If you have ever finished a game night and thought "I could make one of these," The Game Makers is the board game that lets you try, using more than 300 real games as your raw material. Designed by Ted Alspach of Bézier Games, the studio behind Ultimate Werewolf, Suburbia and Castles of Mad King Ludwig, it casts one to six players as rival board game publishers racing to build the greatest catalogue of all time.
Got a regular group? Create a private community, poll for the best date, vote on games, and let your friends RSVP in one place.
Set up your group for freeHere is the clever bit. The games you are manufacturing are not made up. The box features over 300 real titles from more than 100 actual publishers, including Wingspan, Brass: Birmingham, Ark Nova, Terraforming Mars, On Mars, Android: Netrunner and Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition. You collect components like dice and tiles from a central warehouse, feed them into your factory, and decide whether to upgrade your facilities or push a game out the door for genre bonuses and prestige.
It plays in 60 to 90 minutes for ages 15 and up, sitting in that sweet spot between a meaty euro and something you can teach a curious group. The meta concept clearly struck a chord. The Kickstarter campaign blew past its $50,000 goal to finish on over $1 million from nearly 6,000 backers, more than twenty times what Alspach asked for.
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Find events near youFor anyone who spends as much time reading about board games as playing them, the appeal is obvious: a love letter to the hobby that happens to be a proper strategy game. It is now open for pre-order on the Bézier Games site. Time to gather the group, because someone is going to insist on being the one who "publishes" Brass.
Sources: Bézier Games | Wargamer | Kickstarter
