NSKN @ 2 years

A bit more than two years ago I was registering the name NSKN Legendary Games, embarking, together with some of my friends, on an unexpected and amazing journey. I had big plans and little knowledge, but it seemed that designing and publishing board games is the right thing to do. Two years later I can confirm that I made the right decision and, even if this proves to be a much tougher journey that I could have ever expected, it is worth every moment.

Anniversaries are not only moments of joy and celebration, but also good opportunities to remember, because "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (G. Santayana).

But the history of NSKN did not start only 2 years ago. It goes back another year or so into the past, when the idea of making board games sparked in my head.  That is the true beginning...

Jun 2010 - Warriors & Traders prototype, second version. Looking back at this it feels like ancient history, like it happened 500 years ago. Looking at the prototypes we are making today, it feels childish, but deep inside I know that had it not been for this one game, NSKN would not be what it is today.

It took another 14 versions if I remember correctly and one year of play-testing before Warriors & Traders was ready for printing, but hard work and good friends to exploit were the key to making it happen (there are so many people that I want to thank for their help and for believing in this project, but that is beyond the purpose of this post).

Apr 2011 - The last play-test of Warriors & Traders. Soon after we established NSKN, while our graphic designers were doing their magic, preparing the final version, ready to print.

The summer of 2011 was one full of planning and hoping, we were about to go to our first Spiel Essen, we had no idea how the distribution was working and until the very last moment we were afraid that the games might be late (it had happened to the biggest names in the industry) and we will simply be eight people in an empty booth showing people a big... smile.

Oct 2011 - Spiel Essen - In the end, everything was fine, NSKN came to Essen with Warriors & Traders, a game well received by both the public and the distribution companies.

Spiel '11 was an event I will never forget. I still get goosebumps when I go think about the amount of people we talked to, that we ran out of games several time and we had to drive back and forth from Germany to Belgium to bring more. It was indeed a magical time, one to remember every time something went so wrong that I wanted to quit and never look back.

By the end of 2011 we had already sold a significant quantity of Warriors & Traders, covering most of Europe and North America and reaching game stores as far as Thailand and Japan. What we were still missing was the direct connection with the gamin community, but we were about to take care of that aspect too.

While still busy and focused on selling Warriors & Traders, I was secretly working on another big game, Exodus: Proxima Centauri, though back then it carried a completely different name.

Jan 2012 - GobCon - This was our first contact with gamers in a local convention and it was a blast and not only because it was in Italy - the country of amazing food and wine - but because of the people I met and the friends I've made. This was also the starting point of the first expansion in the history of NSKN, Warriors & Traders: Italia, developed especially for the organizers of GobCon.

Feb 2012 - The prototype of Exodus: Proxima Centauri was ready. I had worked on it for half a year, I had learned physics and read books in the process, but all my effort was rewarded with good feedback after the first session.

And how many designers out there can honestly say that for their first test of a sci-fi game they had good feedback from an all-girl team? :)

Apr 2012 - NSKN was celebrating 1 year. We had cake, and Champagne, we recalled the good moments of the year that had passed and we made plans for the future.

By then, Exodus: Proxima Centauri and Wild Fun West were both tested, working quite well and it was just a matter of time and fixing the details before NSKN was ready to publish two new games.

And that is the first part of our little saga... The second part is coming soon.

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Find out more on the NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine 

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

How to chose your holiday destination

Long time no hear! After two years of working like crazy I felt that the line has been crossed. The winter in Poland was absolutely out of the ordinary this year. The first three months were OK. Winter, you know, cold, snowy, rainy and so freakishly dark outside most of the day. Anyway, this would be still acceptable if only after all this winter sadness ... less winter came. However mother nature had a different plan and it brought us more winter sadness! It was the end of March when the temperature dropped to -10°C with heavy snowfall and wind outside our windows, letting us know that winter was not going to leave us neither easily nor soon. And you could feel that your heaters are on the limit! They may be able to get you to April... but then what? 

I have to be honest with you, I am completely weather dependent. When it's sunny outside, birds are singing and there is a rainbow on the sky - oh yeah! I feel the power! (and yes, I do sing "I got the power!", when I wake up with this picture outside of my window).

So I went to discover the sunny side of the earth, with the sneaky thought in my head: "When I come back it should get better in here. Maybe", and here comes the bold thought, "there will be Spring already in Poland."

(Just as a spoiler I will tell you now that when I landed back in Poland I sang "I got the power" again.) 

However, choosing holidays destinations was not easy. The winter was long, so you can imagine that I've played quite many board games and you know how they work - they move one's imagination! 


?? Should I go to Mexico and see Chichen Itza, Palenque, Uxmal, Tikal, Yaxchilan, as while playing Tzolkin I hanged on all those new places to discover?  This game, Tzolkin, put so much curiosity in my head! 

?? Maybe some place with nice beaches, white sand and palm trees? - Thank you Merchants & Marauders! Thank you Hawaii!

?? Or, or... I know ... something more exotic! Like in Ming Dynasty... Asia?? Asia!!

?? For adventure in dungeons with torches and magical blue potion in one pocket and a silver dagger in another I was not ready yet! Who knows, maybe in the summer... Winter and dungeons sounded too extreme in my head. Thou Descent: Journeys in the Dark filled the gap perfectly!

?? For Cosmic Encounter and Race for the Galaxy I was totally not prepared. What do I know about cosmos? What if Exodus will come and hey! what will you actually do if you discover a new form of life? Space definitely seemed too much to handle.

So Asia it was, without my gaming preferences I needed sun and I needed it immediately. Long story short - the trip was wonderful. It was long enough to detached from all the responsibilities, clear my mind and see things from a new perspective. I am now loaded with new ideas, my mind is nearly exploding! This year will bring a Perfect Storm and Praetor and W: The Board Game at least. We're planning to fit in all this also re-dressing of Exodus: Proxima Centauri this year. So, as I said, long story short - let me get back to work... I wanted to share with you that there are wonderful board games coming up this year from NSKN. And yes, I am genuinely smiling while writing this... ha! Wait till you play them!

Now, all our thoughts are focused on the preparation for the UK Games Expo 2013 on the 24th - 26th of May in Birmingham. We are printing, cutting and gluing prototypes so you can enjoy playing freshly made prototypes with Andrei and I there. Many more thing are going on at the same time.. World is never asleep and especially board gamers! So I hope to see you there!

As a conclusion of my adventure I want to share with you this picture. Some of you maybe have seen it already, as I shared it a few seconds after taking it ;-). However it is so mind blowing... imagine seeing this in reality!

Enjoy! And let your mind wonder!

Captured while wondering on the streets of Yogyakarta

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Find out more on the NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine 

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

Perfect Storm, yet another board game from NSKN

Do you like fishing? If you do, that's great news, you will enjoy our new prototype. If you're not sure, this is a great opportunity to learn.

Prototype of the map

Perfect Storm is a game for 2-5 player about fishing in the Bering Sea, one of the toughest places on Earth to have a job.

You are a young entrepreneur with a fishing boat and dreams of getting rich. So, you will hire a captain and a crew and send them fishing in those dangerous waters.

The weather in Bering Sea is the greatest challenge. It can be sunny today, but tomorrow your boat will face 25 ft tall waves and a storm you only get to see once in a lifetime. But it's not all bad news, the bigger the waves, the easier it is to catch the best seafood in the region, the Alaskan King Crab.

Perfect Storm is a game of risk management and every player will have to calculate his decision to fish for the most valuable prey without exposing his crew and cargo to unnecessary danger. In the end, the winner will be the player who will find the best balance between his boat, crew and captain, the place to fish and the risk to face bad weather.

More news after a few sessions of play-testing.

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More about NSKN Legendary Games on the website | Facebook | Twitter | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine | Blog

Warriors & Traders can also be found on its own website | Facebook |  BGG
Exodus: Proxima Centauri: website | BGG
Wild Fun West: website | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: Agni, Alexandra, Andrei and Vlad 

Deus ex machina - it's time to research

There are so many games out there with some technology tree that you can research just so you get more resources, better weapons or all other kinds of advantages. I know I've been playing lots of them and two of our own games (Warriors & Traders, Exodus: Proxima Centauri) feature the same mechanisms and it so much fun to research.

I've seen gamers who play just to be able to research, oblivious to the fact that technologies were simply means not purpose. So, what is technologies were the purpose?

OK, enough small talk and introduction, let's skip to the main topic - what do you think about a game which is all about research?

Our new prototype called (at least for the moment) Deus ex Machina is a game in which 2 to 5 players research technologies. Each player takes a civilization in its earliest stages and develops it to the 20th century.

You'll start by discovering the wheel, agriculture, religion, move through the middle ages with arts, cannons or alchemy and end up developing jet fighters, artificial satellites or social media.

The game has a total of 500 research cards depicting 159 different technologies divided into 5 ages, ancient, medieval, industrial, modern and post-modern/contemporary and also into 5 types, according to their purpose, government, military, science, engineering and culture. 

Guilds Tech card, first prototype 

Every player starts with 5 cards in his hand and takes one action per turn. The action can be to play a technology card, to place a card in his personal stash or to draw new cards. With each technology he discovers, a player gets an advancement or a number of victory points. 

Every technology requires some older technologies or an amount of knowledge progressively higher as you advance through the ages and it open the path for one or more new ones. The same cards can be discarded to pay the knowledge cost of another technology, making the game streamlined and fast paced.

We are still in the early stages of play-testing, but things are looking well. We're going to start mass testing soon and we are hoping that Deus ex Machina will go to print before the end of the year.

__________________

More about NSKN Legendary Games on the website | Facebook | Twitter | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine | Blog

Warriors & Traders can also be found on its own website | Facebook |  BGG
Exodus: Proxima Centauri: website | BGG
Wild Fun West: website | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: Agni, Alexandra, Andrei and Vlad 

Good deeds...

An amazing thing happened! Warriors & Traders has been nominated to The Game Of The Year 2011 in Romania. Voting has already started, so if you are proficient in Romanian - vote for us today! If you are like me - having troubles with understanding anything written or/and spoken in Romanian - you can always use Google translate.

Warriors & Traders nominated for The Game Of the Year (Jocul Anului) 2011 in Romania

As most of us already know, what really counts for a board game publisher is the players' feedback on the game they launched. And to see a session review or an amazing picture or a video review uploaded by people owning Warriors & Traders brings a huge smile on all NSKN Legendary Team and motivates us all to create more and more new unique games. 

And then it makes you think - who are those people? Is there more to it? You have at least one bonding point with all of them - passion for the board games and especially this specific one. Whoever managed to produce their first game, the most pampered and occupied by many years of hard work, they understand how amazing and cheerful feeling it is to see others posting and commenting on 'your child'. And do you know how some times working on one thing continuously for 'too long' makes you not see the obvious anymore? Thanks to all the feedback we gather for the past year we gained a lot of knowledge on how things can be done differently. 

So, now we are working on four (yes, you did read correctly - 4!) new games which we will try to produce in the second half of 2012 and the beginning of 2013. Two of our prototypes still do not have their name! We are brainstorming and looking for great new titles. You can help and be a part of our gaming family if you want - just check our website. It will give you better understanding of each prototype and then you can just post comments here or send us an email with your brilliant ideas!

And it is all thanks to you - players of Warriors & Traders, commentators, friends, reviewers and every single one of you who Liked us on Facebook, Tweeted about us or shared on Google Plus ... and a very special thanks to the Board Game Geek community! So you can hug yourself now or pat on your head on our behalf - you have done more than one good deed this year! :) 

Why our tokens smell like pizza

When we have to decide between chinese food and pizza in a gaming evening, we always pick pizza. If you imagine that we are a bunch of pizza freaks then you're most likely wrong. But we love pizza in our twisted way, it comes in card board boxes that can be recycled and used for our prototypes.

Before

Almost over night, game design changed our behavior from passive recyclers to active recyclers. We do not just have a throwing rule for plastic and cardboard, each in separate bins, but we also have a keeping rule - whatever can be used in the near future for testing a new prototype or improving an old one stays!

After - The newest prototype

Imagine now how much pizza we had to eat for the 15 versions of Warriors and Traders. No wonder some of us are on diet all the time except for the gaming evenings, when pizza becomes a part of our "job-description".