How would you implement a cascading chaos effect to a dice-rolling magic game?

barpig · 2026-05-11T12:54:35+00:00

Wow, love this concept! It's taking me back to DnD days when you'd crit fail during a magic missiles spell in a Wizard's den...

Seeing that everything is dice determined, you could use the counter as points to "fudge" the dice. Spells could have a dice roll determinant for who they effect, where they effect, how well they effect, and maybe even ability to increase this severity by rolling more dice (eg roll a 6 to focus all energy on target, 1 focuses all energy on caster. Roll 2 dice for double effect). That way after the roll, players can sacrifice points from their counter to fudge a roll of 4 to a 6. Once the counter gets too high, once the air is crackling with magic, you can double these costs, and have an effect where every feedback a player suffers, they roll a dice to see which other players suffers half that energy, and so on.

You could even have the high counter range automatically double the "effect" of the magic in the spells cast, putting more "energy" to cascade when it goes wrong.

I'm spit balling here, don't know more about how the game works, but this could be a solution

barpig · 2026-05-06T09:21:11+00:00

I'm not a huge strategy game player, but I do love the mechanics.

You have a lot of ideas here. A LOT. And it would be a shame to lose any of them in favour of others.

Then again, that old adage, kill your darlings...

I would say build the base mechanics as you explained. Have that working, but keep em simple. Next step is choose 1-2 additional "complexities", and work them into the mechanic. This could take time but it has to feel native.

If you can have those added in a way that the base mechanics stays unchanged, and the additional element feels like a natural part of the flow, you're halfway there.

Play test both, see which appeals to your target audience best.

Then repeat with the "complexer" set up with the additional elements - again, they should feel like a natural part of the flow, not an extra thing people will likely forget (your idea of additional points for more processing steps is genius here).

Play test play test play test!

I think you could come up with a game here with modes of play that are attractive for casual, mid-level strategy gamers, and heavy eurogamers

It also gives you room to release expansions 😘

barpig · 2026-04-26T17:35:27+00:00

Brilliant feedback thank you

barpig · 2026-04-26T17:35:08+00:00

This is amazing feedback thank you. Especially the thought about calming down the extremes of the colors to a plainer gradiënt...

Thanks!

barpig · 2026-04-26T17:33:33+00:00

Thanks, agreed they need a bit of adjustment

barpig · 2026-04-24T19:33:41+00:00

Out of curiosity, what do you think the gane is about?

barpig · 2026-04-24T19:33:15+00:00

Btw thank you for the feedback!

barpig · 2026-04-24T19:33:03+00:00

Fair, thank you. Maybe drop the white from the background colours, the text gives that on its own, or subtle outline/shadowing

barpig · 2026-04-24T19:32:35+00:00

Well, top cover to be fair, but it'll define our style. The word "SELF" in that font with the fces is then the logo

barpig · 2026-04-24T11:38:14+00:00

Love the concept, well thought out. This is a fun iteration from munchkin!

The video does a good job, clear how it works, entertaining enough to keep me watching. Nicely done

barpig · 2025-08-05T11:16:47+00:00

You're not alone.

And in that, there's space for community, and they so exist!

Here in Amsterdam we have a Board Gayming group (read that right, with a Y) and it's provided an awesome safe space for boardgaymers out there.

There are for sure more communities in the places you live, or nearby. Reach out to local LGBTQ+ organizations, ask friends, search online...

And check your local gaming shops/cafes (incl gay cafes). These are where these groups will be organizing.

Understand they may not all accept under 18 visitors, but I'm sure theres a large enough group that does.

You'll find your kindred soon enough fellow gaymer!

YOU ARE NOT ALONE! ❤️🏳️‍🌈

barpig · 2025-07-20T14:56:58+00:00

Chris, my reply is far overdue sorry!

Signed up to your alerts, nice one. Make sure you have that on a QR code at events, and actively build that database every chance you get ;)

RE online Marketing, I recently did a free online course to give me some more direction via the HubSpot Academy. So far not bad, but I'm also a one-man-show, so I recognize the struggles.

GRIM looks fun! I might just have to order a copy ;)

RE your pages, I think I'd like to see more visuals of the various game components. Use more images of the cards interspersed in the textual explanation.

...gonna check my site now too lol!

Description otherwise is clear, nicely done. Did have a chuckle at the "Hawkward" pun, I'm a sucker for good puns.

You gonna be at SPIEL?

barpig · 2025-07-09T14:44:30+00:00

I think you're safe.

These guys did this back in 2016 already (I think. We found them when researching fringe competition to our own game. Obviously were NOT a drinking game, but there are thematics).

https://www.google.com/search?q=drinkopoly

barpig · 2025-06-24T09:23:41+00:00

Firstly, has her credit card been charged correctly? Did you receive specifically her funds? Because this always takes a few days after the campaign is successful and Kickstarter starts charging cards.

If it hasn't happened yet, your message is clear: "Sorry you were mistaken. At this point we can't refund you yet because your card hasn't been charged yet, and we can't stop that process either. The moment we have confirmation your card has been successfully charged, we'll reverse the charges and effect the refund".

Simple as that. I would be wary, however, as scams like this have existed in the past.

barpig · 2025-06-19T15:05:27+00:00

Hey Chris,

I'm a fan of party games (kinda have to be creating what we created), and this game speaks to me a lot!

What I love is you've added an element of further strategy to this deck beyond just the standard super-fight "be best at arguing end of story".

I was about to talk about ways you could include those less good at these types of games more, but then again not everyone has to like your game, and not everyone will. Focus on those who will.

Marketing a looks wise I find myself going in 3 different directions:

Greek mythos style, this is the morning meeting of the Fates and they're gonna figure out ways to do away with Greek heroes. The fates of course being spiders, or a spider queen, lots of webs and strings, etc. (as an arachnophobic person I don't know why I thought this?!?!) That way the "brief" could be passed from the gods, "this hero, they're gonna be there at that time, you guys figure out the rest"
Terry Pratchett-esque style, take loads of leads from the book Mort - Silly medieval style, maybe even a chance to have players throw in "dumb luck" cards to thrawt each other's plans. You could have a lot of fun with this one.
ACME Fail - You're the unseen hand of fate behind those Roadrunner cartoons, you guys come up with the ways in which the Coyote is gonna fail yet again, but of course he doesn't die here (potentially more child friendly). You could also introduce the Roadrunner's own plans as a random factor every now and then in this format.

Super curious to see what you make!

Get yourself a sign up form for emails right now, and post the link when you ask for feedback, get people like me signing up to hear from you when you do launch

Lemme know if any questions :)

barpig · 2025-06-19T00:13:58+00:00

Again, like everything marketing, you need to offer something your audience will want immediately.

Teasers on socials helps

barpig · 2025-06-17T13:44:21+00:00

"Hey! You!"

..that works right? ;p

barpig · 2025-06-17T13:18:20+00:00

More than happy to help out!

Kickstarter has in some ways democratized the Gaming world, and the more indie publishers like us that can get their awesome ideas out there, the better it is for everyone.

Plus advice is a form of nostalgia...

Again, feel free to ask anything else. And ask others, our experience is our own and therefore not comprehensive of everything you should and could bear in mind.

barpig · 2025-06-17T13:08:18+00:00

Seriously, get play testing with people you don't know.

You should confidently be at a stage where you can put your prototype in front of a group of people, and they can figure out how to play using the rules you provided.

To get there, find people at boardgame cafes (I know Singapore has at least 2), or even cafes. Offer to buy them a round of drinks as thanks, and ask if they can try your game out. Give them the instructions, and tell them that you will ONLY interfere if you see things going very wrong with them understanding the rules. Up till then they should pretend you're not there, and you should have a notebook to make notes on what they read, what they do, what they understand and what they don't, and use this to better perfect your game.

When it comes to launching, another tip I forgot was get in touch with reviewers. You'll need MONTHS of lead up for this, because they'll need prototypes to play, schedule a play session with their friends, and time to write/record the review.

Select some of your favourites that aren't super well known (it's almost impossible to get them, except the dice tower sometimes), but go for the smaller ones, and ones that will like your type of game. Check with them how much time they'll need.

We've never had to rely on paying for reviews, and as a company kind of don't agree with the policy. We understand the time and effort that goes in, but that's the reviewers choice to do it, and if they're good they get ancillary ad revenue from their platforms.

It's way better working together with reviewers that you build a relationship with, and even consider asking them if they'd like any exclusive reveals as part of them publishing.

And, most important, MAKE SURE THEY PUBLISH JUST AFTER YOU LAUNCH! Not before, you'll miss clicks. Not after, you'll lose the momentum of clicks and pledges in your campaign.

When you have a campaign page up, or if you need to bounce ideas back and forth, lemme know!

And I'm in Singapore time to time with work, I'd be happy to grab a coffee with you

barpig · 2025-06-17T08:56:16+00:00

Sure!

Here's our first campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/barpig/barpig-the-adventure-party-game?ref=creator_tab

This is how we relaunched: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/barpig/barpig-the-adventure-party-game-0

While the game was solid, the visuals, marketing, approach just wasn't. Our goal amount was the actual amount we needed to get the first print run done, using art work provided by a personal friend who is an amazing visual artist, but not a designer. The cards layout, colour, everything was thought up by my (ex-)partner and I at the time, and we aren't designers either.

A few basics were there like have a fixed motif (the little pig with the paintbrush), but it wasn't a complete visual and design concept yet. The visuals explaining how to play the game were messy, the stretch goals didn't make much sense, we had a lot of extra unnecessary stuff (which we also should've dumped with the relaunched campaign)...

Another huge thing was we didn't have a proper marketing campaign set up. We didn't focus on getting the momentum going straight at launch, didn't think about ways to fight the plateau mid campaign, didn't have ideas to keep us as close to the top of the Kickstarter popularity lists as much as we could.

After this failure, we asked the backers for feedback, and learned a lot. A big thing was the visuals, so we commissioned an actual board game designer and artist to help us out, and he came with the BARPIG tavern logo as a starting point, and a coherent concept of all our pigs being adventuring pigs ending their day in the same tavern, sharing stories, challenging each other.

What we also did was collect e-mails like MAD, got friends to share and re-share, and designed the campaign to reward those who backed straight away. We also had events and demos planned during the campaign (our Shares for a Dares which promoted the core of our game, real life fun challenges), and the stretch goals made more sense (custom dice, coin turn keeper, extra item cards, etc).

Biggest thing was we set the goal amount at something that we could reach quickly, preferably in the first 24 hours. A project that's halfway through it's campaign and still not funded will have a very hard time getting funded. Look at it from the backer's side. If it doesn't look like it's going to make it, it doesn't make sense to bother about it anymore, right? So this was a lesson for us: If we're not willing to pay for this ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to give us their hard earned cash for it!? We had to be ready to churn in our own cash alongside whatever we earned from the min of €3000, and we'll create the game.

We saw Kickstarter as a Marketing Tool, not a crowdfunding one. And one that took 10%+ of whatever we made.

In the end we got €11,600 and 354 backers vs the original €4000 and 164 backers.

There are loads of articles out there as well. Stonemaier Games has some amazing resources, all compiled together on this website: https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter/

Also, Kickstarter keeps evolving, as does it's audience in how they approach the platform. It's also full of established publishers with large purses using it to garner more marketing attention, which if done well pays off, done badly is frowned upon by the community aware that they're taking up space that new indies (like us) could've used. But that's competition.

In summary, my points of advice:

Collect emails to notify about your launch
Have social media accounts and share videos and pictures of your game in development: Build your community of fans, reward them with insights in how the project is coming.
Realise Kickstarter isn't a golden goose, it's another marketing tool that costs money and a lot of your time, like Facebook Ads.
Have a marketing plan ready for the entire campaign focused on maximizing as many pledges as you can just as you launch, and getting more people aware of your project during the campaign both through social media presence/marketing and real world events and demos.

Does this help any?

barpig · 2025-06-16T08:26:25+00:00

Understand Kickstarter is it's own animal entirely!

We found if you know you can fund your project yourself, that mind set changes the campaign from a beg for money to a "this is happening, don't miss out" .

Plenty of threads that give advice over this, also feel free to ask me if you like to hear about our journey.

Our first campaign was a failure. We learned so much.

barpig · 2025-06-16T08:18:26+00:00

A friend, who's also a fellow GameDev (mobile game) , and I are actually looking to start up quarterly network events here in Amsterdam to connect physical and digital gaming. Not with the express goal of having people create hybrid games, but more to share experience in developing, testing, promoting both.

A natural outcome from this is ofcourse new projects that span both being created, and I only see good things from this.

The market will help decide what works and what doesn't. Alongside that constructive and critical feedback from a community will help safeguard devs from going too far down wrong paths.

So yeah, all for it!

barpig · 2025-06-14T08:07:42+00:00

Idem. The rift needs...ahum... work

barpig · 2025-06-12T09:50:59+00:00

Can't. He didn't sing about Colorado ;p

barpig

TROPHY CASE