TURN 1 - Player Count
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[Music]
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welcome to Whose Turn is It Anyway your board gaming podcast where we talk about cardboard cardboard and you guessed it
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even more cardboard this is an expansion pack episode where we have Lee Miller from Molinorius Games and just like
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other kind of guest episodes we just get down to the business we chat all about
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games the genesis of the company and much much more so without further ado I'm going to hand over to well myself
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and uh to basically introduce Lee and get on with the show
TURN 2 - Lee Millers Turn (Molinarius Games)
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[Music]
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we are here with Lee from Molinaris Games welcome to the show Lee thank you very much yeah great to have you uh
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finally been wanting to do this for for a while i think ever since we met a few years ago right so yes it's really
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exciting to get you here in the in the Who's Turn studio online and uh having a chat about all stuff that is you so yeah
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how's how we've just come back from UK Games Expo right this literally whenever it was last week how how's that for you
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uh still decompressing as I expect most people are my voice has returned um but
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yeah very we had a great UK GE our best ever in terms of of sales and kind of uh
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fun as well and meeting people and everything else yeah just gets bigger and bigger every year um but yeah it's
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fantastic loved it can't wait for next year already yeah nice and uh for those that may not have kind of come across
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you Lee or or heard of Malinoris Games uh before give them pitch what who are
Introducing Lee & Molinarius Games
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you and uh what is it all about how dare they not know who we are
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yeah so we're a a UK based uh in Leicester small indie company started
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about 5 years ago um with our first game called The Lakes which is uh now in
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supermarkets and we do very well and it's a game about the Lake District um so yeah long story short um I started
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the company during COVID because I was stuck in the UK and at the time I was I was working in Chicago um so just
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something to fill my days um we decided to make a Lake District game and it kind of took off from there really and then
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uh Ocean Pods came afterwards and I thought oh Kickstarter and crowdfunding looks really easy let's have a go at
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that um you know if we'll talk about time travel later but if I could go back in time and and kick myself for doing
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that I probably would because it's not easy at all uh and I think that the
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naivveness was great for us then because we were able to get some games to market and
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just generally not worry about the pressures of the selling or anything else we just made games that we thought were fun and people wanted to play and
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we put them on Kickstarter and then our stand got a little bit bigger at Games Expo because we had more games and then
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um we met Mike uh Peacock who's now our director of Family Games who joined the
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team um brought Shaw into our stable uh and then Flippers this year was was his
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second game so yeah in a in a very short space of time we've what seemed to be just kind of a a folly has grown into a
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a successful business and it's now my full-time job um and we also have uh I
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think at this expo we had 12 to 15 volunteers working for us doing different shifts so yeah it's definitely
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getting bigger and bigger and bigger and we've got another three games in the pipeline so yeah it's it's great it's
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also coming from a a stressful environment uh a work environment to to
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working with friends and family and kind of doing something you love is is really nice at this stage of my life as well
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yeah mate i I completely empathize with the uh the naivity aspect it's the same
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when we started the podcast right we was like "Yeah we'll do it how hard can it be?" And then you actually start doing
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things and you go "Oh right you got to edit these things right?" And all right yeah i've heard some of the links yeah
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oh my god um but I I think sometimes when you're you're starting out I think
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it's quite good to have that naivity because sometimes if you knew sometimes how much of the you know the hard work
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it actually is it could probably put you off from even starting so actually just getting going i'm a big uh believer on
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fail fast anyway as as a kind of um concept so you know just start just just
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get going just learn and you will learn through the pain of it half the time but then he gets better right and then you
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get to know it's more familiar so it was we were really lucky as well because I met um one of the first people I met was
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was Chris Priscott from Unfringed our friend Chris yeah uh and and then he introduced me to a Discord group where
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there was lots of other people who are in the same boat uh and there's quite a few of us now on that uh in the UK
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publishers group um and that that was a a wealth of knowledge because every
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mistake that could be made someone had made it in that group and was able to point out uh good people so if there are
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any game designers just starting out listening then I would definitely say find a support group because that that
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that was invaluable definitely cool so we'll probably circle
How did Lee get into the hobby
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back with a little bit of Mullen Horris uh in a second but I want to know more about you is Lee the the the board gamer
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and uh how did you get in the hobby um and how long ago did you get in hobby was it kind of a recentish thing or have
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you been board game tabletop gaming for for many many many years before it it's
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I tabletopped a lot when I was younger like most people and then um kind of at
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university fell away a little bit when I was like oh not everyone's as geeky as I am so so I I reinvented myself a little
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bit to be like I was going to say to be cool but that's never been the case um but to be less geeky than I am now um
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and then yeah nobody wanted to play risk for like 7 hours um so then uh naturally
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as you know you hit your 20's and you start work and everything else it just I just lost contact with it and I moved um
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um around a lot as I said for work um and then uh Mark who you met who did
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your your demo of Time Troopers this week um he kind of said "Look uh I'm
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quite into gaming do you fancy coming around and playing Katan?" And I'd never heard of Katan this was maybe 10 years
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ago now uh and from that moment it was like instantly being transported back to being a a kid and then and I know it's a
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kind of a cliche gateway game katan but it it it's it's a cliche for a reason it was just a perfect kind of easy game to
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get me into back into the hobby and then I think that weekend I went and bought a katan and then made my wife play it with
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me and then yeah uh three or four Kax units later it kind of like everyone else grows out of
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control yeah i remember my wife saying "Is your hobby playing games or collecting games?" And I was like "Um
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I think there's a bit of both in there." Yeah so it got out of hand very quickly and and but but yeah it was great and I
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loved and also because I was in such a corporate world and spending a lot of time on laptops and and traveling the
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disconnect from a TV screen and then the tactile nature of touching components
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and interacting with someone over over a tabletop whereas you know I guess years
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ago we'd have been doing that over the dinner table and but increasingly people don't eat dinner at their dinner table
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anymore so I just love the social side of it as well well it gave us an excuse to get together and now every Sunday my
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two brothers myself and Mark get together and play uh games on a Sunday and it's I can go all week uh and not
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really talk to to people i know others can as well if we're if we're like head down working all week so yeah I I love
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it uh so so to answer your question I played a lot when I was younger then none through my 20ies and then got
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really back into it through the last 10 years nice nice one so the the hardest question that everyone um can never
What is Lee's favourite game?
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answer well usually is if you had to pick one game as your favorite of all
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time what is it what is your game of choice so I'm on record quite a lot with
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this one uh it's Battlestar Galactica awesome game yeah um and for for a few
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reasons one it's my favorite sci-fi franchise as well the mechanics of the game are great and also
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you don't get casual gamers playing Battlestar Galactica you you can't just like go "Oh yeah I'll have a game." You
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can't just jump in you need to know how it works uh and I think I have kind of a
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a spot where people One of my critical traits is I feel like you should you should have to work to
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enjoy something and and like most geeks you have to you know you find the the the grains of of beauty and things that
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because you you know the backstories of characters and you know things so when little Easter eggs pop up you appreciate them and I think that Bar Galactica game
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is so great because you've earned it and you understand the rules and everything else so yeah there's a ton of other
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games I've played recently which are great um I really liked Nemesis when that first came out i thought that was
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fantastic and played that to death um but yeah Battlest Star Galactica and and
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also because you just go and play every week it's impossible so when you do play it it's fantastic every time never let
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you down it's like an event game isn't it it's like um you know we we in our group we've had some good history with
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BSG and and actually like Unfathomable's come out to I put air quotes replace it
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but for me it doesn't it doesn't replace it even though mechanically I could probably argue it is superior right
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mechanically but it's not BSG i love BSG for the fact that it is how it is and um
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and the theme just does it for me more than Mr wibbly Tentacle Face you know
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yeah and and the fact it's out of print and um I mean you know make all my friends wear white gloves and there's no
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drinks on the table or anything like that when we get it all out so yeah it's like a theater of playing
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yeah they were in a kind of a you know an airtight seal with these suits
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like a crime scene but it's hard to have a a favorite game because obviously it depends what what mood you're in uh but
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yeah that's kind of my default choice it can change card it for sure yeah mine does all the time um so you said that
What's hitting Lee's table lately?
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you you do your kind of weekly games on on a Sunday so what's been the game of choice for the last three or four
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Sundays what's been hitting the table we've been playing a lot of Witcher recently okay like the old world yeah so
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that so that's that's been to the table I think three weeks in a row um but we
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recently we play we've been playing overs which is a cricket game oh heard of that one it's it's fantastically fun
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uh so it's it's kind of a the bowler plays a card and then the batter plays a card and it's obviously a bluff and
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counter bluff uh and you and you get there's eight possible bowls and eight possible bats but obviously six in and over so the more the bowler plays the
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more the batsman know what ball type of ball they're going to play so obviously certain batting strokes will and then
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you uh will do better against certain bowling strokes so yeah really simple game i think it's mling games um
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fantastically easy to play but a lot of fun uh so we've been playing that and um
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Dragon Eclipse I've been playing a ton of which just came out recently from Awaken Realms uh it's kind of like
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Pokemon style adventure game um which I backed on Kickstarter um and uh Mark
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bought Crunky Hole Board so we've been playing some of that as well and uh a
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lot of old school games um Shards of Infinity we were playing uh recently which you can't go wrong just looking at
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see what else I mean oh we've just been playing some Lords of Hellas cult Express um Mark won't play Arknova uh so
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we've not been playing that uh yeah that that's kind of it really just just everything anything and everything you
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can get your hands on and just escape for a Sunday sounds Yeah
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we're not snobby about games but uh yeah anything really yeah just anything you
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find fun right so cool that sounds cool um so let's let's circle back then to to
TURN 3 - Molinarius Games & Time Troopers
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a bit of uh Molinarius then so you said that you set that up um obviously during CO um so what was the kind of genesis of
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the idea like you said you you were at home a lot and you just thought you'd found a board game company i mean did
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was this something that's been sitting with you for even before co as ideas or
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was it literally just come out of nowhere definitely it just came out of nowhere um so I was finance director
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prior to that uh and so I do think um I do have a good eye for for business and
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so we were playing we were in the Lake District playing this game um that that
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I mentioned that I kind of invented because there was no Lake District game just with beer mats me and my wife uh
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and I think I've told this story before but three or four people would come at the table and go "Excuse me what are you doing?" I was like "Oh we've made a
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little game about the Lake District in the pub." Uh and they were like "Oh uh can we play?" And then the next year I
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took a like a really crude prototype just from your life to enjoy it wasn't a oh there's a business here but then
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again after like the 50th person over the week had said "Oh this looks really good." I thought did think to myself
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maybe there's a business here and just out of curiosity more than anything else I was interested in profit margins and
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how the how it would work and manufacturing trade and and everything else so I kind of looked into it and
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thought "Yeah we could do this just for a bit of fun and and and do a Kickstarter." And I approached Mark
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because that was the stage where obviously we'd been playing a lot of games mark's like "Yeah let's do it." Um
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yeah and so Molinaris was born my my brother did the artwork uh for it he was the graphic designer my other brother
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helped play test it and write the instructions and that's why the company is called Molinaris Games because it's
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Latin for Miller which is all of our surnames i was going to ask you that and I need to make the connection there you
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go uh yeah because Miller Games was already taken so yeah it was very much a family um family thing nice uh yeah and
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it kind of that was that was it really not not um
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not a a huge like exciting story but if I could go back in time now uh yeah we
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would have done things completely different because we made so many mistakes which made the game more expensive than it needed to be and we we
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We in our second edition we made the card squarer you know we just once we'd been in the industry two three years we
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realized okay it it was embarrassing what we what we probably put out that first uh that first edition but at the
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same time it's it's part of the part of the learning curve yeah it was part of your journey really and like you say if
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you didn't do it you wouldn't have learned those lessons maybe you know and you know people getting it right first
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time as much as you know they're probably the finance guy in you thinking "God damn it I could have got a better margin." Um but but generally yeah
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everything happens for a reason in that way so you know your company's probably stronger for it because you've gone
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through those things won't ever go through those things you know and I was kind of like I'll do this for a year and we'll make a little bit
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money and it'll just like pay my way until I till I find another job and then that was 5 years ago still doing it i
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love I love the fact you you've turned this into full-time that's just such an amazing story right where something you
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know your hobby that you've enjoyed and and now you can do that and your you know friends and family are a part of
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that so actually it must I mean I'm not saying that you don't have stressful times because it it will be work in in
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places but it must be a nice feeling right to to kind of go this is my job
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how cool is this yeah and it is cool but yeah it there there are times when I'm
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like oh it's it's when it's the Thursday and I'm loading up the van to drive to the UK games expo and I know that it's
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everyone's going to be having a fantastic time and I'm going to be there till midnight and everything else um but of course there's that in every job but
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then I think back to how three weeks out of every four I was traveling all over
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Europe and and the US and and never saw my friends or my family whereas my work life balance now is fantastic um but
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also I've met a huge community that I I would never have met if I'd stayed in finance mh and it is the best the board
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game community is just full of nice people it took me a little while to realize that people are genuinely nice
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um because in the cutthroat world I was in it was like everyone would would would stab you in the back to to step up
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the ladder i was like why is everyone being nice to me what's what's in it for that agenda here yeah um so that side of
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it is the social side of it and the meeting the new people from the community is also a huge kind of boost
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for me not just a fin not just financially but also kind of yeah it's it's a nicer industry to be in I think
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yeah definitely definitely okay cool um so we we kind of met and you mentioned
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this Discord group right so when we we met uh what is it two three three years ago um I think you messaged me didn't
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you on whatever social media app it was I can never remember and you said "Oi
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we're at Expo it' be great to to I think you found we were doing like little mini interviews." And I don't think we were
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press at the time we didn't have press passes but we were just trying to dabble
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um just again get a bit of experience cuz you know at that time we were kind of in our infancy as a podcast and and
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it's something that we aspire to to kind of get proper press passes and start doing this thing properly so yeah we was
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like absolutely we'll we'll come around your store this rag tag group of people
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um and I think you mentioned that cuz we already had a link with Chris so and
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Chris had uh you obviously you guys had spoke and said "Yeah get these guys." You're just doing like interviews and
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stuff and whacking it on social media so that's kind of how we we met and I always love catching up with you guys
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it's like as you you always pop one of my little checklists at Expo got in the team always you know what's going on
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how's it going and this has kind of led us to going "Wow what's this this new
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game that you've gotten?" And and I think you kind of teased it because you you know my my kind of love of the theme
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of time travel and I always said there should be more time travel in board games which is why I like anacrony it's
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why I like uh those any film with time traveling or anything like that I'm in i'm like yeah this this sounds cool so
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yeah and then we kind of wander to your stall I think last year and went what is this game what's it all about so of
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course I'm talking about um Time Troopers but give me the um the the
What is Time Troopers?
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spiel this is your pitch now Lee okay what What is Time Troopers and for those
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that are trying to imagine when when I kind of turned up to your store last year what would they expect what is it
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well when you appeared at our store last year you would have seen the 8 foot um octagon time gate that was sagging
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slightly because the glue was getting hot um yeah like a Stargate to walk through that gate into our stand so yeah
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Time Troopers um I know this is going out um hopefully when we're already on
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Gamefound so at the time of listening hopefully Time Troopers is a fully funded game on Game Found um which is a
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solo deck building game uh I say deck building in as much as it's a campaign mission so you're deck building over um
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a whole campaign um so there's close to 500 cards in the box and you'll start
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with a deck of 24 um so by the time you work your way through the campaign you will have replaced or upgraded a lot of
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your cards as you're unlocking them um secret missions as you're going along um
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but the crux of the game is very much it's a solo campaign mission where you're going back in time to steal
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artifacts from ancient civilizations uh these artifacts are rich in a dark energy which will power the time gate
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itself uh and we need to power that time gate to fix things in the future like global warming famine uh American
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presidents putting tariffs on my products that kind of that that kind of thing topical yeah sorry it's like how I
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got news for you all of a sudden i love it i love it carry on um so yeah um
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there's a rival faction called the Scorpions they're coming back going back in time through their time gate as well to stop you from doing that because
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they're mercenaries from from rich people in the future want to stop you from doing that so you have this wonderful paradox of you are playing a
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mission in ancient Egypt and all of the deck of cards you're playing against will be ancient Egypt um this is
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probably the best artwork we've ever done on on any of our games it's it's absolutely phenomenal it looks fantastic
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i have to say it looks fantastic yeah and um it's taken us a long time cuz we
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don't have any AI in our in our uh commercial products at all um so to have 500 cards and the majority of them I
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think 460 of them have unique art it's taken us ages to get um all of that done
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um so yeah so you end up with this paradox of you'll be in ancient Egypt playing against an ancient Egyptian deck and then with a tournament card some
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like robots from the future can jump uh into ancient Egypt and try and stop you achieving your your goal so yeah it's a
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story campaign as I say each uh mission lasts about 45 minutes there's a ton of
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different things you'll need to achieve so for instance it's not just combat there's as you know you've demoed it sneaking stealthing and riding horses at
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one point across the Mongolian desert and uh you know one minute you're in a temple one minute you're in a Viking
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rowing boat so yeah I would say people who like immersive uh campaign games um that each mission
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will last about 45 minutes this is something they should check out um because there's a a lot of game to it
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there's eight different time zones and each one has at least three missions depending on what choices you make
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because in the campaign book as well you also have kind of choose your own adventure elements to it so we could
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both play the time troopers we'd both start and end at the same point but we'd have completely different journeys of of
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how we get there unlockable content etc etc so it would be a different experience um so yeah I I think it's a
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game that we want to play and that was the key behind this is when I was talking earlier about uh jumping into
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making games this is not the first game you ever make because it's it's it's very technical there's a lot going on in
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there but also it was the idea that I always had in the back of my mind uh and Mark as well on so once we'd cut our
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teeth on a few games we were like "Let's do it." But it's taken us three years to to produce this but we're very proud of
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it and I think it's going to be a great game yeah you you should be proud of it i mean it's it's definitely getting a
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lot of buzz um from from not you know just ourselves that we we kind of talked about it last year our first experiences
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but you know other content creators out there that have kind of had those demos at Expo and and had that experience and
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obviously they've just had a little little tiny slither of the game right because you can't spoil it it's like
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here's everything let me show you everything you want to keep some stuff secret that's the hardest part is I just want to like I just want to show
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everyone everything and all the cool bits because it's like the marketing guy is like show them how cool everything is and I'm like no no no it'll be cooler
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when the game's released and then some people will be playing it and then it's like doing a movie trailer uh doing a
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demo at the moment is is how I've been describing it to market just tease people but don't give away too many secrets yeah absolutely because you want
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them to experience it themselves so yeah this obviously feels as a title kind of a bigger um production a bigger focus so
Is Molinarius Games heading into more grand productions moving forward?
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obviously you mentioned this is something you've been wanting to do but as you say starting with that as your
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first game is is is it could have could have been a huge risk because who knows where it would have gone with what you
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knew at the time so is this something we we can expect from more from Molinarius moving forward you know games the size
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of of Time Troopers these bigger kind of grander titles i think so um we bringing
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Mike on board Mike Peacock who's a fantastic talented designer as you know who did Sh and Flippers um but what he's
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also been able to do is he's really interested in the industry as well so he just doesn't want to sit back and
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collect commission checks um he wants he wants to be involved which is why he's on the stand all the time demoing and
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and and helping grow Molina so um appointing him the direct family games
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has meant that he can take some of the reigns away from uh from from Mark and I
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and almost split the company in well we have split the company in half so we have a blue division and a black division now so we will have these
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family games um which are which are fantastic and great and are our core yeah um but it also means that um
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we can we can take swings and and make risks on the bigger box games uh more sci-fi more gamer games in inverted
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commas uh like time troopers but of course the run rate will be completely different we we might make a time
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troopers every 3 years because of the the leveling investment and time everything else that's required um but
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we can do that knowing that Mike's got a handle on the on the blue division as well so as we're growing um we can we
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can service two completely different customer bases mhm so yeah it's quite exciting um there's we would have
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probably done time troopers quicker but obviously I'm having to focus a lot on the on the admin side of things of
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business as well so now we're growing and Mike and Marcus are doing a lot lot more work it just means that time troop
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the games like Time Troopers will come out more frequently in the future yeah no it makes sense so you mentioned Time
What led you to drive a solo only experience?
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Troopers is a solo experience so what what kind of led you to I'm going to
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kind of craft this this game for the solo player cuz there's always a decision there which is you know I
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always think it's a brave decision um but I think these days it's there's a
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lot more solo only experience and games out there and I think it's great because the solo market is it's bigger than many
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people you know can probably know um especially outside the hobby in the
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hobby they're like "Yeah most board games have solo modes some of them as we know aren't great and they're tacked on
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but some some are are absolutely fantastic." But when you craft the game from the ground up with solo play in
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mind I always think that there's something quite special about that because you you're kind of imagining
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that player you know being there at the table and and you want to give them the best experience that they can so what
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what what led you to that decision and rather than going actually you can play on your own but you can also play with friends yeah there's I mean as I say we
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started this about three years ago and even going back three years ago there were not that many solo only games uh on on the market there they are growing but
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um so I like to play solo games um but most
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solo games are a solo mode of a functioning game which I think you touched on yeah um and it never quite it
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feel it always feels for me as though it's tacked on to something it's an afterthought and I'm not criticizing
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anyone there because obviously the crux of the game if we take a game like Arc Nova which I know whose turn is anyway
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love um if you take if you take that game then it's that's
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that's not been designed to be a solo game but obviously they've tacked on and a solo mode and the same with Wingspan
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and Ottoas and things like that uh so it it it almost it's it scratches an itch
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for a solo player but it's not done in mind with a solo player um so what I wanted to do was design a solo only game
28:11
that I would want to play and and we had three kind of we wrote down on a piece
28:17
of paper when we were brainstorming Mark and I what we wanted and it had to be quick and easy to set up uh it had to be
28:25
immer completely immersive otherwise the solo experience is sometimes I played
28:31
solo games where I feel like I'm just doing admin rather than actually enjoying the game perfect
28:37
uh so ISS Vanguard is a game that I really really love but I got to a point of I'm just putting things in folders
28:43
this is like being a a secretary or something um so yeah and then the the kind of third
28:51
thing was it has to be written uh for the solo player to enjoy themselves like
28:58
thinking about someone sat at a table on a Wednesday night they've got an hour to spare i I always say the Love Island
29:04
test i've said this millions of times while someone else in the house is watching Love Island um or whatever it
29:09
is on TV for an hour they've got an hour to kill get it out set it up in 5 minutes play it in 45 minutes love it
29:15
pack it away doesn't live on the diner table and it goes back on the shelf mhm and it's talking about naivity it's
29:22
incredibly rare to start with this is how we want the game to be set up rather than these are the mechanics of the game
29:30
but I think sometimes it's good to build yourself a cage so because then the
29:36
choices all have to fit into those parameters and every decision we make it had to fit that criteria is it immersive
29:42
okay we could do loads of minis but then is that going to make it harder or easier to pack up and pack away and and
29:48
those kind of things so yeah we we set the solo we we started to write it
29:54
deliberately as a solo only game and uh I think it was Mark who said this is
29:59
like a a computer game that someone's printed out onto cards was how he described it and I was like yeah that
30:05
that's kind of the vibe we're going for you know like you can play on the you can play on the PlayStation or whatever 45 minutes and then switch it off and
30:12
then you're done you're back to your family without it living all on the dining room table and everything so yeah
30:18
that that was a decision we deliberately made and I think it actually helped us in the design process yeah no it made
30:25
sense like I I one of the games I've I've got you probably see it right behind me which doesn't help our
30:31
listeners um but it's Hopus Victori right which is somewhere about there um
30:36
and I really enjoy Hoplo Victorium as a game um have you heard of it have you played it i I haven't heard of it no no
30:42
it it's basically gladiator the the board game right and the idea is you're you're kind of a gladiator from a kind
30:50
of imaginary region based on the the world Atlantians and and different
30:56
different places there and um and you go around traveling and I've have arena
31:01
fights and battles and things like that and it's it's super immersive but the barrier always for that game for
31:09
me is right i'm going to play that tonight okay cool got to set up right
31:15
setup's about good half hour so half hour of me getting that rolling all the the stuff neoprene and because it's chip
31:22
theory games productions neoprene and chips and everything and Okay good we're we're set up now i've got to play it and
31:28
it's four acts in the game each act takes three hours
31:34
so you then go through it and honestly by the end of it I'm like god like
31:41
and it's good but it's a lot and they then fit that in as you say with with
31:47
family and you know I've got two kids and and stuff like that so that means either I'm leaving that on the table or
31:53
I'm going to have to try and cram that in on a Sunday afternoon or something which means just takes me away for pretty much a whole afternoon and if you
32:01
got the time for that there's there's a great experience in that box but a lot of people most people don't and I'll
32:08
tell you the last time I played Hot Play was what a year or two years ago and probably says I I probably should get
32:15
rid of it cuz when am I going to get time to play it even though I do enjoy it so So I think the fact that your game
32:20
in Time Troopers is that you 5 minutes you're in pick up where you left off bang and you can kind of get the
32:27
scenario done in within the hour bang and finish it done get back to life you
32:32
know and setting it up that way so as we were designing the mission book um it just meant that we numbered all of the
32:38
cards and then all the cards go into the um into the insert in order that you're going to need them for the different
32:44
missions so it's very quick and easy to get the the the little mini packs of cards out which and just little touches
32:50
like that mean it's 5 minutes to set up maximum which is great uh and I and I don't think solo games will ever replace
32:58
playing with your friends because that's the coolest thing in the world for me but there it does scratch an itch like I
33:04
say on on a Tuesday or a Wednesday night where it's raining there's nothing to do uh you know either you've got an hour to
33:10
yourself or you're looking after the kids or whatever it is or you've got an hour off work whatever it is you can squeeze a game of this in and enjoy it
33:16
and then put it back on the shelf um but I think it's also very immer so immersive that you'll you'll love it as
33:22
well which is which is key for us nice cool so for those listeners who are going I
How does the mechanics of Time Troopers work?
33:29
am peaked with my interest time travel yes I'm in um solo experience I'm in um
33:36
and you know I want to learn more about the kind of mechanics and and how this
33:41
works like could you bring to life obviously not spoiling anything but maybe something of the first scenario
33:47
but can you bring to life kind of how it works mechanically like what am I doing as a player um uh specifically and also
33:53
how time is used or or utilized within the game cuz you know my brain time travel what what apart from going back
34:00
in time how can I use it and abuse it yeah so as well as well as timing and the theme we've also built in some
34:06
mechanics um so it so it laps together perfectly so um you'll be able to go on to gamefound and watch all of the videos
34:13
and download the rule books and everything else if if if you're interested then I would definitely say head over to gamefound and have a look
34:18
um but if you're in the car obviously don't do that um so yeah how it works is
34:23
you there's uh your local phase your time trooper phase and then an event
34:29
phase so okay very easy to play i would say similar to a Marvel Champions or an Arkham Horror in in style of play mhm um
34:36
with a campaign story book so your troopers come through the gate and you
34:41
have to use time so time is the currency in the game um so kind of like Shards of Infinity where you're collecting the
34:47
crystals or or whatever it is you have time vials which are your currency in the game and you can spend that time to
34:54
do actions um you're also battling or stealthing or sneaking past um what we
35:00
call the the locals which are the time locals so that could be Vikings it could be samuris it could be dinosaurs uh you
35:06
mentioned gladiators we have a gladiator level um so yeah there's tons of stuff in there uh I don't want to give too
35:12
much away no um when you when the locals are taking their turn obviously different characters have different
35:17
abilities so uh Genghask Khan might do something completely different from Cleopatra depending depending on what
35:24
era you are in um but if there's a dice roll you don't like u it's not a problem because you're a time trooper so you can
35:30
rewind trying by spending a time token and reroll a dice mhm um but of course the more you do that uh if you're
35:38
unlucky the more rerolls you choose to do the less time you'll have available to do actions and bring characters uh
35:44
into play so there's this wonderful trade-off of of resource management as well um you can also see into the future
35:51
so at the top um of the uh of the laidout cards there's an event deck which is nothing new in games um you
35:58
know we all have event phases but these have three possible timelines that you'll fall down so at right at the
36:03
start of the of every round you'll see what the three possible events are going to be uh and which timeline you'll
36:09
follow by re-roll by rolling a timeline dice uh and again if you roll a three
36:14
and you're a I don't want to roll three cuz it's a sandstorm's going to happen and that will mean I can't complete this
36:19
mission um so again you can spend currency to rewind time and uh and roll
36:26
that game so you can also so you can rewind time and you can see into the future there's a lot of cards which come
36:31
out as well which will uh kind of engine building cards so you can go through your discard pile and you know bring
36:38
someone back to life or rewind something and and undo your last turn or see into the future and look at the enemy deck
36:44
and that kind of thing so time is very much um built into the mechanics of the game as well as it just being the theme
36:50
which I think is important we've all played games where just feels like there's a skin pasted over the top of a
36:55
mechanic yeah i'm not mentioning any games in particular but No no no but we know what they are yeah um so yeah
37:03
there's a there's a lot to do here uh and it just it just feels immersive it
37:08
feels right when you're playing the game because the mechanics are built into the theme i saved my ass a few times on the
37:14
event dice cuz Yeah i was like well one of these is really really bad like two
37:19
of them I could weather and and get around but one of them please don't be that you roll it off yeah and and it's
37:25
like "Yeah but I I I've got some time i can do it." So I rewald it again boo got the different one I wanted moved on and
37:32
the fact that like you say is that resource do I want to hold it back accept my fate knowing that you know my
37:39
my next hand of of characters are is a good five time cost character i really
37:45
want him on the board because he's tough and he's going to kick some ass yeah versus oh what do I do so yeah it it
37:51
it's really kind of ramps up the tempo in the game because obviously the game and the scenario is just trying to win
37:57
against you and stop you so yeah it's been great doing the demos and all play testing and seeing people's different
38:03
approaches as to how they deal with that and and you get people who like oh statistically I have a 66% chance of
38:09
getting through so I won't save any time and then you're like oh they failed and then you have the overly cautious people
38:14
like let's save all of our time just in case we have a bad roll it's it's which is really cool seeing
38:21
the different approaches that people take yeah so with the uh obviously the characters in the deck so you're
38:26
obviously drawing them and and they're all uh different and and unique and have their strengths and weaknesses um is
38:34
that something you kind of thought of in the design space so as you progress through the campaign you kind of get to
38:40
know these characters a bit more in terms of you're going to have your favorites right these are the ones you
38:46
dependables the ones you like I always rely on these guys and uh and will they
38:51
still be there and as the game goes on who knows you know yeah so that was something which um Mark is is great at
38:58
so we have a very good working relationship where I'll design I'll design the game and then Mark develops it and breaks it and and brings his his
39:06
fountain of knowledge and stuff and so he was constantly from the get-go was like I want to end this campaign with
39:12
none of the guys except for one or two of my favorites that I choose to keep so we need unlockable unlockable content
39:19
all the way through it so you can replace your characters in fact sometimes you have to so there's
39:24
certain missions where if you end that mission with damage cubes on them they get forced to go to the infirmary so
39:31
they'll miss the next mission you have to call it replacements um there's some stuff in the mission book which I won't
39:37
go into which forces you to remove some some characters from play um and you can
39:42
promote some guys as well so you will keep the same character but maybe an upgraded version of him because he's now
39:48
a veteran um so there's all of this kind of cool thing going on so it's it's virtually impossible that we would both
39:55
end with the same characters because like you say you might constantly be failing a mission and decide I need a
40:00
medic whereas my I might decide okay well I'm not going to get a character i'm going to get uh more time so I'll
40:06
I'll increase the number of the amount of time tokens I have in my deck and then I can handle it yeah so it's very
40:12
much your control uh what you do and there's side quests as well in the game so the more side quests you complete
40:19
similar to uh like Gloom Haven you know where you you take the chest or Frost Haven you take the chest and then it
40:24
says go to the back of the book and it tells you what to do so there's unlocks uh you'll get from from doing those kind
40:29
of things as well so uh you'll get three chances at each level so let's just say
40:35
for argument sake you did you did it on the samurai level maybe you'll unlock a cool samurai sword which you can attach
40:41
to a to a trooper going forward which may be useful in some missions like the
40:46
dinosaur missions etc where you can't fire weapons so yeah there's there's tons of stuff in that as you can tell
40:52
i'm very excited about it but I just want to blurt everything out but um yeah it's really cool some I know yeah sorry
41:01
but no it it is uh really good fun and um like we we played I say at Expo last
41:07
year and literally a week ago um where Rob played mainly last year and I had a
41:12
game um this year and we we both had a ton of fun and Mark did both of those demos and and you can tell Mark's
41:19
incredibly passionate about this as well is all in with this the theme the the way it works and and it's just lovely to
41:26
see that that level of passion from you guys on on this product and know you've put a lot of you know blood sweat and
41:33
tears into it and developed it over the years to see it now being available on on game found right now
41:40
is it must be a real humbling like ah this is this is cool and obviously who knows where we will be at this time cuz
41:47
timey wy podcast release is always a bit weird um but Yeah it's it's Yeah you got to be proud of that cuz that's that's
41:53
awesome and uh yeah I'm proud of the journey that's come along and Mark's done a fantastic job with the demos and
41:59
he is enthusiastic and he's he's a teacher in his day job so he's he's uh
42:04
naturally kind of good at instructions and everything else um but the turning point for me was when we heard the first
42:11
soundtrack from from Tim Tim who's the music producer so as soon as we played
42:16
the game with the soundtrack that was the bit where I thought "This is going to be really cool." You know
Adding immersion through soundtracks
42:23
I love the fact you've done that i think you didn't need to do it that's the thing you didn't need to go I'm going to
42:29
put the soundtrack with the game but I love when you you kind of have that as that option to to really enhance the
42:35
immersion um and I'm a big fan of you know sounds and and and background music
42:42
when playing games cuz like you play a video game you're getting all of that in right cuz everyone's it's designed with that in mind from a visual and uh uh
42:49
kind of audio uh perspective but board games it's mainly what's going on in in
42:54
your head and how you're imagining the things that are kind of happening in front of you uh per se so yeah one of my
43:02
favorite things to do as a solo player generally is to sit there at the dining table and you know put the old uh
43:08
Bluetooth speaker on and and write hit hit the play although usually my my experience is I'm either listening to
43:14
playlists that others have done which are really good actually some some people have really put some thought into
43:19
or I'm using um have you heard of melody cuz yeah just go put the game in and it
43:25
just goes and finds relatable stuff or I've I've been on some really weird um
43:32
uh kind of tangents on on finding different music for different things I
43:37
would have never found before so that this is kind of how it um how we explored in in the the the gaming group
43:44
some of us um playing what was it uh New Angel that was it was playing New Angel
43:51
so cyber punky futuristic dystopian thinking right and you're going to need something like that and I came across a
43:58
band called Gunship right never heard of them and they do um kind of 80s style uh
44:06
kind of retro um they call it synth wave it's a It's a thing like synth wave music but it's all made like nowadays
44:13
but made to sound like it came out in the 80s like like Bladeunner type yeah and I was like I am digging this i'm
44:20
loving it and I've been listening now to all their albums and got got curly into it and he's like oh this is awesome it's
44:26
just weird how that started off with me trying to find the right music for the right play experience just to be
44:32
immersed in this thing so so yeah you tell us more about it so you've got a proper full-blown official soundtrack
44:38
for the game yeah it's um Yeah it's a we we hired a music composer Tim Clay um
44:44
who's also was was at the stand he was at UK Games Expo as well so uh he's also
44:49
joined the company now uh full-time um to do this because we think music's going to play a big part in our games
44:55
going forward um as you said everyone or or a lot of people we did a few polls
45:01
and a bit of investigation into this and and I think it was something like eight nearly 8% of people listen to music while they're playing games um so that's
45:08
solo players sorry um and so obviously it was a no-brainer for us to put our
45:14
music to it so whilst it's cool that people are listening to music playing games you know what music you're
45:19
listening to most of the time so if you're playing Lord of the Rings game you put Lord of Ring soundtrack on fantastic it's perfect but every now and
45:26
again there might be something in there that doesn't quite fit the theme or you
45:31
know what you're listening to whereas when you're listening to the publishers
45:36
uh soundtrack you don't know what's coming next so uh the Viking mission is
45:41
the one I always explain cuz it's nice and easy too so what the mission is you are on a Viking longboat out of the sea
45:47
and you're battling Vikings so hearing the like slow war drums and the OS and the like sea spray and a seagull every
45:54
now and again and some and the there's a Tim's done an awesome job of recording a
46:00
um kind of a a melody which which we're calling the time trooper melody we call it the infinity just because of the
46:06
symbol and everything else yeah and so what he's done is a fantastic job of putting that into
46:12
uh war drums but then also putting it into uh uh
46:18
old uh ancient Egypt music as well but obviously at a different tempo but so
46:24
it's it's it's it's kind of like familiar but different and it's like I know that that Yeah um and so um yeah
46:32
it's just it's just really cool and that was that's that's what for me was was when I thought this is really good and
46:38
but also we know at the end of certain missions the tension's going to ramp up because you're working against the clock
46:44
and things like that so there are some missions where we can change the theme and feel and tempo of the music to suit
46:50
the mission which might start out um really easy but then we know it's going to end quite difficult so we can we can
46:57
change that and submissions where you know you're against the clock we can have it you know speeding up and that so
47:03
whilst it's cool that everyone listens to music I think there's definitely a future where publishers are putting
47:09
content out there for you to play with their games to be in the right mood set so
47:15
a great example would be if a horror game came out if you're playing your own soundtracks you know when the scary bits
47:22
are in that but if I give you a soundtrack to play with a horror game there's going to be jump scare moments
47:27
in that soundtrack which are going to scare you because you don't know they're coming so playing that with the game I
47:33
think there's just a world of possibilities that we can do as as board game publishers which we're not using
47:38
music um for yet um so definitely this is something we'll look into uh more and
47:43
as in this it makes us stand out a little bit more as well it makes the game definitely more immersive but if
47:49
you don't like it it's not your vibe you don't have to use it it's not going to change ch change you know there's no
47:54
speech there's no instructions it's just pure um music to to immerse yourself a
47:59
little bit more you're not going to go around people's houses then demand that they listen to it like no speaker just
48:06
literally like don't listen to work into it i will be checking but uh I
48:12
think most people will give it a go because I'll say like if 80% of people listen to music those that don't it's
48:17
not a problem it's it's fine yeah but I think yeah
48:22
it's it's it's really good and and I'm really again I'm really proud of this tim's done a fantastic job um hopefully
48:29
we've we've set you up with some so hopefully we can uh you can play some on the podcast and uh people can have a
48:35
little sample yeah well let let's do that right now and you know rather than talk about sound which is always
48:40
difficult to do let's just play a little snippet for for people to get a taste of what they can expect when they uh get
48:46
their copy at home and they've got the soundtrack going on so let's do that now
49:04
heat
49:11
[Applause] heat [Music]
49:31
[Music]
49:39
heat heat
50:02
[Music] fantastic well that's that's awesome to to be able to give that um to to the
50:08
listeners and uh and potential backers of of the game so yeah thank you for that Lee for sharing that with us
50:14
awesome any any other things you want to mention about time troopers no just that um everything's included in the game we
What's included in Time Troopers and when is it being fulfilled?
50:21
don't do deluxe versions so you will get the game the playmat the music everything's included i love the fact
50:27
you're putting a playmat in there that's just amazing like here you go playmat included yeah and and again it's going
50:35
back to what we want people to have what we want people to enjoy solo gamers so we could have made a little bit more money by charging people an add-on for a
50:41
playmat but I don't want people robbed of the opportunity of playing the game that we
50:47
want them to play so everything is in the box that we want you to have so that's why we don't do uh the add-ons
50:53
and things the other thing is the game's finished so the more complex we make it for ourselves by doing extra add-ons and
50:59
stretch goals and things like that it just it makes the campaign longer so um we're we're very kind of basic in as
51:07
much as we've designed a game it's really cool please come and buy it and we have this old-fashioned kind of
51:12
attitude of if you give us some money through crowdfunding we should give you a game in 12 to 16 weeks it's a really
51:19
novel concept that we've invented exactly but I love that so if if people
51:24
like come and back you today and you should um you say what 12 to 16 weeks so
51:30
is this the projected turnaround then yeah so the game's finished uh as I said
51:36
um we've we've got some spelling mistakes we keep spotting bits and pieces but this is not a back this game
51:42
and in three years if the wind's blown in the right direction you might get a copy this is a the files are already
51:47
with the manufacturer and we've done some proof runs and everything else so um yeah we what we like to do is the
51:54
work our end and get it finished before it goes on to crowdfunding and then we have a very short window so flippers for
52:01
example was two weeks so um it fund flippers funded three three or four
52:07
weeks ago and people were picking up their copies at expo fantastic uh to fulfillment because we've done the work
52:14
up front and the other thing is the finance guy in me i want to know what the numbers are the only way I can work out the numbers is to finish the game
52:20
yeah always too many variables so I don't know where this is yeah especially with like the way transport and shipping
52:25
and tariffs and everything else is now so uh I don't want to be one of those companies that has to go to its backers
52:31
and say "We've made an error can you give me another 30 quid please?" Um so yeah it also just means that once
52:37
someone's backed one of our games they're much more inclined to back another one because they they know they're going to get it quite quickly
52:42
yeah I love I just love that model i think um yeah it's really it's really good that you're kind of taking that
52:48
stand and here's the finished game if you love it then you can get it soon rather than here's a game that we think
52:55
is going to be great and if you love it you might get it in three years and it might happen and it might and it might
53:01
not and you know we see that a lot in in crowdfunding um so to kind of go against
53:06
the grain and the fact that actually you want to turn this around for uh for people to get it in their hands as soon
53:12
as sooner rather than later is I you're not going to hear any complaints from anybody for sure um so no I think Rob
53:18
will be happy definitely rob will be ecstatic and Rob will be listening to this for for sure and and he'll be Yeah
53:26
he'll be quaking his little boots uh waiting to get his coffee so awesome i mean we'll put um all the
53:34
details of the the game found page in the show notes so if people are driving going I must look at that thing what is
53:40
the link just check the show notes out it will be there and you can you can click away and look at the the page and
53:47
get to know a bit more about it and and stuff like that um have you got any kind of uh videos on on the kind of how to
53:54
play or or more videos of play stuff without obviously it's got to be difficult because you don't want to spoil anything but Yeah so what we're
54:00
doing is the first three levels are um are going to be up there and there's going to be some we some artwork and
54:07
some cards so that people can see like an example from each era but yeah definitely don't want to spoil the the
54:13
story there's there's puzzles and things in there as well um which which I'm not going to tell too much about there may
54:18
be some secret envelopes and bits going on as well which again I don't want to tell too people that but it's we're
54:25
gamers so we've made stuff that we think is cool and we've seen in all the games that we think uh people will like and
54:30
we've put little nods to that in in this as well uh and yeah there'll be some videos um we're doing those on Monday uh
54:38
today without breaking uh breaking any boundaries so yeah we're doing that in two two days um we're recording those so
54:44
they'll be up on the Gamefam page as well fantastic cool well thanks for
54:49
chatting around Time Troopers and um I really yeah kind of wish you guys all the success in it because you deserve it
54:56
it's it's a cracking game and yeah I think Rob's obviously itching to get a copy i'm just going to help him out the way cuz I want um so there we go u last
What are you looking forward to?
55:05
question that we we'll ask um obviously is what are you looking forward to other
55:10
than your your time troopers related uh stuff but what what's coming up for for you and Molinaris games without
55:17
obviously spoiling anything but generally any kind of games coming up what what's exciting what's coming down
55:23
the track i'm really excited about the direction of the company and how it's growing uh but also bringing new people
55:29
into the team so it's not not just just me so yeah seeing uh Mike Peacocks kind
55:35
of two years ago he came to our standard expo and said "I've got an idea for a game." and now he has two published
55:41
games and they're going to Gen Con and you know we're nominated for awards and things like that so seeing kind of
55:49
working with brand new game designers is really cool uh we've got a game coming
55:54
up called Little Frankenstein uh for Halloween um by Omar um Azim who's again
56:01
he's been working with us he was on our stand fantastic talented guy so watch this space for him and there's a couple
56:08
of other licensing things we've got in the in the background so potentially we could come to Games Expo next year with
56:14
another five to seven new titles which is crazy
56:20
yeah so I'm excited about the way we're progressing as a company but also I'm excited about people's personal journeys
56:28
within the team like like Mike uh and seeing how how he's developing uh and
56:33
just yeah just like after Expo we had a beer and everyone's like beaming and going "I can't believe we've sold all
56:39
these games and it's we still have that little kind of fraud insiders of going
56:44
it's like we're a real company but well we are a real company but it doesn't it doesn't feel like it sometimes it just
56:50
feels like a bunch of mates having a laugh so yeah I'm I'm really excited to see how Omar's game develops and if we
56:59
can bring one or two other games into the stable as well work some new designers." Definitely brilliant brilliant well thank you so
57:06
much for for coming on the show Lee and uh chatting all around you your company Time Troopers and all that stuff it's
57:13
been a blast to to kind of get into it with you and uh yeah as I said wish you all the best with everything and um yeah
57:20
go and smash it mate no thank you i listen to your podcast all the time as you know and uh yeah so it's it's great
57:25
to to be on it it's another it's another goal ticked I think yes yes put these on
57:31
your hall thank you very much mate thank you mate
TURN 4 - The Final Turn
57:38
[Music]
57:45
and there we have it uh thanks to Lee for for chatting with us for for this episode it's been great fun um so if
57:52
you've enjoyed what you've heard today then please like subscribe and uh yeah get involved in our socials we're on
57:58
pretty much most of them by now and uh you know if you want to get involved then send us some messages and we'll we'll get back to you um also we always
58:05
ask if you can share the podcast with a friend family or another member of your board gaming group and uh we like to get
58:12
the word of whose turn is it anyway out there as best as we can and if you want to support the show we are on coffee ki
58:18
and we love all the support that we get from our current uh supporters and if you want to help the show and keep us
58:24
going then we greatly greatly appreciate it but other than that all that's left to say is uh who's turning that anyway
58:37
[Music] [Applause]