CraigBlog

Origins Game Fair Friday

—

by

Craig
in

Demoed:

  • Scallywager – Basically that dice game from the second Pirates of the Carribbean movie, but with some extra bits & fewer barnacles
  • Trailblazers – building walking and biking and water trails between sites in order to get victory points. Requires more thought than it looks like at first glance, because I managed to absolutely tree myself very quickly.
  • Iconoclash – emulates side view platform fighting games. I got my ass handed to me, but it was quite fun
  • Crabs In A Bucket – get rid of all your cards, but of course there are complications, and a solid crab theme. It was very fun indeed, and plays quickly – we learned to play and then played the game in maybe 5 minutes

Learned About:

  • Cabby-Baras – still being developed. It’s about capybara’s transporting other critters to their destinations, and I do like me a good capybara pun
  • Riftblade – I strayed too close to the booth and triggered a pitch about the game. Deck builder with various ‘unlike other deck builders’ features that I didn’t really understand.
  • Robot Quest Arena – adorable little robots blowing the hell out of each other, battlebots style
  • A setting for D&D 5e that I can’t remember the name of called Battlezoo, which started out as a bestiary, then a set of playable races from that bestiary, and finally it’s own setting
  • String Theory, about conspiracy theory podcasters. Gameplay involves physically linking various elements of the conspiracy landscape with string, hence the name; Also, people were wearing tinfoil hats.
Basic mechanic is that dice game from Pirates of the Carribbean, with cards that’ll mess with other people, or protect you from losing dice.
This was in the Under Development area – It started with the pun, I suspect. Elements of a tile/tesselation game to fit the passengers in, some route finding once you know where they’re going.
I’d heard the pitch yesterday, but couldn’t stay for a demo, so I looped back
Board game side scrolling platformer. I played a demo & got the crap kicked out of me
Wall of games at Arcane Wonders
I know nothing about this, I just like the art
Deck builder with innovative features which probably mean something to people who play deck builders? I listened to the spiel, but didn’t demo it

The Battlezoo folks look as though they’re having so much fun.

A chance comment about the revised/relaunched Twilight 2000 game led to a conversation with one of the other attendees about the game Dark Conspiracy; He’d never run into anyone else who’d ever run it. Sounds like his players were way more gun-happy than mine, but from the sound of it they were only just teenagers, so it makes sense.

I’m not certain that it was today, but it seems likely that this was the day that I ran into Mikey Mason in the elevator lobby of the hotel; I thought it looked like him, but I wasn’t 100% sure, but then he recognized me.

A few different booths were doing daily raffles, so I tried to be there during the drawings. Arcane Wonders raffled off a lot of stuff, and the guy running it had a fun crowd presence. I missed out on winning an absolute monster of a game bundle by one number; I was 429, he drew 428.

He was really good at whipping up the crowd, and involving both them and his own staff in the “what do we raffle off next” process. Also did a few “if you win this you have to give half of it away to somebody else in the crowd” kind of things, which was very fun to watch.

The folks from Robot Quest Arena, or more accurately from the booth that was selling Robot Quest Arena among other things, also had a raffle for a game I’d never heard of. I turned up anyway because why not; I can always give it away to somebody who will play it

Wandering the game hall in the evening, there was the same ‘pockets of people’ effect that you see at Gen Con in place; Chunks of open space, then some people wearing tinfoil hats, then a gap, …