293 – Phil-Walker Harding & Joey Games – The Family Gamers Podcast

We are super excited to welcome Phil Walker-Harding this week, to talk about a few of his game designs and his new effort Joey Games.

Fact – “Beverly Hills, 90210” ran for 293 episodes.

Games we’ve been playing:

Voyages (a print and play recently on Kickstarter and available now)

Unmatched Jurassic Park: Dr. Sattler vs T-rex

Sunny Day Sardines (coming soon from 25th Century Games)

Kingdomino Origins (our review)

Nessos

Meeples & Monsters (our review)

Blank (our review)

Goonies: Escape with One-Eyed Willy’s Rich Stuff – we compare it briefly to the Adventure Games that Phil had a hand in designing.

SNAP Review

If you have fond memories of the 1985 movie The Goonies, check out The Goonies: Escape with One-Eyed Willy’s Rich Stuff, a Coded Chronicles adventure from The Op. Watch the video or read the transcript of our review.

Phil Walker-Harding

First we have to talk about some of the incredible games Phil has designed. A bunch of them, for different reasons, are super high on our favorite games list:

Barenpark (our pun-filled Barenpark review – and another for the expansion).

Imhotep (Anitra’s favorite)

Super Mega Lucky Box (our review)

These games are all fantastic and all totally different. Although a lot of Phil’s games use polyominoes (like Barenpark and Cloud City and Neoville), he’s explored many genres of board games.

“A big part of design for me is keeping it fresh and interesting – for myself.”

He says his favorite mechanic right now is simultaneous play. (Super Mega Lucky Box is a good example – everyone plays all at once.) When they work, it keeps everyone involved really well. Sushi Go! is one of his earlier designs that does this well!

Joey Games

Phil Walker-Harding has had some experience with self-publishing before. It has upsides and downsides, but he was happy to leave it behind – until he came up with the idea for a new imprint.

The mission of Joey Games is “board games about Australia for kids and adults to play together“.

The three games they are launching with are:

Busy Beaks – a simple card game featuring Australian birds.

Scribbly Gum – based on a type of tree where moth larvae make “scribbles” in the bark.

Pass the Party Food – with an odd collection of food that is often brought to (kids’) parties in Australia.

The focus will be on Australian distribution, but Joey Games titles should be available to the rest of the world as well.

Phil’s Games

Don’t worry! Phil will still be designing games for other publishers as well.

We play a little game – how many games are listed under his name on Board Game Geek?

But which one is his favorite? “The one I feel really proud of, and most identifies me, has got to be Sushi Go!” But when it comes to his own game designs, there are two he really enjoys playing (still!) are Gizmos and Barenpark.

Find Phil Walker-Harding online:

www.philwalkerharding.com

Twitter: @PWalkerHarding

Find out more about Joey Games:

joeygames.com.au

Facebook: @joeygamesau
Instagram: @joeygamesau

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