Dice Throne Adventures + Season 1 ReRolled

1 Play

I’ll start this off with a bit of a caveat: I enjoyed Dice Throne more back when the DTA kickstarter launched.  I enthusiastically backed the project for the second set of fighters (the Season 1 ReRolled battle chest) and tentatively backed this Adventures box as well because it looked like a fun way to mix up the formula with cooperative campaign dungeon crawling instead of head-to-head combat.

The Dice Throne team certainly delivered on their promise.  This is a gorgeous production, jam-packed with unique tiles, enemies, scenarios, and encounters.  People who really love this are going to get a lot of mileage out of this box.  Yet I found this expansion spoils an experience that was already trending downward due to my morphing tabletop tastes.

We’ve played and enjoyed our Dice Throne Season 2 battle chest over a dozen times, but most of those plays occurred in 2019 and really dropped off over the past year and a half.  With King of Tokyo, the Yahtzee mechanism was one of our favorite entry mechanisms into the hobby years ago, and Dice Throne was an evolution of that concept.  But over time, the weaknesses became more apparent when contrasted against other mechanisms.

The main area where the Yahtzee mechanism struggles to satisfy is when a player has horrible luck with the dice.  When a person’s entire turn amounts to absolutely nothing due to a bad roll, both players feel bad and the fun is dampened.  It was easy to overlook this weakness when Dice Throne had so many other things going for it.  Fast forward a few years, and the competition is much more fierce with game systems like Unmatched.  

Both Dice Throne and Unmatched fill the same niche of light 1v1 combat with a diverse cast of characters wrapped in a gorgeous production.  Dice Throne gets bogged down by a slow pace, frequently anticlimactic turns and endings, and an on-the-rails decision space.  On the other hand, Unmatched doesn’t overstay its welcome and has more diverse, interesting, and thematic fighters.  After dozens of plays between both systems, a long span of time spent refining my gaming preferences, and finally revisiting Dice Throne, those key differences are much more apparent to me, rendering Dice Throne obsolete within my collection.  I still get why Dice Throne has its fans thanks to all the love and care that has gone into this system, but I have to accept that it is no longer for me.

Within that context, I find Dice Throne Adventures to be an expansion that weakens the core experience.  It simultaneously doubles the playing time while cutting individual player engagement in half.  Dice Throne always worked best as a 2-player game where everything your opponent does has a direct effect on you, yet this expansion plays to Dice Throne’s weaknesses.  Players now spend each turn directing their combat and effects towards an NPC (non-player character); so while one person mulls through their hand, selects cards to spend and dice to re-roll, resolves effects, etc., the only external engagement that occurs is when one other player has the brief privilege of mindlessly rolling dice for a NPC.

I can’t stress enough that any kind of downtime in a game like this is bad downtime.  Dice Throne is a game that requires minimal planning and strategizing, you’re simply rolling dice when it’s your turn and deciding what to reroll thereafter, so all time between your turns is spent floating in a void.  The card play certainly helps ease the chronic pain, but it’s more of a thin distraction than a cure.  By lengthening the turns and reducing external engagement, Dice Throne Adventures only serves to amplify this issue.

While there’s an interesting cornucopia of rewards, surprises, and variety that comes with this campaign-style dungeon crawling expansion, those things are collectively overshadowed by the dramatically extended playing time.  Where a standard game of Dice Throne usually takes an appropriate 30 minutes, our first Portal Crawl scenario blew far past two hours (and that’s not even including the setup, teach, and teardown).  It’s impossible to justify spending so much time with something so light and unsubstantial, especially in the same universe as Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion.

And here is where I arrive at the two nails in Dice Throne’s coffin.  On one end, I have the consistently more satisfying Unmatched to scratch my light, asymmetric dueling itch, and on the other end I have Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion as an accessible scenario-based dungeon crawler to keep me fully engaged.  Nothing within this expansion gives me a solid reason to pull it off the shelf, or even keep it there for that matter.

Current Ratings

Dice Throne Season 1 ReRolled: 6/10

Dice Throne Adventures: 5/10

Renature

3 Plays

Renature blooms from the dream-team assembled.  Planted by designers Michael Kiesling (Azul) and Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande) and cultivated by Capstone Games’ Simply Complex brand (The Estates), we have a game bred for one purpose: tabletop domination.

Those looking for the next highly accessible game with a depth to satisfy all and a presentation to back it up need look no further.  Renature is as simple as place a domino, add a plant next to it, and draw another domino.  The design has the perfect amount of animal variety and hand size where your location options for placement are neither too overwhelming nor too restrictive.  

Which plant to place where and when is the ultimate hinge upon which the points swing.  Hotly contest areas gain late plants easy, immediate points; yet early, imposing plants can be great investments that discourage competition and net big points later.

What starts out slow and meandering quickly becomes tight and crafty.  Domino placements must be carefully considered and deliberately planned.  But the sneaky complexity really rears its magnificent head within the neutral plants and cloud abilities.

Surprisingly, this cuddly nature game is as nasty as Capstone’s meanest (The Estates, Stick ‘Em).  That moment when you realize that a well-timed neutral can erase your opponent from an area and net you an easy batch of points is unrivaled in games of this weight.  Neutral trees also bring a critical, zesty layer to the 2-player game that would be too predictable without.  Moreover, the simple bonuses that spent cloud tokens can provide open up delicious opportunities.  Blowing your cloud supply to pounce on an unsuspecting opponent or lock down a valuable area can be the difference between victory and defeat.

Renature is the complete package.  It’s a beautiful game that I will happily bust out with all types of players at any count of 2-4.  It bears an elegant pace with its heaping of classy dominoes and chunky foliage across the threshold of greatness into evergreen fields beyond.

Current Rating: 9/10

Under Falling Skies

3 Plays

“I don’t solo often, but when I do, I prefer video games.”  

-The Most Interesting Man in the World

That’s just the way it is for me.  Growing up on Nintendo does that to a man.  Yet these days, I get much more excited about board games than video games.  Perhaps I’m jaded by all of the generic shooters, soulless open-world adventures, and cash-grabbing mega-publishers, but tabletop games usually contain WAY more value and payoff for me thanks to their tactile, social natures.  A few exceptions to this rule include big-budget Nintendo games (Zelda, Super Mario, etc.), god-tier indie video games, and solo tabletop games.  Any of these reasons will cause me to leap from the chair & table to the couch & screen.

So it’s all the more impressive when a tabletop game manages to reel me in and get me playing all on my lonesome.  I’ve determined that a solo game will only work for me under the following conditions:

1) It is designed to be played primarily solo.  For me, playing a board game solo that is intended to be experienced with others is a game not worth playing at all. 

2) It is quick and easy to break out and play.  Setting up a sprawling game for only myself is just too dang exhausting.

3) It offers interesting variability between each game.  When you are playing against the game instead of players, that game better have a lot of tricks up its sleeve or it will get bland & predictable fast.

Under Falling Skies checks all of these boxes and has me eager to explore it more.  The production and design are a full-course meal of fun.  With clever dice allocation and manipulation, painful trade offs, sliding plastic ships, rising tension, and thoughtful replayability, Under Falling Skies is a solid solo game for me.

Current Rating: 7.5/10

Hadara

1 Play

Hadara takes a lot of inspiration from 7 Wonders, even going so far as to use eerily similar symbols, tokens, and color coding.  Hadara feels like the faster, more streamlined, and less interactive version of 7 Wonders.

While Hadara is quick, simple, streamlined, and slick, it’s also completely devoid of soul, personality, theme, and meaning.  This game might be the closest I’ve ever felt to managing a spreadsheet.  It’s just a merry-go-round (minus the merry) of cards, points, and coins.  Anything and everything grants points.  Each new card nudges one of your tokens up the designated color tracks.  Purchased cards become these ever growing columns of colors in front of you.  Everything melds into a bland pile of stuff that costs stuff but earns you more stuff and scores you lots of stuff at the end.

It’s been a few years since my last play of regular 7 Wonders, but I do recall the drafting and strategic paths being much more meaningful.  The spiritual sibling, Hadara, isn’t guilty of being a bad game, yet it is all too forgettable.

Current Rating: 5.5/10

Schotten Totten 2

4 Plays

So far it’s an interesting twist on the original Schotten Totten / Battle Line card game thanks to the asymmetry.  This series of games pits one player against another, gives them each a hand of 6 or 7 cards at a time, and challenges them to commit one card at a time onto their side of the battlefield at 9 possible locations of battle.  It’s a game of keeping your plans as opaque as possible for as long as possible.  Once a card is played down at a location, it is committed there and the best set of 3 cards will claim the location.  These sets have poker style rankings (sum of the numbers being the worst rank, a run of a single suit being the best) that will determine the victor at each site.  

Schotten Totten 2 puts a spin on this concept by giving the 2 competitors unique victory objectives and abilities.  The attacker must win at three total sites or twice at the same site to claim the victory.  The defender must last until the deck is empty or complete all of their formations to win. Another major change is that the defender can use up to 3 oil spills to wipe out one card of the attacker’s (before they achieve a winning formation), and the attacker can retreat an entire formation to commit something even better to that section. And finally, the sections contain more variety with some limiting the types of sets you can play and others requiring more or less cards in a set.

After our first two plays, it seemed incredibly hard to win as the Attacker. Both games saw the defender annihilating the attacker. But of course, this is a Reiner Knizia game, so there’s a lot more nuance to the asymmetric strategies than what we discovered within our first two plays.

For games 3 & 4, we decided to add the tactics cards into the mix. Armed with these new opportunities and a deeper appreciation for how the game plays, we soon witnessed the attacker becoming the back-to-back champion.

Clearly, there’s no huge issue here with the balance. And even if there was, the best way to play ST2 is twice in a row, switching roles each game, and the rules provide a method of determining the winner if the victories are split.

ST2 is a very interesting twist on the original Schotten Totten / Battle Line thanks to the asymmetry. As for a main downside: it tends to be more AP inducing than the original, resulting in a slower game. But Knizia knows how to make a solid head-to-head card game!

Current Rating: 7.5/10

Loot of Lima

1 Play

Loot of Lima is nothing short of an amibitious project from the team at BoardGameTables.com.

The self-assembly dual layered player shields with rotating hands are excellent components that make things especially easy for when players ask you questions about your own location tokens. The player sheets have a layout that is extremely functional and well thought out. The dice are satisfyingly large and the tokens work perfectly for what a careful deducer needs.

The production is not without its hiccups, though. In the dark cafe-like setting that we played, players often struggled to differentiate the colors on the dice and player mats. This sometimes resulted in critical mistakes of writing notes down in the wrong rows. Fortunately, those mistakes were usually caught… usually.

I worry that Loot of Lima’s rulebook is going to keep a lot of players from discovering the juicy goodness of this game and sharing it with others. The strict adherence to 4-pages is a detriment to rule clarity, experience smoothness, and player sheet potential. Within the brief rules, I failed to find any information about several different tokens and how to use them (the record tokens, the question marks on the backs of the player tokens, why the location tokens should be face down on your shield instead of face up, etc.). The rules could have even used instructions for how to fit the components back into box, which I and others seem to be struggling with (hint, you have to make a pair of hands overlap and face each other on the maps).

I also had to dig into the depths of the internet to figure out the basic principles of using your player sheet. The rulebook shows an example of a player sheet, but explains nothing about what all of it means (besides recording a player’s question and answer in the bottom section). I get that there may be a desire to not pigeon-hole players into one way to take notes, but the lack of direction left half of my group floundering. What do the X’s and O’s mean? Why box in some squares? What are good ideas for notes to write to the sides? Some simple player aids could have gone a LONG way to ease newcomers into the game.

I managed to figure out some of the basic ideas of how to use the player sheets, and I explained these tips and suggestions to my opponents, but without any kind of player guide or formal rules I saw multiple opponents get completely lost and underutilize their player sheets. This of course wasn’t something I could correct mid-game, as these sheets are kept secret, so they instead had to just suffer through an hour+ of floundering.

The game also requires an unprecedented level of discipline, care, and attention to detail that severely increases its fragility. One person giving a wrong answer can break the game for everyone, or recording information into the wrong column/row/box can break the game for one’s self. The opportunity for victory-crumbling mistakes are high, higher than I’ve ever seen in another board game.

All of these rough edges unfortunately rubbed all 4 of my opponents a little too raw, and it seems like none of them has a desire to try Loot if Lima again. That’s a heart breaker for me, because this game is incredibly good if you manage to survive the barefoot run across the coals.

I think the best litmus test for a good candidate for this game is a person who LOVES Cryptid and is quite good at it. I would place myself into this category, and I am certainly hungry for more Loot of Lima. I nearly deduced the two correct locations, as did one other player. Yet nobody truly won the game, and most didn’t seem to care for the bumpy journey either. If I can just manage to find a few compatible candidates, I have no doubt that Loot of Lima will be a killer game for experienced players.

Current Rating: 7/10

Article written by Nick Murray. Keep an eye out for his first published design, Social Grooming, which will debut in a Kickstarter bundle alongside two games from critically acclaimed designer, Reiner Knizia! Don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle coming in 2021! Subscribe to the Bitewing Games monthly newsletter to stay in touch.

The post Candid Cardboard: New Release 1st Impressions (March 2021) appeared first on Bitewing Games.

“This your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Morpheus – The Matrix

It all started when I stumbled across Wavelength on social media. Talk of the game lead me to its active project on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website that I had heard much about but never actually delved into. Wavelength’s colorful, psychedelic art design drew me in like an unsuspecting Alice. I clicked play on the campaign video, and down the rabbit hole I fell.

Mad props to whoever made that video, by the way. If anyone needs a case study in how to hook potential backers and reel them in like a fish, just check out that whole page. After combing through the entire pitch, I wasn’t just excited about the concept, I was compelled to help bring about its existence.

This is the crux of Kickstarter… when a person or group dream up an incredible idea, pitch it to a crowd, and they collectively pledge their resources and efforts to make it a reality. This is old news to many backers and creators who have been using crowdfunding for years. We’ve even reached a point where many desensitized backers call Kickstarter a pre-order system, especially in the tabletop games category.

While that’s not entirely false, there is still something magical about joining a community of passionate dreamers and embarking on a journey of creation. When you support an exciting project and it fully delivers on its lofty promises, there is no better feeling. Fortunately for Kickstarter, Wavelength hit a homerun (just read my review of the game), and I’ve kept more projects on my radar ever since.

Projects that Earned My Pledge and How They Did It

Captivating Videos — Wavelength

Let’s talk a bit more about Wavelength’s campaign video. If you clicked the link above and watched it, you’ll notice something incredibly unique about it compared to most other campaign videos. How much time was spent showcasing or explaining the game? Practically none. You hardly even see a single game component in the entire video, yet it has a laser focus on what makes Wavelength special.

Instead of explaining to us how the game plays, the creators of this video opted to show us the game through the players’ emotions, reactions, and interactions. It paints a very clear picture to its viewers of what they can expect to experience with their family and friends. Most importantly, it briefly and succinctly shows the viewer the exact outcome they want from this kind of game and then leaves the rest of the project page to fill in the details of how they’ll get to that outcome.

Contrast this to many other campaign videos that quickly lose me… Usually they get caught up in fancy thematic narratives with fluffy animations and take far too long to get to the point of why I should back their project. In my opinion, if your campaign video is the first thing people see on your project page, then it should absolutely feature the hook of your concept and nothing else. Let the rest of the page take care of the details, once the hook is set.

I had never even visited Kickstarter.com before encountering Wavelength, but that campaign page had my pledge within minutes because it knew how reach me on a personal and emotional level.

Low-Risk Rewards & Credibility — Tussie Mussie / Sprawlopolis / Seasons of Rice

Wavelength was my form of taking the red pill and falling down the rabbit hole into Kickstarter Wonderland. Button Shy’s affordable, low-risk wallet games kept me hanging around for more.

I initially heard of all three of these games in unique ways:

• While enjoying our recently acquired copy of Wingspan, I heard that Elizabeth Hargrave’s next published game (Tussie Mussie) was on the way with another presentation that would appeal to my wife. Tussie Mussie was also the winner of the 2018 Gen Can’t design contest.
• Separately, I watched Tom Vasel’s raving review of Sprawlopolis that put it on my wishlist.
• Finally, I listened to the Board Game Design Lab’s episode with Corry Damey about How to Win a Design Competition, and of course the competition winner (Seasons of Rice) piqued my interest.

These above encounters were critical for getting these projects on my radar. Each game had an underlying credibility to it that allowed me to put my trust in a design I had never played. Perhaps more importantly, the pledge levels were all at a reasonable price ($10 per game) that gave me little reason to hesitate when clicking the pledge button.

Quality & Consistency — Dice Throne Adventures & Season 1 ReRolled

I was already an owner of Dice Throne Season 2 when this project went live. Having been blown away by Season 2’s character variety and production quality, there was little resistance left within me when Roxley tempted me with more Dice Throne goodness. But there is something to be said for making each little detail of a production a premium feeling experience. When publishers display a high standard of consistency and quality from one project to the next, backers will notice and they’ll return for more.

Alluring Presentations & Illuminating Playthroughs — Sleeping Gods

Sleeping Gods was Kickstarter’s biggest challenge yet in successfully acquiring me as a backer. The $70 base pledge is a tall order coming from a publisher and designer that I have no prior experience with. On top of that, this is a style of game that I have never even played before. The art and presentation are certainly alluring, but the pessimism was strong within me.

How am I supposed to know whether I like a storybook adventure game? Won’t this just feel like a more clumsy, fiddly version of a video game, book, or movie? What if I start playing and quickly discover that I blew $70 + shipping on a game that is clearly not for me?

I had plenty of reasons to stand my ground and let this campaign ship sail, yet I ended up backing Sleeping Gods. Ryan Laukat, you sly dog. So how did he do it?

Well, that dang artwork and concept was so well imagined and executed that I wanted this unique game to work for me. I think this kind of thing happens all the time to us gamers. Just look at something like PARKS, Camel Up, Horrified, or plenty of others. Strip away the gorgeous artwork, the inviting theme, the killer components, and much of what makes those games shine is lost. PARKS becomes a generic resource collector, Camel Up becomes a luck-infused dice roller, Horrified looks like an off-brand Pandemic copy-cat . Moral of the story: don’t underestimate the value of a unique theme, quality art, and thoughtful production.

The stellar presentation of Sleeping Gods wasn’t enough on its own to get me to bite. I still needed to find something within the gameplay that made me say, “Ooo, this looks fun!” Who helped me to uncover that fun? None other than Rahdo, himself.

Oddly enough, my opinion on games hardly even aligns with Rahdo’s. Usually when he says, “Too mean,” I say, “Just right.” Yet, I’ve found Rahdo’s run-throughs to be extremely valuable in communicating the puzzly tension of certain games. It took me a lot of deep digging into the project page and beyond, but Rahdo is exactly what I needed to push me over the edge on both Sleeping Gods and the next game I backed, Calico.

Alluring Presentations & Illuminating Playthroughs — Calico

Like Sleeping Gods, Calico is game that tempted me initially but required more effort to earn my pledge. I could tell it filled a similar niche as Azul and Sagrada, which have been big hits with my wife. But on the surface level, I had no way of knowing whether this one would measure up to its competition and justify its place on our game shelf.

Once more, it was Rahdo’s runthrough that uncovered the excruciating tension lurking within Calico’s gameplay. Before watching his play-through, this was just a cute puzzly quilting game with cats, and I was mildly interested. After watching his play-through, this was an agonizing feline challenge with colorful, crunchy decisions, and I was a backer.

These kinds of video previews that not only show how a game plays but how a game feels to play are often critical factors in earning a dip into my wallet.

High Standards & Hot Streaks — Loot of Lima / GPS / Sequoia / Mountain Goats

Perhaps the most important thing a publisher can do for long-term success is maintain a high standard of design from one title to the next. A mediocre game can often do more harm to a small publisher’s library than its short-term sales are worth. When I catch onto a publisher or designer that is on a hot streak, I will preorder and pledge to every title they throw at me until they lose my trust. If I’m burned by a design team, it’ll take a lot of convincing from critics to get me to take another chance on future games.

My current list of auto-purchases include any Capstone Games’ light-medium weight titles, any Cole Wehrle design and/or Leder Games titles, and games published by BoardGameTables.com. I’ll also seriously consider every new game put out by Matagot, Roxley Games, Stonemaier Games, Facade Games, Reiner Knizia, and Osprey Games due to their several hits of the past few years.

BoardGameTables.com have proven themselves with both On Tour and QE. I appreciate their attention to detail and love of quirky designs. My fingers are crossed for their next batch of games coming soon including Loot of Lima, GPS, Sequoia, and Mountain Goats.

IV Marketing — Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile

If you’ve ever been an in-patient at a hospital, you’ve likely had an IV in your arm drip-feeling your body fluids and medications. An IV (intravenous therapy) is a highly effect route of medication. It delivers drugs directly into your blood stream, bypassing any need for absorption or digestion. In the board game industry, if drugs equate to hype and medicating a patient equates to marketing, then companies like Stonemaier Games and Leder Games have perfected the IV Marketing technique.

When I started following these companies on social media, I noticed a pattern in their techniques. Leder Games publishes regular posts on their designer diaries leading up to a game preorder or Kickstarter launch. Stonemaier Games does the same thing on their website as well as creating Facebook fan pages for each game. Through regular updates and social media posts that tease out more juicy information and tantalizing images, these companies drip feed hype directly to their fans and potential customers. By the time the pledge/preorder button goes live, many people are eager to click it.

Meaningful Upgrades & Add-ons — Railroad Ink Challenge

Horrible Guild got me good with this one. It started out simple with a nice pair of roll & writes with a new coat of paint, improved gameplay, and unique variants. But things quickly got out of hand with more expansion dice, epic boards, and giant box to fit everything into. I often roll my eyes at the endless extras that publishers try to cram into their project, but I couldn’t resist these extras.

Often, these crowdfunding campaigns will try to milk their backers by merely offering fancier components, meaningless variety, and questionable add-ons. When I see a publisher trying to tempt backers to purchase 20 colors of player components for a 5 player game, I begin to question their judgment of customer-focused value.

With Railroad Ink Challenge, Horrible Guild kept offering me more of precisely what I wanted. With roll & writes generally being a low-interaction genre, I look to variants and expansions to give me more replayability and keep my brain on its brain-toes. Thus, I can’t resist new challenges within this familiar favorite.

Reliable Brands & Try Before You Buy — Bristol 1350

If you’ve played any of Facade Games’ Dark Cities titles before, then you already have a solid idea of what you are going to get with Bristol 1350. That’s exactly what makes this series so reliably solid. Facade Games has a playbook that their fans love and they have no reason to stray from it. While their productions continue to get prettier and more polished, a Dark Cities game will always be a Dark Cities game.

To help matters further, I had the opportunity to play Bristol 1350 several times as it was being developed. When a publisher knows they have a solid design on their hands, there is no better way to sell it to potential backers and earn their loyal support than giving them a chance to try it before buying it. This often happens through Print & Play, Tabletop Simulator (or equivalent software), or live demos. After having a blast playing a cheap, ugly version of Bristol 1350, you can bet I was absolutely ready to fork over some cash for a gorgeous, polished version. I even went so far as to write a preview for the game because I believed in it that much. The best evangelists are firsthand witnesses, so why not let people get their hands on your game?

Listening & Responding to Backers — Kemet: Blood and Sand

Kemet: Blood and Sand had a controversial campaign journey, to say the least. Loads of backers had seemingly dozens of different complaints as the Matagot’s campaign trudged from one problem to the next. These complaints included confusion about pricing and value, questionable graphic design and iconography, awkward miniature figures, theme-breaking expansions, and more.

These many problematic ingredients seemed like a recipe for crowdfunding disaster. While the campaign was messier than intended, Matagot weathered the storm well. Each major complaint was met with proposals, polls, adjustments, and solutions as Matagot listened and responded to their backers. While some backers abandoned ship, many more chose to ride out the waves or even join in on the crazy journey after seeing the commitment and care from the team behind Kemet. The end result was a nearly 1 million dollar campaign and a game that is much more likely to reach its full potential.

The Importance of a Hook — Whale Riders

Whale Riders has been another interesting project to follow. I’ve recently become a huge fan of Reiner Knizia’s designs, so this one was easy for me to get behind. The part that has caught me off guard is how little support this game received on Kickstarter. The game quickly funded and hit the $20,000 mark, but it seemed to plateau after that and was barely crawling higher every day since (until the typical last-minute bump).

Grail Games’ project seemed to have the complete package for a mega hit (at least in my naive eyes). It combines a legendary designer with an exceptional artist and a proven publisher. The game is accessible, the theme is whimsical, and the price is reasonable. I’ve also come across plenty of advertisements for it in the usual places. I would have placed my money on this game at least hitting six figures. Yet that didn’t turn out to be within reach.

As I’ve thought about it more, I can only come up with one reason why the game hasn’t received more support. The one thing that Whale Riders seems to be missing is a hook. Don’t get me wrong, Whale Riders looks like a solid game on all accounts; that’s why I backed it. But for comparison’s sake, let’s try to find the hook of the above mentioned kickstarter projects:

• Wavelength: That big, beautiful plastic device that allows for grand reveals and dramatic moments
• Button Shy’s Wallet Games: Pretty-looking, dirt-cheap games that pack a punch and fit in your pocket
• Dice Throne Adventures & Season 1 Rerolled: A premium production of a remodeled season 1 and a cooperative expansion to a beloved Yahtzee combat game
• Sleeping Gods: An epic, hand-crafted cooperative story-book adventure
• Calico: A colorful, Azul-like puzzly game with recessed player boards and cats!
• Loot of Lima: A clever deduction game with interactive player shields
• Oath: A quirky strategy game with a gorgeous production and an innovative system
• GPS / Sequoia / Mountain Goats: A bundle of fancy 10-minute filler games that are easy to teach and addictive to play
• Railroad Ink Challenge: The ultimate roll & write package with dozens of custom dice, maps, and objectives
• Bristol 1350: A thematic social deduction racing game that plays 1-9 players and fits into a compact book box
• Kemet- Blood and Sand: A mega hit game reborn and reimagined with improved gameplay, art, and components

Whale Riders has solid gameplay and fantastic art, but the above mentioned games contain all of that plus more. They stand out in at least one major way, while Whale Riders struggles to differentiate itself. Whether its a novel component, fresh concept, killer production, convenient feature, or something else entirely, the more hooks a project has, the stronger its campaign will be.

Jamey Stegmaier understands the importance of a hook. If you are wanting to pitch a game design to his company, the hook is a must. This philosophy has helped Stonemaier games to become the indie publisher juggernaut that it is today.

Just to be clear, I’m not just saying that I want our games to have an interesting theme or a unique mechanism. Being interesting and unique are interesting qualities, but they’re different than the hook. The key to a great hook is that it grabs your attention. It stands out in a crowd.

Jamey Stegmaier

Rabbit Hole Review

Kickstarter projects have used many effective tools to earn pledges from myself and many others. These tools include:

1. Get straight to the point with your campaign video and page. Why should I be excited about your project becoming a reality? (Wavelength)
2. Low-risk rewards and strong design credibility makes the pledge button easier to click (Button Shy’s wallet games).
3. Quality and consistency earns attention and loyalty (Dice Throne).
4. Alluring presentations and illuminating playthroughs are critical to influencing hesitant backers (Sleeping Gods, Calico).
5. High standards and hot streaks are the fastest route to super fans (GPS, Sequoia, Mountain Goats, Oath).
6. Meaningful upgrades and add-ons are the best shovels for digging deeper into my wallet (Railroad Ink Challenge).
7. Reliable brands and try-before-you-buy is a great way to earn unsolicited volunteers and proactive supporters (Bristol 1350).
8. Listening and responding to backers will gain the trust of current and prospective supporters (Kemet: Blood and Sand).
9. A solid game will be successful (Whale Riders), but a solid game with a hook will flourish.

This concludes my series on How to Win Backers and Crowdfund Projects – A Case Study. Thanks for tuning in! Do you have any personal examples of how a Kickstarter project won you over? Share below!

Article written by Nick. He is inspired by the stellar work of all the individuals involved in the Kickstarter campaigns mentioned above. He is looking forward to playing these games plus many more (including those on his most anticipated games of 2020 list).

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