Mad War Games Site | موقع ألعاب الحرب المجنونة: أكتوبر 2024

الخميس، 31 أكتوبر 2024

🔥 You were part of the experiment, and it went awesome

This is Ignacy sending you another letter. And actually, that reminds me that in 2019, when we were preparing the launch of our spy game called Vienna Connection we sent out actual physical letters to those of you who pre-ordered the game. The letters pretended to be sent out from the secret service agency and this seriously freaked out some of you. Old good times…

Anyway, as you noticed, over the past few weeks I was doing an experiment. Instead of an industry standard newsletter with special offers and product info, I decided to go personal - I am personally writing each newsletter (I view them as letters sent to fans of Portal Games), and I tend to talk about things happening here, at Portal Games, with special offers added only at the end of the letter.

My thesis here was that those of you who don't know me, and who don't care about my rumblings about the company, can easily scroll down and find the special offer at the end of the letter. At the same time, those of you who are here, because you love the brand, because you met me at the convention, because you had a blast playing Robinson Crusoe or Detective and want to have this additional connection with us, appreciate the personal touch, and want to hear from me what's up - will have their own treat.

This is the fourth letter I am sending now and I have data from my marketing team about the other three letters. And the marketing team told me you guys enjoy it, the newsletter is read by many of you and the feedback is positive.

And this makes me happy. This makes me happy because I love to talk to you about games, about life at Portal Games, I love my rumbling and silly stuff. I enjoy this moment of sitting in front of the monitor and writing letters to Portal Games fans.

And heck yeah, I would enjoy it even more if I could do it with my pen, write it, put it in the real envelope and send it out to all of you, but well, we already tested it with Vienna Connection - unexpected letters in your mailbox freak you guys out! ;)

Love you guys,

Thank you for being here for Portal

Ignacy

WHAT'S HAPPENING AT PORTAL GAMES?

One Stop Co-op Shop did a solo playthrough for Thorgal! 👉 Watch here

In the new episode of the vlog I briefly talked about expansion for Thorgal, 👉 you can watch here

We are low on stock on many items, so this week we planned the shipment of restock from our warehouse in Europe, armies for Neuroshima Hex, base game of Imperial Settlers and more will be shipped to the US

REMINDER: Imperial Miners released in the demo version on Steam! If you want to check it out, 👉 here is the link

REMINDER: we have Watch It Played tutorial for AI Space Puzzle, 👉 you can learn the game here

Game Designer Journal: Resurgence

There are two different zones you can send your scavengers to seek for resources - Metro and Harbour. There is also your secret base where you can send people to work too. At the beginning of each round you will secretly choose which of your workers you send to each of the zones - Metro, Harbour or your Base. And then we all reveal our screens and see what happens!

Resurgence is a worker placement game, so as you can imagine, each section has only limited space for workers of various types and skills. If you misjudge the situation, if you send your workers to a zone that is too crowded guess what - you are in trouble. You had a plan, and here is the recent news - the plan sucked.

This is a very small twist in for a worker placement game, but it makes a huge difference in game play, you have these three different types of workers and you plan where to send them, which Zone, and what would be your back up plan if another player screws you and blocks the zone.

Resurgence is an euro game without direct interaction, we don't attack each other, we don't steal resources and we don't do that kind of mean stuff, and yet, in every minute of the game you feel it is not a solo game, it is tight, it is crowded, it is a constant fight for the best spots around the ruins.

Check out the Resurgence, it is really a stunning design!

LEARN MORE

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

If you like my writing and want to ready funny stories about designing Detective and my other games, you can go to Portal Games website, and grab my new book - Board Games That Tell Stories #3.

It's funny, has a ton of photos of my prototypes and gives you a ton of insight into the game design process. Did I already mention it is also pretty funny?

LEARN MORE

السبت، 26 أكتوبر 2024

🙌 About the expansion that you designed for Portal Games

It's been like that forever, and I don't even need to talk about times when Portal Games was doing RPG in Poland and was publishing fan created material as an official sourcebooks for Neuroshima RPG. I am talking early days of Portal Games US, I am talking fan created Dancer army for Neuroshima Hex, I am talking fan created HMS Beagle expansion to Robinson Crusoe.

I was always humbled and amazed when you - players - were creating new content for my games. That was always the ultimate manifestation of your love and passion about the game. I cannot express how much it means to every designer when they see fan created content for their game.

This year Portal Games released two such products. Desert Tribes was created by hardcore Neuroshima Hex fans, brothers Radosław and Julian Zakrzewski. It's the whole community effort, it's Radosław and Julian design and then the majority of Neuroshima Hex community in Poland helping out with testing and balancing it against 20 other, already published armies. This is the effort of the whole community who help grow the game.

This year we also published The Book of Adventures. I said it already many times and I will say it again, and again, with my whole slavic honesty - this is the best expansion Portal Games published in their 25 years history.

It's you, fans pulling my game, Robinson Crusoe in directions I could never imagine, it is you moving the boundaries of the game, it's you surprising me, the designer, what can be done with my own system. The book has a ton of scenarios designed by my team, but above that it has about 15 scenarios (depending on GF or retail edition) created by fans. I couldn't be more proud.

Thank you for your support, thank you for all the variants, handouts, players' aid, for everything you create for my games and post online, mostly on BGG obviously.

I appreciate you a lot. And I hope you continue to amaze me! Thank you!

WHAT'S HAPPENING AT PORTAL GAMES?

In the new episode of the vlog I give you many updates about our new games, you can watch 👉 here

BoardGames That Tell Stories vol3. arrived to our warehouse and this week we started shipping your pre-orders!

Imperial Miners released in the demo version on Steam! If you want to check it out, 👉 here is the link

Rolling Dice & Taking Names podcast reviewed Imperial Miners expansion, you can listen 👉 here,

Reminder: we have Watch It Played tutorial for AI Space Puzzle, you can learn the game 👉here

Reminder, we have playmats for Robinson Crusoe. This is a website exclusive, small print run, these are last copies that were left after the crowdfunding campaign. The mat is freaking epic, and I super honestly say - you need that item in your collection. I have it and I am not going back to play Robinson without it. It's gorgeous.

Take care, talk to you next week!

Ignacy

الجمعة، 18 أكتوبر 2024

🍪🎲 What i brought from Essen Spiel?

Besides COVID, what else I brought from EssenSPIEL!

We are back after EssenSPIEL and I am here with a short update for you.

First of all, yes, I got COVID at EssenSPIEL. Hence, no vlog or any new materials on our website these few past days. Besides COVID, I brought many games and a ton of cookies - here is my loot after the first day!

Besides cookies I bought a new Eric Lang's game Life in Retarra, I bought War Story from Dave Thompson, Age of Comics about running a comic book company, and Around the World in 80 Days, because I love Julius Verne novels. I also bought a ton of little games from Japan and Korea.

For Portal Games EssenSPIEL was a chance to meet with our international partners, and discuss how AI Space Puzzle and Thorgal are doing in each of the markets. It was also a chance to present them with our games planned for 2025. We will announce them to public in January next year.

EssenSPIEL also means that Resurgence, expansion to Imperial Miners, and expansion to Neuroshima Hex are officially released, you can support Portal Games and order them directly from us, or ask your FLGS for a copy.

What else is happening?

One of our fans creates new armies for Monolith Arena, check them out 👉 here

My blog is back, last week I wrote a short story about learning rules and ruining the game for everyone

Our long time friend and fan, Kirdy from Belgium did an unboxing Thorgal, check it out 👉 here

👉 Here , on the other hand, is Tom Vasel's review of Resurgence!

And a new place to interact with me - you can follow me now on BlueSky! I am acting there as @trzewik

And last, but not least - reminder we have a dedicated FB group for all Robinson Crusoe fans.

You can join in 👉 here to see for instance photos of painted minis for Robinson Crusoe like these:

Take care, talk to you next week!

Ignacy

الجمعة، 11 أكتوبر 2024

⚒️🎨 Portal Games newsletter - the one about a witty girl!

Today I will talk about Hania. We've just released a new expansion for Imperial Miners, and Hania outdid herself again – she playfully winks at you in every single illustration she made here. I absolutely love it.

The world of Imperial Settlers from the very beginning has been all about humor, and successive illustrators have added jokes to the cards and hidden Easter eggs. We had the little Loki stealing a Hammer on the cards, we had references to Final Fantasy, and much more - Rafał Kucharski, who was in charge of the line for several years, amazed me with every batch of illustrations.

In Imperial Miners Hania proudly took the baton. We didn't write scenarios for her. We didn't brief her. We didn't give her any script.

„Have fun," we said, „create something cool."

And man, she had fun indeed. The whole game – apart from being a great card game – has also become a collection of insanely funny scenes and stories about the adventures of little miners and their families. I giggle each time I play a card in Imperial Miners. I look at my hand and lose focus, because I look at artwork, not abilities. I build my mine so it contains the most funny rooms.

Hania lives 300 miles from our HQ. I've seen Hania in person twice. I don't really know Hania. But I do know her a bit… She's an excellent illustrator and a super witty girl. She's a perfect addition to our geeky team. I admire her work and cannot wait for you to have fun with the cards.