invincible-ink

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We're ActivityPub enabled! (we think)

Hi folks! Fox here with an exciting update to our site functionality.

Up until now, we’ve been using an auto-posting plugin to share our updates via the Invincible Ink Twitter account (alongside other sites like Facebook and Tumblr). It’s worked pretty well, but with the declaration that Twitter’s API will no longer be available for such services, we have to assume that’s now over.

Honestly, it’s no big loss—Talen and had both already decided that Twitter was no longer a safe or productive platform to be on, and moved to decentralised/non-corporate-ownable social media like Mastodon (incidentally, you can find us at @Talen_Lee and @TheArtGremblin). The Invincible Ink Twitter was already due to go the same way as soon as I got around to it, so this really just moved up the timeline.

(If you’re curious, Facebook is more or less the same story—which is why you’ll find only auto-posted updates there.)

The exciting news is that rather than create a Mastodon account for the Invincible Ink site to post updates, we now have the ability to implement ActivityPub right here, on the blog. That is to say, as of today you should be able to use your account on any major fediverse service to follow @TheArtGremblin to add Invincible Ink updates to your feed! (Currently the supported list includes Mastodon, Pleroma, Friendica, HubZilla, Pixelfed, SocialHome and Misskey.)

The implementation is still in beta at this stage, but it seems to work—so please, if you’re interested in our game launches, art, dev blogging, and general indie creator musings, we’d love if you would follow along and/or share us with others who may be interested! We know the Twitter implosion has been hard for a lot of folks, but we’re very excited for a possible return to a more open web, where the social spaces people rely on can’t simply be bought and ruined by awful people with too much money.

Finally, thank you for your attention! We exist pretty much entirely for the love of making and sharing our creative endeavours, so your support means the world to us 🙂

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/were-activitypub-enabled-we-think/)

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No Colour is Transphobic: Magic-the-Gathering-themed pride charms

Finally, some iso productivity! Yesterday I finished adapting Talen’s 2017 “no colour is transphobic” designs into acrylic charms! 😀 Check out previews of the whole set below.

As you can see, there’s a top and bottom hole on each of these—so you’ll be able to hang another charm/decoration (maybe we’ll come up with some cute options?) and connect them together if more than one speaks to you.

With production and scheduling a bit uncertain right now, we’re not yet sure when these will be available—but we’ll be sure to announce it here as soon as we do!

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/no-colour-is-transphobic-mtg-pride-charms/)

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2D D&D Miniatures—Ready at Last!

It’s been a long wait for our latest prototype from The Gamecrafter—understandable, since we ordered them just before the world turned a bit topsy-turvy! But on Friday they finally made it safely through the postal system of both countries and to our door.

And boy is it exciting this time! We’ve finally worked out the bugs with our fit issues (really, it was Fox’s fault for assuming 3mm acrylic would be 3mm thick!). That means our adorable D&D babies are finally ready to grace your tabletop in glorious 25mm scale!

That’s not all, though; we’ve also got all 23 LFG: Looking For Group characters as 25mm-scale PCs!

It’s probably not clear in the photos, but the print and general quality on these really is fantastic! The artwork is sharp and clear, which is especially impressive since the original drawings had to be scaled down quite a bit, even taking print resolution into account. We’re absolutely delighted with it.

Since we had the acrylics being postage so far already, we took the opportunity to include a test print of Gamecrafter’s “Stout” box, using a pretty simple variant on our current banner image:

It’s such a nice box! It’s really solid and feels great to heft at this size. And the production quality is, again, really fantastic. So far our expenses have only gone far enough to make card-only games, and the occasional handmade/composed special edition. But we do want the freedom to design with more varied components now and then, and seeing these in person really fuels the desire to make something more complex, probably by way of a crowdfunding campaign.

In any case—we’re thrilled with Gamecrafter’s work and really excited to finally have all the kinks worked out. As you may have guessed, Gamecrafter isn’t able to fulfil orders right now, given everything that’s happening. But, when things are back to normal, we can’t wait to offer these adorable 2D minis to our fans at conventions and in our online shop!

Hope we’ll see you then 🙂

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/2d-dd-miniatures-ready-at-last/)

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Sayonara, Comic Gong 2020

So, we just got the announcement we knew was probably inevitable, but were dreading anyway; due to COVID-19, Comic Gong has been cancelled for this year. Of course, we commend the organisers for making responsible decisions about public safety—but boy are we bummed out to be missing one of our biggest conventions, especially with similar writing still on the wall for our mid-year cons.

As you may know, most of our sales come from conventions, where we can meet fans face-to-face and introduce the games we genuinely love and feel proud of. We like to think that how much we love making games (and cute anime junk!) is pretty obvious when you meet us.

It’s a little harder to do that for an online shop, though. That’s why we would really, really appreciate your help! If you like what we do, please share it with your friends and tell them about us. Nothing helps get attention to small creators like people sharing the love 🙂

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/sayonara-comic-gong-2020/)

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Fox here, and I am seriously losing my BUS over seeing my work live on the Desert Bus website! XD My photos were a bit garbo tho, so here’s a closer look at the designs.

My beautiful monster children will be given away TOMORROW, so if you want them, be sure to keep an eye out! You can check the time range in your timezone on the prize page, and watch the stream at that time to catch when they wind up going live.

By the way, please tune in to DesertBus.org and support the kids! It’s always an unforgettable ride, I promise you will not be disappointed XD

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/win-my-dd-beasties/)

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LFG Shirts and Stickers!

Good news everybody! If you loved our LFG designs, they are now available on T-shirts and other apparel on RedBubble and TeePublic. Let us know if you would also like other print-on-demand products enabled!

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/lfg-shirts-and-stickers/)

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Cancon wrap-up

Hello all! I just thought I’d shoot a quick hello to anybody who’s joining us after Cancon 2019 weekend. We had a fantastic time getting to me a chat with you all, share our games and ideas, and of course check out what other creators had to offer.

If you’re reading this on Facebook, I should let you know that our presence here is fairly limited—it’s not our favourite social media platform! It should be fine, but if you have a time-sensitive question it’s best to contact us through our website (www.invincible.ink) or directly at fox@invincible.ink.

With that out of the way, we hope you’ll stay tuned for exciting new developments in the upcoming months. We have multiple new games releasing soon, as well as the “Not Too Familiar” dungeon monster standees many of you admired over the weekend! After speaking with you, we’ll be making them available in battlemap scale as well as the larger scale you saw on our prototypes. We’re excited! 😀

Anyway, thanks for joining us! We hope you’ll continue to enjoy our work going forward.

— Fox & Talen

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/cancon-wrap-up/)

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Comic-Gong Aftermath!

Hi there, everyone! Did you have fun at Comic-Gong? We did. We’re just packing down and wanted to share some stuff about what happened, and what might be coming up!

First of all, wow, thank you so much for your support! One of the things with having a huge library of games for sale, is that it’s actually kinda tricky to show people all of what we have and let them browse and test them at their leisure. This means that some conventions, some games don’t move and the focus sales are on the newest stuff. It’s okay, we have a big catalogue of games and we’ve got to get better at sharing them with you. This convention, we saw sales of some niche games, like CQNS, Queer Coding, Pie Crimes, and Jiāngjú! That’s super cool!

Second, oh my goodness, you were so into our bookmarks, stickers and badges! it was super good to see all the people stopping by for those and we love how enthusiastic you were for our art! It’s super heartwarming to hear people talk about the things we make that you care about, and to connect with all these stories of people from what they love in their work. It was the first year we got to give the games and the art their own tables, which was a huge boon and let people really see the full landscape of interesting art we had!

Third, we were able to compact our inventory! That is, uh, we’re now storing less stuff, in a better way, and part of that means making nice cardboard boxes for games. With that in mind, we’re trying to move the last of our old inventory of unboxed games, which might mean we’ll be selling some of our games for less. Watch this space!

Either way, we had a lot of fun, it was a great day, and thank you so much for showing up and checking out our stuff!

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/comic-gong-aftermath/)

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Announcing: BURNING DAYLIGHT

Hey there folks! Some of you have been waiting literally months for this, so it’s time to announce the launch of Burning Daylight.

Burning Daylight is a hand management game, where you’ll command a gang of rough-neck punks living in abandoned malls, after the fall of late capitalism where the only thing you have to hold yourselves together is one another. Run missions in the forest, steal from the City, or pursue your own individual projects – it’s up to you to choose how you’re going to solve problems.

Burning Daylight takes 72 cards and fits neatly in a tuckbox, and doesn’t require you to shuffle an extremely larget deck multiple times.

If you want to play a game with tactical sinew, that can handle 2-5 players competing over missions but not actively attacking one another, if you want to build and customise your own gang to make combos so the game changes from game to game, then check Burning Daylight out on its store page, or on DriveThruCards.

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/announcing-burning-daylight/)

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More On Boxes

Boy, don’t you love how I come here to talk to you about boxes every few months?

So there’s this German term I was told of once, of Kostspieligluft, a term that I have since learned is not a proper German term at all. The word translates – I think? – into ‘expensive air’ or ‘costly air.’ It’s a complaint of a word: the idea that when you buy a game, you’re also buying some of the air in the box – and the bigger a box is, the more air you’re buying if that space isn’t being otherwise used. This is no secret: Box covers are advertisements, right? They draw the eye. When I sell you a game and I can proudly say I’m respecting your space I can always, in my mind think about how Machi Koro has more support, but Cafe Romantica asks only $30 and a nice, small, tight box for you to play. That’s really nice.

Here’s the problem: There’s a reason companies make games in bigger boxes. Speaking with Aetherworks, one point that’s been brought up is how valuable the card fasure of larger boxes is, how many of our games once people notice them get people to buy them, but before that, they sit quietly on shelves underexamined. A big box gets your attention, and most interestingly, when a game comes in a larger box, it becomes evident to people that it’s worth money to buy it. This is extremely weird to me, but apparently, some of our $10 games would ‘sell better’ if they were in a bigger box – with empty air space! – and cost $15!

Now I’m not making changes on this front yet: I’m very proud of our cheaper games, including our Pay What You Want allstar Simon’s Schism, the Print-And-Play $5 games like Dragon’s Favour and The Botch, and our printed $10 games like Senpai Notice me.

Here’s the other problem: People keep wanting boxes.

It’s been pretty universal when I probe people on the topic: If it’s extra cost to get a box, people would rather a tuckbox. Right now, the smallest box we have access to is a 54-card folded tuck, which I really like, from DriveThruCards, and since we’ve started to use them I’ve become a huge fan. They’re nice, they’re robust, they’re pleasant to touch, they have a resistance in them that means weight on them doesn’t doom the structure, and they can scope down pretty nicely. LFG-Looking For Group, for example, is 46 cards in a 54 card box, and you don’t feel hurt for the missing space.

But what about 32 cards?

What about 20?

Our smallest games at the moment are about 24 cards: The Botch and The Botch Is Back are mainstays of our sales and one of our best games (one of? Whatever). But in a 54 card tuck, those cards look pretty spartan and we hit a new fear that transporting volume is a problem. What do we do about that? Do we start making 54-card boxes for our 20ish card games, and leave you with empty space? Do we start putting token cards in the box, or reference and rules cards to fill in space and give you more ‘something’ for your money? Or do we just start designing more games for the 30+ card bracket, knowing that 40ish cards is the point where we have to start charging $15 for a game?

These are not simple questions to answer and we’re still not sure.

Now, hopefully, going forwards, DTC will introduce a smaller box, like, 30ish cards? And that’ll make all these problems go away. But until then we’re left with this strange new problem of where we fall on the value of selling you air to give you a nice box.

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/more-on-boxes/)

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Cancon 2018 Post-Game!

Well holy heck, that was a weekend!

Cancon 2018 is done with and we’re now moving forwards, but we’re doing so with lighter stock boxes than we thought: Turns out we sold out (almost) completely of LFG – Looking For Group, our newest game! We found one final copy in the cleanup after we were putting boxes away. That’s not all though – we also sold out of physical copies of The Suits and almost out of first-edition printings of Crowdfund This, as well as getting copies out there of our heavier games Cafe Romantica, Fabricators and Sector 86… which I now notice doesn’t have a webpage yet. Gotta go fix that, note to self.

This was the first showing for some of these games at a convention so we’re super happy that you all liked them so much!

Next convention we’ll be hitting will be our local one, Comic-Gong in May, at which we expect to have another four game titles in the library. As always, follow us for every game release and we’ll tell you what’s coming as we go. We learned a lot this weekend, and got some great ideas. We’re looking into different boxing solutions for our very small games and instruction cards, video tutorials and audio tutorials for people who want to play the games without necessarily reading a book, as well as maybe giving revised box covers for some of our other games.

Either way, Cancon 2018 was a rousing success and we’re so thankful to all of you who checked out our stall!

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/cancon-2018-post-game/)

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Cancon LFG Launch (with free bonus!)

Hi folks! A lot of you may already know that we’re headed to Cancon this weekend for their 40th anniversary event. But did you also know that while we’re there, we’re launching our newest game, LFG – Looking For Group?

One of our cutest titles ever, this is a fantasy drafting game where you’re trying to put together an adventuring party (hopefully without anyone getting killed in the tavern!). Play is deceptively simple, but surprisingly difficult as you try to plan out your draft picks to use their special abilities at exactly the right moment. (All that, AND your party can be led by a heroic dog!)

As a special bonus for folks who buy LFG at launch, we’ll be throwing in a postcard-sized promo print of your favourite character art. Visit the Invincible Ink trade table, located in the link corridor, to get yours! Of course, we have a limited supply, so come by early if you want to secure your favourite 🙂

Thanks for watching, have a great weekend, and hope to see you at Cancon 2018!

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/cancon-lfg-launch-free-bonus/)

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Café Romantica - Errata and Update

Hi folks, and welcome to our first errata post for a game. How exciting! There are two main issues to address for our recent release, Café Romantica.

Firstly, we’ve discovered a misprint in the v1.0 printing of this game. One variant of the Energetic host has a cost of 3, and the other 5 variants have a cost of 2. 3 is the correct cost for this host. This will be corrected in v1.1 printing, and any later versions! For customers who purchased v1.0, we will look into a sticker that can be applied to the existing cards.

Secondly, we have learned that the italicised rules text on the cards is a likely barrier to readability for dyslexic players. We apologise to anybody who has been inconvenienced by this! We would very much like our games to be as accessible as possible, so we are revising v1.1 to use a sans-serif, non-italic font for this text.

Thanks for sticking with us, and happy holidays! 🙂

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/cafe-romantica-errata-update/)

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CHRISTMAS BUYER'S GUIDE PART 4: $25 Games!

Next up,we have our $25/$30 games! These are the big games, the heavy hitters, the ones that I’d best hold up as ‘gamer’s games.’

  Cafe Romantica

This is a builder game where, instead of crafting a business or an empire or a market or anything like that, you’re running a club full of cute boys. It’s very indulgent, low-impact and lets you customise the look of the boys you recruit by selecting your favourite look amongst the boys available to you.

Who Wants It: Players who want a builder game’s feel, without the dryness of a more economy-themed game.

Age Range: The game is very anime trope and has some homoromantic themes, so, you know, determine if you’re okay with that.

Skulk!

Skulk is a board game of anticipating player behaviour. You’re a bunch of thieves running around in a dragon’s hoard, trying to get enough gold and get out, but doing so knowing that there’s a dragon that’s stomping around in the same hoard. Each player gets to control the dragon, except the player who acts last doesn’t get to control it.

Who Wants It: People who want a small-box filler board game that’s got a good back-and-forth mechanism to it.

Age Range: I’ve played it with 4 year old kids, but it’s much better when people are all on the same page as far as predicting one another’s behaviour.

Sector 86

This is a small-box card game, with a lot of variance and turn-by-turn strategy. It’s a game with a lot of depth where you’re rewarded for paying attention on people’s turns. It’s a push-your-luck kind of game. While lots of these games finish up in 20 minutes or so, Sector 86 is a hearty, big game that takes its time to play out, giving you a chance to build your community of mercenaries and agents and your little space station.

Who Wants It: This is another gamer’s game kind of game. You’ve got a deep strategic game with a lot of variance that rewards you for knowing how to push your luck and when.

Age Range: This game is more of your 12+ Magic: The Gathering aged kind of game.

Fabricators

I wanted to make a futurist game that was sweet and optimistic. A vision of a future where we’re 3d printing environmentally safe manufacturing sectors. Fabricators is about the rebellion against the idea we’re doomed – and the game you get is a tight, thoughtful little challenge of intricate resource management; you’re trying to build your economic engine, all while still aiming to do things that make the long-term efficiency of your sector maximised.

Who Wants It: People who want a thoughtful Eurogame without themes of colonialism.

Age Range: This game is a bit denser and playing it well needs an extra insight into secondary effects, so probably aim at 12+.

Middleware

Middleware is our earliest big game, and it’s a cooperative cyberpunk deck builder. It’s a big game, with a cooperative theme, and a rudimentary enemy AI. It can handle 2-4 players and unlike other deck builders it wants to give you a sense of character to what you’re crafting.

Who Wants It: If you like deck builders but you don’t like low-themed ones or oppositional ones, this is one where the game is all about fulfilling its themes and working together. Basically, if you like the sound of ‘cyberpunks committing cool crimes,’ this is that game.

Age Range: Because Middleware is cooperative and very low-impact, the game is pretty accepting of including younger or less experienced players. Ramping up the difficulty can exclude them, though. Around 12+.

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/christmas-buyers-guide-part-4-25-games/)

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CHRISTMAS BUYER'S GUIDE PART 3: $15 Games!

Next up,we have our $15 games! These games are a bit bigger and come in a more snugly fitted box to their purposes.

Lily Blade!

Lily Blade is a duelling game of young women sword fighting. It’s a two-player game where what you commit to winning can be taken from you as the spoils of losing.  There are two sets of Lily Blade, each featuring three characters, which are fully compatible to play with one another.

Who Wants It: People who want an accessible duelling game that they can play in reasonably common areas.

Age Range: This game is playable by almost anyone who can read, so 5+ is fine.

Foxtail!

A soft, fluffy and gentle game of building a lovely tail, Foxtail requires you do no reading and the rules are very simple. Play is simultaneous and players are focused on making their tail as charming as they can make it while it snakes across the table.

Who Wants It: Anyone who wants something non-confrontational and low-impact. It’s great for kids and families.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 5+. This game was designed to be compatible with kids who couldn’t read or even do complex math yet.

Escape Code!

Another hidden identity game, Escape Code is made to be more about playing and chatting, rather than working out some complex nest of if-then-else statements. Played to a timer, players are trying to slip a phrase into conversation, or work out who, at the table, is being shifty.

Who Wants It: Groups that like hidden identity games but find they collapse into a specific pattern of play.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 10+.

Good Cop, Bear Cop!

Another hidden-identity game, Good Cop Bear Cop is about the fanciful idea of a precinct of cops with non-corrupt members that are also secretly bears. As with other games, this seeks to be a hidden identity game that cares about making sure players can keep playing rather than being focused on a fmailiar pattern of play. In Good Cop, Bear Cop, players are trying to advance their own goals, find the bears, and head off any other cops who they think are trying to pursue their own goals.

Who Wants It: Groups that want a more systemy hidden identity game that isn’t necessarily about throwing around wild accusations. Less anxiety driven, with people more interested in winning themselves.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 10+.

The Dragon’s Favour!

Dragon’s favour is a voting game, where each round is about working out how you think other people will vote, and then committing yourself to voting in your best interests. It’s a complex game that spirals out of hand fast as you start to politick your way through your friends’ actions.

Who Wants It: Players who want a varied play experience that scales up from small numbers. It’s 2-7 numbers.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 7+.

Murder Most Fowl!

Murder Most Fowl is a path-building set collection game with some gotcha cards in it, designed to poke at other players and make it harder for them to collect or advance their own plans. It’s got an over-the-top British Poshness aesthetic, and is full of silly bird names that are fun to say.

Who Wants It: Playgroups of 2-4 people who want something a bit like Arboretum, but with some bite.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 7+.

Dark Signs!

Probably our ‘hardest’ game, Dark Signs is an area control, hand management game with a nightmare aesthetic. Players are terrible outsider entities, trying to get a poor beleagured poet to chant their name upon waking. The gameplay has a dash of hand management and control, knowing when to fight and when to fall back.

Who Wants It: Playgroups with 2-4 people who want something pretty tight and strategic.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 10+. It’s a bit deliberately spooky.

    (reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/christmas-buyers-guide-part-3-15-games/)

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CHRISTMAS BUYER'S GUIDE PART 2: $10 Games!

Our games are divided very simply into ‘how much they cost to make.’ This doesn’t reflect development time or art costs or anything that stuff: We just want games to be as good for you as they can be. So I’m going to give you a run-down on our range of $10 games, with an idea of how they play and who they’re for. And go:

Pie Crimes

You’re all playing bakers in the Candy Kingdom. Every turn, every player decides to cooperate or advantage themselves. It’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma, made into a game, and played over rounds.

Who Wants It: Play groups of 3-5 people who want to play a game a few times in a row.

Age Range: Ages 5-up can play it, but bear in mind little kids playing it will probably be playing basically random.

Chin Music

Short, fast rounds of memorising the stack of cards put down in front of you. You’re all playing speakeasy dwellers deciding who goes out and beats up the Ruffians outside.

Who Wants It: Player groups of 2-5 people who like memory games.

Age Range: Ages 5-up can play it, but odds are good that a kid in the play pool will shorten the rounds and maybe lose a lot.

D-7EC7 (pronounced ‘Detect’)

It’s a hidden movement/stealth game for 3-5 players, designed to be played in a tiny space. If you do train journeys and want to play a board game with a bit of a space around you, this is a game for you. You can play it with a notepad and pen, in a race against your own battery life.

Who Wants It: Player groups of 3-4 people who like stealth games and want to bluff and fool one another.

Age Range: You want players who can handle object permanence and the idea of tracking an unseen object, so 10+ is a good mark.

You Can’t Win

A nearly unwinnable trick-taking game of trying to use a tiny scrape of information, You Can’t Win is slick, fast, and played simultaneously. You’re all trying to exclude your opponent’s options for winning, while making sure you don’t ruin your own chances of winning, with two wild cards in the mix to make everything worse. Handles up to seven players.

Who Wants It: Extremely, extremely process-driven players who want to construct and solve an incredibly difficult puzzle.

Age Range: Ages 5-up can play it, but they’re not going to like playing it given how incredibly difficult it is.

Jiāngjú

Do you like hidden-role, bluffing identity games but don’t like them taking 40 minutes during which some players just have to sit and wait? Do you hate the waiting and the slowness when what you want to bite into is the question of who’s lying and why? In Jiāngjú, you’re all playing crooks or cops in Hong Kong, at the final moment of a dramatic high-octane action movie! You point finger-guns at one another, try to argue over who should point at who, and as you change targets, the stress ramps up. Then when the stress hits its limit? Snap, everyone fires. The game can handle up to eight players.

Who Wants It: People who already like games like Werewolf but needs something faster.

Age Range: Ages 10+, if you’re okay with the kids pointing fingerguns at one another.

Wobbegong-12

This is a real-time game about kicking a junky rover around the tabletop trying to pick up a single victory condition. Players are all holding a uplink card that lets them control their rovers, and if they lose contact with that card, their rover stops. The problem is, there’s only one uplink card. Handles up to six players, plays quick, and comes with variant rules for people who aren’t extremely mobile.

Who Wants It: People who want to laugh and play with the physicality of the games.

Age Range: Ages 5+. This game is definitively kid friendly.

Cat & The Mouse

A two-player stealth game! Read your opponent, find a good hiding spot, and make use of it. This super-light game is good for when you can take your time, when you can really soak in an exchange of questions between people, when you can let players wait between those moments when you guess… Are you in room-

Who Wants It: Pairs of people who want to play a game about reading one another and anticipating movements.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 10+.

The Suits

Following up on Dog Bear as an introductory RPG using card games, The Suits builds on it and tries to use its mechanics to teach people how to run RPGs rather than just play in them. It’s designed to make the process of DMing interesting and about cycling the control of the game around.

Who Wants It: RPG groups that want to make things inclusive and accessible to people, improv fans.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 10+.

The Botch + The Botch Is Back

The Botch and its expansion are brewer games, games where you have control over how it’s set up and that changes the way the game works out. It is a game that can fail – it’s possible players get into a gameplay loop where nobody can win any more, and that’s a problem, and one the game has to get rules to fix. But! The basic gist of the game is still a rollicking lie-em-up where you’re all trying to collect diamonds, discern each other’s plans and maybe if things get to hard, shoot each other.

Who Wants It: Mid-sized groups, 5+ people, who want to be able to deal in new people, change up the game experience, and like the absurdity of stare-down bluffing.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 10+.

Crowdfund This!

Hey, do you wish Cards Against Humanity was about making fun of kickstarter ideas that get out of hand? Same basic idea. The winner is meaningless but the play is the fun.

Who Wants It: You need at least 3 people, and you need people with a creative idea of integrating silly card text with the way the game plays out.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 10+.

Dog Bear

Dog Bear is a Metal-Gear inspired silly game of short improvised RPG sessions. It’s als available as a PDF for $5.

Who Wants It: Mid-sized roleplaying groups, who want a fast single-session comedy game.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 10+.

Simon’s Schism

Much in the vein of Werewolf and Resistance, Simon’s Schism is a small-group game for 5+ players who want to play a hidden role game without specialised cards. Players will be either sycophants to Simon’s regime or rebels or collaborators, and the whole game can be played with an ordinary deck of playing cards.

Who Wants It: Hidden role/identity game players who don’t want the focus pulled onto one person.

Age Range: Probably anywhere 10+.

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/christmas-buyers-guide-part-2-10-games/)

[invincible-ink]

CHRISTMAS BUYER'S GUIDE PART 1: Where Are You?

Reality of life: The Pacific Ocean sucks.

American friends: You are fine. Canadians, too. Shipping within the USA and to Canada is reasonably cheap for our games. Canadians, if you’re horrified by the rates you pay and still think those aren’t ‘relatively cheap’ I hope you now understand just how much more expensive our stuff is. Either way: Stuff you order today will arrive before Christmas. You have leeway.

If you live in Australia, Malaysia, Japan or any of the countries on the far side of the Pacific Ocean, shipping gets harder, and if you want something quick, you’ll want to get something that we, the Invincible Ink team, have in stock. Unfortunately, our stock update has been delayed, so we’re in the unenviable position of just not having a lot of stuff that’s recent. The plan is our next major restock should happen in time for Cancon, so we’re considering doing like a digital sale for that weekend too, a Change The Date Sale.

That means that if you’re looking for games like Fabricators, Good Cop Bear Cop, Escape Code, C-QNS, Yes Chef!, Nobeard’s Treasure, or Sector 86, you need to order them really soon from DriveThruCards, and they will probably get to you in time. Order now~!

The UK is the wild west, for me: I don’t know anything about those shipping times or costs. I’m dreadfully sorry.

But that’s our part #1! Just knowing where you are is a useful stepping stone for how you need to approach things.

Next up! We’re going to do three posts explaining which games are for which people, based on price bracket!

(reposted from https://www.invincible.ink/christmas-buyers-guide-part-1/)