From the Game Crafter Website
My name is Bill Paterno and I am 36 years old. I currently reside in
Pennsylvania with my wife, our two sons, and our two dogs. I work as a
motion graphics designer for an advertising agency in Center City,
Philadelphia.
Like most of you, I have a fondness for (some would say an addiction
to) playing games. It really does not matter what kind; video games,
puzzles, tabletop games, card games… I enjoy them all. When I stumbled
across The Game Crafter website last year I realized that I could
actually create my own professional looking game, inexpensively. Since
then I have not looked back!
Overlords is a game which I designed for The Game Crafter’s Micro
Game contest. It was originally going to be a dice-based dungeon crawl
game that was inspired by my younger years playing Dungeons &
Dragons. And one of my fondest memories of playing D&D was the
Monster Manual. I was always thumbing through it and admiring the
artwork. For this game, I really wanted to have a similar look and feel
with my game.
So I broke out a pack of index cards and began to work on a design. I
even had my good friend and coworker, Jorge, start the artwork.
However, after a couple of weeks I realized that, although I was making
progress, this game was not the right fit for the contest. I needed to
find another game model that was simpler, streamlined, and I needed to
keep the fantasy theme that we already started work on. I looked at all
the pencil sketches Jorge had given me and laid them out while I thought
of new direction to go. The sketches looked like a collection of
portraits. I thought, perhaps a collection game would work. And that is
how Overlords began.
I spent the next month working on sets and scoring, making each
monster unique in it’s own way. And then I began to play the game. It
was good fun but the game needed more flavor… more player interaction.
So I created another set of cards called Hired Hands. These characters
grant a player a special ability at the expense of generally scoring
less points. Adding just a few Hired Hand cards to the game deck made
the game more interactive and created numerous “take that” moments
between players.
Since then, I have play tested the game over 75 times, including over
20 sessions of blind play testing, and made refinements to the rules
and scoring. I have included a list of suggested variants for different
players. There is even a 2 versus 2 team play option that has been a big
hit with players.
Overlords ended up finishing third in the contest and has already
received a very positive review from All Us Geeks with several other
reviews scheduled to drop soon. I am really proud of the final product
and honored that The Game Crafter would include Overlords in their
Kickstarter campaign. Thanks for checking it out!
Overlords is part of the Village in a Box Kickstarter. Support Bill by backing Overlords today.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
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