Status Report and an Introduction
Welcome back to Taran’s design diary and intermittent blog post ramblings. As always, I get to post here far less frequently than I want to and, as always, I’m hoping to change that. There is always just so much going on! That said, I do have some exciting news about a new game project!
“Wait – what?” You might be inclined to ask, “Why are you working on a new game project when you haven’t even Kickstarted Helionox: Chronicles yet?”
Well, that is a fair question and the answer is, quite simply, I want to be in this industry for the long haul and so I need to have several projects going at the same time. I am super excited about Helionox and I do still hope to Kickstart it at some point later this year – it’s actually really close to completion. In fact, art, graphic design, and game design / development are all at around 90% complete. It’s literally in the polishing phase of ready – still some work to do on the Campaign mode, and thousands of logistical details going into the Kickstarter and marketing side of things but the game itself is more or less there. In fact, you can play it on Tabletopia right now, if you are interested!
But this post isn’t about Helionox, right? This post is about a new game which will I will be launching on Kickstarter very soon – in fact, possibly in late July!!!! Whoa – just saying that sounds insane to me. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m a meticulous planner and as such, it takes me a long time to get things to the point where I believe they are ready to go – so, a Kickstarter this suddenly feels – well – a bit sudden! Thankfully, I’ve been working on this a lot in the past few months and – even more importantly – I have a team. This makes all the difference! So without further ado, I give you:
Richard Launius
Maybe you’ve heard of Richard? He designed (among many other games) something a few of us may have played called Arkham Horror? I met Richard at B-Con in Denver (a small convention hosted by Mr. B Games) about 4 years ago. We played a bunch of games and prototypes together and hit it off immediately. By the end of the con, we were talking about working on some projects.
Thunder Rolls
Thunder Rolls is the name of the game I will be launching as my next project on Kickstarter. It is designed by Richard Launius and is the second project Richard and I have worked on together. The first is a huge story driven game called LA-1 which is a topic for a different post, I think. Just know that LA-1 is still very much alive and will happen someday…
Back to Thunder Rolls – you may have guessed from the title, this is a dice game! You may have also guessed from the image that this is a stock car racing game. It’s dice chucking, action selection, card drafting, fast and furious fun – oh and it plays from 1-8 players, which is a very cool aspect of the game. I’ll get into game play specifics and videos in future posts but just know that this game is coming VERY soon.
Mr. B Games
The other part of the team is Mr. B Games who, of course, published Helionox: Deluxe Edition and The Last Sunset for me along with countless other games along the way. Super excited to be working with this team and can’t wait to show off Thunder Rolls in the coming weeks 🙂
Other Musings
I say it all the time, but I really hope to be building a lot of online content these next few months while continuing to build content for your tabletop. Here we are, half way through 2021 and I have to ask – how are you doing? Discussions on the insanity that was 2020 are everywhere and I haven’t really written about it much but seriously – how are you ? Is the “day to day” getting back to normal for you? What games have you been playing? Are there new games coming up that you are excited about? Until next time!