Correct. Hexplore It: Valley of the Dead King if you want to get technical.
They’re currently running a Kickstarter for the next game, Hexplore It: Forest of Adrimon, which is at least a year away.
-Tom
So is the $120 price the standard price for the box? I saw that the Kickstarter page for it listed a $60 base “get the game” tier when it was going on. Is this going to be published for that price or am I paying double no matter what? It seems like something my kids and I would enjoy but too risky at $120.
It definitely shouldn’t be $120, because it only comes with two minis! :)
Seems like that’s just some sort of price gouging third-party selling through Amazon. You might be able to find it for closer to the $60 base price if you look around. The Kickstarter version has a handful of exclusive races, but you’re not missing too much without them.
Also, I know you guys are Patreon supporters. I’m giving away a new shrink-wrapped copy this weekend through Patreon this weekend. You might want to hold off until then.
-Tom
:-O
I will definitely keep an eye out for that! Luckily your giveaway will come before the Kickstarter for the sequel game concludes. . .
Adjusts monocle… I will enter your fine contest, my good man!
Actually, per the sequel Kickstarter page, both games are intended to retail for around 90 and 60 is a special Kickstarter discount price. 120 is still gouging, though.
Yeah, well, this is one of these weird things where there’s a supposed retail price, but no real retail run (all orders were through their Kickstarter, afaik), so the $60 vs. $90 is marketing more than anything else. What they are really saying is had this game been distributed via retail it would have cost $90 aprox.
The game was sold for $60. $52 if you bought 5 copies. And everything else is a reselling market.
I got on the preorders for $60 just about a day before it closed, so I was lucky. I have yet to play it, though. Might get on the sequel, but if so I will do a late pledge like I did with this one, I think.
Any particular reason no one wanted to publish it and put it on shelves?
It’s hard to say if they even tried for that. But if they did, I mean, it’s got a ton of stuff for not that much money (so might be undercosted for the market, Gloomhaven certainly was), arguably has niche appeal (hexy, mathy, virtually no minis in a genre stuffed with minis), and the dry erase thing is kinda weird.
In general, boardgames don’t need the kind of development money videogames do, so if you can raise production costs on Kickstarter and figure out a relationship with a manufacturer there’s no inherent need to sign on with a publisher, and Kickstarter is about as much marketing as you need to get copies to people on Kickstarter. So the question is whether you care about a wider retail presence or even would sell at retail, and I suspect for a lot of these games there’s not a ton of reason to.
I guess so… it just makes these things a collector’s item before they even are known to the majority of people who might be interested IMO. I guess it’s great if you’re in the club, and kinda crummy if you’re not.
People moan about Steam discovery, but these boardgames are a total crapshoot.
I think sometimes that’s by design. Gets people hyped to get in on your Kickstarter, and satiates the jerks who feel like other people having access to something they have harms them somehow (there’s a distressingly large amount of that mentality on these projects, I’ve found). I definitely miss a lot of stuff I might be interested in, though, and I’m checking Kickstarter threads multiple places on the regular. Like I guess Spirit Island was Kickstarted? I had no idea it even existed until Tom got all excited about it.
The flipside, mind you, is that a lot of the games that aren’t going to see retail end up having reprint Kickstarters (Gloomhaven, 7th Continent, etc), expansion Kickstarters, or similar (like Hexplore It). And those, if the game is any good, tend to have much stronger word of mouth and you can make a much more informed buying decision with much better expectation of actually getting what you paid for.
And it’s not like it’s hard to miss stuff in the regular retail market. Games seem to go out of print all the time, and while the bigger publishers will usually do new printings, that can take a while…
Never have truer words been written, Dave. It’s way too easy to get caught up in a Kickstarter campaign or a cool description, only to discover the game was made by someone who had no idea what he was doing.
-Tom
true, owner of a Dark Souls kickstarter copy (at least the minis are ok)
Just stick to these names: Kim Kanger, Mark Herman, Ted Raicer, Dean Essig, Mark Simonitch …
…Volko Ruhnke, and I really like what I’ve played from Cole Wehrle.
Tom Mc
I was actually listing only wargame designers - Volvo and Cole CAN apply when they design a game with a combat factor in it! :)
http://www.gmtgames.com/p-531-wilderness-war-2015-edition.aspx
Volko’s first game, that I know about. But I think you are right. That would be the only one I can point to with combat factors at all.
I haven’t played Wilderness War yet. I was hoping to spring it on my Washington’s War opponent but he never took the bait.
Tom Mc
Cards cancel combat factors. No more CDGs! :)
Sounds like a cool game. A shame about the name though. Yeesh.
Corrections:
“Shrines sells”
“the kiss of death in a boardgaming”
“we used ou[r] boats”
I am very, very tempted. Talk me in/out of this Kickstarter, please.
Also, can someone run it as a forum game?