Gamzee Blog

Again, we’ve been woefully remiss in updating the blog (too much work, but in a good way).

At any rate, we did Game Night, as usual, last night, and were joined by our friends Holden and Duffy from PageWoo. Howard Marks (Gamzee CEO and co-founder) co-founded an incubator/startup accelerator called StartEngine, that we happen to share office space with. StartEngine’s a 90-day program that gives startups a seed investment, office space, expertise, and mentoring; and besides Howard and Paul Kessler from Bristol (one of Gamzee’s investors) has a really great group of mentors onboard from different entrepreneurial backgrounds.

The takeaway is that there are 10 other startups in our space, including PageWoo, who are doing quick, single-page websites for brands. It provides a really nice energy and a lot of cool people to run things by. And apparently new folks for Game Night.

Last night, we eased them into Game Night (they were new to it) with the single longest game of Munchkin (Munchkin Booty, to be precise) I’ve ever played. It took about 2 hours (it’s normally a 30-45 minute game), and Abe finally won it. That was followed up by a couple of rounds of BANG! Duffy was a little slow to pick it up and died almost immediately as the Sheriff. The second round, I would’ve won as outlaw, taking out the renegade (Duffy again) and the Sheriff (Max, playing the worst game of BANG! known to man, which started with him killing his Deputy, Sean), except Sean decided to simultaneously “help” (read “play”) Duffy and Max’s hands. So Max won.

In more work-related news, we’re in open beta testing of our newest game, DownWords. DownWords is a casual action word game that combines Tetris and Scrabble. Letter tiles fall from the top of the screen, and you have to click them and form words. The tiles gradually drop faster and faster, and eventually they’ll scroll off the screen, ending the game.

So far, feedback has been very positive (which is nice, we’re really fond of the game). It’s currently playable on desktop Web and on iOS devices. Android coming soon. And we’ll be launching it in earnest shortly.

But first, some news…

We’re in the home stretch on mystery game #1. It’s looking very nice. Stay tuned for more news.

Last week’s Game Night marked the debut of BANG!, a Spaghetti Western-themed card game that we’ve had in our office for around five months. We finally got around to playing it. BANG! is kind of a cross between Mafia/Werewolf and maybe a really dumbed-down Magic: The Gathering or Dominion, sans deck-building.

Players take on a secret role, except for the sheriff, and try to kill or help each other out secretly. The hidden role dynamic, variety of cards (we played with a super-set with several expansions), different characters, and other bits make for a fun, quick game. Plus, all the cards are in Italian and English, so you can practice your fancy accent.

This week, we brought out Small World again, for a four-handed game. It was the first time playing for Michael and Tom (Web Designer). But the great thing about Small World is that it’s pretty simple to pick up, a quick play, and fun. Despite some inadvertent cheating on my part, I managed to win the game, just barely. This was the first time I’d played any games with Emily where she didn’t win (although she did come in second).

We are pleased to announce Emiley Flowers joining the team, at least for a while, as a contract artist. Emiley is super-talented, and is going to be helping our art director, John Flynn out with cranking out all the assets making an isometric game requires.

You can check out some of her work here:

http://www.palidoozy.com/

On an unrelated topic, as game dorks, we have a weekly game night every Thursday evening. Most of the games we play are Eurogames and/or Fantasy-themed. Frequent favorites are Munchkin, Munchkin Booty (the pirate set), Talisman (2nd edition), and Settlers of Cataan. We actually have a bunch more games, but we usually wind up playing those.

Last week, we tried out Dominion, which John bought. For those who’ve never played, Dominion is a “Living Card Game,” which combines a lot of the appeal of Collectible Card Games, except there aren’t sealed, randomized packs, and you can get all the cards in a set for a low price (saving you hundreds to thousands of dollars versus something like Magic: The Gathering).

In Dominion, you have a varied set of communal cards that you can “buy” to add to your deck each turn. Each player tries to amass the most Victory Points, and play continues until three stacks of purchasable cards are exhausted or the stack of 6-point Victory Point cards (Provinces). What makes it cool is that the base set comes with a wide variety of cards, so you can swap out the purchasable cards with dozens of variants, making each game different with totally new strategies.

We played a couple games, the stock setup, which Sean won outright, and the “Large Size” deck variant, which has a bunch of cards that add cards to your deck (and one that gives you points for each 10 cards in your deck rounded down). That game was much closer, with a 2-point difference between last and first. I won that round

Next week, who knows? Michael’s been clamoring for some Trivial Pursuit. We have Bang!, and haven’t yet played (and I’m definitely interested). And I just bought Small World, but have only played with my long-suffering fiancee.