Introduction and Podcast Support
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Corey from Grimstone Games, and thanks for checking out another episode of Should I Play It? Quick plug today before we get started. If you're looking to support the podcast, we would love for you to like, share, subscribe, do all that stuff that you normally do with podcasts. Aside from our website, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. So do us a favor, check it out.
00:00:25
Speaker
Like the shows if you like them. Share it out to friends and definitely subscribe so you can catch more goodness on the channel. So with that said, we'll just dive right into today's episode.
Introducing Marco and 'Escape from Stalingrad Z'
00:00:45
Speaker
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the podcast that I have affectionately called Should I Play It? I am here with Marco from Raybox Games, and we are going to talk about, well, amongst other things, I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot of things, but we're going to talk specifically about Escape from Stalingrad Z. Marco, how are you doing today? I'm great. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Talk to your fans. Talk about my game.
00:01:14
Speaker
Of course, I mean, the best the best thing ever is to talk about your own game, right? So before we get into the game itself, which, by the way, I'll preface this by saying, and I mentioned this to you when we were talking before recording that I asked our president's son, who we backed escape from Zollinger Z full disclosure. I've seen the game in its physical form, but we gave
00:01:36
Speaker
the game to Mike's son, Elric, and he's been playing it. He's been playing the solo campaign a lot because he has a lot of time to do that. And I asked him, hey, what do you think about this game? And the two things that he said were, one, easy to set up and easy to get into, and two,
00:01:54
Speaker
World War II and Zombies. That was the glowing recommendation from him. If you knew him, you would know that that's a glowing, glowing recommendation from him.
Marco's Game Design Background
00:02:06
Speaker
Before we talk about the game, I actually want to hear a little bit more about Raybox Games because you have been designing games for quite a while, haven't you?
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting story. And without doing the long take on it, I was designing games in the 90s. So I designed a whole bunch of miniature board games, designed one called legions of steel, design another one called inferno battles of the abyss, which was kind of like battle tech in hell.
00:02:34
Speaker
which I still might re-release one day, and a whole bunch of other supplements and stuff like that. So from 90 to 96, 97, I was designing. I even had the sub-license at one point for the Star Wars miniatures game. I was literally designing the Star Wars miniatures game back in the 90s.
Evolution of Game Design from the 90s to Now
00:02:51
Speaker
So I was heartbroken when I lost it. That's kind of when I got out of the business. But West End Games, which held the license, went bankrupt. So I had the sub-license, so that disappeared. So it was unfortunate.
00:03:04
Speaker
I had already, you know, we have hope I have miniatures from it. True 28. And anyway, so it was really depressing because I lost a lot. And I mean, I could have kept going, but it was just not for me. So that I stopped designing games. And then 25 years later, designing games.
00:03:23
Speaker
I think over 10 years of experience of designing them, like designing rulesets and also production and marketing and kind of everything. Yeah. So it's been a good run, especially since I've taken up the mantle again and I started to design games again and I love it. I get asked this because the 90s to now, the process has to be so different and probably so much more accessible now than it was back then.
00:03:50
Speaker
Well, absolutely. Uh, so designing games is this basically the same, except you have to, you know, work with the times, uh, regarding what kind of game. So fast set up, like my, like escape from soundgrads, he sets up in less than a minute. Like I time myself, it's 45 seconds. Some of the bigger scenarios, maybe a minute and a half, but most of them are under a minute. So that's something important today. And it's small space. Like it fits, you play like the state from soundgrads he plays on a book.
00:04:16
Speaker
You just open the book up and you play directly on it. The left side is your instructions for the scenario. And the right side is the actual map that you play on. Anyway, so those are two things that came out of the 2020s kind of thinking. But in the old days and the 90s, no one really thought about that. I mean, there were teeny games, like Steve Jackson did tons of stuff. So that's one thing. In other words, designing is kind of the same in the rule set. But how marketing works now is completely different, which is important for independent
00:04:47
Speaker
Publishers how to market your stuff because you're up against some giants and how you manufacture now is basically if you're doing any game that has You know, it's more than just cards or something. You pretty much got to go to China to make it There's not a lot of options some options in Europe, but so you have to be able to Have the confidence to deal with China, which is pretty daunting at the beginning but now I'm used to it and
00:05:14
Speaker
In the 90s, everything we made was made in Canada and the US. That's where we made it. There were big games and tons of miniatures in them, but they were all metal back in the day. That's the big changes. Marketing is different, manufacturing is different, the distribution chain is different for anyone who cares about that, but you still design games that are cool.
Features of 'Escape from Stalingrad Z'
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, speaking of cool, as I was prepping on this monitor over here, I'm sitting here looking at a screenshot, that little slider that you have on your website and the miniatures, they look incredible. For a game that's in a compact space that sets up so quickly, the level of detail on these miniatures is absolutely astounding. Do they come pre-painted?
00:06:00
Speaker
No, they don't come pre-painted, but they come pre-assembled. So the way I like to look at that game is, first of all, the miniatures are optional. So you can buy the game for under $30, which is what I call the book set or travel set. And that gives you everything you need to play, but you'll photocopy the character sheets and use a pen and eraser to go. But it's like,
00:06:19
Speaker
30 bucks and you get the entire story. It's not like it's a slim down version of the full game. You get everything in that. You don't need miniatures, but if you want to add miniatures here, you can. Then those are available separately. You can buy the book set, you can buy the box set that has double layer of punch boards and stuff like that. That's how I would buy it if I was a consumer. Then they'd have four miniature sets that are available
00:06:45
Speaker
that you can just add to it. So you kind of can choose. I got lots of zombies from like, say, Zombicide. So I don't need to get World War II zombies, but I don't have the heroes. So I think these heroes are cool. So I'll just buy that set. Or you could be like, I like them all. They're awesome. I want them all. And you can just buy them all. So I wanted to give a lot of flexibility to the consumer, to the players.
00:07:07
Speaker
And then there's a few deluxe sets left that come with everything plus a bonus. But yeah, so the miniatures do not come pre-painted. That's kind of part of the hobby for people who like that. But for others, you can just play with the miniatures. I mean, there's tons of games now that come up with miniatures. They're basically board games with miniatures, right? Because there's a whole other segment that's war gaming with miniatures, and that's a bit more involved. You've got big battles with lots of space.
00:07:36
Speaker
So yeah, that's how ours comes. So you can just, you can basically pop the box, open up miniatures and start playing right away with them. You don't have to do anything except play and have fun.
00:07:45
Speaker
And you're not kidding about that hobby because when we play test, we play test at a local game company, a game store. And I often find myself like turning my head and looking at the guys playing Warhammer and just actually ogling over the level of detail in those miniatures. So I guess I am kind of a miniatures geek, although I'll never paint one because I don't have the patience for it. I'll leave it to John. Yeah, for sure.
Gameplay Mechanics and Modes
00:08:11
Speaker
So we've kind of screwed it around the issue or the question of how the game actually plays. So if you were describing the game to somebody, can you give a couple of minutes on, hey, this is actually how the game plays. This is the theme of it. This is the way that you'd approach it. And you can go as details as you want into the mechanics of it, whatever you want to tell everybody. Well, yeah, for sure. So the main thing about the game is that it plays on the book. So it's a fast setup, like I said, and it's a small play area.
00:08:41
Speaker
There's almost 50 scenarios in the book, so there's lots of gameplay, like available. And it's a narrative story that's a choose your own adventure style game. So basically the decisions that you make in one scenario will affect what happens next, but not only affect it, but you might have different paths. So when I created the game, there's a matrix of
00:09:05
Speaker
I want to say I created a creative with a bunch of great guys. So it was me and Tom Frank and Wes Johnson, a bunch of guys. I was the lead guy was my idea. And I brought it to the table and then work with these other people. But, um, uh, it's like a choose your own adventure where you might go on a whole different path. There's, there's like three or four different endings. Well, there's three winning endings. And then there's the you die ending.
00:09:26
Speaker
Um, and, uh, yeah, so that's kind of the concept of the narrative campaign when you're playing a story. I like to look at it like a movie. So it's like, like you're playing, you know, like, uh, uh, a movie. Like if you're playing a movie that you, one of your favorite movies, but you're playing now in a book and you have your characters or which are the characters from the movie and they, and that's kind of the concept of how that works. Um, you basically start with one character.
00:09:54
Speaker
And from there you'll gather your team, you'll find more along the way, you'll rescue them or they'll be part of something else and they join your kind of your group, your team, your squad. So you build your kind of team as you go along. There's a group for all the characters, so all the characters have unique skills that as they get more experience from basically killing zombies and completing tasks,
00:10:17
Speaker
They'll unlock these skills. So you have a bit of that sort of growth plus there's a whole bunch of weapons and you'll start you literally start the game with nothing and then You'll pick up a knife and maybe a Luger and then slowly you'll build, you know an arsenal of weapons and your character kind of specializes in one of them So they'll they'll gravitate to that as soon as you find that one that'll be your favorite weapon so there's that sort of exploration and the game is a tactical combat uses d12 and
00:10:47
Speaker
But the game mitigates the T12 by having basically re-rolls. You could have a few re-rolls per scenario depending on your level to mitigate sucky bad rolling.
00:11:02
Speaker
war is fog of war and whatever like when you're you know your guns can jam and things can happen and that's just the way it is so so bad luck is you know real anyways very much is um so uh uh so tactically you know your characters can move and attack the the we have this interesting
00:11:24
Speaker
Well, in this concept, when you're playing that you can move and you can, while you're moving, you can attack with your weapon and then you can keep moving if you haven't used up all your moving points. Many games don't allow that. It's like, you have to attack with your gun or whatever, attack with your weapon and then move, or you can move and then attack. And often you don't want to intermix it. So we allow for that, which adds more, not really harder once you start playing it, but it adds more realism and tactical flexibility. And the other thing about when you're playing tactically,
00:11:56
Speaker
Is is that you can if you don't actually you know attack during your turn you can save it Which is called covering so you can actually wait you kind of like you know in a real battle Let's say you're in you're in a burnt-out city with zombies around you're kind of like waiting there waiting for the zombie to turn the corner so you can blow it away so if you have an attack you can save without your attack so practically that's how it works and
00:12:19
Speaker
And, you know, again, the game unfolds from page to page as you're playing it. And then there's another layer of kind of complications that you have to deal with. Now, Stalingrad, World War II, 1940, 1942, and 1941, 1942, it was really, really called why people starve to death. It was like, so you have resources and you have what's called a fatigue tracker. So as you're going and trying to escape from Stalingrad Z,
00:12:49
Speaker
You'll also be trying to collect food and net kits and other things that can assist you so that you don't get so fatigued. And in between the scenarios, you can do what's called the between scenarios where you do scavenging and you can find more ammo and stuff.
00:13:02
Speaker
or you can like hole up where you're going to you know find a safe place and you know put a little fire on so you can warm your food so there's that kind of aspect to it too and if you let yourself get too exhausted then that'll affect how you you fight the next scenarios so there's that kind of realistic interesting kind of dynamic to the game that makes it even more challenging it's all totally doable and
00:13:26
Speaker
often people may die the first time they play it, like, you know, because as you're learning how the system works, then, you know, the zombies overwhelm you. That's how that goes. Now, there are three modes of play. There's you can play solo, of course, and co-op. And then there's in those cases, the zombies and the monsters in the game have an AI, which is pretty simple. They basically most zombies will just move one square. So it's a gridded map where you're playing on it. They'll just move one square. That's it.
00:13:55
Speaker
And if they start their action adjacent to one of your characters, they will lock them just like in the movies. They'll just grab onto them if they start. So you have a chance to get away before that happens.
00:14:06
Speaker
And then if they've locked you, the next turn when they activate, they'll just simply do a straight up one wound. And you have like four wounds before you die and turn into a zombie. Basically, if your character dies, let's see if a few characters and one of them dies, they immediately turn into a zombie. And then you have to kill them too, of course. But it's harder to kill them because they look like your friends. So there's modifiers, right? And if you don't kill them, they show up in future at once until you kill them. So they're like there to
Replayability and Storytelling Emphasis
00:14:33
Speaker
haunt you. So it's kind of creepy.
00:14:36
Speaker
But, you know, real in the same way and like you're like really like you're writing your own story, right? And every game is going to have its own story.
00:14:47
Speaker
So the AI is relatively simple and you can play like I said solo co-op and then there's a third option which is versus of course and that's where one person plays the zombie master and they control the zombies and there's rules for that and that's generally harder for the human like people playing humans because the people are smarter than the AI for the most part. We've done things that hit it but it's definitely challenging.
00:15:11
Speaker
If you buy the box that you have a double layer character dashboard where you can plug in the weapons that you find and they easily sit on there and that sort of thing. Oh and the other thing too is that the
00:15:28
Speaker
We have hidden movement basically. So all the zombies are all flipped over on the question mark side and until they become getting to your line of sight or your line of fire, you don't know what they are. So there is always like, what am I going to encounter? You don't know 100%. So it changes every time you play the game, right? I think that's basically it in a nutshell. Yeah.
00:15:48
Speaker
That sounds, you know, as you describe that, it sounds like a very, very good adaptation of a lot of the video games that we've played into board game form or book game form. Call it a book game, not a board game, because it's played in the book.
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah. When you mentioned the zombie, like your friends actually following you, I instantly in my head, I don't know if you played Diablo three ever on video game, but there on the Xbox, there was a, the thing called a nemesis and it was an enemy, a friend that you would actually be in, in the past, or if you played co-op with somebody or a big enemy would actually come into a current scenario and this like gong would chime and that thing would show up and attack you as well in the middle of this battle to make it even harder. So I just, I heard like,
00:16:33
Speaker
I heard the Nemesis Gong go off in my head when you said that about your friends showing up and attacking you. That's awesome. Let's get into the core question, the name of the podcast. I'm sitting there and we'll talk about where to buy it after, but I'm sitting there and I'm thinking about buying this. Why? What's going to push me over the edge? Why should I play it?
Game Appeal and Accessibility
00:16:51
Speaker
Well, if you like tactical gaming and you like movies,
00:16:57
Speaker
and you like reading basically maybe let's say that you you know um you're gonna love the game because it's an unfolding story and it changes every time you play it there's like eight characters to choose from or eight heroes character survivors whatever you want to call them but you can only use up to four per scenario so there's lots of replayability because you can play it again with different ones you can choose different paths like one you're like okay do i go towards the burning building you're being followed by a horde of zombies right so you got a choice so i go into the horde of uh
00:17:26
Speaker
the burning building which will be put me to map 36 or into the sewers which will put me to map 28 and you're like I don't know if I want to go in the sewers I'll go in the burning building the next time you play you go screw it I'll go right into the sewers and see what happens right and you know there's always ways the game doesn't trying to kill you well it's trying to kill you but like you always have choices to get out of it and until you make the most you know we don't try to just
00:17:52
Speaker
mindlessly remove someone from the game. We're going to give a lot of hints if you're getting to the end and you're like, yeah, don't go that way. If you still go, it's like, well, okay. And then the thing about playing the game is that it's solo. So, I mean, if you don't have time for your friends all the time or you get together, not everyone gets together as often as they might like, this is at home.
00:18:18
Speaker
And so now so basically you can play at home and that now what happens is you can play at home in a small space. It takes very little time to set up that takes very little time to tear it out. So it basically gives you time to play this game. I guess games like it that are solo and you know, it gives you time to play. But even though it has such a small footprint and even though it takes so little time, it's it's
00:18:45
Speaker
when you're playing it you're like absorbed into it and you're like in that universe for that like the 20 minutes to half an hour it takes to play it so it really delivers the goods when it comes to having fun and getting
00:18:59
Speaker
uh you know nervous and scared and like deciding what to do and like you know regrets and and and basically it creates its own story like even the story within the story so you'll be telling your friends later how you were just about to get away and then this thing showed up and locked you and then you got to you you had your machine guns you had to switch to your knife and you know just stories then you hit them in the head and you made it and you got out in time before the bomb went off so it's like the story and then there's your story right so
00:19:28
Speaker
I think the reason to play this is, first of all, to have a good time. And it's, like I said, it's spot on as far as space and all that's concerned. And it's going to be an ongoing story. And you obviously can save it. So you don't have to continue playing. You can just play one 20 minute to half an hour game. There's a few maps that are bigger, that are double the space. So those are more.
00:19:55
Speaker
more involved which is good because you're playing and then you get to maybe play a one hour one and that but yeah so I think those are some of the points that you know we actually address specifically to make sure that people want to buy it and the other reason would be that you can get this almost you know 50 scenario book getting a hundred page scenario book with
00:20:17
Speaker
almost 50 maps and you know all the other things that you need to play the game uh for like 30 bucks so it's like price point yeah how can you like not get it just you know and then and then if you want more you get the bigger one or whatever and if you want miniatures you can buy it separately but we're not forcing you to do that and that's what
00:20:36
Speaker
That's when we backed it on, when we had it on Kickstarter. A lot of people are so happy because you're not forcing me to buy minis. I can buy this for 30 bucks. And then often they'll be like, I'll get the $60 version because it's got all this extra cool stuff. But you don't have to. You absolutely don't have to. Some people actually, like even one of my designers I work with, he likes doing it all pen and paper.
00:20:57
Speaker
like or pencil because yeah like he doesn't want to have all the counter he just wants to write it all down and if you're a role player like this is a great solution for a role player who doesn't have a dm and is interested in world war two zombie universe and yeah so that's that and another thing about it is that we have a sequel
00:21:15
Speaker
So basically what I wanted to say is, why would you buy this game?
Future Expansions and Sequels
00:21:18
Speaker
Well, it's not just a standalone game. We have a sequel called Escape from Project Risa, which is like a sequel, which like six months later, you know, in the Owl Mountains. And so if you like the game, the story continues, new characters, new weapons, you can bring your old characters over.
00:21:32
Speaker
And then there's a third one in this series called Escape From... No, it's not called... I just use that for the first two, Escape From. And then the third one is set in Africa, North Africa. It's called Africa Corpse 41. So, you know, there's movies and that's like a prequel to what happens. You get to kind of go back in time.
00:21:52
Speaker
Basically, it's going to have a lot to offer. It's a supported system. We have DLC stuff online. We have it in multiple languages. We're going to create a DIY scenario toolbox so people can design their own scenarios. We're going to give you graphics and new maps and icons and stuff that you can put on the maps and all that kind of stuff. You can design it from scratch. If you're a little bit savvy, you can do it in Word.
00:22:17
Speaker
So there's all the other stuff that's coming on board with that. And then we're also, well, we have the Viking one out that's just launching in two weeks. So if you're not as much into World War II or zombies, you can do nordic horror, which the Viking one uses the same system tailored for Vikings. And again, if you know the first system, you'll know 80% of the next system. So like that. So it's an expanding universe that we're supporting and keeping on going with.
00:22:47
Speaker
Well, that's awesome. That's very cool. So we talked about, you know, last question, the big question is how can somebody buy any of these games, any of the games, not just escape from Stalingrad Z, but any of the games you just mentioned?
Purchasing and Supporting Indie Games
00:23:03
Speaker
Well, yeah, on game found, all my stuff's on game found. So escape from Stalingrad Z, we've printed it, we've made 6,000 copies.
00:23:14
Speaker
on the first printing and we still have some inventory left where you can just buy it directly at chips. I collect the orders from one week and then the following week I give it to the distributor and then out they go. So you can just buy that and it'll go straight to you and you do that on game found. It says you know what's your pledge but it's not really a pledge anymore, it's just like your order. Acts of Escape and Sign Rites, you can buy that now in whatever format you like. There are some deluxe sets left.
00:23:40
Speaker
Um, and then escape from project Risa is also on game town, but it's now in the pledge manager mode. So you're basically. Pre-buying the game for delivery next year. Cause we're still developing it. And anyone who wants to, I'm an indie publisher. So that's this by getting that you're kind of supporting, supporting me in the business, right? You're going to get something out of it, obviously, but, but it's very helpful for us. So you can, um, you can, uh, uh,
00:24:09
Speaker
You can get it there for Stalingrad Z, and Gates of Nilheim, which is the Viking one, and Nordic Horror one, which has Frogger, and Trolls, and Mardrum. And if you haven't seen the miniatures for that one, you've got to take a look at that page after.
00:24:24
Speaker
it's going to for sure because we've gotten better as we've gone along our miniatures as much starting right here i think stand up miniatures but when we didn't reason we pushed it a little bit further and now that we're doing the viking when we're even pushing it further mine like really
00:24:41
Speaker
You'll see really awesome integers. Anyways, that's available on Gamefound. Sorry, you can go on Gamefound now and look up Gates of Nilheim, which is spelled real funny. So maybe you can write it down for people. And I... Yeah, so it's a weird, but that's going to launch in two weeks on November the 15th. But in the interim, you can sign up to get notification and stuff like that. So you're aware of it. So everything's on Gamefound.
00:25:09
Speaker
it's all there and you just type in the name that you like it'll come up and of course it'll kind of show the other stuff I do too so you'll it should be easy to find everything and that's where you can find those games and as a footnote next year that we have uh so gates of nilheim is going to is going to crowdfund now and then we have two games coming out next year one is going to be called the cats of nil uh the cats of mozami shell
00:25:34
Speaker
which is really cool.
Upcoming Family Games
00:25:36
Speaker
I don't know if I'm getting ahead of myself talking about this stuff on your podcast. Sorry, it's all good. We've got two games coming up next year. One is the Cots of Mont-Somme-Michel, which is set in France during the French Revolution.
00:25:50
Speaker
there is a place, a monastery called Mont Saint-Michel and in real life, I don't know, in real life back in the 1700s and whatever, you know, they were kind of blocked in and there was the stride of starving and they had a silo with wheat so they could live but the rats were eating it and then the cats came in and they basically saved them, you know, that's how the story goes. That's actually playing those cats, right? And you're fighting against rats and cockroaches and whatnot.
00:26:16
Speaker
And it's designed for it, so it uses the same basic system from Stalingrad Z, but it's stripped down a bit because it's designed for more family-friendly stuff, and you can play like, I would say a 10-year-old with the help of the parents can play it, no problem. And that's also a co-op when you're playing furry cats and all kinds of neat stuff like that.
00:26:35
Speaker
That's gonna be. We already started the first four scenarios. The rules are already written and so now we're just play testing working at the artwork is being worked on later this month. So there's a lot happening with that. And then we have another release for Christmas next year, but we'll leave that for. We'll do that one in the net in another podcast. We'll leave something to the imagination.
Conclusion and Thanks
00:26:58
Speaker
So I got to say, the other place to that, you know, where I did all my research was, uh, Rayboxgames.com and the escape from Stalingrad Z. I've got it. This is like a follow-up question. I love this. I love this as a, as a design concept for the page. The first thing that I did and I went to the Stalingrad Z page, I clicked the I.
00:27:21
Speaker
I don't know if I'm called marketing genius, but for your fans out there who are listening, basically there's just this really kind of eyeball that's floating there, you know, protest, and it says beside, do not click the eye. So I'm gonna get people to go to my page where I'm selling it, tell them not to click the eye, and then yeah, so thank you for clicking it. Everybody, I'm sure everybody clicks the eye, because it's just, it's interesting. It's kind of just out there, and when it said, do not touch it, like I gotta touch the eye, I mean.
00:27:50
Speaker
How much people enjoy the, you know, where they end up going is it's, you know.
00:27:56
Speaker
It's great. Marco, I can't thank you enough for joining us. I'm looking forward, I'm going to try to grab the game from Elric when he has a chance, when I have the chance next time I see him to try it out myself. I know that he's been playing through the scenario, so I don't know if he's all done with it. Looking forward to the Viking theme one, because you've hit two of my loves, historical loves is World War II and Viking times. Great. Well, then, yeah, you're going to love it. You'll love it. Yeah.
00:28:25
Speaker
So I can't thank you enough. I appreciate your time coming on. I know it's getting later in the day in Spain. And I look forward to hopefully talking to you again in the future when new games come out. Oh yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me on. Great. So everybody, thank you again for listening. This is Should I Play It? My name's Corey, and we will catch you on the next episode. Take care.