What makes me crowdfund a project?

I’ve been spending money on a lot of projects last week, and I thought it might be interesting to briefly talk about why I’m crowdfunding those specific projects. I have a pretty specific set of standards when it comes to crowdfunding, and so far, they’ve (mostly!) kept me from being burned. They’re also a little different between video games and board games. So what are they?

The Rules

Obviously, I have to want the project to succeed. But even then, I tend to run it past these small internal checks first.

  1. The developer or publisher has delivered another project.
    This doesn’t have be another game in the same genre, or even another fully produced project on their own. It doesn’t even have to be the same scope. For example, when I backed TemTem, I suspected it was likely to fail (or at least not quite meet the hype). But Crema Games had released Immortal Redneck, so risking $20 wasn’t too big a gamble.
  2. If they haven’t released anything, there must be a fairly extensive demo, or playable prototype.
    This is more common for board games than for video games. Usually, by the time a board game gets to the crowdfunding stage, there was a “playtesting it on Tabletop Simulator or Screentop” phase. But if possible, I want to play the game before backing it.

Why these standards?

Rule number one is designed to filter out two groups of people: scammers and dreamers. Scammers are simple enough to understand: if something is too good to be true, it probably is. Dreamers are a more complicated group. Being good at marketing and pitching (the skills crowdfunding rewards!) is absolutely not the same as being good at game development. Or working with manufacturing partners. Or managing international shipping regulations. Or any of the other dozens of things that need to happen behind the scenes to actually get a board game to your door.

Rule two actually serves a bit of a different purpose.

I buy things because I want to have fun. The goal is to exchange money for enjoyment. That said, I’m not too picky about the order in which that exchange happens. If a game developer makes a fun game I can play in Tabletop Simulator and I have fun playing it, I’m willing to give them some money.

The Projects I backed

So now that I’ve set out these little rules, let’s look at all the projects I backed, and see how well they align.

Pond by Brother Ming

This one is entirely a “previous projects” back. Brother Ming has a strong track record of consistently delivering, and I’ve really enjoyed some of his game designs. As such, it’s the sort of thing I’m willing to take a chance on, even if I haven’t played the game myself yet.

Space Lion 2: Leon Strife

Just like Pond, this sort of a legacy back. I very much enjoyed Space Lion, I spent a lot of time playing it with friends on Tabletop Simulator before it released, and Solis Game Studio successfully delivered it.

Super Battle Mon – Ranger Packs

This last one is a little bit more on hopes and dreams. I backed the original Super Battle Mon campaign. The cards came in recently, I played it, and it was a ton of fun, so I’m putting up some money for the expansion. I’m optimistic it’ll fund at a reasonable price-point, but I mostly just want to see some more Super Battle Mon cards.

So all these projects are going to succeed?

I have no idea. I sure hope so!

To be frank, I have some worries about all of them.

Pond looks excellent, but has a high number of components and additional pieces, all of which could drive the cost up significantly if the current tariffs stick around. Space Lion was a bit of a niche game in the first place, and hasn’t hit its funding goal yet. Super Battle Mon has hit its funding goal, but is still sitting at a wildly low amount of money for custom printing of a TCG.

In short: None of these projects is a given. That’s the risk of crowdfunding. But for all of them, I want them to succeed, and I’m optimistic that they can, and will.

Dragonsweeper

I like Dragonsweeper. It’s also free. You should go play it in your browser here.

This is perhaps not the most elegant piece of writing I have opened a blog post with, but it’s also all true. Dragonsweeper is a small, clever twist on Minesweeper. It doesn’t cost any money. It won’t eat your entire day. There are no microtransactions, or other bullshit. It’s just good.

To quote the office: “Why use lot word when few word do trick.”

That said, you’re still reading, which means you haven’t been persuaded yet. That’s okay. Maybe you missed the first link. Here, I’ll link to again.

It’s possible that didn’t work either. Unlikely, given the incredible rhetorical barrage I’ve assembled so far, but possible.

It’s important to note though, that since Dragonsweeper is a puzzle game, in order to talk about it, I will be spoiling some of the puzzles. As few as I can! But some. This is your last chance to just back out and play it?

No? Well let’s continue.

Dragonsweeper is a puzzle version of Minesweeper. It uses the general framework of Minesweeper the same way Balatro uses poker: as a structure with so many things grafted onto it that it’s almost unrecognizable. But understanding the general concept or the original will make the initial exposure more tolerable.

Like Minesweeper, Dragonsweeper consists of a grid of tiles. Clicking a tile reveals what’s beneath it. If the tile is empty, just like in Minesweeper, that tile then displays a number of the sum of the surrounding tiles.

Unlike Minesweeper, most tiles on the board are not empty, nor do they contain mines. Instead, they contain monsters. This is a problem for our boy Jorge.

As Jorge spawns with only 5 health, clicking on a Minotaur early is an easy way to game over.

When you click on a monster, Jorge loses health equal to its power. If Jorge goes below zero health, it’s game over. Fortunately, defeating monsters also gives experience, and after collecting enough EXP, Jorge levels up, refilling their health bar.

But after the first few levels, the amount of EXP needed to level up is higher than the Jorge’s total health, and just defeating monsters isn’t enough. Instead, it’s necessary to crack open treasure chests, use healing scrolls, or find some other sources of EXP.

If you’re just starting the game, you will almost certainly die.

And then the real game begins.

This is your Last Chance to Back Out Before I Start Spoiling The Puzzles I Mean It This Time

In the corner of the screen is a little tiny purple book. When you click on the book, it tells you which monsters have which values, and how many remain. It also includes this little bit of text.

This right here is the heart of Dragonsweeper. See, Dragonsweeper isn’t truly random. It’s randomized, but after a few death screens, you might notice that the 10 value monster, the Mine King, is always in one of the corners.

Or you might instead pick up on the fact that the Slime Wizard is always guarded by six 8-value purple slimes, and always on the edge of the map.

You might spot that the 4 value gargoyles will always be facing another Gargoyle in a cardinal direction.

There are at least another five or so little patterns and rules like this. There are some I haven’t even found, and there are several that I didn’t spot until I had beaten the game, and was showing it to a friend.

For me, spotting these, and figuring out how to use them is what makes Dragonsweeper so brilliant. It’s very clever puzzle design where learning about how the board can be laid out, and how some things interact is the progression.

Again. Dragonsweeper is really good, and you should play it, and it’s free.

And a request for the developer: please make a full game. I have given you money and I will give you more.

Gametrodon’s 4 Year Anniversary

It’s been four years since the first post on Gametrodon, and I have to say: Wow, how time flies when you’re distracting yourself from reality with digital and cardboard amusements.

Five years seems like as good a time as any for some retrospection. So let’s start at the very beginning.

The First Post

In our very first post, I talked about some games I saw at PAX that seemed cool. These included Lucifer Within Us, Knuckle Sandwich, and Genshin Impact.

I’d end up interviewing the Creative Director of Lucifer Within us, Jongwoo Kim, about the game. It was a really fun interview, and also demonstrated how much work interviews are.

2020

That first year of 2020 had the most total interviews I’ve ever managed to actually put up. I chatted with Max Seidman of Resonym about running Kickstarters and Surrealist Dinner Party. I talked with Jeremy Choo, the CEO of a Malaysian development studio about how their publisher stole their game, and how they tried to get it back.

Interviews, like RPG Module reviews, have not really become a regular feature of this blog. They’re a huge amount of work to do properly, and while I love talking to people, I don’t love transcribing and editing. The Secret of Shirakawa Castle has remained one of my favorite “tester” adventures in D&D though.

2021

There isn’t too much to say about 2021. The pandemic continued to ravage the earth, and it had some knock-on effects the world of gaming. Some standouts I want to draw attention to include Beglitched, Shovel Knight, Atomicrops, Disgaea 6, Luck be a Landlord.

Storybook Brawl was pretty good, but then they got bought by a crypto company. Then the CEO of the company committed an $11,000,000,000 fraud. So you can’t play that anymore.

Oh, and there was that whole Blizzard being a shitshow thing.

2022

2022 started with a bang: mostly me banging my head against a wall as “Gamers” continued to fail to understand how to read a shareholder letter.

But it’s okay, because I played Inscryption, and it was great. It would also see the continuation of Rants as a category of my posts. Even though none of my rants are particularly accurate or thoughtful except maybe this one about MetaZoo. That one I think I kinda nailed.

Nobody Saves the World was great. Pokemon Legends: Arceus ran like shit. Stacklands and Mad Rat Dead were good. CRIMESIGHT was unlike any other game ever made, and Konami killed it because they’re fuckers. Perfect Heist 2 was also great, but I’m not sure it still has a playerbase. I played a dating sim as a joke.

Oh! And Neon White came out! And Hazelnut Hex!

Finally, we had a Pour One Out, a semi-regular feature for all the games that died that year. Some years I do one of these, and some years I’m just not feeling it.

Honestly, 2022 was an incredible year for games.

Shame about the five year relationship I was in that ended near the end of 2022, and as a result would chipper-shred my productivity for uh…

Pretty much everything since then.

2023

I did manage to get out a review on Pokemon Scarlet. It has some fun drawings, something I haven’t really returned to since then. Pedigree Tactics also feels like it deserves a shout out for being a rare situation when I was able to give criticism that actually helped improve a game. I guess I did a Ludum Dare?

A lot of this year was just a fucking haze, if I’m being honest.

Deceive Inc was cool. I ranted a bit about Diablo 4. Lorcana was a thing. Clank! Legacy was good enough that I bought the sequel.

Oh! And Tiger and Dragon, a fantastic tile trick taker sort thing was probably the most played board game of my friend group in the last few years.

The year ended with a backlog cleanout of things I didn’t have the energy for a full writeup on, even though Pizza Tower and Inkbound absolutely deserved them.

2024

2024 was truly one of the years of all time. There were bangers, like Slay the Princess, Palworld, and Baldur’s Gate 3. And Tactical Breach Wizards,

There were non-bangers like Knuckle Sandwich and Legend of Mushroom.

There was X-Angels (NSFW!).

And there was Athenian Rhapsody. God, Athenian Rhapsody.

I think the Athenian Rhapsody writeup was rewritten more times than any single thing I’ve ever put on this blog, and involved perhaps the most… soul searching? Internal dissection and critique? Thinking? I dunno. Just… it was a huge amount of effort for a very minimal outcome.

Athenian Rhapsody is really difficult to discuss.

Oh, I also saw the eclipse. And there was a complex bit of board game inside baseball that I accidentally had front-row seats for. Finally, I covered the Indie Games Night Market.

The Present

And so we enter the fifth year of Gametrodon. I’m not famous, or even internet famous. I’ve created some great opportunities for myself to talk to folks in the industry. I still don’t have a press badge, the one thing I wanted when I started writing this site. My quantity of work is definitely down from the first two years, even if the quality is up. (Thanks in no small part to my nameless editor!)

Which does raise a question: Is it worth it to continue writing this blog?

I’m not sure.

There have been several projects over the last few years I’ve picked up, and then dropped or failed to finish. Fluffy rants and personal opinion pieces are easy enough to crank out. Taking a stab at something resembling journalism, or full interviews, is much harder, and often those don’t even result in usable drafts.

Running and writing Gametrodon is a hobby that sits on top of my other hobbies, and like most side things I do, how long it lasts is mostly dependent on vibes and habit. There was that point in time where I was streaming 3 times a week, and that other point in time where I was making TikToks.

Honestly, though, I kind of hate playing the meta when it comes to this stuff. I may switch back to making comics, because at least they amuse me. I may just keep doing weekly writeups.

I have no idea where I am going in life, and this blog is just a part of that.

Oh, one more thing.

A Small Favor

No, it’s not money.

Look, if you enjoy reading Gametrodon, do me a favor and retweet and like my stuff on Bluesky. Or whatever it’s called now since Twitter died in a fire.

Not for every article or writeup, but for the stuff you find interesting, or useful, or informed you about a game you wouldn’t have heard of before.

Retweet that stuff.

I still have my small hopes of reaching the point of being a micro-influencer at some point, but beyond that, I like people reading my stuff. I like talking about games.

But it does feel nice to not just feel like I’m flinging words into the void every now and then.

Fellowship Demo

Fellowship has a time limited demo until March 3rd 2025. If anything in this article sounds interesting, I highly encourage you to try it out.

I’m not good at, nor do I like MMO’s. They’ve always been too pricey for me, and while I’ve tried both WoW and FF XIV, neither made me want to play it long term. Somewhere, my character sits forgotten, having only gathered eight of the fourteen nut screws needed to advance to the next set of screw gathering.

Of course, then my friends who like such games will tell me that “I haven’t gotten to the raids or dungeons,” and that those are the good parts. I privately wonder in the back of my mind why, if those are the good parts, I have to spend my time gathering blinker fluid and elbow grease for twenty hours before I get to those parts.

Ultimately, I find myself wondering why someone doesn’t just make a game that’s just the “good” parts of the experience.

Well, someone has, and the game is called Fellowship. It has a demo right now, and it’s open until the end of the coming weekend.

I find Fellowship fascinating because I haven’t done classic MMO-style raids before. As such I don’t really have much to compare it to, and don’t really have too much to say on the subject that hasn’t been said before by others. There’s the classic tank/heal/DPS, extra mechanics are added at higher difficulties, and gear is rewarded on completion.

So why do I care about this game if it’s not really my thing?

Fellowship is interesting to me because it’s a chance to experience a set of mechanics that I’ve previously been locked off from. As an obsessive control freak who hates not being in charge, I chose to tank, and as a result, I now have a quiet seething hatred for all DPS players.

Okay, I joke, but I do find it really interesting how quickly I feel into some of the emotional responses I’ve seen folks make fun of for years, like getting upset when someone doesn’t know the boss, or fails a mechanic. Even if, y’know, I failed that mechanic and didn’t know the boss TWENTY MINUTES AGO. It’s fascinating, and I’m learning a lot about myself. Mostly that I’m an asshole when handed even the smallest ounce of authority.

There is some stuff here my friends complained about that didn’t bother me much, the big one being that there’s no character customization. But as an opportunity to experience the best part of MMO’s without 60 hours of mushroom bullshit? Sign me up.

Is a Jigsaw Puzzle a Game?

Occasionally I see a take on the internet, and get real twitchy about it for a moment. This morning, it was a post about if puzzles are board games. Thus the twitching began.

The first thing I want to ask is, “Why are we asking this question?” That’s not superfluous, or being rude, it’s an important distinction.

The first response to the original question on Bluesky links to the Board Game Geek game criteria page. It is a very nice page, and I especially enjoy how it puts puzzles out of scope in one moment, and then puts escape rooms, a collection of puzzles, back in scope paragraphs later.

But the BGG page has a specific purpose. They want to limit and filter what sorts of products end up on their website, because they do not want to just have a list of everything. It’s a valid reason to define what a board game is, and to decide that a puzzle is not a board game for their purposes.

Let’s look at two others real quick. A friend asks you to bring something for board game night. You bring a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. Are folks going to be happy?

Probably depends on the friend group. But I’m leaning towards, “No.”

What about sorting things for a store? Do puzzles go with the board games? In my experience, often the answer is, “Yes,” though that might have more to do with packaging and distributor than content. But the last few times I’ve been in a store, the puzzles sit right next to the copies of Cards Against Humanity.

So going back to the original question, what I want to ask is: Why does it matter if a puzzle is a board game? Are you stocking a store? Giving a gift? Setting up a web page? Because that context is going to change the answer.

Why am I being twitchy about this?

I don’t like it when people define words around art and art adjacent spaces in such a way as to exclude certain things from being in that category. To do that, there needs to be a good reason for it.

The usual reason for folks doing that is to exclude a category of other people from being in their in-group. The prime example of this is “gamers” claiming that The Sims and Animal Crossing aren’t “real games,” but I’m sure their are plenty others. That’s not a good reason, it’s just being a gatekeeping asshole. Now, I don’t think the original question on Bluesky was posted to gatekeep. But gatekeeping is why my brain decided to do the record scratch noise, and spend 40 minutes on this garbage writeup.

This year at PAX East, I got a chance to meet some of the folks doing Speed Puzzling. Presumably the speed part is what elevates it to the level of board game, but it was something fun and neat that I’d never heard of before. It’s also something that would never show up on BGG.

I’d rather that board game enthusiasts had space for weird stuff that does not in fact conform to neat tables of rules, or perfect definitions. I’d rather we had more In Memory Of sorts of things.

Okay, but are puzzles board games?

A sandwich is a piece of meat between two slices of bread.

Is this a sandwich?

Which is to say: it doesn’t matter without additional context!

Someone who’s very hungry might be happy to have a hot dog after asking for a sandwich. Someone who catered a sandwich tray for a work event might be slightly less enthusiastic to receive sixty Costco hot dogs.