Justin Gary of Gary Games and Richard Garfield, designer of Magic: The Gathering.
So far you probably know Gary Games just from their deck-building game Ascension, which has had a few expansions and has done pretty well as an iPad app. Gary Games teamed up with Richard Garfield, inventor of Magic: The Gathering (and the entire trading card game category) to create a new digital card game called SolForge. Matt Forbeck visited with Justin Gary at Gen Con and shared a little more about the game then, and I spoke with him at PAX as well. Although I’m not really a TCG player, I really liked the “level up” feature of the game, which would be pretty hard to implement in a physical game and really takes advantage of the possibilities of digital card games. Also, I appreciated that you could play to earn cards and unlock them through regular play or purchase them as booster packs — you’re not locked into one or the other.
SolForge screenshot: At level 1 you just get a Dragon Egg which doesn’t do anything, but it really pays off later.
SolForge has less than a week to go in its Kickstarter campaign and they haven’t met their goal yet, so if you’re a fan of Ascension or Magic you should check it out. As an added bonus, they’ve got a few deals going until midnight tonight: pledge at least $25 and you’ll get an extra starter deck, or pledge at least $100 to get 10 extra booster packs as well.
Venetia Charles and Lee Moyer with the 13th Age map.
At PAX I ran into Lee Moyer, one of the folks behind The Doom That Came to Atlantic City. He was there promoting another project, 13th Age, a fantasy adventure game with role-playing elements and a focus on story: it reminded me a little of Story Realms, though it’s not for young kids and looks more complex — something for the serious RPG fan, perhaps. While 13th Age itself is not a Kickstarter project (you can preorder it from Pelgrane Press), the 13 True Ways expansion book is currently seeking funding. If you’re a fan of RPGs and the phrases “gridless, free-flowing combat” and “escalation die” sound intriguing, go check it out now.
Finally, two other projects that I heard about but didn’t have a lot of time to check out: Guts of Glory, which I saw in the Kickstarter Arcade room, is a post-apocalyptic eating contest board game with some crazy artwork. You can actually download a print-and-play version for free if you want to see how it works and give it a try, or pledge for a copy of the game at $25 and up. Consequential by Chris Cieslik of Asmadi Games is currently canceled but has a planned relaunch in October — it’s an ambitious cooperative game with individual episodes, free downloadable content, and instructions on which components to use when you set up the game to tell a larger story. Think of the changing nature of a game like Risk: Legacy, but used in a cooperative game with a 16-week “season.” While you can’t back the project now, you can check out the canceled Kickstarter page for a little bit more information, and wait for the relaunch.
