The Giant Brain

Well Games Expo was as good fun as ever and it was great to meet some B-Movie fans and general indie games enthusiasts over the course of the con.

For the majority of the con I was on the Indie games booth but I also managed to get in a game of Reel Adventures.  It was called ‘On her Majesty’s shrunken service’ and was a James Bond style story where one of the protagonists was only a few inches tall. It was a really fun game and I’ll try to write it up soon.

Of course no con is complete without a few purchases and I picked up Survive: Escape from Atlantis, Ascending Empires and some old school gaming in the form of Swords and Wizadry and Vornheim. Vornheim especially is worth a look, a beautifully produced handbook for running city adventures. The one other product I saw that I really want is Operation:Fallen Reich. An exquisite production with a crazy board game attached to it that is used for character creation. May see about picking this up later in the year.

It was really nice to be back at Games Expo this year and to meet Eero and Mark from Arkenstone. Also good to catch up with Andrew and Matt, whose imprints you can find links to under our Spotlight tab.

The expo reignited my enthusiasm for roleplaying which had been waning a bit recently, and I am hoping to back next year with a few new products including Action Movie, Reel Adventures and Nobel Intentions, which I think I fixed on the way back up from Birmingham.

All the best

Iain

That’s Genius – Design Goals

So ‘That’s Genius’ has gone through a couple of playtests since I last posted. The core idea is really solid, and it has been a great laugh coming up with stupid inventions and everyone has enjoyed the basic mechanics so far. However a few things are currently in flux, but before I get to that I thought I would talk about design goals.

Whenever I work on a game I try to come up with a set of goals I want to achieve with that project. For B-Movie I wanted something quick playing and amusing, very much a “Beer & Pretzel” game. For ‘That’s Genius’ I still want the element of creation and humour from B-Movie, but I want to get a bit more tactical depth worked into the gameplay. However I don’t want it to drag on forever either so I’ll be aiming for around 30 mins as the playtime. So those goals are:

• Creation based gameplay
• Humour
• Quick to play – 30 mins maximum
• Tactical depth

With that in mind I have changed the following so far:

Card Costs: Are out the window replaced with a good news/bad news style of card abilities. By this I mean you can choose to activate a card ability for free but there will usually be a positive and a negative to that ability.

Random Element: For the next two or three playtests I’ll be playing around with the concept of removing the dice roll completely and just inflicting a cost on a player who chooses to score an invention. This may make the game too easy to win, or just plain boring but it was suggested by one of the players and I think it has some merit.

Card Abilites: These are undergoing constant flux at the moment, currently on the third printing of the cards, so not much point in telling you specifics at the moment. Suffice to say the more tactical elements I am going for will rely heavily on having interesting and balanced abilities.

R&D: The tokens you place on a card to show ownership are called R&D, and I am toying with making them a finite resource, perhaps a way to trigger abilities. Have to play with it and see.

I am off to the drawing board and will be back soon to tell you all how it went.

Iain

Welcome one and all to the new website for ‘The Giant Brain’ games company. Things have been a little quiet round here of late, but I have finally found some time to get things back in gear.

For starters I have redone the website and I hope you like the changes. The changes are mostly cosmetic and organisational, the only major alteration being the removal of the forums. As it stands the games we produce are not large enough to need forums to chat about them, and as such they were just standing empty. If you do want to contact the company you can do so from the appropriate Tab above or head over to the forums at The Collective Endeavour and I’ll catch you there.

I’ll be using the site to write a bit more than I used to covering my thoughts on games design as I work on new projects under the Development tab, talking about what I have been playing and enjoying under Recently Played and shining a light on games I think are worth paying attention to, but not necessarily get the time to review under Spotlight.

Revenge of the B-Movie 1 & 2 are both back in stock and we will be doing our best to make sure it remains so from now on. You can buy both of these products from our new store. Our next game in that line ‘Action Movie’ will be out later this year.

Reel Adventures is finished and ready for layout and I will be working on that in the next few months. A release date will be announced as soon as I am confident I can hit it. I have delayed that game again and again for which I apologise, but it will be out as soon as I can get the time to lay it out and get it printed.

Our next release will be a PDF version of B-Movie followed closely by its sequel in PDF form and a bundle. This is a new avenue for the company and I will let you all know how it is going in an effort to help out others who want to do small press card game printing.

Anyway, keep your eyes on the site as I will be posting regular articles on games development, printing schedules and events I’ll be attending.

Wishing you good gaming.

Iain McAllister