I apologize for not posting more often. I have been really busy at work and haven’t had a whole lot of time recently. That should change a bit now that our release is nearly complete.
This past weekend I attended the UnPub Mini event at Atomic Empire in Durham, NC. Here is a link to the event details and a list of games. For those who don’t know, the event was for unpublished games to be play tested by people with the designers on hand to answer questions and explain their games.
Unfortunately I arrived late as I didn’t get some work done at the house in time. But, I had a lot of fun while I was there! I was able to play three games from two designers. I won’t go into too much detail about the games, just my experiences.
- A La Kart – A game by Daniel Solis. This is a fun kart racing card game for 2-6 players. We were just playing with two players. The theme is based around “Sugar Rush” from the movie Wreck it Ralph. I had a lot of fun with this small game. The point is to use the cards in your hand to score the spaces on the track. I played 3 different decks and each was distinctly different in their play style. The game was really quick at about 10-15 minutes. I had a bunch of fun and I would most definitely pick this up when it’s released.
- Trickster Fantasy – Another game by Daniel Solis. I think Daniel said up to 7 could play, but we were playing with 4. The premise of the game is to have as little cards in front of you as possible at the end of the game. Each type of card in your hand has an ability to change things up. I don’t want to say too much about this one because I don’t know what state the game is in and Daniel said things might change a bit. But, this was fun and could easily be applied to different themes. We’ll see what Daniel has in store for this =)
- Blowback – This one was designed by Nathan Bivins. This can play 3-4 players. The name is the final name as Nathan is currently looking to possibly rename it. Regardless of the name, I thought this was a fun game! I ended up being the traitor(one player is working against the rest of the players in secret) for this one and it was a fun game of trying to mislead the other players without giving myself away. Once we all got the hang of it we started playing pretty quickly. This is the first game of this kind that I had played before so it was a new experience for me. I think my favorite part of the game is how there is still potentially stuff to do on other player’s turns when they play cards. It keeps things interesting and engaging. The game felt mostly done, just a few small tweaks we mentioned to Nathan at the end of it. I will be looking for this when it goes to a publisher.
I wish I could have gotten there earlier and played some more games! I walked by some of the other tables and some of the other games looked fun and interesting. One neat idea I saw being played was a MOBA(a la League if Legends) as a board game called 8-Bit Battle Arena. That was pretty cool seeing played out. I also saw Valley of the Mammoths, which was an interesting mix of dexterity and deck building. I didn’t have a chance to play it, but I would like to check it out in the future if possible.
I had a bunch of fun and saw some cool games. If you have the chance to check out an UnPub event I highly suggest it. The event was well organized and had plenty to do and see!
To read more about Daniel Solis and his games, you can visit his blog. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a website for Nathan Bivins to share, otherwise I would.
The Gaming Cubicle 