of gamers,
right? Maybe people who are coming into the hobby need to know, but are we in five to 10 years gonna be at a spot where we can just assume that our audience has this like level of knowledge where it's like, okay, they know what worker placement means.
Yeah. You see certain mechanics, you go, Oh, that's that. I know how that one works. Yeah. And then it's just the symbols, what those mean, all you need is a little menu of what each symbol means you can off you go.
Yeah, like and so I don't I don't know, like, necessarily where it's going because there's, you know, the other limitations of board games, right. We don't have the,
¶ How this trend applies to their new game Stonesaga
you know, the programme. We're running all like the setup and like all those different things in the background, right. But it is interesting to kind of think about going forward with with games. Yeah.
I've never thought about that before. It's interesting because the games have gone have gone like that and they let you experience it afresh and kind of just dive headfirst in sometimes can be nice sometimes can be infuriating
It is interesting. You know, like jumping ahead. I know I'm skipping Mythwind And this one's like very interesting to speak about. But Stonesaga like so I don't I don't... when does this go live?
This will be live when Stonesaga campaign is live
Okay yeah nice so so like our newest game coming out it's just called stone saga thinking about the experience like cool I want I want to capture that kind of survival crafting experience that I've enjoyed, and lots and lots of video games that I haven't seen really done well and board games. And that was that was like the the whole premise and you know, reached out reached out to Max Brooke, who did a lot of design on, well he was with Fantasy Flight to work with X Wing and Legend of
the Five Rings. And then we got Luke Eddy as well who's like a Star Wars Legion guy. But these are really like two super competent designers and see them bring to life this game. And it's very much like we have a lot of... there's a lot of systems in the game, which is pretty cool. We have... like there's a crafting system, there's a gathering resource system or kind of three systems
¶ Exploring the next level crafting system in Stonesaga
for that, there's an exploration system. There's all these different systems. And so we onboard players in the first three games, to learn the systems. And then it's kind of we have these, each game is structured in a challenge. But it's like, okay, go if you want to spend your next two games, learning how to make a bow like go and find out. You can go in if you want to spend your next game, just building your village and, you know, building a well and doing this like, go for it.
And so we create these like systems and the crafting system is next level and it's brilliant.
Awesome. Yeah. It reminds me of like Rust or something like that, where you're saying you have these tiles and you kind of like just put them together and whatever code that then puts in is what you make it just it seems so unique.
Yeah, it was Yeah. So that's like the the one thing we're getting back from all the all the reviewers says like, you know, games are really good crafting system never seen anything like it, right? Because it it captures the, it's fun for me to gush because like I didn't design this crafting system, it was Max. Max had this incredible idea. And Luke came in and gave
it legs. But it's it's it captures a sense of discovery that I haven't seen crafting games do in a board game, right where you can like, you can kind of put items together or resources together and you can see what you get. But you can also kind of intuite it as like, Okay, if I put the Sharpen pointing out and then put a stick underneath of it. I should probably get a spear right. And you get it looks like this. Yeah, yeah, it looks like a spear. And then you know, you
flip open your Codex. And if if you've gotten... so I spent my third game, the there was this whole goal, there's this behemoth trying to kill my wife and I, and the only thing I wanted to do was craft a bow and...
Fumbling around and just like 'oh no'
It was so annoying, because I was like, Okay, I think I have the two resources, I need to craft a bow. And I smash them together. And this was before we added hints, but but now you smash two items together, you read it. And now we're like, Oh, hey, it looks like you're trying to make a boat. Maybe, maybe one of your resources needs to be stronger. Right? We give players a little bit of like a hint. And I could
¶ The uniqueness of the games from OOMM Games
have used that when I was playing because I didn't realise.
What did you make in the end then?
It was nothing.
It just failed?
Fight a bear with that.
So funny. But ya know, I gotta keep my resources but it is like, you know, when thinking about like game design and new games, you know, for us, at least. I bet Stars of Akarios is going to be the most similar to existing games. Even though I feel like it's... so people compare it to like Gloomaven and Space, but it's weird because the only thing that's like the same is like the modifier deck. And then a big book of scenarios and like
it doesn't play anything. It's more it's more Ameri trash than it is Euro. Right and so like
¶ Stonesaga actions feel intuitive & tactile
the game mechanics it's like, okay, it is an RPG. And there's a bunch of scenarios but like that's about it. So it is still quite different. But like, like Mythwind, I don't think there's any game that's like out there that's like it. And same with Stonesaga. So so it's for me, I think there's so many like new new areas to like, push into that haven't been explored that it's like, I'm just excited about like, the possibilities for it. So
Yeah, I mean, I watched the the One Stop Co-Op shops coverage of Stonesaga. So yeah, we're kind of going through, I think it's your three scenario prototype that you kind of sent out. And it was a blast to watch. Honestly, just as a viewer, just to kind of see, right, we're in this valley. Okay, what we got to do, right? Didn't know what we got to do stuff. Right. Okay, off we go. And they're just like literally
pushing buttons. And, and trying to just feel their way around the system, feel though, feel their way around the world. And what I found was really cool about I mean, aside from the crafting system, which is brilliant, was the little mini games that you have for the different kind of actions that you have. So if you're foraging for resources that you have the the little set of cards that you have like a push your luck mechanism, so that you're like, oh, I want this and this. And
that was quite cool. Like you go delving into caves and as like, choose your adventure path system. Likewise, with the mining, it's like going into the bag, and you're trying to get the resources. It's very cool. Like just how all these mini games kind of work.
Yes, we're used to seeing more like video games like Bethesda games? Yeah. Where you do something and its a mini-game? Yeah, a lot of people's board games, you don't see, you see sometimes, Mansions has it a little bit. But seeing that in each of its systems, which also are very relevant to each individual areas
It's tactile, isn't it? Yeah, I'm mining. And I feel like I'm mining because I'm literally reaching into a bag, extracting stuff out of it. Right. And so it translates really well. And I think yeah, this going back to your feeling. What feelings do I want to kind of invoke when I'm doing these kinds of actions. Yeah, it all kind of makes sense. But yeah, I really kind of enjoyed just how they all integrated into the
¶ The minimalist approach to help immersion
mechanisms, it was quite intuitive as well. Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing was the, the omens which to be honest, I don't know much about and it's quite nice that I don't know much about the omens but omens these little symbols that appear on the components rather appear on these hex tiles they appear in cards and, and depending on like what I've noticed in age, but depending on what kind of night or cycle, the omen is prominent, then certain things will happen. And it's
yeah, it's interesting. Well,
Well what's exciting for you is as exciting for me too. And is a big driving force of the game, as we say we want it to be like, like this visceral-ness, right? We want you to have a feeling what you're doing. And kind of the layer behind that. It's like, it's all, like, art driven, which, which, for me, like the hexes I'm so proud of it, but like the hexes they have no icons on them. Right? And that's very intentional. But because if you can see a river, you can go
fishing. Or if you see a mountain you can go mining, right? And that for me is just it's neat. Because that's that's the immersion. Right? You know, you're you're you're exploring this is like, what you see is what you get, and that's like throughout the whole game, you know, the foraging mechanic, it's same thing. It's art driven. You know, the mining you're, you're reaching in?
Yeah, and it's like, you know, when I when I think about games, like Seventh Continent flirted with that idea, like, like they just flirted, right. It didn't, it didn't embrace it, but it did. You know, say, Hey, you can kind of search this and maybe you'll find mysteries. And it
¶ Telling your story by leaving your mark
was neat that way, but each of those squares are filled with icons of different actions you can do same with, same with stars with Stars of Akarios world exploration. It's like, there's a bunch of icons that you can do. And you know, not saying icons are bad, but for, for how we could, you know, approach this survival exploration game. We want people to be like, oh, wait a second. That looks like a moon. Maybe I should like, go check that out. Right. And to have like these
weird moments of discovery. It's so neat.
Yeah, that's really cool
So the last, so one of the things that you've kind of talked about when I've watched interviews with yourself and other content creators, is about the box lid, right? The fact that it looks like a cave painting, and actually getting players to actually write or draw symbol of their experiences or certain events that happen in their game. I mean, when I first heard about that, I thought God, I've got to write on my box, like I don't know how to feel
about it. But then the more I kind of thought about, yeah, the kind of why you would do that. It's pretty cool. It's very thematic, is we're telling the story of our journey. Yeah. Which
Let me say this off the top. For those of you out there listening are like, I don't like writing on any of my components. Don't worry, we provide you a journal that you can that you can write on. Okay, so you have a journal you can write on. And if you really want to, you can buy the add on leather bound journal. Okay.
Nice plug. Nice. Yeah.
Did you hunt the leather yourself?
Yeah, whatever. No, so actually, JP, that that was actually the first idea for the game. You know, I said the experience, but but the actual idea I think I was in in the shower a couple of years ago. And I was like, how cool would it be? If you opened this box, and you look on the lid, and you just see a bunch of like symbols, and you can start to tell a story of everyone who has ever played this game, just based off of what is on the inside of that lid? And that's
neat. It's like, okay, if if I build a fire with like, my two tribes people? Yeah, great, cool. Maybe I get killed by this crazy behemoth, right. And I'm thinking about my level of ability, which is stick figures. I'm like, okay, cool. Okay, cave paintings. Great, right. And so then we incorporate that in like a gameplay mechanic where, you know, we get people to kind of leave their mark on the game,
and we give. So for those of you out there who are like, I'm not an artist, don't worry, we give you guys like little symbols. And they're like, you can literally just like sketch the symbol. And for the artists out there, they can, you know, embellish and flourish. But there's going to be future challenges, future goals, that will be like, hey, you know, check out your box, like you
have this symbol marked. And it's a little bit like a scenario check in some ways, where it's like, Hey, have you have you completed this goal, if you have, you will have drawn, you know, this kind of Stonehenge esque thing in your in your box or in your journal. And then you can, you can link that in. So it's like, like that
idea. And, you know, for me, it's I'll play, I won't sell Stonesaga, but let's say I did write say I bought the game and I played it for like six, six sessions, or like or 10 sessions, like, Hey, I had a lot of fun with this, you know, hand it off to someone, I think it's
¶ How big is Stonesaga as a campaign?
a neat for them to like, open the box and like, wow, this is like been lived in, and not in a way where it's been used. But it's like, there's this whole story that's been told by this other people. Like, that's cool.
It's going to be quite cool that you learn about their story more when you start doing your own marks. And then as you do your own marks along, you'll be able to read what's going on as well. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So I definitely, I like it a
So with Stonesaga, then obviously, it's a I'd say a lot. campaign style game where you're going to play a session, your pack away you play another session, which continues on from your previous I mean, obviously, this is not a specific question, because it's probably not a specific answer. But like, what, what's the kind of length we talking about with this game? Is it like six sessions? 10 15 100? Like, does it depend on where your story goes?
Yeah, so with with Stonesaga, we have each game is one challenge. And it's roughly four to six challenges make up an epoch, we call these at the end of an epoch, there's actually like, a, like a significant jump in time, you don't lose everything from the previous epoch, but it is like, it moves you ahead. And so, you know, the the game itself, yeah, like 10 to 20 sessions, for a
run through of the core box. And so, you know, each session is like, hour and a half, two hours, kind of depending on the play group. So you know, it's a decent amount of content, but you know, maybe you get the game or like, hey, you know, you just want to play one epoch with your gaming group, because I was like, you know, five sessions. Like, you know, maybe you get that in two months of gameplay and you're still playing, that's a good chunk of those a good
chunk of game, right? 10 hours, you still get the you still get the full arcs, you still get to experience everything. But you
¶ The tri-hex trays help the set-up and tear down
know, kind of like natural, natural stopping points. And then we're also we're also going to, like introduce a little bit of like a, like a free play slash endless mode in the game to, where we do kind of just like lean into the sandbox. So for those who maybe don't want to tackle specific challenges, or like hey, like, go survive, see how it is. Just gonna be a
little bit more freeform. In that case, But you know, and there's there's a couple of quality of life things that we have for campaign games, you know, I tried to get as fastest setup and teardown as possible, something that the review copies don't have right now are our trays. So we have a couple of token trays that we have planned just to kind of make that setup like real quick and painless.
We're still figuring out exactly what we want to do with the cards but we're thinking like a card box with like, nice little dividers, so you can set that up. And then the the land trays are like these cool tri-hex plastic things where the hexes go in. And those all get stacked into the spot in the box where a lid and kind of snaps it shut. So it saves it from from session to session. So yeah, that's kind of like the direction you know,
our campaign game. You know, decent decent time, I think on our, you know, we're advertising like 30 hour campaign is is what it is on Kickstarter. Yep.
I like the Save mechanic. It's nothing more I think we were speaking about it earlier. But the fact that it takes ages to set up can just be really off putting, and like trying to remember your save and putting all your tiles out finding all those exact tiles. I saw that little save mechanic and I thought was a bit a bit of efficiency there. I love that.
If if that got you excited, I don't know if you if you really looked into Mythwind or if that was like, hey, you know what, cool game not for me. But Mythwind, I think people are gonna really like it, we were doing something so radically different with how with how the setup and teardown and everything works, because there is no setup and teardown. Besides your initial setup. You know, each each character gets
its own tray. But each tray is is gameplay, which is different than like a storage tray right now if you don't like pack everything up, and it was like you're actually playing in your, in your tray. And then everything just kind of like slips back in. So I'm saying like 30 to 60 seconds setup and teardown to the game because you have to get everything. Yeah, so everything, just everything just stacked on top of each other.
And I'm so excited for people to get in the game because I don't think... we did an okay job of communicating it on our Kickstarter. But we went to Kickstarter pretty early on in development for Mythwind. We're much further along Stonesaga than we were for Mythwind. And so we weren't, I think quite able to communicate the vision that we had for Mythwind to its fullness. And now that I just got the first sample of our box and our punch board. And we're trying that with their 3d trays.
And it's like, oh, yeah, this is this is cool. So, yeah, I'm very, very excited.
Is that gonna be a retail? Or is it just Kickstarter only?
There might be some UK retailers who bought in, probably, but it was you know, it was Kickstarter only. We will go back, you know, probably do an expansion after we after we deliver the first edition just because we assume you know, there's a lot of people not who who missed it the first time for you know, it's Yeah, exactly. It's interesting, right? It's, you know, like, like partnering with the
distributor. Love the idea of it, but we need to sell five to seven times the number of copies through a distributor to equal
¶ The importance of communities when launching new games
one Kickstarter sale. Right? And, and no distributor is going to order 100,000 copies of Mythwind. But they're just not it's you know, it's like $100 game. That's like, they're just not going to do that because hobbyists you're already fighting for so much storage space, and unless you're like a Gloomhaven name, it's it's, it kind of doesn't make sense to like really pursue to pursue it.
And so, you know, for us, it's also a big thing for me is I love the the communities that kind of spring up from from Kickstarter from Facebook from Discord, where it's like, people who back one of our games, they, they they know who I am, right? They they they know who our designers are, they get to meet they get to communicate with Max and Luke in our Discord channel. And that's like just a really unique relationship that I think is better for both ends because
we ask for feedback. We incorporate feedback, and it's just the cyclical development process. Right.
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the great things and when I kind of mentioned earlier about Stars of Akarios, is your and you know, Max and Luke's involvement with the community not only up front before the the crowdfunding campaigns happen, but during the campaign, when the campaign's done, the continuing kind of support and communication out there is just fantastic, because, you know, a lot of the times people get you
all buzzed up and excited. And then you hear nothing for the year, and you get the odd updates, etc. But I know that you've, I don't know how many hours you must have poured into, even after the campaign was done on Stars. But even just supporting answering the questions and just engaging the community, must have took a big portion of your time? But I know it was well received.
Yeah, no, that's, that's a good thing. Thank you for saying that. It was, it was unexpected. I had other stuff slotted for like those two months for work. I was like, oh, wait a second, this is going to take a little bit of my time. Yeah,
I've underestimated this.
Quite a new age development process as well having this like, constant communication. And not all developers do it with board games. And it can get the community quite irate. And rightly so. Especially if they end up making a game that no one really wanted in the first place. And they change loads they which they don't listen to feedback, but hearing you guys, your guys process and hearing your guys kind of relationship with the communities, like it's
¶ Brendan's Niche Number 1's
really nice.
Yeah, no, that's, that's great. We We honestly, like, we want to be where we are, as people took a chance on, you know, Akarios like back in the day, right? It's like, we're relatively unknown developer, see this game? And it's like, okay, hey, great. You know, we'll we'll give you guys some money, just take a shot on it. So massive, massive thanks, anyone who's who's backed one of our projects.
Excellent.
Well, thank you for making the game.
Make the games, we'll play them I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah. But no, I think as we kind of, kind of get to towards the end of our chat, Brendan and I can literally talk to yourself for
¶ Favourite game that never hits the table?
another seven hours, but you've got work to do. No doubt and, and we probably need to go to sleep at some point. And being in the UK. One of the things I wanted to just ask you, we do a little thing on our main episodes, we call them Niche Number ones. Okay? And, and essentially, we kind of put what is our favourite game and really niche specific circumstances. So if you're game, if you're up for a few of these, I'll just throw them out quickly and see what happens. Let's rock and roll.
Let's rock and roll. Let's do it. So what's your favourite game that never hits the table?
Game of Thrones, the board game fantasy play.
We've had so many arguments on that game.
So unfortunately, I win every time we play. And it's because there's a lot of like rules that you don't think of. And I've played it the most nights so I teach it to people. And I win because I'm so competitive. Great. Love. I love that game so much.
Do you play with the Mothers of the Dragons Expansion
I have not played it. Just just just the base. It's I don't know if there's a game that has captured the art of backstabbing, as well as that game, made so many alliances that I break because you gotta you gotta go in line with the characters that you're playing. Right. And so it's like we shouldn't have you shouldn't have trusted me.
You know? Yeah. Expect Yeah.
Oh my gosh, like, like that, that support token mechanic. Oh, genius. Because you flip it, you flip it and you're like, hey, I'll support you. They fight and you're like, No, nevermind, I'm supporting this other guy. It's just so good. I love it. Anyways,
It's a firm favourite, and our group, is probably a game we get to the table once a year. Because it goes on a bit long. We need to do it on a weekend. We've tried to do it in the evening and it's always 3am when we finish and we're like probably too much. But it's it's just a fantastic game and the design in it is the fact that you have to work with people to
¶ Favourite game that you got rid off that you regretted the most
achieve their goals. But you have to also backstab them at some point it's just a matter of when
It's when BacksTambo got his nickname wasn't it? Yeah, cuz he like backstabbed like three different people in one game. All right, yeah. Fair enough.
Next time I'm in the UK, you'll have to plan a Game of Thrones night and then I'll join in for it.
Yeah, Brendan 100% Let us know when you in the country we will travel. Okay, next one then is what's your favourite game that you got rid of that you regretted the most so obviously, you have a cycle of games that you talked about earlier? Yeah,
¶ Favourite game that puts you in the state of zen
one that you know. Why did I do that?
I was thinking about this. Spirit Island. Okay, I miss playing Spirit Island. I loved Spirit Island. I thought it was a really fun thing. I should have bought an expansion for it. My wife and I we felt like we had solved everything in the core box. Even though it took us a while to get there, but an expansion would have been fun.
Yeah, yes few to choose from now. Isn't that to be fair, but yeah, I played it once you've played it once. Played it three times or three times. Yeah. Nice. Good. Yeah. It's really good now so yeah, games. Good game. Okay, last Niche Number one we've got for you is, what's your favourite game that puts you in a state of Zen?
Is it XCOM?
No, I'm trying to think maybe like Tapestry or Welcome To, two very different games. But Welcome To you know, it's a flip and write, which is good. Tapestry. I don't know, you're just you just get into the zone. You don't really care about anyone else around the table. You're just like,
¶ TURN 4 - Planning Your Turn - What's coming up for our guest
doing your thing.
Right. Moving up a track. Doing lots of combos. Exactly.
Yeah. Four tracks. Yeah. Well, there's there's four. There's four tracks.
With expanded fifth of the expansion. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And there might be I might be six. You never know where the next one who knows.
Great stuff. No, no, thank you for that. I just thought we liked asking some of our guests and our niche number ones. It's just, you know, bit of fun. And we actually love doing those episodes, right? Yeah. Because we just pick random random ones. Yeah, it happens. Okay, so the last thing to ask you that Brendon and we'll wrap up is kind of what events, or what kind of games are you excited for in the future? Like, what what's coming up that you're looking forward to?
Oh, outside of Stonesaga and Mythwind? Kind of like one and one and two for me. What am I looking forward to? I don't even actually know what is on the release schedule. Oh, you know what? I think I am going to late pledge for Oathsworn. Think I'm gonna do it.
You've been toying with this one haven't you?
Yeah. With Frosthaven in the way, I'm never gonna get to it for like a year.
And Oathsworn looks like it's done some new things. And yeah, I think I think I'm going to pull the trigger. It's I get the reminders from Gamefound. You have a $1... or whatever it is? That sounds like? Yeah, maybe?
Yeah, look, it looks pretty cool. I probably refrain from looking too much. Because, for me, it's expensive
It's not cheap. It's not cheap. Oh, I would never, base game for me.
Any events coming up?
Yeah. It's a great question.
We were talking about conventions earlier before we started recording.
Yeah, you might see me at GenCon this year. You might see me at GenCon. This year, we we we don't have a massive convention presence. This this year, we might start to increase our convention presence with with them. So GenCon, potentially Origins. And we show up to Shux. But Shux is a really small convention compared to the other ones. So
Hopefully, we'll look out for you.
Yeah, if we do get across the pond.
Exactly. Yeah.
¶ Thanking Brendan
Muster up the funds, and we'll come over, but it's on my list to pop over to a US or convention or even in Canada, where your based. So yeah, it'd be awesome to kind of combine that with a trip. Yeah. Get all the group together games and travelling. I mean, what's better? I mean, I've got to convince my wife and kids that I can leave them for a week or so it's fine. We'll make it go to America without them as well.
¶ TURN 5 - The Final Turn
Yeah, yeah. I'm going I'm going to America bye. But no, look, Brendan, thank you. So so much for for taking your time to speak to us today and jumping on the podcast. We really, really appreciate it. And as I said, I'm sure we could literally just talk about your game designer kind of brain for many, many hours. But no, thank you very much. Really loved to have you on the show.
Hey, yeah, no, thanks. Thanks for having me, guys.
Anytime, anytime. Hopefully you enjoyed our chat with Brendan. But before we wrap up, let's cover off how you can get in touch with the show. As always, we have so many handles and different ways you can do that. First we have BoardGameGeek where you can subscribe, become a fan and check our episodes on there. You can contact us directly on our email players@whoseturn.co.uk. We've got Facebook, Whose turn
is it anyway podcast. We've got Instagram, @whoseturnpodcast and of course tiktok @whosetureisitanyway, and we'll be back again with more main episodes and various different expansion packs very soon. Catch you on the next one.