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2015/08/20 By Kyle Hogendyk Leave a Comment

Happy Mitten Podcast Season 3 on Kickstarter August 25th!

We’re excited to announce season 3 of our Dice Tower Network podcast, “Board Games, Business, and.. ” on Kickstarter August 25th! If funded, season 3 will bring about twenty four new and awesome episodes featuring guests from all facets of the board game industry.

The Happy Mitten Podcast began in 2013 as a way to learn about the board game industry through the publishers, designers, artists, and others that make the industry great. We have had an incredible amount of fun recording over sixty episodes with the likes of Colby Dauch (Founder of Plaid Hat Games), Rodney Smith (Watch it Played) and so many more during the podcast’s two year run. We are looking for funding to take the series further than it has ever gone before with twenty four new episodes and need your support!

You can show your support for the future of the Happy Mitten Podcast by going to the Happy Mitten Podcast Season 3 Kickstarter and choosing one of the pledge level options. Whether you want to show your support by ordering our limited edition podcast t shirt, advertising your business to our audience, or being an actual guest on our podcast, the Happy Mitten Podcast Kickstarter is there to give you that sweet love you need.

Thank you for backing and sharing our project!

– Jeff, Lee, and Kyle.

Jeff Lee and Kyle at Yesterdog

2015/07/22 By Jeff Large Leave a Comment

JurassAttack! A Conversation

We like to support projects and friends in the industry when we can. The following is a conversation between publisher Jason Kotarski of Green Couch Games and Ryan Cowler, designer of JurassAttack! (now on Kickstarter). Read on to get an inside look on the gentlemen making this game possible.

Jason Question:
I’m curious about your design process. How does a new game start for you? And specially where did the idea for JurassAttack! come from and when did you know you had something special, what kept you going?

Ryan Answer:
Welp, generally speaking, I alternate pretty steadily between starting design from a theme and starting from a certain goal or mechanic. I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that there’s a “better” or “right” way to start a design, so for me it’s literally which mechanics/restrictions/themes I think of that resonate with me personally, and then I use that as the launching pad and I see where that idea takes me. Though lately I’ve been liking giving myself very strict component restrictions, then trying to figure out a theme or mechanic around that. For instance: JurassAttack for me started with my general dislike for trick-taking games. I was getting ready to take a shower one day (I don’t know about you, but I find showers and the minutes leading up to when I fall asleep to be some of the best times to brainstorm ideas or think things out, haha) and thought it might be a good challenge for me to make a trick-taking game that I would actually play and enjoy. That was it, the resonating thought.

Card layout During the course of that shower, I tried to think of a theme that fits some kind of trick-taking aspect, but that I could play around with. The very first thing that came into my mind was “Food chain”. So I thought about that, it made sense to me. You have trumps in trick-taking games, and those would fit the “top of the food chain” area, then everything else comes in below that. I thought at first of doing an animal food chain, but quickly dismissed it because that theme just didn’t resonate with me. The next thought was Dinosaurs! My wife and I love dino-anything, and that theme instantly stuck with me and resonated, so I explored it. Everything fell into place after that, all during the course of the shower. I knew that the Spinosaurus would be the apex trump card, and then I just started to think of dinos that would promote interesting powers or abilities that could change the way the cards interacted with each other. I thought of the draw mechanic where only the loser draws as a way of “self balancing” the game. Something like that meant that no one could have the perfect game or go on too long of a winning streak, it would also inherently bring in a hand management component and the idea of losing on purpose, so I fell in love with the idea and knew that would be one of the driving mechanics. I also came to the realization that the cards HAD to the tarot-sized…..because dinosaurs! I love psychological interaction in games, so the eggs were my way of upping the bluffing factor that’s dusted into the game. And all the other powers just kinda wrote themselves.

After I got out of the shower, I got some blank poker cards and wrote up the first prototype in 10 mins with a sharpie, haha. I recently found that first prototype deck and posted pics of it on twitter. You’ll see from that prototype that the game is pretty much 90% the same. The Sarcosuchus’s ability was the last power I came up with, because I intentionally left one card without an ability so I could fill it in with an ability that I felt was lacking from the game after I tested it a couple times. The very next day I took it to a monthly designer meet-up I do with Chris Handy (and occasionally Ben Haskett) and tested it with him, and he really dug it and said what I had was solid. So that was really all the motivation I needed to move forward head first into finishing the design, as I hold Chris’s opinion in such high regards, he doesn’t sugar coat anything.

About a month later, Shaz had all the art done and it was pretty much how you see it today 🙂

In the end, though, I think I pretty much spectacularly failed at my goal of making a trick-taking game, because there’s just so much going on and strategy to JA that I don’t think it even qualifies as that anymore, haha. I loved that it’s ended up the way it has though, the journey was worth it, so I guess in a sense I didn’t *truly* fail.

Ryan Question:
What about you? Like for Dead Drop, what was the catalyst there? Did you just “stumble” into the design like I kinda did with JA?

Jason Answer:
Sort of! My wife and I were just watching all of Alias on Netflix so I thought the idea of racing for a piece of hidden information, like spies are known to do, would make for a fun game. I was always blown away by the idea of super small games like Love Letter at the time. So I started there and grabbed some cards to play around with until it felt right. For that game, I was all about exploring the theme and then I came up with a simple additional mechanic that felt fresh and added an extra layer on top or simple deduction. Not only did you have to find out what number what hidden, you also had to get a hold of the right cards to grab it. So basically, my process was television inspiration and ham-fisted hammering until I had a game.

Jason Question:
What are some specific games that you love that aren’t just fun to play, but have influenced you as a designer? At least 3 or 4!

Ryan Answer:
Oh man, Betrayal at House on the Hill REALLY influenced me right off the bat in that it showed me how great of an “experience” a tabletop game can be. I mean I can play that friggin’ game every day and not tire of it. It’s definitely not perfect and sometimes you get that build up to the traitor, only to be stuck in a position where it’s an insta-win for either the traitor or heroes, but I still love that game. In my designs, I’m always looking for that immersion of theme in my designs, the way that game brings everyone together and it’s very light and fun until stuff gets real and the traitor event happens. I love that duality!

BraveRats is another game that really struck a chord with me. I love that every card interacts with another card or affects the next round in some way. I love that each player starts with all of the cards in their hands, no drawing to randomize things. It’s what I like to refer as “chess balance”, which I love. I love when players start off with the exact same symmetry, and it’s simply up to the player’s skill as to how to best play and react to the opponent. It’s “fair”. There’s no lucky draw or advantage in BraveRats and Chess….the only advantage is being better at the game than your opponent, and even then it’s moreso your ability to READ your opponent’s actions and getting inside their head rather than you “knowing” more than your opponent. BraveRats did that, but in a bite sized package, and I dig that. It’s quick, so even a defeat isn’t that worrisome, you just pick up the cards and try again. It also really opened my eyes to how awesome smaller, filler game can be. BraveRats really influences all my current designs by thinking about how I can elegantly make a cards react and play off of one another, how to create a tiny ecosystem of powers and abilities that interact with one another in interesting ways. BraveRats I’m sure has influenced more of my designs than I’m even aware of, haha!

Citadels is also an amazing game to me. It’s another game I can play everyday and never tire of it. I love the light social deduction aspect of it, I love how the way you play the game HAS to change the more you play it with a group. Like in Dominion, for instance, you can pretty much have your set strategy each game, and there’s really nothing your opponents can do to hamper that, short of curses, so after a while the only way that it can have true replay value is by just adding new cards. To me, that’s flawed, just my personal opinion. But in Citadels, if you keep going for the same 2-3 roles and everyone catches onto it, you’re going to get punished heavily by the assassin and other players hate-drafting the role they know you want. So over time, you have to adapt and zig when everyone else expects you to zag. I loooove that, it make the game “living” in a sense, because the social aspect of the game goes beyond just the cards and becomes something that you have to “adapt or die”, so to speak. I also dig that even the less “useful” roles in Citadels still have great strategic leverage if you can play them right. It greatly influences my designs because I strive for games that have that “living” strategy to them, where the replayability of it is much more than just “get new cards”, but hits more on a socially interactive level and gets the table talking to one another.

Ryan Question:
Okay, your turn! Given your love for the lighter filler games, I’m interested to know what kind of games inspire you and get your designs to tick!

Jason Answer:
Oh, man! I just like really clean, simple ideas that feel like I have choices to make. Stuff that is fun and reveals some depth over multiple plays is really fun. 6 Nimmt! by Wolfgang Kramer rocked me the first time I played it. Just numbers on cards but a fun experience that really clicked regarding a simple, engaging design.

Lately, I’ve been really digging a little betting game from Superlude called Kobayakawa. It’s numbers 1-15 and some chips. 2 choices, flip a card face up from the deck or draw a new card and choose to keep it or the card you already have! The player with the highest card wins but the player with the lowest card gets to add the face up card in the middle to their total. So much fun crammed into that little game. It really makes me want to explore that teeny tiny game space again.

Jason Question:
Outside of the game space, can you point to life experience or interest that have also helped you as a designer?

Ryan Answer:
Hmmmm…..that’s a tough one….Well, my pro-wrestling background has definitely influenced things at least a little bit, on a couple levels. First off, there’s an old saying in wrestling of “Work smarter, not harder!”, and I feel that simple mantra can permeate into a lot of different facets of life. In design, this translates into knowing when to move on, for me. If I have a mechanic or circumstance in my design that’s giving me trouble and I just take a step back and say to myself, “am I working harder on this than I need to be? Is there an easier, more direct approach?”. Usually this leads to me taking something out of the game because it overcomplicates something else, just keep it simple….work smarter, not harder. The second thing I learned from pro-wrestling that I think translates is “knowing the room”. In pro-wrestling, you often will (or SHOULD) adapt your style in-ring to the audience around you. There’s always a different way to think and interact with the audience depending on their age, city, country, etc.. Pro-wrestling is incredibly adaptive in that sense, you have to know your demographic, so to speak. I would wrestle a completely different style if I’m doing a show here in NorCal as opposed to performing in Memphis, for instance. In design, this viewpoint is always something I keep in mind early on of “who IS my audience for this game?”. Keeping that audience in mind will then factor into almost every single decision after that. It determines how much information each card can have, how many components I limit myself to, what kind of verbiage I use on cards….or should I use verbiage at all? Will the target audience think mechanic X will be fun, or will they find it frustrating at points? Will the target audience appreciate all the choices I’m giving them, or are there too many choices, or a choice in particular that they won’t connect with? All this stuff comes into play.

Just like in pro-wrestling, games, movies or any type of entertainment, enjoyment and fun are very much subjective. One man’s meat is another man’s poison, so to speak. So I always know full-well that each game isn’t going to be enjoyable or liked by everyone, but focusing the experience for a particular audience or range of audience will at least make the experience hopefully a little more enjoyable for that target. I might not be able to make everyone happy all the time, but at least I can focus on *this* type of person and really bring a smile to their face.

Ryan Question:
Speaking of which, did you punk rock background and interest influence your thought process? The punk community is a very DIY type of community, so has that kind of mentality been one of the driving factors that made you want to start Green Couch Games?

Jason Answer:
Totally! I used to want to run a record label. I learned in my punk rock days that I loved putting projects together: writing songs, recording, booking shows, working with folks to design merchandise. Running a game publishing company, and creating games, is a very similar experience. That “come up with ideas and share them however you can” punk mentality is totally present in the grassroots, gaming scene. I am just home more on weekends now!
Jason Question:
With every new game/project there is always something to learn. What is something you learned with our experience so far?

Ryan Answer:
Right off the bat, the first thing that comes to mind is simplifying card verbiage. When you first took a look at JA, the Discard Pile was called the “Exhausted Pile”, the Score Pile was called the “Dominance Pile”, and the Draw Deck was referred to as the “Prey Deck”. When you brought up just changing how those piles were referred to being direct and simple, it really hit home for me, for whatever reason. You were totally right! Why SHOULDN’T they just be called what they are? Haha! I was so wrapped up in making everything in the game thematic, that I ended up calling the piles stuff that would just complicate things….I WAS WORKING HARDER, NOT SMARTER!!! Switching the terms back to what they actually are, a Discard, a Score and Draw pile, there’s one less game-specific term the players had to learn, which makes the game just that much more accessible. I’m usually so wrapped up in making all card verbiage and terms so thematic, that I forget to take a step back and realise that it’s “Okay” to refer to a card as a “card”, and a discard pile as a discard pile, there’s no need to drip EVERYTHING in the game with theme. Immediately after you had me do that, I went back to my other nearly completed designs and simplified all their verbiage as well 🙂

Oh, and this whole Kickstarter process is fascinating to me! I love learning new things, and all the KS stuff and preparation is really eye-opening! All the numbers and math involved: it just confirmed my assumption that I could never have run my own KS campaign and NOT lost money by the end, haha!

Jason:
Thanks for chatting with me, dude! This has been fun. Really excited to get to work with you on the JurassAttack! project. I hope others see the cool stuff that I saw in the game.

Thanks again for reading and remember to check out JurassAttack! on Kickstarter!

Green Couch Games

2015/06/01 By Jeff Large 5 Comments

Game Design on a D.I.E.T.

The following is a guest blog written by Patrick & Katherine Lysaght of Chara Games. Learn more about them via Facebook and Twitter.

Most game design discussions deal with the question, “Does game design start with theme or mechanisms?” I think this question misses the point. Games designers create player experiences not a lifeless product. Beginning the game design process with a clear picture of the desired player experience creates a unifying, streamlining vision for the game. As the design develops, incorporating elements of theme, mechanics, and physical components produces the desired player experience. If this is true, then the designer’s challenge lies first in understanding the player experience, and second in the way the three elements affect this experience. In my own designs, I use the D.I.E.T. acronym to define and refine the player experience. D.I.E.T. stands for decisions, interactions, emotions, and tensions. This blog explores how designers can use D.I.E.T. to incorporate theme, mechanisms, and components into a cohesive player experience.

While every game is different, players expect to make some decisions, and for those decisions to materially impact the game. Designers can disrespect this expectation in two ways. First, a design can over-restrict the player’s choices. This gives the player a sense of powerlessness. Second, a design can offer too many choices. This induces analysis paralysis, and slows gameplay. Between these extremes lies the acceptable “decision space” or manageable range of choices for the player. Theme, mechanics, and components each contribute to the decision space by bounding the player’s choices in a way that supports and propels the game’s narrative.

Game design process Next, the degree of player interaction puts muscles on the decision skeleton. Will your game have tit-for-tat exchanges, a solitaire-ish feel, or shared responsibilities? Matching the level of player interaction with the desired player experience produces consistency with the theme, mechanisms, and components. For example, a deduction game in which you couldn’t ask the other players questions just wouldn’t work. Now that the design has mapped out a good decision space and an appropriate level of player interaction, it is time to assess how your players are feeling. Does their emotional engagement reflect what is happening in the theme, what they are doing in the mechanisms, and how they are using the components? If not, then they will experience a gameplay interruption. These interruptions force players out of their groove, and leave them thinking, “This makes no sense, but I guess that’s just how it is.” From that point on, the player will have significant doubts about the game.

Lastly, designers must consider the game’s tension. I see tension as a balance between pace, effort, and game length. Can you imagine a 4-hour version of Space Cadets: Dice Duel? The tension would wear out the players long before the game ended. Designers need to adjust the theme, mechanisms, and components to create, or vary, the desired duration and intensity of game tension.

What does the D.I.E.T. process look like in reality? It is an iterative cycle. Our upcoming Kickstarter game Commissioned is a good example. It was designed to immerse players in the faith, fear, and wonder of the early Christian church. This called for a decision space that reflected first century options and limitations, dictated a cooperative approach, targeted an anxious-but-hopeful emotional state, and suggested a gradually escalating game tension. Early efforts fell way short on the meaningful decision and tension scales. The incorporation of a deck-building mechanism enhanced player choices, deepened player interaction, and really heightened the game’s tension. We hope you will check it out, and let us know if we hit our player experience target!

Patrick & Katherine Lysaght recently founded Chara Games to build games that create joy by developing relationships with God and people. Patrick is active-duty Air Force, and Katherine homeschools their three kids. Their first game, Commissioned, will launch on Kickstarter on June 3rd.

2015/05/08 By Kyle Hogendyk 1 Comment

Aether Magic’s Full Stop.

Publish a game that you would like to own and assume there are others like you. A reasonable statement, but merely a sentence in what needs to be a larger success “story.” That first sentence could be Happy Mitten’s motto for Aether Magic. We took an interactive, wonderfully designed game and tailored it in the ways that felt right to us, while carefully listening to the guidance of our play testers along the way. We then combined those elements with the talents of a fabulous illustrator and were left with an awesome game that we could stand behind. We constructed a terrific sentence, but our Kickstarter results proved we were missing what was needed for our success “story.”

People often spend time on activities few else find interesting. I feel they do it because they have an unrelenting desire inside them to do that thing. For no obvious reason, that thing is what they need to do otherwise they would not be able to function, they would die. Some people can mesh their passions with a business endeavor and accomplish spectacular things, but that typically does not happen. It doesn’t happen because a person can not create a business in which their work is convincing others that what they’re doing is great. Some ideas resonate, but most do not. Business owners should be listening to what people need first and identify the skills they possess that can satisfy that need in a great way.

As proud as we are of Aether Magic, when we withdrew the campaign on March 10th, we raised enough to sell two hundred units. Two hundred units is far short of a reasonable print run of fifteen hundred units. The results revealed that we were not satisfying a demand, we were convincing others that they should have a demand. If we re-launched an improved campaign today and were hypothetically able to triple our success, that would still leave us with roughly nine hundred units in storage that we would be pressured to sell as the warehousing costs eat away at our potential income. After re-grouping, Jeff, Lee, and I have mutually decided not to go forward with an Aether Magic re-launch. It was a difficult decision for us to make, but one that was needed.

Jacqui Davis Illustration from Aether Magic.

As Happy Mitten continues, we want to improve the elements of our company that people are responding to. The feedback we’ve collected from you (our audience), reveals to us that our podcast has been the community’s favorite part of what we do. So, we will go with the flow and focus on making our podcast the best it can be while we evaluate our opportunities to improve the industry we love.

In order to ease our time and financial burdens, for the first time ever we are now opening up our podcast to select, company sponsors. Our sponsors will be promoted by the three of us at the beginning and end of our episodes. While we are exploring the idea of making this a Kickstarter campaign, we would like to present the opportunity to you guys before anyone else. If you are interested in joining the first group of companies to sponsor our participating Dice Tower Network podcast to utilize Happy Mitten’s audience in promoting your brand, please contact us using our form *HERE*.

We love what we do and appreciate your continued support as we create our free content. We can not do it without you!

– Kyle

2015/03/23 By Jeff Large Leave a Comment

Best Treehouse Ever- Designer interview with Scott Almes

Designer, publisher, and friend, Jason Kotarski put together this interview with Scott Almes. Scott is the designer of Green Couch Games‘ current Kickstarter, Best Treehouse Ever. Enjoy!

Jason: Hi Scott. As a designer myself and a publisher who is putting out one of your next games, I thought it would be fun to ask you a few questions to take a look under the hood of that tiny epic brain of yours! And since I’m kind of into small things, like my podcast 20 Minutes of Filler and Green Couch Games, I’ll keep it quick. Also, since the Happy Mitten Games crew were kind enough to host this little discussion (THANKS!), Jeff might pop in with a few questions, too. Ready for it?

Scott: I’m ready! (Straps on safety gear and goggles)

Jason: What is the first game you can think of that made you want to design games and why?

Scott: I think playing roleplaying games is what inspired my to branch out and design my own games. I was the dungeon master, and when you are in that role you are basically creating games already. Designing quests within an rpg structure is halfway into board game design, you’re just still in the shallow end of the design pool. After playing RPG’s and moving onto board games, the itch to create was still there and I just chased it. Plus, I have always liked making things within the hobbies I enjoy. I like to read, so I started to write stories when I was younger (and still do today).

Jason: You have a number of games under your belt, starting back with a couple titles from Tasty Minstrel Games; Martian Dice and Kings of Air and Steam. Can you share a little bit about how you have seen things in the gaming space change between now and then? For better and for worse?

Scott: Kickstarter is, of course, the biggest change. With Kings of Air and Steam, Kickstarter was still relatively new. It had been only a couple months since games like Alien Frontiers and Eminent Domain started to blaze the trail. Since then, KS has allowed a lot more small publishers and indie designers to get on the scene. This has created a much more diverse landscape, which is great.

And, it’s impossible not to notice the trend towards small box games recently. With so many games coming out, I think cost is becoming more of a factor It’s becoming harder to have a smash-hit big box game. Not impossible, but certainly harder. A lot of the runaway hits recently seem to be smaller games, with streamlined rulesets.

Jason: What’s your favorite character/faction in all the Tiny Epic games?

Scott: In ALL the games? Well, I’ll say the shapeshifters in TEK. When you play them, it’s like seeing a “who’s who” of factions within the game. It’s the sampler platter of factions.

Jason: What are a couple short term and long term goals you have set for yourself as a designer?

Scott: My short term goals tend to be very development oriented. For instance, I’m working on a two-player variant for a game coming out later this year (The Great Dinosaur Rush with APE Games). Or, I’m trying to get a game out the door by X date. Right now, I just finished a light dice game (a great, 12-dice push your luck/party game) that I’m starting to find a publisher for. My short term goals tend to be very discreet like that.

My long term goals include:

Continue the pipeline of Tiny Epic Games
Continue to work relationships with my awesome publishers – I like to work with people again and again
Keep my games diverse and unique, and branch out into different genres that are outside my comfort zone

Jeff: Which published game that you currently have was the most uncomfortable to create? Why?

Scott: Tiny Epic Galaxies – because I was met with a crippling fear when developing it that it wouldn’t live up to the standard we had with TE Kingdoms & Defenders. It was the first game that I designed from scratch to be part of a continuing series (Defenders’ mechanics had already existed in another game, which fit TED better) When I started TEG, from the very beginning, I knew it was supposed to be part of a successful series – and that scared the crap out of me. In the end, that fear made the game better. (And I hope I don’t lose that fear for any of my games… it helps me strive to be better) But, that fear was by far the most pronounced with TEG.

I’ll give a bonus answer, too: the most awkward one was Kings of Air and Steam, because I had no idea what I was doing when we entered development. The game was decent when I submitted it – and awesome by the time we were done – but since it was the first game I had gotten accepted for publication (although Martian Dice would hit the market first) it was really the one I learned the process on. Luckily, the folks at TMG were great about working with me. When we would later work on Harbour and the KoA&S expansion we were all on the same page.

Jason: As a person who works in the train industry, what are your top 5 train games?

Scott: I’ll keep Kings of Air and Steam off the table, since I’m obviously biased, but they are:

Steam
Ticket to Ride
Paris Connection
Trains (the AEG game)
And the Crayon Rail series

Jason: If you could work with any game designer on a co-design, who would you pick and what kind of game would you want to make?

Scott: This is a tricky one. There are a lot of designer’s I admire, but it would be so hard to tell if you’d work well together. Co-designing is such a personal thing. Adam McIver had hinted that he’d be interested in working on something together – so maybe him and I will have to talk soon 🙂 I met him at BGG.CON, and he’s a great guy. Plus, he’s one of the best artists in the biz, so anything we worked on would turn out beautiful.

Jeff: If you forced into a cage fight with another designer, who would you throwdown against?

Scott: T.C. Petty – both in a figurative cage fight as a design challenge, because he’s coming up with some great design ideas that deserve more attention. Why hasn’t anyone published his Club Zen yet!?!? His theory on positive player interaction is worth noting for any designer. And, I’d face him in an actual cage fight, too, because I’d like to see what chops he has behind that pretty-boy hair. The gauntlet has been dropped, sir! Ya hear me TC?

Jason: Our little game, Best Treehouse Ever is on KIckstarter right now! In your mind, what makes this game special?

Scott: You get to build a treehouse! Seriously, that’s the most fun part. At the end of the game, after competing for points and colors and deciding a winner, you get the sense that you really built the best treehouse ever. It’s that “I built this!” feeling that makes the game rock.

Jason: What made you want to bring this game to my company Green Couch Games (prepares to stroke ego)?

Scott: Mainly, I like the podcast – you GET the need for cool little filler games. Fidelitas turned out great, and the Kickstarter was well done. So, it seemed like a no brainer when I had this little game looking for the home. And, it seemed like we were on the same page instantly after I submitted it and we chatted on Skype, which always bodes well for an awesome production.

Jeff: If you could live in the world of one of the games you designed as one of the characters, which game would you live in and why?

Scott: Best Treehouse Ever… because it has everything you’d ever want! Martian Dice doesn’t seem like a good call, because Martians are abducting everyone. Kings of Air and Steam will likely have global warming issues, due to the lack of environmental regulations and the overheating airships. The Tiny Epic series is a pretty dangerous world to live in. So, yeah, I’ll go with Best Treehouse Ever.

Jason: Thanks for taking some time to share with us! Tell folks how they can track you down and what we should be watching for.

Scott: Sure! Thanks for the chat! You can find me on Twitter @Scott_Almes where I’m always posting about game stuff. Right now, you should check out “Best Treehouse Ever” and make the kid inside you happy. In the future, you should look out for “Big Easy Business” by Nevermore Games, “Loop Inc” by Eagle-Gryphon Games, “The Great Dinosaur Rush” by APE games, and some more Tiny Epic stuff later on, too.

Jason: Alright, Scott’s a cool dude. You’re pretty cool, too. You know, for taking the time to read this and checking out the next game from Green Couch Games and Scot Almes, Best Treehouse Ever.

Special thanks to Happy Mitten for doing lots of cool stuff to support this gaming space we love so much!

Wall of Fame!