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Relaunching Diabolical Dave's Rumble Throwdown
44 Plays3 months ago
The Grimmsteel Games crew returns to talk about relaunching the crowdfunding campaign for its game, Diabolical Dave's Rumble Throwdown. Stretch goals, solo and two-player mode, community feedback, and refining the game's rules are the topics of conversation. Listeners can check the game out at www.grimmsteel.com/ddrt.
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Transcript
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to Should I Play? I'm Corey with Grim Steel Games, and we're kicking off what I talked about the other day as season two of the podcast ah with our own game, Diabolical Dave's Rumble Throwdown. I once again have Mike and John, my co-conspirators, partners in crime, whatever you want to call it. And ah we're talking about the relaunch of our campaign. So a little backstory, ah we launched Diabolical Dave's Rumble Throwdown on Kickstarter, March 2024. and had just great support but also an amazing amount of ah feedback from our community talking about the things that they would have wanted to see in the game. And after some deep introspection and probably a couple drinks too, we decided to ah
00:00:54
Speaker
pause the campaign, reevaluate the game, and come back even stronger than ever. So ah today what we're gonna do is we're gonna talk a little bit about some of those decisions, the community feedback, and the launch of our, the relaunch of our campaign coming on July 16th, 2024. A seminal date in history because it's also my birthday. I'll kick it over to to Mike and to John. you know We originally talked about the game being a three to six player experience. we We are coming off of COVID. We really just wanted people to get together again and play games and have fun. ah But the community said, hey, you know what? We really would love a solo or two player mode of this game. We think it would be awesome.
00:01:34
Speaker
And after a lot of evaluation, we decided, you know what? That was good advice. ah So Mike, you know, why the change? How did that come? How did those modes come about as part of the relaunch of the game? Well, the solo mode. kind of existed prior. It was just me doing play testing on Tabletop Simulator. I was hell-bent on not having a solo in two-player mode because, like you said, we wanted that multiplayer experience. But after evaluating the feedback and saying, okay, how can we make this solo experience
00:02:07
Speaker
more like a multiplayer experience without the players. We had to introduce a what we call the the superstar action deck. So we have a dedicated deck now that the superstars can draw from during their matches with players. This will simulate another player playing one shots and weapons on behalf of the superstar to make things a little bit more difficult so that way it's not just the same number every single time. In this in this game, you're you're trying to exceed a certain number based on the proficiency of the superstar you're going against. And if you know the number going in, you might say, hey, I'm going to win this match. I'll go ahead and go and do it. We wanted to add some variance to that. So now there is that superstar action deck for both solo and two-player mode.
00:02:56
Speaker
When it comes to filling the event pool, we've also added a random D6 to be added because normally everybody has a style or gimmick in play and the gimmicks contribute to that event pool. So we felt that that number of crowd points available per event was going to be low if you only had one person. So we now we add in an extra D6 of crowd points. ah There are some differences in how the game is played. You know, we remove certain cards that are only effective in in multiple player situations. Stuff like sneak attack and cut a promo and special guest referee. You're not going to be a special guest referee for your own match.
00:03:34
Speaker
So we had to remove those temporarily in that mode. um The action deck itself has a bunch of weapons and one shots, and there's no requirement. So there's no faction with the superstar anyway. And then the two player mode is pretty much the same thing, but there are certain cards you reintroduce and you bring back the sneak attack and whatnot, because they're actually the commentator role will switch back and forth from one player to the other. And we have playtested those modes extensively again. to make sure that they met and exceeded the same experience that you get when you play with three to six players. The one thing I noticed from it, though, was it it's actually really good. Solo Mode is really good for learning the game. So for people that have never played the game,
00:04:20
Speaker
And instead of being in a room with a bunch of people and everybody's trying to figure it out all at once, you can actually take time and play it by yourself, and you get to choose your style and gimmick when you play solo and two player modes. Whereas in the three to six player setup, you randomly dealt some gimmicks and styles to choose from. In this scenario, we can actually spend more time learning how a gimmick and certain style combo come together. And then maybe when it comes up in a three to six player game, you can say, hey, I know how to play this combo because I've played it before.
00:04:52
Speaker
All right, so you mentioned the superstar action deck. And maybe I want to kind of dig into that a little bit because I think this is a cool like addition. And I know we're goingnna we're probably going out of order here. But, you know, so those cards are actions that your that the your opponent is going to take against you regardless. Right. So when you're playing a three to six player game, you know, Mike, I'm playing against you. You're wrestling a superstar. I don't want you to win your match. I throw out a a one shot or a weapon that that the superstar you're playing on behalf of. In this case, that happens automatically. You know, let's talk a little bit ah more about how the the wrinkles that that throws in because I felt like when we play tested it, it made the game more dynamic and more interesting, but also harder to to actually win your matches.
00:05:33
Speaker
what What you're actually speaking to is is ah an optional mode or a variation. We're going to be introducing a bunch of different variations. Now normally the superstar action deck is not used in a three to six player game because the other players are there to take those actions on behalf of the superstars. But We actually played with this, but we call it the superstar action variation, which uses that superstar action deck in the three to six player mode when you normally would only use it into the one to two player mode. So this makes it a little bit harder and, let's just to say, less predictable. I mean, of course, when you have multiple players, you don't you can't predict what they're going to do anyway. But some players like to be
00:06:15
Speaker
ah less confrontational and just work on building themselves up. So if you're in a group of people where people are not interacting too much, this forces some sort of interaction. Plus, it gives you the ability to maybe use some more of your abilities. Certain gimmicks have abilities to stop or reverse weapons in one shots. And you see more of that happening. So you're not just building a war chest of crowd points. You actually have to use them to get further and win your match. We had decided during the first campaign to not have stretch goals. great we set We wanted complete experience, expansions in game, we'll talk about expansions in a little bit, ah expansions in game, and you get what you get and we fund, we fund, we don't fund. you know It's in all truly an all or nothing. The crowdfunding community, I think, really loves stretch goals. I think that we heard that loud and clear from everybody we talked to.
00:07:08
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit about the stretch goals, um we talk about the, you know, kind of what the thought process that went into the ones that we decided on and ones that we didn't decide on, but also, you know, just the general talk about that. And, and you know, full disclosure, I appeared on the crowdfunding nerds podcast while we were making this decision to talk about stretch goals and the, you know, the good and the bad about them. So this has kind of been, it's been a big topic in the crowdfunding community. So we had our our base game and we decided what what you just said, we were going to give everybody everybody the complete experience. And in order to make things a little more intriguing, maybe leave some things behind the curtain, we decided, OK, what can we do to make things better? So unfortunately, we decided to postpone any expansion. Originally, we were going to have our adult-friendly breaking kayfabe and infernal invasion for having independent wrestlers. We've had to postpone that until a later date.
00:08:03
Speaker
But what we did do is we pulled a couple of the gimmicks that were going to exist in the Breaking Cave, and we brought them into this, what we're now going to be calling the Champions Edition. This is going to be a deluxe edition of the game called the Champions Edition. Now, this edition of the game is only going to be sold right now through Kickstarter and through our website and through a handful of potential brick and mortar retailers that back us during the campaign. So when it came to thinking about what we could do to make the game better, we decided to go back to an old, obviously we did a poll to find out what people wanted to do. And the top things we came up with were tag team division, which has always plagued me, but we have to write it out.
00:08:44
Speaker
um and One of the ideas we came up with had to do with playable superstars. Now in the previous rule book, we had a superstar mode where you would just take the superstar card and you would make some variations and use it. But instead of doing it that way, we decided we used to have this pre-gen idea we played with a long time ago, where some people wouldn't know you know what to do with their cards when they got them. So we figured, hey, how about we just create a pre-generated wrestler, kind of like a pre-gen character in RPG to learn with.
00:09:16
Speaker
So we're we're taking these actual wrestlers, superstars, I should say, and making them playable. Of course, you remove them from the superstar deck because you're not going to wrestle yourself unless you're the undertaker from 25 years ago. And then you get to build that superstar. So basically, you're taking their persona. You get a few moves, maybe do only one move, some attire. You use their style, which is their base style. Of course, it can change throughout the game. We're going to tell you which gimmick to start with. And so there's not going to be any overlap. everybody There won't be no conflict. So if one person wants to play one superstar and one person wants to play another, there will be no overlap or conflict in the cards that they get. And then the other mode, the other thing was having more gimmicks. Because as we continue to develop the gimmicks that were know appear in Breaking Cave Fade,
00:10:03
Speaker
We started thinking of, oh, remember this, remember that. So now we have, I believe we're at seven new gimmicks that potentially can be unlocked in the stretch goal process. Um, and they're pretty iconic. If you think about them, like, for example, one of those, I'll tease a couple of them during the podcast. So one of them we have is the beast master, which is reminiscent of your Jake, the snake Roberts or your Coco be aware. And there's another one called One Tough Son of a Gun, which is like your Steve Austin. Even didn't like the Road Warriors back in the day, it didn't matter if they were facing the hill. Everybody loved them and they fed off the energy. So there's those types of characters, plenty more gimmicks to come. And the tag team mode, that was the one that we were having some problems with. What it really comes down to is how the commentator role gets passed around, but we just kind of came to the resolution that there may be some matches where there's no dedicated
00:10:53
Speaker
You could have four player game, and it's one tag team versus another player tag team, and there's one commentator, and he's in the match. And there was no real way around that when you add these types of modes. That was kind of what we were looking at before, but we just said, you know what? At this point in time, we just have to roll with it. But those are like the top three categories. Of course, there are some upgrades to components we're also going to be offering to um just to increase the quality and longevity of the product. But yeah, I think that having these stretch goals in place, it's going to be fun when we get to the tournaments. We'll tell you that much right now, but I'll leave it at that. yeah That's going to be there to help give the community some more input onto playable superstars. Yeah, I think that what the stretch goals did for us too is a byproduct really was creating some really cool gimmicks. I think the the the most fun part of the play testing that for me has been
00:11:48
Speaker
the the new gimmicks that have come out and the the variations on it. and And I keep using the word dynamic, and I think I mean it you know sincerely. It made the game more dynamic. The gimmicks that we had before were great, but now the the variations on gameplay are just, ah you know we called it infinite replayability before. I think this really helps it as well. so And listening to the community, I think you know ultimately that was that was a big part of it. We mentioned the expansions. yeah know we We brought in some of the brick and kayfabe, but you know let's just touch on that for a second. you know what's What's actually happening with those expansions, the inferal infernal invasion and brick and kayfabe?
00:12:26
Speaker
Well, there nothing is happening with them right now. I mean, we've got some of these cards fleshed out, but there's no ah solid artwork done. Like I said, we we took over, we took a couple of gimmicks and some other Swingo cards from Breaking K-Fade, and we're bringing those into this Champions Edition. But right now, those expansions are still planned to happen at some point after we fulfill this Champions Edition. And We don't want, yeah especially some of our independent wrestler fans, we don't we don't want them to feel like we're abandoning them. We are going to be coming back to it. we just
00:13:01
Speaker
had to refine this new campaign to be a little bit more focused. People thought that it was too expensive. It was a $100 pledge level that we had before for the base game, plus the two expansions. They felt that that was too costly. So we're actually bringing the price the base pledge down to $59, and that's going to be for the Champions Edition. We are also opening up extra slots for the creative superstar. So if you watched our last campaign you'll know that we provided the opportunity for one of each style to be created where you pledge at the $500 level and you can submit a photo and help us collaborate on the name of the wrestler, their style, their moves, um and their quotes and all that.
00:13:49
Speaker
we have to go in increments of four. And last time we had all four of those slots sell out immediately and we had other people wanting to buy them. So at this point we decided we're just going to go with eight. So two of each. That keeps us on our timeline because our artist has a certain amount of workload he can take on every month. And if we give him eight pieces to do, that keeps us on track for going to production in October. if we go beyond that, then we're going to blow our timeline. And we've committed to not doing that. So none of our stretch goals are going to extend our timeline. And this kind of flows into my next topic. And and I'll let you guys kind of handle this one. you know The impact that the community has had on development and you know how we decided to change our approach. you know Let's talk a little bit about that, because it's important. I think you know we're we're making a game because we love gaming. right I mean, let's let's just face it. that That's the sole reason that we're here. We're we're creative.
00:14:46
Speaker
We'd like to think of ourselves as creative. We definitely had to produce something. And, but ultimately we want to get this into the hands of people in a timely fashion, right? We don't, we don't want to be waiting a year or two years to get a game into somebody's people's hands. but So ultimately it's about the community and we've had some really good back and forth with people um who have had opinions, good in, you know, negative and positive. And we've taken all those into account. um So what impact have, has the community, have our fans had on everything that we've done? And, you know, let's just talk a little bit about that because I think it's, it's, it's important to acknowledge the fact that, that this is a kind of a community created game, even though we're the ones who kind of, we built it.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, well, the solo and two player elements are clearly the the highest in demand. And I'm guessing that's a holdover from a lot of games that came out during the past few years that featured those types of modes. And you kind of just, it's almost like they become default. Like you have to have it. You can't not have it, which, you know, growing up, how many times, how many games did we have that you played by yourself? It was called solid care. And that was it. So. And video games. Well, you know, video, video games, there's less to the imagination there, but.
00:16:02
Speaker
yeah Basically, what I'm getting at though is when it comes to board games, card games, right now there were very you didn't have solo stuff. Or if you were playing by yourself, it's like what we did, you just just to figure out the game, try out different mechanisms in development. But it wasn't until after we decided, okay, we're going to do a solo mode that we started playing and we're like, Hey, you know, this is actually fun. Now that I remove myself from the development side of it and just play the game like as if I were a fan playing in solo mode, I was like, wow, you know, that it's it's faster. You definitely get through the game a lot more quickly. And and it's it still has challenges to it. It's not just a walk in the park because you have that superstar action deck. But that was some great feedback from the community. It forced us to think outside the box and so
00:16:52
Speaker
It really wasn't as overwhelmingly difficult as I had thought it would be. In my mind, I always put up those barriers, okay, we're not going to do this. I don't want to even have to think about that because I'm the type of type of person that I'll stew on things for a long time. As far as other elements, like I said, the stretch goal thing that really made me think a little bit outside the box because And I think when we talked to Andrew, he told me, he's like, you have a programmer mind. And i I laugh because I do programming. So I had to shed some of my programmer mind in in favor for the marketing mind. And I've learned some things about how people interact. And you really just want to have fun. it's um like You're gamifying the process of funding a game. So we did some thoughts on that. We've done notes. I'm looking at them right now.
00:17:41
Speaker
introducing these stretch goals has made us think outside that box. You know one of the things that that's really been kind of fun during this too is it's it's forced us to kind of go back and really look closely at the rule set of the game and you know some of the new gimmicks um some of the new swindles that have come up all of the game modes Mike that we've talked about that we've kind of created you know the the superstar action deck, the tag team, everything, like all the, all of the different variations. One of the things that's really kind of stood out to me is the number of little, and this is probably speaking to how deeply strategic this game is, but the number of little things, John, that you've kind of found as we've, you know, as we've played this. So I think of games strategically. I think Mike, you talk, you know, you talk about your, you've talked about for a long time, your programmer mind, right? You're very logical.
00:18:31
Speaker
very regimented. I tend to look for ways to win. ah you know Maybe it's the athlete, maybe it's whatever the case may be um in my background. But John, you you're... your ability to kind of poke at that little ah loopholes in the games, which, by the way, drives anybody who DMS for you nuts in in a role playing game, um is your ability to to to defeat the system within the rules. We'll talk a little bit about that, too, because I think it's actually kind of cool. And it really shown through in the last couple of months where your ability to kind of look at rule sets and kind of quietly do things and say, you know what, it's written this way, but I'm going to
00:19:09
Speaker
You know what? I'm going to push the envelope a little bit. I'm going to push the edge. yeah I think it's kind of cool. And I've we've talked about this off off the side, but I'd love to hear your mindset on pushing the pushing the rules a little bit. Needless to say, I am a big proponent of the air bud rule. If it doesn't specifically say that a dog can't play, then a dog can play. You know, there you go. ah Yeah. In any system, I just naturally look for ways that I can make a character more powerful. I can find a way to make a character. Sometimes it's it started off as a way to make a character more unique because my my imagination would say I want to do this. So how can I do it? And if the rules didn't specifically say to me, well, you can't do that. Well, then I would find a way to do it. And that is just carried over into every game I've ever played since, which
00:20:03
Speaker
Like you said, it can annoy game masters and fellow players alike. And it has worked to our benefit in this game and making sure that the rules are much more concise, easy to understand that they're, they're not going to provide confusion so that when a player looks at the rule, the rules, they don't say, well, you know, it can be construed this way and create those kinds of arguments that can sometimes pop up at the table, which. can detract from the game because then you spend hours and hours discussing how the rules can be played. You know how many games I've played where the creators put out a complete set of rules and then have to put out you know a frequently asked question sheet to clarify a hundred different rules. The back sheets
00:20:51
Speaker
end up being longer than the actual rules. We really didn't want to do that. I think that this this was ah has been a forcing function for us, this reset. We didn't change the game fundamentally, but we kind of did change the game fundamentally in the past couple of months. And I think that ultimately, and and thanks to that attention to detail, I think and think everybody's going to be better off for it. And we're creating a game that we can you know we can kind of hang our hats on and be proud of as our first effort as as game developers. All right, guys. Well, you know, we are, as we're recording this, we're only 11 days away from our crowdfunding relaunch. I want to thank everybody who has provided feedback, provided guidance, and really made this journey kind of a cool learning journey. I know, Mike, you mentioned that you've learned a lot. I know I've learned a ton.
00:21:41
Speaker
Things that I didn't never even thought I'd be thinking about at this at this point in my life This has been a great learning experience. It's been a pleasure ah bringing this to market and hopefully knock on wood we're we're talking in a month or two about a successful campaign and Talking about our next game, but ah for everybody who's listening, you know, check us out on the Kickstarter follow our Facebook group um you Just look up Diabolical Dave's Rumble Throwdown on Facebook and you know we hope you enjoy the game when it comes out in early 2025.