It’s been a week since we returned from GenCon and I’m still processing everything. It was a fantastic show where we released Set a Watch, publicly demoed Lawyer Up and AlderQuest and talked and playtested a bunch of our other ideas and projects.
A lot of the highs of the week revolved around Set a Watch. We sold out of it on Friday afternoon… way earlier than we would have liked, but we also were not anticipated some of the press we got leading up to it. We had a nice recommendation on the BGG show leading up to GenCon:
Then while we were on the show floor, someone on Facebook let us know about Jamey Steigmaier’s video:
Todd also got a chance to show Set a Watch off on BGG’s GenCon live stream:
Watch Gen Con 2019 – Day 3 from BoardGameGeekTV on www.twitch.tv
New Games in the Works!
Lawyer Up
I spent most of my time demoing Lawyer Up (designed by Sam Bailey and myself) in Lucas Oil Stadium. It was funny how many lawyers and/or law adjacent playtesters we had (everything from legal librarians to paralegals). People definitely enjoyed it and were asking where they could pick it up in the expo hall – I was surprised they couldn’t tell it was a prototype. I mean it is going to look way better when everything is finished:
It’s crazy to think that Lawyer Up was conceived about 4 years ago. I think I first talked to Sam about the concept 3 GenCons ago… then 2 GenCons ago Sam had the first prototype and then last GenCon we showed off the game in the First Exposure Playtest hall and this year we demoed a much more complete version. I’m definitely excited to finish everything up for it and love how different the other cases feel. It’s going to be the rare Rock Manor Release that has 1-2 expansions ready to go for it at launch.
AlderQuest
Ryan Ward came along with us to his 2nd GenCon and spent a ton of time running some large events for AlderQuest. AlderQuest is an area-control/tile placement game with match 3-based resource collection and scoring, in which factions of animal combatants compete to collect Acorns from their opponents. Throughout the game, players will manipulate the matching Board, lay tiles hidden to their opponents, activate Hero abilities, play Schemes and Traps, and move minions about the Battlefield in search of enemy Acorns.
We showed off AlderQuest in the First Exposure Playtest Hall last year but man what a difference a year makes. The game has improved so much and is really looking beautiful on the table. I love how the game combines a match-3 economy (think mana system) with a strategic area control and bluffing game. Nothing feels better in this game then setting a trap that your opponent thinks is an acorn.
I’m pretty confident that AlderQuest will be the next of our games to hit Kickstarter. The only major art piece that we still need to get done is the 3D tree and then we should be ready to send out review copies.
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