About

To start, we ask, what is a game? In Raph Koster’s “a Theory of Fun for Game Design” he offers several options he describes as “bewildering and often contradictory”.  These include short statements like: “a series of meaningful choices” by Sid Meier, the designer of Civilization, a personal favorite game of ours. To longer statements like: “Games are a subset of entertainment limited to conflicts in which players work to foil each other’s goals, just one of many leaves off a tree that includes playthings, toys, challenges, stories, competitions, and a lot more” by Chris Crawford. We think of games as: an artificial conflict system of simulated rules designed to teach players by means of a series of entertaining and meaningful choices. We want our games to be Fun, Strategic, Playtested, Thematic, Dramatic, Replayable, and Intentional.

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Fun. Koster poses the question, “What is fun when it comes to games?” We like his short answer, “learning is the drug.” And his longer answer “Fun games arise out of mastery. It arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun.”

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Strategic. We make strategy games, and in doing so, we keep the following player choices in mind: (a) a chance before the game’s main challenge for players to make choices that increase the chances for success, (b) a sense of space, (c) a time tested solid core mechanic, (d) a range of challenges, (e) a range of abilities used to solve the challenge, and (f) the need for a skill to use the abilities required to meet the challenge.

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Playtested. We believe extensive playtesting makes our games fun in the best possible ways. 

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Thematic. We are role players and love role playing games. We work to infuse our strategic games with a sense of role play by having our games from the rules to the artwork, game pieces, to the sense of space all tied into a theme that allows players to escape into a role that defines how they play our games.

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Dramatic. We like players to be on a roller coaster of emotions that flow from the benefits and consequences of their own, and other players, calculated risk taking.

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Replayable. Koster points out that two classic strategy games, chess and tic tac toe are both replayable. The difference is that the replayability of tic tac toe is limited, while that of chess is limitless. Both games have fairly simple mechanics but are very different in what it takes to master those mechanics. We strive for strategic games that have core mechanics and challenges that are easy to learn but difficult to master. 

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Intentional. There are a lot of decisions that go into game design, and we strive for compassion and intentionality in as many aspects as we can.  This means we consider the impact on the environment, our players, our suppliers, and the larger communities we all live within. In doing so, we strive to limit the environmental impact of our games, to ensure that we treat our artists, writers, and workers who make game components fairly, and that the content of games challenges social norms that should be challenged without being offensive, the idea that we live in a diverse, multicultural, and interdependent world in which there is a real need for compassion, understanding, and grace to reconcile and restore differing points of view and life experiences.