Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — game publishing

Throughout my life, from my childhood until the present day, I've had brief, intense periods in which I became obsessed with chess. It's an irresistible compulsion, the gaming equivalent of pon farr. After a few days or weeks, the fever passes. This waning of my sudden affection is helped along by the fact that I've always been pretty rubbish at chess. I've no head for playing competitively nor competently.  I'm a much better fit for backgammon, a game I came to late in life, but deliberately and by choice. That is to say, at an early age, someone decided I...

Concluding our three-part look at what we've got planned for 2018, here are the games that didn't fit into either of the previous categories. Here we go!  The Big Push Renaud Verlaque, the designer of Age of Napoleon, created this strategic World War I trench warfare card game. We were really smitten with this one the moment it hit the table. There are plenty of agonizing decisions for both players as they contest control of six different areas. Each turn you'll draw a big ol' hand of cards equal to your production capacity, said capacity being diminished by the actions...

I like to say that my job is to get up in the morning and play board games all day, but that's something of an exaggeration. While I do sometimes spend a fair amount of time hunched over a table pushing counters through hexes, I'm just as likely to spend that time hunched over a table sorting out little wooden bits and putting them in little bags.  In that video, I joke around a bit about how monotonous it is, and sometimes it can be, sure. There are days where I'd rather do anything in the world but count out...

There's a growing market for solitaire games, something that was readily apparent to us with the publication of 2016's Agricola, Master of Britain. You would think that in 2017 we would have published a bunch of them, but we only managed to push Charlemagne, Master of Europe out the door. This wasn't for lack of trying; once Agricola turned into a surprise hit, we immediately started seeking out more solitaire games. The thing is, of course, that designing and developing games takes time. And so while work started on some of these titles early this year and late in 2016,...

Though 2017 still has some life left in it, Mary and I have been spending most of our time and energy in 2018. Since folks have been curious about what's down the road, we thought it'd be a good idea to dedicate a few blogposts to what we have in the pipeline. In this first installment, we'll be looking at some known quantities - that is, series games and sequels. Next time we'll be looking at some solitaire titles we have in development, and we'll round it off with a glimpse at everything else. And so, without further preamble, let's...