While I am talking about Kickstarters, I should point to Tao Long. ThunderGryph Games started up last year and Kickstarted their first game, Overseers. It looked interesting and I backed it at the “Founders Club” level, which is a lifetime subscription to their games. So I’ll be paying attention to everything they do. Gonzalo Aguirre Bisi of ThunderGryph has a nice post about his first Kickstarter experience. The game arrived as expected, upgraded, and before Christmas.
I have only had one evening with Overseers on the table, so I do not have a heck of a lot to say about it yet. The mechanics work well. We found the swings of small decisions to be very large, but part of that was due to translation issues with the rules. When you play, make sure you have the FAQ because some of the rules are mis-described and there is a recommended text change that happened between printing the cards and the manual. I think the game runs much better after seeing the FAQ, although Greed becomes much weaker.
Let’s be honest, you expect some language issues when a Spanish company translates a Japanese game into English. Hyperborea, which I love like chocolate, had worse issues trying to avoid language and instead using increasingly arcane symbols to show complicated rules on cards. We have put up with worse to play our MMOs. This looks to be their model, translating games and taking them to new markets. I look forward to more non-European Eurogames.
Storytime over, Tao Long burst out of the gate, more than triple its funding goal in less than a day and currently over 1000%. It’s not a $10 million game, but it is already a relative success, twice the funding that Overseers received. If anyone has explored the game in greater depth and would like to discuss mechanics, rather than just game development meta, comments are open.
: Zubon