6 Games I'm bringing to UnPub 6!

Unpub 6 is in just under a month! I'm bringing almost all of my self-published games to pitch and present, but here are 6 games I'd like to highlight in particular. You may have seen my last post on the subject of "sale sheets" or "summary sheets", but I've since expanded this to a whole series of at-a-glance summaries for handing out to publishers.

Curse You, Robin Hood!
You’re a merchant of Sherwood Forest trying to get rich while dodging those thieving Merry Men. Get as much treasure as possible, but not so much that Robin Hood notices you as a target!

Koi Pond
A zenlike, fast-flowing card game. Collect colorful koi fish and keep your pond as balanced as possible.

Monsoon Market
In 1405, a Chinese emissary sails the Indian Ocean, reporting the quality of each market along the way. It’s time to get busy! Earn a reputation for accurate orders or rush off any old goods in bulk. It’s a race to earn the fastest fortune in the Monsoon Market!

A La Kart
Food fighters, hit the road! Bump karts out of your way with Pasta Shells! Blast ahead with a Mushzoom! Baste the track with an Olive Oil Spill! Taste sweet victory while rivals eat your dust!

Tractor Pull (Co-design with Matt Everheart)
It’s time for the Tri-County Triple-Rope Tug-of-War! Lead your team of scrappy vehicles against your rival in three unique arenas! Beware the crooked refs! Pull the most ropes to win the match. Win two out of three matches to become champion!

Light Rail
A new age of rail empire dawns in the near future! Barons vie for ownership of a mega-city’s growing commuter network. Claim routes that connect as many different districts as possible and fulfill lucrative contracts.

You can find PDF versions of all these sheets in this dropbox folder. Hope to see you at UnPub!

Testing New Cats, Cranes, and Turtles for Koi Pond

As part of my ongoing development of Koi Pond into a more retail-friendly product, I'm re-evaluating some of the long-standing comments about the Cats, Cranes, and Turtles. Over the years, players have said one of these animals are overpowered relative to the value of the Koi scoring baseline.

The funny thing is that no one could agree on which animals were the ones that were overpowered. Was it the crane, which let players know precisely how well they'd score? Was it the Turtle, which fed off of competition for the ribbons? Was it the cat, which though unpredictable, was still strengthened by having a secretive opponent? No one could come to a consensus.

That being the case, I let the issue rest on its own and the game has done very well regardless of this possible balance issue. At the time, I observed that games that have some wrinkles draw more of a community than games that are perfectly smooth. "This will just be Koi Pond's wrinkle," I thought.

But now I've had many more years to consider the issue and I have learned a lot more about basic game design. I think I've got a rules tweak that may make the animals more balanced and easier to play.

• New Cat: A cat in your pond scores you one point for each koi card of the cat's suit in both neighbors' houses.
• New Crane: A crane in your pond scores you one point for each koi card of the crane's suit in both neighbors' houses.
• New Turtle: A turtle in your pond scores you one point for each koi card of the turtle's suit in both neighbors' rivers.

This removes the odd alternating target system from the current edition of the game, yet expands it to two targets. It scales back the value to one point per card rather than based on total koi. That combined with the 4-rank and 5-rank koi cards from Moon Temple also means the baseline koi scores will be much more valuable without further destabilizing the values of cats, cranes, and turtles.

Even without those high-rank koi, the current POD edition should be just as viable with this change. Give this a shot with your home games and tell me how it turns out!

A New Lake for Koi Pond?

I'm developing some variants for Koi Pond in an effort to make it a more viable retail publishing candidate. That includes more opportunities for components and as a result significant rules tweaks. I want to keep the spirit of the game intact, which makes this a significant challenge.

First and foremost, I need a new way to handle the lake that works in round 1, but cuts down the analysis paralysis of selecting from a whole pile of face-up cards. Here's where I'm at right now.


The New Deck
My local development has been working with the full Chinese edition of the game, which includes the Moon Temple expansion. This lets me have a bit more freedom to mix up cards and set aside other cards as future chrome bits.

The new main deck is comprised solely of Koi cards; no other animals. These include the 4-rank and 5-rank cards from Moon Temple as well as the rainbow 1-rank koi. This ends up being 80 koi cards, which is a little more than enough for a full game of four players.

The ribbons, cats, cranes, turtles, shrines, novices, monks, and abbots would be replaced with actual 3d objects. That's beyond the scope of a single blog post, so let's ignore those for the time being until a future post.


The New Lake
Every round begins as follows:

Shuffle all of the koi cards into a single deck. Then deal them to the center of the play area as a 5x5 grid of stacks, with three cards each. The bottom two cards of each stack are face-down but the top card is face-up. The center space of this grid is kept empty, so do not place cards here.

Any remaining cards are not used this round.

There is a new component in this edition called the Boat. I'm using the boat from Lanterns: the Harvest Festival for my home tests. The boat starts in the center of the lake in the empty space.

Here's what it looks like:

The New Turn

On your turn, move the boat up, down, left, or right to the nearest stack of cards in that direction. Note that this means the boat can go any distance, as long as there is a stack in that direction. If the boat has no stacks available in either cardinal direction, then it may move to any stack.

Take those three cards into your hand. From among all the cards in your hand, choose one to put face-up upright in front of you into your house, one sideways face up to your side in your river, and keep any remaining cards in your hand.

--~--


I'm still testing this out locally, but I'm hoping it keeps the spirit of the original game while making the Lake a little more manageable. I'll write about the other components I'm thinking about in a future post!

Chinese Editions of Koi Pond and Kigi back in stock!

Good news! I have a few more copies of the Chinese edition Koi Pond and Kigi direct from Joy Pie. Order ASAP if you want it at your doorstep before the holidays. These are the actual Chinese editions of both games and are normally unavailable in the US. I got a few complementary designer copies and now I'd like to send them to you! Find them at my Etsy store!

Thanks!

Selling Chinese and Japanese Editions of My Games!

Heyo! I'm selling the Japanese and Chinese editions of Kigi and Koi Pond on my Etsy store! I'm also adding a few other games to the inventory as they become available. These are extremely rare and hard to find in the United States. The handful that I have in stock are the most you'll find anywhere in North America. Get them while you can!

Backstory: I sometimes get complimentary copies of my games from publishers when the first print run comes out. Normally these just sit around collecting dust on my shelf, but last month I had to do an emergency replacement for my work computer. Let me tell you, it's expensive and is still hitting our budget hard this month. So I'm trying to make up for the expense a little bit and offer you something interesting in the deal. Hope you enjoy them!