93 Made Games will be running demos of Monster Town, The Winking Dead and its other games throughout the 3-day Mother Of All Battles gaming convention being held at Sylvania Heights Community and Youth Club from 4-6 October 2014. Visit the MOAB website for more information and be sure to drop into this free event and say hi if you're in the area. This year's MOAB includes a well-appointed canteen with plenty of sumptuous options, huge bring and buy activities, a board games library and free participation games for all ages. Competitions to be held over the weekend include Flames of War, Warhammer Fantasy, Bolt Action, X-Wing, 40K and more! MOAB, short for Mother Of All Battles, is a three day gaming event held each year over the October long weekend at the Sylvania Heights Community and Youth Club.
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It was another successful Toy and Game Expo for 93 Made Games in the year two thousand and fourteen. We'd missed the previous year's expo due to a variety of reasons and were very happy to return to an expo that brings gamers, game designers and the general public together under one very high roof. The expo started off with the indoctrination of the newest member of the company when we subjected Simon to bump in on a freezing winter's night. Whilst the expo hall was warm enough, having to circumnavigate half of Olympic Park to return to our cars froze our proverbials off. Both days of the expo gave us plenty of chance to catch up with old friends and make new ones. We received visits from Barry and Jason from UOW Guild Gaming Society as well as Simon, Sam and Will who have been big supporters of Viewpoint in Australia and abroad. Christine and Manuel from Mega Games also dropped by to say g'day and pick up their freshly-minted copies of Monster Town. We made a lot of new contacts with up and coming designers such as Kim from Secret Base Games, Jason from End Game Games and Anna from Draw Cards Game. We saw and played many great games from Australian designers and can easily envisage a time in the near future where Australian games are going to be a well sort after commodity. Watch out world! It's not a Toy and Game Expo without a Viewpoint Championships and it seems it's not a Viewpoint Championships without the reigning World Champion Lindsay Heming from The Games Cube winning again! 22 other competitors placed Lindsay firmly in their sights but he managed to stave off a concerted effort in the typical style of a champion (winning by the smallest of margins) by claiming his first double crown - Viewpoint Champion 2014 and Viewpoint Reflections Champion 2014. Well done Lindsay! Viewpoint aside, we also had great fun demoing Monster Town and NinjitZoo. The guys from Blue Room Games definitely have a popular game and we're proud to help them get it out to the gaming public. We also can't wait to see what game they have in store next. So if you were unfortunate enough to miss out on this year's Toy and Game Expo, make sure you check out their website and get in early for next year's expo. We'll see you there! The Toy and Game Expo is Australia's only public expo with the latest in toys and board games. Experience the fun in this family interactive heaven for ages from 4 through to adults based on a principle of See, Play, Own. Come along and SEE passionate high end users demonstrating their projects. PLAY with it yourself, and if it tickles your fancy take the opportunity to OWN it by visiting a retail booth.
Are you an independent designer and have self-published your own game? Do you want help getting your game into stores in Australia and abroad? If you answered yes to both questions then 93 Made Games can help you. We know how hard it is getting a newly produced independent game onto the shelves of game retailers. Australian independent designers simply don't have the money, time or clout to compete on the level of international triple-A publishers who push their games into stores across our wide brown land. We've spent many years building up relationships with stockists throughout Australia and beyond and, along with releasing more of our own games, are also distributing for other independent designers/publishers. If this is something that is of interest to you then read on to find about the benefits of our distribution services or email 93 Made Games for more information. Benefits of 93 Made Games independent distribution include:
So if you have a game that you’ve designed and published and would like help distributing it in Australia and beyond, then email us a brief explanation of your game and we will let you know if it’s suitable for distribution by 93 Made Games. 93 Made Games is an independent Australian tabletop game design and publishing company. Because our designers are big fans of the 80's and 90's and broader pop culture you will notice that a lot our games contain retro themes and stylised imagery as well as tongue-in-cheek references to the latest fads.
Gamers will have their first chance to get their hands on the premiere edition Monster Town at this year's Toy and Game Expo in Sydney, Australia on 5-6 July. 93 Made Games will also be showcasing its other games - Viewpoint and Viewpoint Reflections - as well as NinjitZoo, which is the first game from Indie designers Blue Room Games. These games will be exclusively available to the Toy and Game Expo attendees for special expo-only discount prices. Along with Mega Games and Natural 20 Games and Hobbies, the expo will also be the only locations where gamers will be able to purchase Monster Town prior to its official release in September 2014. Free Stuff! As per usual, 93 Made Games will be giving away plenty of merchandise to people who show up at our booth and purchase our games. And back by popular demand, 93 Made Games chocolates will be available - while stocks last - to anyone who comes by our booth to say hello. Demo Games We will be demonstrating all of our released games as would be expected but will also be demonstrating the latest prototype of Superstars Rugby League to those diehard league enthusiasts. Attendees will also get to throw rotten tomatoes at us during our 30 minute stint on the Spotlight Stage so please feel free to raid the vegie bin and hurl some produce our way or at least come by to say hello and play our games. Indie Distro Last but by no means least, we want to meet with as many other independent Australian game designers and publishers as possible. The expo is a great place for doing this so if you have a game that you have designed and/or released then we want to know your story. Come by our booth or drop us an email so we can see how we can help build the Australian games industry together. 93 Made Games might even be able to assist in distributing your games throughout Australia and beyond. The Toy and Game Expo is Australia's only public expo with the latest in toys and board games. Experience the fun in this family interactive heaven for ages from 4 through to adults based on a principle of See, Play, Own. Come along and SEE passionate high end users demonstrating their projects. PLAY with it yourself, and if it tickles your fancy take the opportunity to OWN it by visiting a retail booth.
After successfully reaching our funding goal, we are now able to give gamers a sneak peek at the production samples of Monster Town. Due to feedback received during the Kickstarter campaign, the game was changed from being split across four deck boxes (one for each gang) to one box containing the full game. A lot of the artwork has also been redone and looks wonderful when compared with the washed out images of the prototypes. Production will be completed by 5 June and the game will be in select stores and in the possession of our Kickstarter backers by mid-July. As well as receiving copies of the game, certain Monster Town backers will receive limited edition merchandise, such as Monster Town playmats, the Art of Monster Town book, artprints and so on. All backers have been listed in the credits in the Monster Town Comprehensive Rules but we'd like to give special mention to the following backers and supporters of Monster Town:
Monster Town - Bite off more than you can chew. Ever dreamt that you were fighting monsters in a B-grade horror film? Maybe you had just encountered Monster Town.
93 Made Games are showing up in all types of media these days. During the Monster Town demo tour, Sean and Anthony were interviewed by Mark Rickards on Hobart's Edge 99.3FM radio The Dice Men Cometh program. Monster Town was also discussed on an End Game Games' Tablepop episode. You can listen to The Dice Men Cometh interview and End Game Games episode by clicking on the respective logos below. Monster Town - Bite off more than you can chew. Ever dreamt that you were fighting monsters in a B-grade horror film? Maybe you had just encountered Monster Town.
Monster Town is around the corner… literally. After 5 long years of development, 93 Made Games are only a couple of days away from launching the Kickstarter campaign to crowd-fund the full production and distribution of the Monster Town card game. The team has organised in-store and in-club events around Australia and have plenty of rewards on offer for those brave enough to take a journey to Monster Town. Monster Town is an expandable card game set in a fictional city whose denizens include all manner of supernatural beings, such as Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies. Players command their gang and wage brutal combat against each other as they journey through Monster Town. The backstory of Monster Town is told in reverse narrative, where the first game is actually the last chapter in an intriguing chronicle. Each expansion adds to the story and unravels the mystery behind the appearance of the Dark Spire - an ethereal power source that has warped the citizens of Monster Town. We have carefully chosen Kickstarter rewards that will appeal to gamers, game designers and those who appreciate of original pieces of art. Backers of the Monster Town Kickstarter campaign can pledge for lots of exciting loot, including copies of the four gang decks and the Kickstarter-exclusive Reinforcement Packs (additional cards with which to expand your gang deck), limited edition artwork and autographed prints, and even a reward where you and your friends can create your own gang… and we’ll produce it for you! Seeking crowd-funding for Monster Town via Kickstarter has allowed us to offer an immersive experience for all types of gamers, from dedicated gamers to casual gamers, and even non-gamers. Whilst playing Monster Town is the main game, we are encouraging anyone who is interested in the supernatural, horror or fantasy to get into the spirit of Monster Town by dressing up as their favourite supernatural being and attending one of the Monster Town tour events. Heck, even if you just want to hold your own Monster Town party without us (we may shed a tear), send in your photos and we’ll post them on our website. The best-dressed at each of the tour events will get a booby prize. The Monster Town tour will kick off with LIVE LAUNCH PARTY at Mega Games in Penrith. Be there for your first look at Monster Town in all of its frightening glory. Be sure to stay tuned to the Kickstarter page (when it goes live) for a list of official Monster Town tour events. Anyone who attends an official tour event, and pledges for a reward containing Reinforcement Packs, will receive an extra Reinforcement Pack for each and every one of these events they attend. Just be sure to let us know who you are at the event so we can be sure to get you your extra packs once the campaign is over. There is so much more to tell you about but, for now, check out our Monster Town Kickstarter Theatrical Promo and then pledge until your heart is content once the Monster Town Kickstarter page goes live (from 8 p.m. on Friday, 11 April 2014 (AEST)). Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. Everything from films, games, and music to art, design, and technology. Kickstarter is full of ambitious, innovative, and imaginative projects that are brought to life through the direct support of others. Since Kickstarter's launch on April 28, 2009, over $1 billion has been pledged by more than 5 million people, funding more than 50,000 creative projects.
93 Made Games opens their master design file and looks back over the last five years of the development of Monster Town. There are many differences to the original concept; however, a few key themes and gameplay elements have survived half a decade of play-testing. Just three months shy of 93 Made Games' first birthday, Monster Town Lead Designer Anthony Condos, conceptualised an adventure card game where players would reveal locations (to be captured) and encounters (to be dealt with) from a central deck. Whilst this doesn't sound too different from the final game, it was the players rather than their gang members who were directly affected by the locations and encounters. Also, because there were no gangs, there was also no combat. Thus, the first change was to add gangs and combat cards through which gang members could 'attack' each other, suffer wounds and be killed off or turned. This also introduced the idea of different races - Humans, Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies. Combat was further expanded to include combat abilities on the gang members and a mechanism to limit the exploitation of powerful abilities through the consumption of 'power'. So this is the origin of the blue Power Dice. Through further play-testing, the design team found that the basic win condition of, what was then, capturing a set number of locations would not always be achieved prior to the location/encounter deck running out of cards. This lead to the creation of the 'end game' phase where a free-for-all final combat would ensue, with the winner being the player who had the last gang standing. The victory conditions were further tweaked over the five-year development and included timed games, combat-only games and varying the number of locations required to win. Eventually, the design team settled on a 'conquest points' system where players needed to reach 10 conquest points to win with locations being worth 1 each and gang members being worth varying amounts but only if killed during the end game. At around the same time the end game phase was devised, Anthony started work on the artwork. Preliminary designs were rudimentary in order to get across the basic themes but were soon improved by using models for each of the gang members and non-playing characters used in the game. You may notice that all of the gang leaders look an awful lot like someone who is very closely involved with the creation of the game. Whilst Anthony was compiling the artwork, he also added special items (weapons, armour and augmentations (which were at the time simply known as special abilities)) as a card type. Originally, each gang deck was going to include 10 special items; however, this number had to be reduced so that all of the flavourful combat cards could be retained. Fortunately, many of these special items will be included in the Reinforcement Packs that will be available to Kickstarter backers. With the addition of special items and the artwork coming along nicely, the design team's next big job was to streamline the game by removing superfluous cards and rules. The first to go were the double-sided follower/attacker cards. Whilst having an image of a follower on one side and an image of an attacker on the other was visual appealing, it took away from the suspense and surprise of revealing cards from the location/encounter deck. Therefore, only one image was used and both effects were moved to the same side of the card. Another significant change was the introduction of uncapturable locations, which played similarly to encounters but kept the theme of travelling through Monster Town. The game was eventually trimmed down from 200+ different cards to a much more manageable number across four gangs. Even though the flavour of the game had been built up from an early stage, the specific themes and history of Monster Town and each gang was thin on content. This is where Design Manager Sean Carroll came up with the idea of 'power' representing the emanations from 'The Dark Spire', a mysterious monolith that has corrupted the denizens of Monster Town. The backstories of the gangs were fleshed out from this basis and thus Humans became the Renegade Militia, Vampires would be known as the Brotherhood of the Fang, Werewolves would don the name Wölfenpack and Zombies were all too obviously titled The Living Undead. The last few months of design and development included some radical but necessary changes, such as the adjustment to scouting where players originally were able to reveal all of the scouting cards at once instead of one card at a time. This further increased the suspense and the “edge-of-your-seat” action that the game provides. After five hectic years of development, Monster Town is now ready to claim. Successful beta play-testing has been conducted with no holes found whatsoever. We used some of our most cunning play-testers, who have repeatedly broken our alpha prototypes, to ensure the fidelity of the game. And also to make sure Monster Town is still as enthralling to play as ever. We will be launching the Monster Town Kickstarter campaign in the very near future so stay tuned to 93 Made Games for comprehensive details on all of the amazing rewards that are on offer. Monster Town is an expandable card game set in a fictional city whose denizens include all manner of supernatural beings, such as Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies. Players command their gang and wage brutal combat against each other as they journey through Monster Town. The backstory of Monster Town is told in reverse narrative, where the first game is actually the last chapter in an intriguing chronicle. Each expansion adds to the story and unravels the mystery behind the appearance of the Dark Spire - an ethereal power source that has warped the citizens of Monster Town.
Gamers will get their first look at the Monster Town beta prototypes during International Tabletop Day activities hosted by Mega Games in Penrith, NSW on Saturday, 5 April 2014. Viewpoint, Viewpoint Reflections and NinjitZoo will also be on show as part of the International Tabletop Day festivities at the PretzCON games convention in Omaha, Nebraska and g33k3 (pronounced “geeky”) pop culture convention in McKinney, Texas. International Tabletop Day is a celebration for all the fans of tabletop gaming. A single day where the whole world is brought together in a common purpose of spending time together and having fun.
93 Made Games Managing Director, Sean Carroll, talks about his unexpected experiences at PAX Aus 2013 - the first Penny Arcade Expo held outside of the United States. Warning: This article contains many “shout-outs” to the wonderful people that I met at PAX Aus. Alright, I've been to plenty of expos and conventions over my time as both visitor and exhibitor and have learnt to generally ignore the hype coming from organisers. In all fairness, show conveners need to big note their expo; otherwise, who would bother to show up in the first place. This is what I thought PAX Aus would be like. The PAX Aus website was replete with event listings and exhibitor names but I was very ho-hum about the whole thing apart from the fact that I would get the chance to join some great people on the Indie Board Game Design Panel. I was so blasé that I booked a late flight out on the opening day of the expo and an early flight back on the closing day. Thus limiting my expo exposure to less than half of the time available. [Cut to the PAX Aus Queue Room at 4:30pm on Day 1] I strolled in and I was like, “OK, the Queue Room is bigger than most expos I've been to.” It was impressive; however. I didn't want to be hasty in judgement so I took some time to check out the other halls after getting my speaker pass. The pass came in very handy for jumping queues all weekend. I can't complain about a little rock star treatment. [10 minutes later, cut to the Expo Hall] I stepped through the front doors and looked out across a dimly-lit hall that was filled wall-to-wall with buzzing stands and towering wide screen displays offering the ultimate in PC and console gaming experiences. I thought, “Hmmmm, well, this is rather promising but I'm only a casual computer gamer. I like electronic games but I just don't get as much time to play as I used to.” Even so, I took some time to walk around and check out the latest games from local and overseas developers. [20 minutes later, cut to The Big Top] After walking past line after line of expo-goers queuing for hot food, seminars, DJ sets, special invitation events and so on, I reached The Big Top. This is where my cynicism was finally tipped over the edge. (It only took 30 minutes!) I peered across the vast expanse of The Big Top, which was populated with rows of modern consoles, costume-clad pop culture fanatics, herds of gamers with their heads down in their portable consoles, columns of tabletop gamers playing released and play-test versions of games, more hot food, retail stalls and, my personal favourite, retro consoles! I was in pop culture heaven... and I wasn't alone. The preliminary figures from the show conveners claim that there were at least 35,000 unique visitors to PAX Aus. That's more than half the current population of my home town. For the next few hours I took in the whole experience as I ambled around The Big Top. Even though the expo was massive, I ran into some familiar faces, including Andrew Lum from Aetherworks. He was playing Magic against enthusiastic newbie Nicole, whilst her friend Ben watched on. Nicole almost demanded that I sit down and was all too accommodating when I asked if I could challenge her to a game or two. After conversing with Ben for a while, I found out that both he and Nicole were also Sydneysiders. The number of people venturing South for PAX Aus was quite astounding. Time ran out for playing Magic as I had to dash to meet with the other panellists. I ran across to the board game free-play tables and was met with an extremely welcoming reception from Alex Dijk and Paul Nicholas from Blue Room Games, Wesley Lamont from RAEZ, Anthony Sweet from Handwritten Games and Thomas Eliot from Sixpence Games. We went through our game plan for the following day's panel, which didn't take long as everyone was extremely professional in nature and definitely new their game design theory and practice. Everyone had to run off after the meeting so I took this opportunity to grab a snack and continue wandering around The Big Top. After filling my belly, I decided to settle down in the Retro Consoles area where I would spend the remainder of Day 1 playing old favourites such as Mega Man, Space Invaders and Batman (the 1989 movie version). Day 2 was a bit more business-orientated as I caught up with industry luminaries such as Gerard How from Paradigm Infinitum Games, Christopher Badell and Adam Rebottaro from Greater Than Games, Dann May from Game Salute and Sol Green from EuroGameFest. Gerard and I discussed plans for a big Southeast Asian release of Monster Town, Zombie Viewpoint and the re-release of Viewpoint and Viewpoint Reflections. I had a chance to try out some games seen in Australia for the first time but the clock was against me again as I had to hot-step it to my 6:30pm rendezvous with the Indie Board Game Design Panel. I won't harp on too much about the panel as the other guys prepared a video of the panel, which you can watch below. I will say, however, that imparting wisdom to up and coming game designers is one of the most enjoyable parts of being a game designer and publisher. I think Alex and Paul would say that having groupies cheer you on is also boast-worthy. Kudos Hannah! After the panel, Melissa Rogerson from Boardgames Australia, organised a few tables for the panellists to demo our games. Once again, this was an awesome experience as I got to share Viewpoint with other gamers and got to know some more game designers in the process. A big wave goes out to Tom, Diran, Rebecca and Lachlan. Thanks for letting me win at least one of the games. A “heya” also goes out to Jeremy and David from LXG. I'm looking forward to seeing you next year in God's Own Country for some more gaming shenanigans. The demos didn't stop there as I got to play-test Anthony Sweet's latest creation - Breakwater - until Day 2 closing time. I love the New Orleans voodoo/steam punk theme. This is going to be a great game so I recommend that everyone buy it. Be sure to buy Alex and Paul's game NinjitZoo, Tom's game Professor Pugnacious and Wez's game Gaeon as well. With the business and panel out of the way, I squeezed in some time on Day 3 in the Expo Hall and The Big Top playing PC and console games and snapping up some bargains from the retail stalls. I said my goodbyes (rather see-you-laters) to Anthony and Wez as I made my way out of PAX Aus 2013. Without a doubt, I will be back next year... and this time... I'm bringing reinforcements. PAX Aus 2013 was the first Penny Arcade Expo held outside of the USA. Go to the PAX website for more information on all Penny Arcade Expos.
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