Wind Catcher Games

Nika Hits First Two Stretch Goals! (Also, play it at IndieCade East)

The Kickstarter campaign for Nika is going great! We hit our first and second stretch goals with ease, and now we’re eyeing the third, a very cool and very useful wooden turn marker. Check it out:

If you’ve backed already, thank you so much! You are wonderful. If not, I guess we can still be friends.

Either way, if you want to help us reach those last couple stretch goals, please help spread the word! You know, on Facebook and Twitter and… Pinterest… LinkedIn? I dunno. Just talk to people on the internet, is what I’m saying. Or in person. Tell your friends, tell your acquaintances, tell the people.

If you’re in the NYC area, you can also come check out Nika and Crystal Brawl this very weekend at IndieCade East! It’s being held at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens from Friday to Sunday! Along with the rest of Studio Mercato, I’ll be helping show Crystal Brawl on Saturday from 4-6 PM, and Nika on Sunday from 4-6 PM. IndieCade is also a legendary indie games institution (which is possible, apparently) and we’re super lucky that there’s an East version of it as of last year. It’s going to be cool. Hope to see you there!

Josh

Nika Coming Jan 15! Also, MAGFest!

My first semester of game design grad school is over, and I’ve given myself a bit of time to recover – but now it’s time to press on!

To start, I have a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: Nika‘s Kickstarter campaign is slated for January 15th! Chris, myself, and the fine gents at Eagle Games have been working hard to get everything ready. The instructions and art are almost prepared, the rules have been finalized, and I’m beginning work on a little strategy guide we’ll probably include as a stretch goal. I’ll be sure to update here when the campaign is officially launched, so keep an eye out – we’d love your support!

Second, we’re going to be showing Crystal Brawl at MAGFest from January 1-5. It’s in National Harbor, MD. If you’re near the DC metro area, come say hi! It’s a solid 4-5 days of Music And Gaming (the “MAG” in “MAGFest”), should be tons of fun.

I’ll end by completing the list of games I’ve helped create this semester. (Again, video games have *asterisks.)

7.  Assassin’s Feed – A live-action game played in a grocery store where you compete to assemble a meal that best fits the judge’s criteria. The catch? You can only take food items you see non-players touch first! Created with Misha Favorov, James Marion, Will Pang, and Alec Thomson.

8. Grecian Goldsmiths – As a machinist in an alternate-history Byzantium, maneuver your golden automata across the empire to harvest resources and do battle. Conceived as a hybrid of European- and American-style board games. Created with Misha Favorov, Brad Lee, Chang Liu, and Will Pang.

9. 100K Years War: Agincourt – Command a spaceship fleet in a 3D grid-based combat scenario. The idea was to make a game like Advance Wars but with 3D cubes instead of 2D squares. Created with C.J. Chen and Chang Liu.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Nika Is Coming (Along)

Hello! It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? Have a seat.

To start: Nika is getting close to entering production! Artist Chris has been hard at work laying out the instructions and revising the board art, while I’ve been moving the rules toward a final edit. I also sent several prototypes off to Ralph Anderson, VP of marketing and PR at Eagle Games, who’s been analyzing the game and running playtests.

As part of this process, I attended Metatopia yesterday and today. I ran the first blind rules tests of the new layout instructions and got a ton of great feedback. The game inspired its usual focused intensity, as seen here:

Intense playtesting at Metatopia!

The Nika app is coming along too – we’ve polished the controls and added a new tutorial, We’re also looking into online play and AI. We’ve successfully deployed the game on a number of different platforms, so it may have a fairly wide-ranging release, though I don’t want to make any explicit promises.

We’ve managed to find some time to work on Crystal Brawl, which gets better and better after every session of work. UI, feedback, and game balance are all improving, and everyone who plays it agrees the game’s just fun as hell. No release date is in sight, as we still may need to port it to Unity in order to support more platforms, but we’ll get it out there someday.

Finally, for those of you wondering what I’ve been doing at school, I’ll just demonstrate by listing the games I’ve created this semester with a short description… (games with *asterisks are video games)

1. Warslayers 2: The Battle of Warslayer Hill – a mod of the card game War – with Char George and Elyse Lemoine

2. Shifty Critters – a tile-shifting game where 4 farm animals use their special powers to make their way toward victory squares – with Char George, Sig Gunnarsson, and Chang Liu

*3. In the Dungeons of Gnomes – an action video game where little square gnomes compete to destroy each other’s bases while upgrading their powers with hidden gems

4. The Emperor’s True Love – a hidden role game where the ladies of the Emperor’s court vie to win his favor without accidentally poisoning him to death – with Sig Gunnarsson, Brad Lee, and Will Pang

*5. Mace Magus Malebolge – a first-person hack-and-slash video game where you use your magical mace to ward off never-ending waves of demons – with Vanessa Briceño

6. The Great Porridge Purge – a hex-based cooperative game where players eat their way through a village flooded with porridge, battling time and the urge to vomit – with Elyse Lemoine and Geoff Suthers

Not bad for two months’ work! Next semester will be even more intensive, as I’m taking Bennett Foddy’s Rapid Prototyping course, where you make a video game every goddamn week! This is in addition to two other production courses. I’ll either go insane or, um… make a lot of games. Let’s hope it’s the latter!

–Josh, 11/3

The B-FIG

The Boston Festival of Indie Games was amazing. I manned the table for Nika, which saw constant play and received a very positive reaction overall. I didn’t get to see much of our Crystal Brawl demo, but it was apparently drawing crowds all day. For both games, people were asking “How do I buy?”

If you’re one of those people, you can send me an e-mail to get on my unofficial Nika mailing list. We may start a more formal one if there’s enough demand. Otherwise, follow the Studio Mercato Twitter and Facebook pagefor updates.

Also, I had 2 whole interviews! One was live on NPR’s Beyond the Horizon (WBUR), another was for the Guys Games & Beer podcast. The podcast should be up soon, and the NPR interview will be replaying over the next week and may be available later online. Got to plug Nika and Studio Mercato on the airwaves for the first time – fun stuff!

Back to work now, though – my schoolwork awaits.