MIND MGMT Launches…and FUNDS in one day!

Wanted to make sure you knew that the new game designed by Sen and I, MIND MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game” launched yesterday on Kickstarter…….and funded in less than 14 hours! Wow!

The game is a one vs. many, hidden movement game and has been receiving amazing reviews so far. The game features amazing art by the NY Times Best Selling Author and Illustrator, Matt Kindt. It introduces the SHIFT System in which the losing side gets to open a sealed package after the game which will give them game-changing abilities the next time they play.

Check it out, watch the amazing video (made by Kazan Productions – highly recommended) and see what we’ve been up to lately!

Check out MIND MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game” on Kickstarter.

-Jay Cormier

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Stay informed about Jay and Sen’s newest game

Sen and I have been working for a long time on a game based on our favourite comic of the last 20 years, MIND MGMT. The main thing we want people to know about this game is that you literally don’t need to know anything about the comic to have a blast with this game. It’s a one vs. many, hidden movement game that plays in under an hour. The game is called, MIND MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game” and it’s hitting Kickstarter March 3rd, 2020.

If you want to stay informed about it, head on over to http://www.offthepagegames.com to sign up to their newsletter. We need all the support we can get for this game because it’s the first game where I’m also the publisher! Wowza. Lots of learning. I’ve been documenting my learning on my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/offthepagegames

-Jay Cormier

Board Games on the rise at Fan Expo in Toronto

I just got back from Fan Expo in Canada, where I was invited as a guest to speak on some panels. Fan Expo is mostly about celebrities and geek culture, but they’ve been growing their board game presence in the last few years. This was also a great opportunity for me to showcase the first game that I’ll be publishing as Off the Page Games, which is Mind MGMT: The Psychic Espionage “Game.”

Thursday afternoon I arrived and was able to walk around the north building marketplace for an hour or so. It’s pretty big, but 1/4 of the size of the south building marketplace. It’s unfortunate that the con is split over two buildings as it’s quite the trek from one to the other, especially since the main board game room was in the north building, but all the panels were in the south building!

Thursday at 8pm I was on my first panel which was about contracts in the board game industry. Really cool panel for me as I’ve now been on both sides of the contracts!
Friday I was able to demo Mind MGMT all day in the board game room. I had my banner up and prototype laid out and I was able to demo it to a lot of people. Some just wanted the quick pitch, some just played the training mission and others played the full game. The overwhelming response was awesome! It’s so great to get this game out in front of non-designers and non-playtesters to see their reaction. I also had postcards made up to hand out to everyone that stopped by. If people hang onto those postcards, then they can use them in some sort of secret way to unlock in-game bonuses once the game is released.

At 6pm I had a panel about how collaborating with other roles can make your game better. We didn’t have a moderator so I ended up moderating the panel! It was fun and great to hear other panelists insights on their process.

Saturday I was able to demo Mind MGMT a few more times until my panel about Playtesting at 2pm. Another fun panel with cool panelists. We reviewed questions you can ask to get the best feedback, where to find play testers and how to receive feedback. All pretty valuable lessons.

I was able to walk around the south building marketplace for a couple hours and spent a lot of time in Artist Alley, checking out all the cool creators. At 5 I was on a super fun panel all by myself, moderated by Sen, all about failing faster. We went through the Fail Faster Playtesting Journal and the rationale of why it was included.

At 6 I was on a panel all about the process of how In the Hall of the Mountain King came to be. The panel had Kwanchai Moriya, the illustrator, Josh Cappel, the art director, Helaina Cappel, the publisher, and me, 1/2 of the design team! It was great to review all the interactions and learnings we had as this game came to fruition. I even got to see the production sample of the game, and it looks so amazing!

After that, 20+ of us board gamey people all went to dinner in down town Toronto. It was great to chit chat with other industry professionals! After dinner I was able to pitch In the Hall of the Mountain King: The Card Game to Helaina and Josh, and it was pretty wild. Why? Wellllll…. Graeme and I have never tested this version! Normally this is a no-no, but I was upfront with them and let them know that this is pretty much an alpha game. Still, I thought it would be good to show it to them, just to see if they like the direction it was going. Good news – they did! No ones sure of anything yet, but once we test it a whole lot more, we’ll see what they want to do with it. They are interested in growing that brand, and so are we!

Sunday was the final day, and it was eventful! I was on two panels: rulebooks, and games in education (which was the most attended panel by far). Both were amazing panel with such varied expertise from all the panelists. It was really an honour to be included in them. With one hour until I had to leave, I met with Jon Gilmour (you know, designer of Dead of Winter and Dinosaur Island, to name a few). This was a very special meeting for me because it was the first meeting I had where a designer was pitching me a game! Oh right, I’m a publisher now! Jon and his buddy Ian has a game they designed that’s based on a great comic, and has that comic creator’s blessing, so it’s a perfect fit for me (since my company, Off the Page Games will focus on publishing games based off of creator owned comic books). The pitch was great and the game looked amazing and I can’t wait to play it. He let me take the prototype home with me. This is new territory for me, but it’s awesome. I’d be so excited to publish a game by Jon and Ian.

So that was my Fan Expo experience. It was the second con that I’ve been invited to as a guest, but the first where they flew me out and paid for my hotel. Here’s hoping I get invited back next year and that they keep growing their board game presence.

-Jay Cormier

Want to run a board game company?

As some of you already know, I’ve decided to start my own board game company called Off the Page Games! Whaaaa? Really? Yes. Yes I am. Not only that, but I’m going to document my process of starting this business through YouTube videos. If you’ve ever wondered what it would take to start your own board game company, check it out, subscribe and follow along as I’ll be posting a new video every week detailing my process. Now I’m not claiming to be an expert, but I’ll share with you what I’m doing and also react to suggestions from you as well! Here’s the announcement video, and then the first video of the series is below that.

 

For a long time Sen and I have been asked why we don’t just run our own publishing company and we’ve always answered that we would rather spend our time designing games than running a business. So what’s changed? Well, I recently ran the Kickstarter for my Fail Faster Playtesting Journal and learned a lot throughout that process, so I feel like I have more of the skills that will be needed. Also, one of the games that Sen and I designed was with a publisher that no longer exists – so we got the rights back. This game was based on my favourite comic book of the last 20 years. When discussing what to do next with the game, it was the creator that recommended that we do it ourselves! So here we go!

I hope you follow along and help me out whenever you see me do something that’s not so smart! 🙂

Jay Cormier

Fail Faster Playtesting Journal Launching

I’m so excited to announce the launch of the Fail Faster Playtesting Journal Kickstarter campaign. I’ve been working on this project for a year now and am excited to see what happens once it hits. You can get one final reminder by signing up to the newsletter at www.failfaster.ca (and you’ll get a free 16 page guide to Sales Sheets for board games as well). See you at 10am EST on Tuesday, March 5th (up until 6pm EST on March 28th).

-Jay Cormier

Free Guide to Sales Sheets

Interested in reading a 16 page guide that’s all about Sales Sheets for board game designers? In it I share the history of how they came to be, why I continue to use them and how to make your own. I include 5 actual Sales Sheets for games that ended up getting published, maybe because of the Sales Sheets?!!

To get a copy, head on over to www.failfaster.ca and sign up for their newsletter. Fail Faster is a new venture that I am doing as a solo adventure! It’s a playtesting journal that will guide designers to take the notes they need to take in order to become better playtesters and ultimately, better designers. It will be on Kickstarter from March 5th to March 28th.

-Jay Cormier

Launch of Fail Faster: Playtesting Journal

Jay Cormier here to let you know that I’ve got a solo project that I’m proud to announce! It’s the launch of a new venture for me: the Fail Faster Playtesting Journal. It’s coming to Kickstarter on March 5th, 2019.

This journal has been developed to help game designers take better notes during their playtests. I’ll unveil more as we get closer, but for now, head on over to www.failfaster.ca to sign up to the newsletter to stay informed!

-Jay Cormier

My Short Adventure at The Gathering

Last year I chose not to attend the Gathering due to the birth of my twins, but this year I was ‘allowed’ to go, though only from Friday to Monday…so I had to make the most of it!

Friday

I flew into London, Ontario so that Sen and I could drive down to Niagara Falls together. We got there late afternoon and we realized that it was the first time we’ve ever been there on the first Friday as it was fairly quiet. With no publishers in sight, we got to have fun and just play games!

We played Deception from Grey Fox Games with Jon Gilmour and a growing group of participants as we played it 4 times in a row. It’s a really fun game that mixes Mysterium with Werewolf. I got to play Azul from Next Move Games with Eric Lang, which was great as I hadn’t had a chance to play this one yet! It’s fun and thinky and a dash of screw you in there. Then Rodney Smith showed up and we played The Mind a few times. This game is super interesting! It’s like The Game, but with no talking! Then we played Deja Vu – and it got crazy as we all fought for the various pieces. We’re not sure if the fighting aspect is in the rules, but I’m sure that’s how I’ll want to play it from now on! I managed to crush everyone as I’m pretty good at speed games.

Saturday

We started our Saturday off with a pitch to Maple Games. We were pitching a game that we recently got back from a publisher that allowed their time to elapse. It’s a 1 vs. many, hidden movement game and it was fun to play this game again. Daryl from Maple Games wants to sign this one asap! He was already familiar with the game because he actually worked at IDW Games as a developer when we first submitted this game, and even back then he was a champion for our game.

Then I saw Peter and Phillip from Eggertspiele and they were free so I showed them In The Hall of the Mountain King designed by Graeme Jahns and myself. They both really enjoyed it and thought it might be a bit too easy for an Eggertspiele game and a bit too hard for a Plan B game, but they liked it enough to seek out Sophie and Martin from Plan B to play it right then. We played it again and it was confirmed that it was indeed to complicated for a Plan B game, so then Sophie left it with Peter to determine if it was good enough for Eggertspiele.

Since we had the attention of Martin from Pretzel, Sen and I showed him all of our expansion cities for Junk Art. It’s always interesting playing and pitching to Martin as he has an amazing brain that can find the most fun and most unique aspects to any game. He liked most of our cities and gave us direction on how to proceed.

By now it was time for our annual tradition where a bunch of us head out to have some yummy wings at Duffs, and then we go to a movie! Usually we try to see a horror movie and this year A Quiet Place just opened, so it was perfect timing. We all seemed to really enjoy the movie even if we had qualms with some of the world building.

When we got back to the hotel, we played more games, like another round of The Mind and then we got to try the prototype of Roll Through the Ages: Medieval Age. This game had tons of pieces that snapped into a grid as you built out your city and we all really enjoyed it! I’m not allowed to show any pics of that one yet though. Then Sen and I fooled around with an alpha prototype of a game based on the comic Mind MGMT and while there were some interesting elements, there wasn’t enough there yet to know what to do next. Bah!

Sunday

Sunday, or as we might end up calling it from now on – Zevday, was jam packed full of Zev-y goodness. Before getting into our day of Zev, I was able to re-pitch FANimals to Helaina from Kid’s Table Board Games. I had pitched this to her at GenCon last year, received some feedback and changed the core mechanics because of it. She really seemed to like the changes and asked to keep he copy and for me to send a copy of the new cards. Done and done!

Then we started our Zevday with our Godzilla game. This is a game we had signed with Toy Vault, who had the license to Godzilla through Toho at the time. Unfortunately Warner Brothers came in and purchased Toho and that made getting the rights a lot more complicated for some reason. So Toy Vault was fine with us pitching the game to another publisher, and knowing that Wizkids has a lot of experience with licenses and also that Zev is a huge Godzilla fan, we all knew this was an important pitch!

The pitch couldn’t have went better as I played this 1 vs. 1 card game against Zev and was about to decimate him, when he pulled out some surprises and came away with the win! He really loved the game and said he’d do it if he can get the license! Huzzah!

Then we showed him our hidden movement game to Zev and he really liked that one as well. 2 for 2! We all went for lunch and then afterwards I showed him a game designed by Don Kirkby and myself called War of the Words. It’s a game about trying to communicate with aliens via all sorts of mini word games. He really liked this one too! He said he’d like to test it with more people but really wants to do it! Wow – 3 for 3! We finished up by pitching In the Hall of the Mountain King and this was the only one that didn’t fit with him or the Wizkids brand. OK, 3 for 4 is not too shabby!

We then finished our Zevday by playing Tichu with him and Stefan Brunelle but are sad to report that we couldn’t repeat our victory from last year! It’s the cards I tells ya – the cards!!

I then found Nathan McNair and Jon Gilmour to show them Skirmishes, a game I designed with Shad Miller. I was excited about this pitch because this game seemed like a good match for this publisher. JF Gagne from Panda joined in as my wing man and we played a 4 player game. The biggest challenge to this pitch was that we were within the last few days for the Dinosaur Island Kickstarter so both Jon and Nathan were preoccupied throughout the pitch. That didn’t seem to matter too much because Nathan showered quite a bit of praise on the game. Sometimes you can never tell if a publisher really likes a game you’re showing them or not, but when they continue to find new things to praise about the game, then I feel pretty confident that they liked it! They took the game back with them to test further!

Monday

I started the day with Sen as we fooled around with our new alpha prototype game that’s set in the Junk Art family and is all about dropping frames in order to score points. It’s still early in development but when Martin from Pretzel saw it, he got very excited and wants to make it his 2020 Pretzel game! Nice!

Then I had a pitch session with Huch! as I wanted to show them FANimals and we played through it twice as we tweaked a rule that made the second game a lot more interesting. It was fun to play with them as well as William Attia (who has a revised Caylus coming out soon!). Then I showed them In the Hall of the Mountain King and we had quite the epic game! Ben really loved it and Britta said she wanted to play it again – which Ben says is always a good sign! Since it was the last day for me at the Gathering, I gave my copy to Huch to take back as Eggertspiele said they really liked it but are going to pass. All of the publishers were interested in our next step with the game – which was to make one central mountain that all players play onto, instead of each player having their own mountain.

Next up was my pitch to Eric Lang from CMON. I showed Skirmishes to him as it seemed to be the kind of game they make. Eric spent a bit of time to explain the new direction that he wants to take CMON and this game no longer fits within what they’re looking for. He liked In the Hall of the Mountain King a bit more but still not a perfect fit. Sometimes rejection can be ok when you get knowledge of the kind of games a publisher wants instead.

We were able to flag down Scott from Renegade and quickly showed him our sales sheets for our games as he didn’t have tons of time. We were able to chat about a game he signed of ours awhile ago and what the future of it will be…which is still uncertain, unfortunately.

Our last pitch was with Tony from USAopoly. While we didn’t have a lot of time, he did express interest in trying some of our games later. He also let us know about a project he’s working on and asked if we’d be interested in bidding on it. Once we knew more about it – we jumped at the chance! We’re very excited about it (and can’t say any more yet)!

And that was all the time I had at the Gathering this year. Sen and I drove back to London late that night so that I could get up 3 hours later and get to the London airport for a 6am flight back to Vancouver.

Oddly enough, that didn’t stop the action on my game at the Gathering! Fabio from CSE Games was there midweek and brought the game Sigils that was designed by Shad Miller and myself to show around. This game was signed last year but he still likes getting it out to show it around and generate interest.

Throughout the time that I was there, I had talked up In the Hall of the Mountain King to Helaina a bunch and she wanted to try it, but we couldn’t get our paths to cross again. Fortunately Sen was returning the following weekend and he coaxed the prototype away from Britta and Ben in order to show it to Helaina. They played it and everyone seemed to really enjoy it! She now wants a copy for herself too! Sweet!

So that’s about it. My short, but whirlwind adventure at the Gathering this year. I didn’t get to play many other games or prototypes – though I did get to see the new 7 Wonders expansion: Armada being played and understand how it works. Looks really cool as this expansion tries to make you care about players other than your direct neighbours.

It’s a lot of work leading up to the Gathering, so I’d like to thank all the playtesters that helped get our games to where they needed to be, and now it’s a lot of work after the Gathering, working on feedback we received!

-Jay Cormier

Game Pages Updated

We’ve been pretty silent for the last…forever…which can be attributed to the fact that a little over a year ago, I became the father of twin boys! They do keep you busy!!

I spent a little time today and updated our game pages (Under the OUR GAMES link) so that they include all our games. On these pages you can find links to purchase the game, links to the rule book and all the reviews we can find!

Newly added content: Junk Art, D&D: Rock Paper Wizard, and Zombie Slam.

Next up I’m preparing for JayCON! This is a made up ‘convention’ where I’m inviting all my local designer friends as well as non-designers that are interested in playtesting, to come and test some games! I’ve rented out a common room of a condo nearby so we’ll have plenty of space for everyone. It’s great timing as The Gathering is only a couple weeks after this, so hopefully all my game will be in a better state after JayCON! JayCON also coincides with my birthday, and my wife has given me the entire day and night off so I can do this! What a great birthday present!! If you’re local to Vancouver and are interested in attending, let me know!

-Jay

First review of Junk Art – Plastic Version!

Here’s our first review for the plastic version of Junk Art – and it’s a hit! The fine folk at Just Push Start have written a wonderful review, saying things like:

“Junk Art has, in no time at all, become one of my go to gathering/party games to grab down off the shelf and get to the table.”

” Fun is well and truly at the core of Junk Art.”

“Junk Art manages to guarantee laughs, pointing, exclaiming and a few good clattering of pieces bouncing across the table.”

You can read the entire review here!

-Jay Cormier