DR Games

The first proof copies of Trade Nation have arrived. It was exciting to open the box and see our first printed product. Although not our first game it is our first physical product, Dark Force Incursion, our solo game that was successfully Kickstarted earlier in the year, was a PDF product. Holding the freshly printed box was a very satisfying moment for a game we have a lot of faith in. It was something I will never forget. Trade Nation is a family game much in the mold of UNO or MONOPLOY DEAL and is designed with universal appeal. It has straightforward mechanics and a bold colourful appearance. The players compete to sell stock at the highest prices. The person with the highest score wins. It can be learned in five minutes and the 120 cards are stored in a rigid box which is portable and durable. Here is a shot of the new delivery showing a completed game. The next stage is to send it out to reviewers. This takes time. Close on the heals of this stage is setting up the ...

We have just recently launched a new projected on Kickstarter called The Bones of KalKratha. This is our first Roleplay Kickstarter. I’m going to talk about how this fits into our business model that so far evolves around making our own games. I have always taken a great interest in Dungeon and Dragons. I played it from the age of ten although admittedly I took a long break while I traveled and my children were young. Through Dark Realm Maps, the forerunner to the company, I created maps for fantasy games and became embroiled in these fantasy worlds and it was not long before I started writing as well. Some of these went up on DMsguild and I realised a larger product was on the cards. So, I combined the maps and the writing to create my first roleplay based Kickstarter under my Dark Realm Roleplay banner a sister to Dark Realm Maps and DR Games. This is basically an expansion of the company model. The way we see things moving forward is to have some clear division between...

Never has the concept of luck been driven home to me more than recently when I have been designing my own tabletop games. What role does it play in the…well the game play? Does a game become weaker because of a dependence on random nature? Can this cause anxiety or fatigue? Should we rely on luck less? Make more of the choices ourselves? Be in control? I wanted to lay some of this out in this latest blog post as it is becoming a particularly important part of how I design games. Making my way across a map...with only a die to guide me With the design of Dark Force Incursion, I created a game that heavily depended on the roll of a dice. Every turn you are bound by the result of your roll and this leads you in a direction, for which there are a set of consequences. Is this too much to ask of a player to be so bound by a one in six chance? Yes, because how can they influence the outcome? This is what gamers will often strive for, a controlling element. I introduced the option o...