TURN 1 - Player Count
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the whose turn is at anyway podcast proudly sponsors the 24-hour board game marathon a charity event based in ill Mr
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[Music]
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hi this is Davey from who T Is It Anyway we've got a special episode coming up for you guys we've got Judson who
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designed deep regrets and we're going to have a little chat let's get into
TURN 2 - Introducing Judson Cowan
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[Music]
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it you're here with me Davey Adrien and we've got a guest Judson hello um from
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thetics game we're going to be talking about deep regrets we're going to first learn a little bit about Judson so um
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Judson where where where did your passion for games come from uh well
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first thanks for having me it's great to be on the show with you uh passion for games man it came early like I I think
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probably everybody has the same kind of story where they played something growing up and just got their claws into them and it developed over life and
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that's same for me grew up playing with you know like the big one in the US is
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Candyland or cude or all these little like Milton Bradley Games The Game of Life things that are in retrospect not
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great games but they they did the right thing which is to get people together to have fun right you know the game is
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sometimes inconsequential so yeah early love for games that built into a a greater love for games as I played
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things later in life I I was big into like um spooky games as you can tell from the my my own milu um like I have
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hang on I'll get it off the shelf to show you on the video I have this cassette tape I'll jingle it around
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for stre and Creeks which was the cassette driven board game where you kind of like went through a haunted
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house and this is something that came out like mid 90s um and I still have a copy of it uh and that I absolutely
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loved that it was a big inspiration to me when I started working on games so like that was the teens and then later in life discovered things like Talisman
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and battl Star Galactica and kind of got into the the deep end at that point the
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classics I've never seen that cassette no I unque it's a beautiful game yeah can
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you um you're G have to send us a photo of that so I can put that on our social as well just to just to go along with
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this that's cool um it's pretty similar to you know where we started as well game wise but design wise how did that
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kind of lead into games design did you did you have like a little brief period of video games in between or was it just
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kind kind of straight into board games and that was your passion uh I I'm a really big video
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gamer too i' I'd say because I can do it on my own more easily I probably play more video games than board games but I
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love both both equally um I had a little bit of a career in the games video games
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industry doing music so I did um I like compos music for a couple of indie games
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called Rogue Legacy um which did did pretty well which was that was cool um did some like smaller titles but that
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was the biggest one and like the the moving into designing of board games I
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guess came from the capability side where I could do it on my own and I love that like I I'm not good at program if I
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learned to like code I could probably make my own video games but that doesn't really appeal to me and board games kind
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of use a lot of the talents I had already like you know like the systems thinking required to design the actual
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game the illustration the graphic design all those things but then also the like marketing skills I have from having
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worked 20 years in marke now and like photography skills from you know
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studying photography at Uni and that kind of thing so it just like was this like nice conflagration of all of my skills
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in one place that I really liked and what's so you talked about obviously love for video games and getting to play a lot of it do you feel like that
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influences your board game sort of choices and and designs or anything like that as to what I mean the obvious one
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is that dredge was a big inspiration for um deep regrets but yeah yeah like a lot
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of my design philosophy I think kind of stems out of the video games I play to some
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degree I think a lot of the like the best inspiration for things comes from other places like if you're making video games don't look at other video games
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for inspiration you're making board games don't just look at other board games for inspiration travel see the world do other things you know a lot of
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times and I think I think people are really good at that in the board game industry it's where you get games about making sushi or you know running a a a
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like a network of pipes in a city you know like there's like all kinds of Random themes and that comes to life
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really well uh so video games of course inspired it like there's a lot of games
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that inspired deep regrets that I'm working on now uh I'm a big fan of all the soulsborne series so bloodborne
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there's a lot of like creatures in there that kind of look like they came from bloodborne and a lot of dredge I talked
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about but then there's there was Prior games to dredge actually like sunless sea subnautica there's all these like
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horror sea horror adjacent things there's one called the shore which is like a really Indie title about it's
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very love crafti and there's all these like SE horror titles that I absolutely that's my favorite genre of horror and
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horror is my favorite genre of anything so that's like a concentrated
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focused Judson I guess already watch the lighthouse last
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week the the Robert Edgars film in preparation for the kickstarter you can see the inspiration there and I do think
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what's nice about Bard games now is the inspiration they draw from video games
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in a lot of mechanics as well as um style and you can see the all the bits
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kind of slot together nicely it's a unique space and we're yeah it's it's
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interesting to see where you can go with it you kind of mentioned that you're a oneman band is that true with tetex it
Learning more about Tettix Games
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is it's it's just me tetex games is you're looking at them or you're listening to them if you're just ding in
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um it's so I you know I work with a lot of I have a lot of friends that lend me
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their spare time to like star in the trailer all those folks you know were very generous with their time to do that a good friend of mine Connor came down
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to UK games Expo you guys met him there he just like helped me run the booth he's also he's like my biggest cheerleader and fan and helps me play
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test and stuff so like I've got a lot of people that work very closely with but like as as as far as people that
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actually really profit from tedex games as just me at the moment well we'll see
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if I can maintain things by myself much longer the scale is getting a little bit unmanageable at the moment that's that's
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a good thing is it's it's showing that's going well at least yeah growing paint it's
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good so what what else in in running it as a oneman band what kind of what do you feel like you get the most out of it
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being just a oneman band um creative control I think is the big one for me
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and you talked about how cool the board gaming space is for that in general that's something that really appeals about it to me is that one person can do
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it all and you get a lot of like you not not just myself I'm talking about all creators like you get all these like
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Soul creators that are able to come up with a concept from scratch
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and then see it through the production all by themselves that means you get this really focused like Vision that is is is evident in all aspects of the game
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and that's kind of what I go for and one of the reasons I like working in isolation I do I'm I'm a really good
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collaborator I like working with people and one of the biggest Hang-Ups I had about moving into a solo career out of
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like because I worked in the corporate world previously as like a creative director so I I ran and managed team
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I'm very accustomed to working closely with a lot of people and that was my biggest fear is that if I left that behind I would just my mental health
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would suffer I'd be in isolation but it turns out um I still work with about as many
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people on a daily basis I like things like this you know going to like board game meetups going to UK games Expo
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having to work with play testers working in board games requires you to work with people because you have to play the
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games with other people so I I am not shut up in my house all the time there's a lot of that but usually it's focused
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on doing design work illustration or something and then there's still a lot of collaboration required surprisingly
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for a solo career it's just like ball games you always have to you have to be there in person as well y designing it's
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the same yep exactly so artwork wise it's got a very
The unique art style of Deep Regrets
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unique style is is that you as well it is me yeah inspiration that's the same thing
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really is that Dred and oh no no um I didn't really like so so like as far as
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inspiration from dredge I pulled the like horror fishing genre yeah you know I thought that was such a great concept
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and it like it brings the sea horror themed together really nicely I wanted to capture that feel but then I wanted
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to do something wholly unique outside of that I didn't want it to be derivative of dredge I didn't want to just remake that game so I took that horror fishing
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concept and tried to do something uni unique with it and the illustration style is part of that I think my
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illustration style comes from like um like my influences are
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like cartoons mostly like there's probably a lot of mat braing in Adventure Time Adventure Time to some
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degree it's that's a bit more flat and graphic than my style it's like like like classy suo Animaniacs not Animaniac
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sorry animations back in the day like um Rugrats and ah real Monsters you remember those shows back in the day I
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do remember those very squiggly all monol lined outlined with like flat colors in there um The Simpsons futur
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Rama Mia the French artist John gerro like he's a big inspiration of mine as
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well um I'm a big I don't my art doesn't really look like him but I love Mike Manola a big Hellboy fan you can
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probably see some Hellboy on the shelf behind me there his art style is very different from mine but I love the way he draws monsters and I love the way um
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guy Davis who did bprd after him does monsters he also did all the creature design for um the Hellboy films and for
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um Pacific Ram which I wasn't a huge fan of but the monsters look cool yeah you have to kind of turn off your
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mind with Pacific Rim it's a fun watch but there's no substance there yeah the
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monsters are very cool though yeah yeah they are cool so obviously we've talked about sort of some of the the more like
The inspiration for the horrific fish in the game
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horrific creatures that you've got in deep regrets I can't imagine I imagine
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you got to a certain number and then thought I've got to figure out how to get the rest of these art like these the
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rest of these creatures and find inspiration was there any very odd choices of inspiration for some of these
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fish you kind of I didn't think of that but now I've seen something this is a great question because it brings up a
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really interesting problem I ran into which is the sea is is already full of what what's the age range for this
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podcast uh you can swear okay yeah really up stuff man
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like especially the deeper you know areas of the ocean it gets bizarre down there so making things that were more
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terrifying than the reality of the ocean is challenging and kind of like where I went for that was The Uncanny Valley so
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instead of making things look weird I made them look more human and that becomes more dist you know it's like
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that like there's even literally a human that's at the lowest depth in the ocean and that's probably the most horrifying
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thing in the game because like why is there a human down there flavor te how
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is he alive and why won't he speak that that was the big one like adding fingers and you know human eyes and all these
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sorts of things to to fish bits and it's nice little mish mash of things becomes
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pretty disturbing over time the same with some of the quotes so we've I think myself and Davey certainly at the at the
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demo we found a lot of the quotes on your cards just absolutely fantastic and and very obscure and stuff like that and
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it it felt like you probably had a lot of fun working out how regretful someone should be over some of these scenarios
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like how regretful should you be about getting an oil spill on your trousers whereas how regretful should you be of
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falling overboard and all that kind of stuff mention you had quite a bit of fun with that all that was good fun I got
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some help from some friends on that as well you know like I wrote up a bunch of them I was like what are some other scenarios one of my favorite the guy
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Connor I was talking about earlier he came up with the um overs salted my breakfast as one of the like trivial
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cracks me perfect love it well a load of these drawn from experience as
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well I made love to a manity no I don't really remember maybe it's a little bit
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of a blur one hazy night yeah so we kind of approached it a little bit
"Diving" deeper into Deep Regrets
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but deep regrets the game that's currently in Kickstarter campaign do you want to tell us a little bit more about
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it uh so we've we've kind of gone into some of the production aspects of it but like the game itself is a horror fishing
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game as discussed for one to five players so it does have a solo mode that you can kind of co-op with two or three players as well um and it's about
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spending a week like the worst week of your life at Sea reeling progressively more and more disturbing things out of
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the ocean um and as you do this you'll kind of gather these regret cards which affect your standing or like where your
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Madness stands so the more card you have the lower you slip into madness or the deeper you slip into madness and the
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more mad you are the more dice you can have and the more valuable the weird fish become and the less valuable the
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real fish become um which is good but at the end of the game Whoever has the highest values of regrets which is kind
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of a hidden number on the back of all your regrets cards at the end of the game is going to lose the most valuable fish um so there's there's a push your
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luck mechanic there where you're trying to be crazy but not the craziest so mechanically can you call a likening to
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any other games I I really struggle with this I've had people ask me before mechan like what is this game like and I
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don't really have a solid answer for that um I'll tell you some things that I
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some some games that I took inspiration from in terms of complexity and mechanics and stuff like that um one of
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them is wingspan like Elizabeth Hargrave I just love her design methodology and like her um she obviously has like a an
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interest in in massive variation like like huge variety and that's important
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to me like the games that I love most all have a massive variety of of cards or art or whatever it is so that was like a big thing for me I want there to
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be hundreds of fish and I want them to all be different um so I took some inspiration from Wings spin in that
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regret in that regard that regret I have the word stuck on my on my tongue in that regard so
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um you know you're always turning over something new like that's that's what I really like about wingspan is how like
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every time you play it you're going to see some new Birds you haven't seen before and it's really fun to kind of go through and every time you turn one over like looking at the details on it that's
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what I wanted to capture with deep regrets is that every time you flip over a fish you never know what it's going to be and you want to like f like you know
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look at all the details on it read the flavor text learn about the fish maybe not look too closely depending on how
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dist so that's a big one um I had been playing things like
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Sagrada um I'm trying to think of other games to do it the games that have a bunch of dice in them I wanted to do a game with a bunch of dice um so when I
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was coming up with like the Mechanics for this I I kind of put this idea together of using dice as like your
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strength or your supplies for the day or you roll a bunch of dice to determine what what supplies and and strength
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you're taking into the day and then you spend those as the day goes along so I like the idea of like because I like opening a box you know of a game and
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pulling about a bunch of cool components and that was a big thing for me too like I mentioned sagrat it's got all this
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like beautiful colored dice in it or a zul that has all those little tiles you know something with a lot of little uh
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tactile components I wanted tactile components that's what I was going for with the buoy Dice and and if you
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haven't seen the game it has little unique four-sided uh booy dice that's um
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they resemble like an old wooden buoy or boy sorry boy is the pronunciation here I
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believe no that those Dice look amazing and they great to rooll as well it's just thematically it's just something
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really nice about picking up these like little little boys and then throwing the floats on the table it's just it's
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really satisfying and I really like that aspect It just fits perfectly with the whole aesthetic of the game so with the
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design part of it we talked a little bit about some of the joy you've got out of the the production part and doing the artwork and all that lot was there any
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part of the design process where you kind of just sat back and thought yeah that was I did a good bit of design
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there was there anything particularly that you've really enjoyed in the game when designing it I really like the Shadows on the backs of the fish so so
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when you're fishing at Sea there's nine shs that you can fish from at three different depths and you just kind of
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pick one and flip the top card over and that's like figuring out what's on your hook basically um and I wanted to be
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there to be different sizes of fish that were different difficulties to catch um and I wanted to kind of um forecast that
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to players like have them be able to guess at what fish like the size of a fish was going to be when they flipped
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it over so I did that by putting these little shadows in the backs of the card so those small medium and large shadows
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and they they relate directly to a range of values so like a small depth one would be between zero and two and then a
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medium would be two to one to three so you know vaguely what you're going to need to pay in dice to catch the thing
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but instead of literally putting those values on the back of the card because you could easily just print one to three on the back of the card you know so you
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I know what that's going to cost but I wanted people to feel clever um I like I like things that make you feel clever
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and I like things that make you feel like you're kind of doing research before you make a decision on something so there's little player guide that that
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shows you what the values of different Shadow sizes are so you have to look at it and you have to reference the guide
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to determine what the range of Shadows is that's that's good friction is what I like to call that um it's like creating
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a little bit of friction that slows people down and makes them make better informed decisions and I I'm very proud
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of that I thought that was cool yeah I think we're both big fans aren't we because every time someone we've had a few people ask about this game because I
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we demoed it and I think one of the first things I bring up is the Shadows on the back of the card because you
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could have easily just had shallow depths you've got zero to five but giving you that idea that this is a
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small fish this is a medium fish and that this thins down the value certainly kind of makes it more of a choice where
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you have decision space to make and and it could be that Medium depth you've
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just got all large fish at that depth right showing from the shadows and you might be like well I'm
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going to miss that and I'll go to the full depth or I'll stay in the shallows until someone decides to catch those bigger fish or whatever or they go away
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for the day after the day or something so I'm glad you brought that up because I think myself and Davey and a few others on the podcast of talked about
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how great we like that design choice so I'm glad you've brought that up a little bit of a luck mitigation as well which
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is always nice like it's nice to have these random elements but then to have a
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choice or to at least have a little bit of knowledge before you go in before you make that decision I think is a really
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good design space yeah that's I know you were talking about like design um
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mentality and another thing that's important to me is luck like it's weird to say a lot of people are like very
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Euro in their mindset for design where they want something to be entirely like 100% player agency where you can come
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into it and you can always have a competitive game but I heard a really good quote from um Richard Garfield the
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guy that did Magic the Gathering back in the day uh recently where he was talking about luck in games and he said like
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luck is important because in a game that is 100% strategy like chess you have a difficult time finding someone who will
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give you a good game if you're really good at chess you can't just sit down and play with anyone because if they're not good at the game you're not going to
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have a good time you won't be challenged properly whereas introducing luck into a game kind of levels the playing field a
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little bit and I think it's a really cool philosophy and it ties into magic really well because you never know what you're going to draw and you're you know
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your game is very dependent on whether you get the lands you need that kind of thing um so that's that's kind of where
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I come from from a design perspective is I like a lot of luck in games and then I try and find ways to like you said
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mitigate that luck so you can make decisions that give you the the best possible
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chances like um quacks of quedlinburg buy good things to put in your bag to try and mitigate the chance that your
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your thing blows up but ultimately you can't really control it I love that game that's a good game I I do think that
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balance is important though because if something's too leans too far on the Lux
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side it can have very like feel bad moments you go in thinking oh yeah I'm I've definitely got this and then
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suddenly you can't do anything yeah another thing um that Elizabeth Hargrave said about deigning wingspan was that
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she noticed a lot of people in play testing just liked making a little display of birds they liked the Tableau
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building aspect of it and did not care whether they won they had a good time regardless of whether they got good birds or not and that's another thing I
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found really inspiring is like it I want the game to feel fun whether you whether you you know did horribly or whether you
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did great which is why I like the madness mechanic because if you lose it's almost more fun like if you're the
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one who had the most Madness that's kind of a fun thing right you're like oh I went totally crazy I lost this fish you don't feel bad about that it's a fun
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thing you get to you still get to take something way you you take away the the pride of being the craziest person at
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the table so you've kind of explained um mechanics of it is there any player
The player interactions in Deep Regrets
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interaction that goes on with the game uh there is um in there's kind of there's minimal
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player interaction from like a direct perspective where there's a few cards that you can like give to other players
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or that Force other players to discard regrets that kind of thing um that they're kind of sprinkled throughout
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there's not a lot of them and then like the big bit of player interaction is kind of the metag game which is critical
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uh and it ties back to the the regrets and Madness that we talked about earlier because you have to watch where people
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are fishing because it can affect you like if people are if everybody's fishing at the lower depth they're going to be turning over a lot of fish that
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give all players regrets and that's going to drive your Madness up so you're going to be sucked into this world of
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madness whether you want to or not so if you're trying to play a safe game and stay at the higher depths and get you know cheaper fish it's going to affect
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the value of your fish where they're fishing so there's kind of and if everybody's fishing at a really high depth and you're the only one low you're
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running the risk of being the only crazy one and and losing when you're knowing that you're going to lose your most
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valuable fish when everyone else is going to do pretty well so this's this interesting like like you know The Good
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the Bad and the Ugly ey Shifty meme thing where everyone's looking at everyone else to see what they're doing and determining with whether they're
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going to make the first move or not we also quite enjoyed the mechanic where if you run out of regrets in the deck then
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we start taking each other's regrets yes yeah yeah that's some very late game player interaction there yeah which
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ended up in its own little meta game in itself of whose regrets you going to take who's been getting rid of their low
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value their High values and who's still got the low values in there yeah I tried to like there in places
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where there was um player interaction I tried to make it not to take thatty because it's such there is so much luck
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and randomization in the game if you introduce a lot of negative effects like that it's going to start to feel
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degrading to play you're not going to enjoy it so like most of the player interaction tends to be things like you
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the life preserver at the start of the round whoever rolled the highest gets to give this life preserver to someone else so they are choosing who they think is
23:54
most deserving of it so it's a player interaction and you can try and en Curry their favor and get it but generally they're going to make the decision based
24:00
on who they think needs it the most or who they think is doing the worst same thing with the regrets they'll take the regrets if all the you know so the
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mechanic there is that if the draw pile and the discard pile of regrets are are empty you have to pick another player
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and take a regret from them instead so you're going to try and make strategic decisions about who you think it would
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would benefit the least from losing a regret basically yeah yeah yeah everyone
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insed their breakfast that morning
An aside on Hideous Abomination which is available as an add-on
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is this your first Kickstarter campaign this is my third Kickstarter campaign so
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I've W two Kickstarter campaigns for the same game in two editions so I did a previous game I did called hideous
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Abomination which is about it's like a familyfriendly monster Builder and I did a first and second edition of that on
24:47
Kickstarter first that's an add-on currently isn't it on deep regrets as well yeah yeah you can get that I'm really proud of that game like it
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doesn't get as much attention because people assume I think it's maybe the primary colors of it they assume it's just for kids and it is familyfriendly
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but I have never met a person that sat down and played that game that didn't love it I'm also very proud of that game deep regrets is great but I don't want
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people to forget about hideous Abomination it's good game so do you feel like you've learned
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a lot from your first campaign over to this one oh yeah yeah every campaign has
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been kind of like a fail forward situation you they were both successful but like the first
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one was only just barely successful and it did everything wrong and it learned a lot from it the second one was
25:28
successful but it wasn't near what I wanted it to be you know like it was it was barely enough to like live on and
25:35
make this game and this one this one is already doing well enough that I can pay myself a salary and then have operating
25:41
funds to continue making games without having to you know scrimp back and Save in the future which would be great
25:47
that's a good end go I have to ask is one of the things you learned the video that's gone with
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deep regrets cuz I think it's fair to say it's getting a lot of love at the moment and I'm I have to put my hand up
25:59
and say I'm one of these people that normally skip the video at the top and I did when I first opened deep regrets and
26:07
then I saw on social media several people talking about the video for that and people really getting quite excited
26:13
for for kind of what was involved in that video so is that what was the process of producing that video and
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deciding to go in that direction so I mean I've done that every time like if you go back and watch hideous Abomination one it's like in the style
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of a like 80s gross out advertisement like there was there's a product in the US called Creepy Crawlers
26:32
back in the 90 like early 90s where you like got this goop and press these little worms out of it and it was you
26:38
know like a mad scientist in his lab making these things in the commercials and that's exactly what I was going for and I did the same thing for the second
26:44
when it was like a sequel commercial basically and I just have a blast doing that like I like I I don't I feel like
26:51
um you get all these like really polished beautiful 3D rendered videos people put up where like the cards are
26:57
like magically lifting up in flipping over and meeples are you know sorry I'm not allowed to say meeples
27:02
anymore wooden people figures are moving around on their own um and they look
27:09
great but they feel so inhuman to me especially in a space like board games where we're talking about sitting around
27:14
playing things with people in person I want it to feel tactile I want it to have actual people in there so quite
27:20
aren't they yeah so I'll probably always do these live action things but then I
27:25
also you know I'm an OT I want to do these little it's like an excuse for to make a short film basically and for for thousands of
27:32
people to watch it whether they want to or not it's like a horror Wes Anderson sty that's what I liked about it yeah I
27:38
never thought of the Wes Anderson thing somebody somebody mentioned that on the YouTube thing and they're absolutely right it's all the like zero point
27:45
perspective you know the life aquantic un moving yes exactly no camera movements all like Centra frame stuff
27:52
yeah I enjoyed that video and I was in the same boat as Adrian where I don't normally watch the board game videos and
27:59
it's probably because they are quite soulless but for me it was quite refreshing watching that video it's all
28:04
kind of part of the theming you know like a lot of times you pick up a game and the only really theming you get is from the box itself and what the what
28:11
the little there's usually a little paragraph at the start of of the instruction manual that kind of casts and you might get some flavor text that
28:17
builds the world a little bit but I I look at the kickstarter and all the marketing as an opportunity to build on
28:22
that theming like that trailer helps flesh out the story a little bit for it so if you didn't watch that you may not
28:29
have like the full picture kind of reminds me of okay I'm going to go back to the souls born World here I'm playing Elden ring in the DLC at the moment and
28:37
they all of their trailers will have like story bits in it that do not appear in the game at all and people are really
28:42
obsessed with the lore of those games so you have to have watched the trailer and played the game to get the full story and I think that's really cool yeah yeah
28:50
it's a unique way to tell a story definitely in a lot of the eldering games I mean a lot of it I've had to
28:57
read up yeah aside from even playing the game I'm just like I I need more this boss
29:04
yeah yeah yeah so obviously we saw you at UK games Expo this year and one of
Was it a hard deadline to get prototypes for the UK Games Expo?
29:09
the things I was kind of fascinated to know about is was it like a hard deadline for you to get prototypes and
29:16
that ready for the Expo did you just hit a point in production where you were like you know what this is ready to go and I'm an expo is coming up let's book
29:22
in for a stool there kind of what was your thought process on getting it ready to to be viewed by the public
29:29
so it was um not just UK games Expo so that that's important but there's also
29:34
that Community aspect as well getting it round to people to play test and to review and things like that and I want
29:40
them to have the experience of of playing a more or less finished game um
29:45
so the Prototype that you played has even at the time of UK games Expo had already changed quite a bit I kind of
29:52
there was like a point at which I was like if I'm going you know this is my tentative date for Kickstarter if I'm
29:57
going to go then I need to figure out how far in advance I want to start sending this around to people and I need
30:03
to go ahead and produce it now so I kind of pulled the trigger knowing it wasn't complete yet knowing but but knowing
30:08
that it was far enough along that I felt like it was a um reasonable representation of the gameplay that I
30:13
was proud enough to put in front of reviewers and previewers and all that stuff so I I made that decision
30:20
maybe in January or February I think with UK games Expo being in when was it
30:26
June started first first weekend of June um what is time anymore yeah I know what
30:32
you mean the 17th isn't it yes 17th of June yes your invite H so
30:42
I it was actually delayed by the manufacturer as well they got overwhelmed so I had my manufacturer
30:47
what's games they built the prototype for me and it was meant to be a six-week turnaround it wound up being about like
30:54
a 12we turnaround so I didn't get it in front of quite as many reviewers and previewers as I would have liked to
30:59
before the kickstarter started off but I had it in time just in time for UK games Expo it came in literally the week
31:05
before I was planning to roll in with my little handbuilt one for a minute there and like it showed up in the mail I was like yes this is this try and I got it
31:11
in the post of reviewers right before I left for UK game Expo actually no I didn't that's not true I sent it off as soon as I got back nice so yeah so you
31:18
all prep but that's close deadline then if you got it only a week beforehand that must have been quite nerve-wracking
31:24
yeah like I I planned it out really well and you know I didn't I didn't building time for delays which I absolutely
31:29
should have nice it worked in the end yep we got to play one of
31:35
the my one of my highlights of the weekend thanks man appreciate it for me too yeah I think anyone goes back and
31:42
listens to our Expo episode they'll hear the I think the amount of fun we had in that in that demo and definitely
31:48
definitely stood out to both of us so hence why we wanted to talk to you on the podcast so I did want to ask you
Some favourite games from Judson
31:53
about some ball games because we usually do this before but we kind of naturally went on to regrets so I thought wouldn't
32:00
stop the flow and I'd ask you um what's your what's your current game that you're playing at the moment b
32:07
game wise um so I just posted about this
32:12
on the the first update I'm playing a lot of Terror Escape at the moment because a buddy of mine went all in on the last Kickstarter and they're they're
32:17
going to their second one at the moment um but I'll say something else because I just posted about on the um Kickstarter
32:23
update so also playing I just picked up sepa which I'm very excited about I've only had a chance to play it once but I
32:29
love mine clash games also a big inspiration to me um I played traran
32:35
seven years ago or whenever it came out and it just blew me away have you played traran yeah yeah play again Sunday like
32:40
that is a a meaty game like the theming like flows so well with it and Septima is is similar in tone I've only played
32:47
it once and there's like a um a basic setup and an advanced setup so I haven't
32:52
done the advanced setup yet but I'm excited to get it back on the table so I can check that out it's about um you're like witches that are Brewing potions to
32:59
save the villagers in the town but you know avoid the Wrath of the witch Hunters that are out there that don't
33:05
like you you're good witches you are good witches you're misunderstood misunderstood witches that's a good
33:12
good um yeah the the shape shifting expansion to that or the module to that is really good as well kind of it it
33:19
Narrows the your choice space a little bit because you have to play a card to get all your other cards back so it's
33:27
quite it makes it an interesting puzzle once you've got the basic game down I've
33:32
seen that but I haven't um I want to play the regular game a few times before I I move on to the models and expansions
33:38
ni so we're big lovers of M crash games yeah yeah any of our regular listeners
33:44
have heard about September before I'm sure so because both JP and Becky sort
33:49
of went through a bit of a loop didn't they of kind of buying it and getting it and playing it so they've both talked about their experience on playing that
33:55
that game of September favorite board game favorite board game
34:00
of all time of all time all time um you're trapped in a room let see any
34:06
game you can play I already talked about traron and wingspan both of which are in the
34:11
running for that I'm trying I would probably say one of those two but I'll say something else let me see if I can
34:16
think of a third favorite board game um I flit around so much so
34:23
indecisive and I like trying new things so it's usually whatever I've just played um but ones that come to mind as old
34:32
favorites you know what I'm going to say recent favorite fit to print um which is
34:37
have you played that one it's um oh I forget the name of the company um the same folks that do uh Cascadia
34:46
and and Calico and all those games so it's it's a game where you're putting
34:52
together a newspaper you're like an editor for a newspaper so you're collecting articles and putting them together it's like all done in real time
34:59
so you have exactly like three minutes or four minutes or how whatever difficulty you decide to set to pick all
35:04
the Articles you want and put them into your page for the day and you're trying to like meet certain requirements and
35:09
certain things can't sit next to one another and at the end of it you you proof each other's work basically to
35:14
make sure you put things in the correct places and it's just great it's it's amazing chaos I love it oh nice nice
35:21
that sounds that sounds interesting I want to give that a go now cuz yeah I hadn't seen that one um Cascadia has
35:26
been on the top of my playlist for a little while now so I like but I think of their games fit to print is my
35:32
favorite so far go I think I saw that on the Expo if I'm not mistaken but maybe not yeah it's not it's not been on my
35:39
radar no I think I I think I W past it but yeah interesting this it sounds unique which is always nice yeah yeah
35:46
it's good things going back to your games it's what's stood out for me at the Expo is it is a unique game and you
35:52
obviously struggled with trying to Define its mechanics that's the reason why is played anything like it uh have
Some future design concepts including Fright House
36:00
you got anything else coming up in the design space um well I I've got you know a few
36:06
things on the back burner that I'm working on I I have one game that I'm working on forever that was the first game I started working on called fried
36:13
house that's about building and running your own like haunted attraction which was born out of my youth spent building
36:19
and running haunted houses for trick-or-treaters in my hometown for like geysers um and it's just kind of I
36:26
I I played traran and I was like I'm going to design a board game and I was like I'll make a thing like traran not
36:32
understanding the amount of complexity that was required to to do something like that um and it just it's you know
36:38
it's a behemoth that needs to be scrapped and started from fresh I want to I still want to make it because it's close to my heart but I don't it's like
36:45
mostly done and it's awful it's it's either too long or not fun you know and everything I do to change it pushes it
36:50
one way or the other the synopsis it kind of reminded me a bit of like boss monster but with it own that's a
36:58
that's a good point of reference so there is a good one to compare that too yeah yeah except you're trying to you're like deciding what what guests the
37:04
guests have like phobias at the moment so there's like four different genres like slasher and spooky and occult and
37:10
they as they go through the rooms you've built if it matches their phobia their fears goes up like a little it's like a
37:15
little hero clicks type base that that attracts Their Fear And if their fear gets too high they can die and then you
37:21
have to like pay to refrigerate them so the cops like thematically I love it I just can't make it work is just too long
37:28
so I'll come back to it eventually but I've got another thing Brewing that's I don't want to announce yet because it's very very early in itsy go space
37:36
hopefully look forward to Fright House at some point that does sound like an amazing concept right so I think we're good to
TURN 3 - Judson's Niche Number 1's
37:43
move on to um some Niche number ones let's do it Adrian's got a couple to ask
37:48
I have so for those of it's been quite a while since we've done nich number we normally do them as episodes and then we
37:54
pick a couple from the most recent episode and we ask our guests a few of them and they can be a bit bit odd and a
38:01
bit crazy and sort of makes you think outside the box a little bit so for those who haven't heard of of our Niche number one segment what we do is we come
38:07
up with very Niche topics and then we ask you what is your favorite board game in that Niche topic um and I tried not
38:15
to go too left field on this I've tried to keep them not quite as niche as we always do but a challenge bring it on so
38:22
the one I've got to start off with is what is your favorite game that you never win
38:27
most of them I'm terrible at games like I hear this from a lot of game designers we're not good at games we just like
38:34
games and like making them um I never
38:40
win moon really enjoy moon but I cannot win Moon I just like the this the
38:46
strategy of it eludes me I don't know what it is about it but I love playing it it's great yeah we just played it recently didn't we there's definitely
38:52
there's a few options to it but yeah I can understand that kind of
38:58
not feeling locked out but sometimes kind of struggling to see how you're going to get all your victory points at the end kind of coming together and all
39:03
it takes is one card to do it but but but it's another one where it doesn't really matter like I you know you're doing something cool and you've got your
39:09
own thing going on and you're working towards it and it feels good whether You've Won or lost yeah no yeah I thought I was doing really well and then
39:15
I ended up losing yeah definitely well okay so
39:20
we'll move on to the next one so what is your favorite game that the rest of your gaming group hates oh
39:31
um that's a good question what have I only gotten people to play once and then they've never wanted to go yeah that's
39:37
that's kind of I'm not going to cheat I was going to look at my tabletopia backlog um I've got a bit of a a weird
39:45
one that my wife and I really like playing but I'm not sure anybody else
39:50
really does and it's the Haunted Mansion call of the spirits board game it which
39:55
is is not very well known I don't think um weirdly we had um I think it was we
40:01
had another developer on who also mentioned this ball game because I had never heard of it before it's it it
40:06
wasn't available in the UK for a while it's like a big um um what's his name
40:12
the funco released it so it's a big thing and it's Disney you know they're behind it it just came out a couple years ago so it's it's a big production
40:18
and it's very well made um but I don't think it's big in the UK I don't think it really made it over here very much I
40:23
picked it up when I was in the US and brought it back because I was I love haunted mansion that's like my whole Aesthetics cartoonishly spooky is where
40:29
I live so you you're like it has a similar mechanic to um deep regrets the
40:35
regret thing so I pulled that kind of concept from both it and another game
40:40
called don't go in there which is like Call of the spirits but in the reverse and I'm not sure which one copied the
40:46
other I have to assume that Disney stole the idea from don't go in there and didn't credit them for it both are very
40:53
cool games you should look up don't go in there as well um but you're like it's they collection you're like collecting
40:58
different ghosts or different cursed things and if you have you know different sets they're worth different things um and but you're collecting like
41:05
haunt cards over the course of the game and whoever has the most haunt cards at the end loses um can't can't win at all
41:11
it's just like a a devastating law or they lose their their biggest set and don't in there as the opposite where
41:18
you're trying to have the fewest points you're trying not to have sets of things which is a really cool mechanic it's like the opposite of a um of a set like
41:26
a set don't collector yeah that is that is an odd sales pitch if you told me that was your
41:32
sales pitch for the game is I want you not to collect sets of things I would probably be like sure but yeah sounds
41:38
like one worth checking out yeah have to take a look into that and then finally what is your favorite game to lure
41:45
non-gamers to play a game o I gotta I mean wingspan works
41:50
really well but I'm not going to use that one again I'm G I'm going to try to pick something different here um
41:58
gentle a gentle rain you played a gentle rain it's a it's like a solo or coopy
42:04
type game um where you're just placing tiles basically you're drawing and
42:09
placing tiles like carcasson style um and if if you link up the flowers on the
42:14
tiles you get to place a little thing in the middle of it and you're just trying to get rid of as many tiles as possible and it's meant to be a Zin experience
42:20
and it just it appeals to people the name itself puts you in a kind of a Zin state of mind so when you come to it um
42:27
you're expecting to be calm to buy it and it's a very calming beautiful game and they've just come out with a new addition of it as well so that's one
42:33
that's one to check out if you're looking for a nice little very quick solo game that's as in experience highly recommend i' have to put some rainforest
42:40
noises in the background while we play yeah it's one I had seen before but
42:46
I love to placement games so like a good portion of my collection is already to placement and I looked at it and thought
42:52
I can't I can't add another one to my collection just yet so recommend it
42:58
good okay well thank you very much for coming on Judson um so the kickstarter
43:04
Campa campaign is currently um in progress um when does it end so it's
43:10
wrapping up on the 24th of July oh don't don't ask me right now I don't I'm I'm
43:16
too frazzled the whole thing it's last week of July I think it's the Thursday of the last week of July whatever that
43:22
is okay the 25th the 25th 25th there we are it's the dve it's 25th of
43:28
[Laughter] July yeah well thank you very much for coming on um it's been great to hear
TURN 4 - The Final Turn
43:35
about deep regrets and everything you've been up to thank you very much for having me it's been it's been great chatting with you
43:42
[Music] guys there we have it Judson from Deep
43:49
regrets it's been a great pleasure having him on the show it's another expansion episode down if you want to
43:55
contact us getting of us get some questions out to developers you can find us in our socials below and as always uh
44:03
who whose turn is it Anyway [Music]
44:14
[Applause]