53 – The Family Gamers Podcast – Marc Specter of Grand Gamers Guild

We interview Marc Specter, the man behind Grand Gamers Guild, and their games Pocket Ops, Unreal Estate, and Stroop.

Their game Pocket Ops is finishing a Kickstarter today! Pocket Ops is a strategic deduction game based on tic-tac-toe. It is very simple to learn, with two extra layers that make it much more interesting to play. The main mechanic is predicting where your opponent will place their tiles – if you guess correctly, they may not place. The secondary mechanic involves special units, each of which has a special power.

We learn about Marc’s 50% funded philosophy for Kickstarter games.

Marc mentions games that are in the pipeline: “Colonies of Venus”, a dice-placement game; and “Endangered”, a co-operative game where players work together to save an endangered species.

Published games

Unreal Estate is a card game in which players compete to build the best fantasy town by drafting and collecting sets of cards. Currently shipping out to its backers, Unreal Estate will be available for sale soon.

Stroop is a empty-your-hand card game based on the stroop effect – your brain has to work harder against interference; eg. if the word “red” is printed in blue ink, which color does it represent? In the first round, the word on the table describes what you can play; in the second round, you describe the word on the table.

Convention

Unpub (a free convention to bring game designers, publishers, and play testers together) is coming to Michigan! The first Unpub Midwest is coming November 3-5.

 

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