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I made a game! I've been working on it for almost 4 years now (it's anniversary is June 29th) and just yesterday we launched it on Kickstarter. It funded in 8 hours, and we're working towards our first stretch goal. I'm so excited   Heckin Hounds is a 2-7 player trick-taking game exploring the perils of professional dog walking in the Underworld. Players are given the task of walking Hades' collection of hounds. Do your job too well, and she'll promote you to management - a responsibility feared throughout the realm. Do your job too poorly, and you'll be demoted to professional dog food instead. The game is played with your hand facing outward, giving you no knowledge of the hounds you have. Every round has a different player serving as the shift leader, who can see both their hand and everyone else’s. The shift leader gives each player three clues as to the hounds they are holding - how helpful, useless, or beguiling the clue is up to you, but they must be true. The shift leader also assigns Cerberus to a player, a trump card pup that wins any trick he shows up to. Players have a few opportunities to try and manage their luck, and must promise how many shifts they will work (tricks they will take) based on the limited information they have of their own hand, and the hands of the other players they can see. Cards are played, tricks are won, and a new round begins. After everyone has taken a turn as the shift leader, the game is over. The player who scored the least without going negative did the least amount of work without being fired, and wins the game! Thus, Heckin Hounds is a game of being barely adequate.  You can find it on Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/527566924/heckin-hounds?ref=q52d0a You can also find it on BGG though the BGG page isn't quite finished yet. Mods need to approve images and videos and such. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/340813/heckin-hounds If nothing else, watch the trailer. It's to die for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBTIainkJ4E
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Jun 24, 2021 00:27
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 10:36 |
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Len posted:it's insane you guys backed day one I couldn't be happier. We broke 300 backers overnight, and are looking to break $8,000 any minute now.
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Jun 25, 2021 15:10
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Len posted:Does James have a playable copy? You could probably have him live stream some games with people from the shop He does! I think 4 prototype copies exist in the world.
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Jun 25, 2021 15:37
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armorer posted:Woohoo! I'm along for this hellhound ride Hellhounds worried me when James first pitched the retheme idea, because when I think of hellhounds it's usually a bit more dark/edgy. Other interesting theme ideas were an intergalactic petshop, which now I'm very glad we didn't go with because Alien Petshop launched on KS the week before we did. I absolutely love the Hades/Hellhounds theme now, especially once he linked the artists he had in mind.
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Jun 25, 2021 15:50
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Len posted:Bunch of people here somehow surprised that the parlor has a prototype copy I hope everyone had a great time with it! I wish I could have been there to play too. Stupid long distances. Pinwiz11 posted:Thanks for mentioning this in the KS thread, I'd have never seen it otherwise. Backed! Thank you for being a backer! It makes me so happy 
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Jun 26, 2021 05:07
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Len posted:Have you guys settled on final meeple shapes? The ones with the prototype feel too large for the score sheet. We had some problems with them getting bumped around a bunch As far as I know, nothing is set in stone until we sign off on the final print. The prototypes that exist now just use stock components from The Game Crafter.
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Jun 27, 2021 00:57
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I found out Heckin Hounds was on The Dice Tower's Crowdsurfing for this week, which I'm really torn on. Timestamped on the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvh428dFDq8&t=346s I don't usually watch Dice Tower, or much at all beyond the occasional SUSD, so I didn't really know what to expect. I assumed being the most popular outlet for board game news that it'd be a pretty informative look at the KS page. I loved that they saw the theme and enjoyed it. I loved that they could tell how much my publisher and I cared about the theme and story and humor involved in the game. Unfortunately, it seems that at least Tom had hardly even looked at the page before the episode. The thing he nailed me on was the player count, which is set for 2-7 players, and while he's not wrong to be skeptical, it feels like he could have done some more research to see how exactly it scales. One of the other people does mention that the hidden hands probably means it scales differently than you'd expect. I guess I just think that if you can obviously tell that the designer and publisher put a lot of love and attention to the game based on theme, that the same amount of love and attention would be spent on mechanics and give an indie designer/publisher the benefit of the doubt. The last point that bothered me, was that Tom at one point said "but is it good?" and I expected him or another person on the show to answer the question and give a more nuanced opinion on what they saw. Instead the question was left dangling. All I could think was "isn't it your job to tell us that?" Ultimately I can't really tell if the highlight helped or hindered me. I suspect it made no real difference, but it's hard to tell from the tracking. Backers/pledges have been pretty steady for most of the campaign. The interesting thing to me, is that even my best friends and most reliable play testers are skeptical of the 2 and 6-7 player counts. They've only personally played the 3-5 player games, due to the group size. My publisher was also skeptical, though in his case he personally played the 2 player variant with his wife before deciding to sign the game. I attribute the 2 player variant to being good enough to get signed. I also agree that the 3-5 player game is, probably, the best. I think 5 is my favorite player count, but I haven't had a player count I didn't think it worked for. It really surprised me at how well the mechanics scaled. It's going to be interesting to see how BGG user polling ends up for players.
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Jul 8, 2021 19:01
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:Any news on the shipping situation, specifically if all copie will be shipped from the US or from within the EU etc? I would love to back the game, but not quite "price of game doubles or triples after shipping from the United States + taxes & import fees" love. I totally understand the hesitation, but we're probably not going to have a full shipping update until it comes time to ship. The entire shipping industry is pretty in flux at the moment. From James: James posted:Which distribution partners we use in a given geographical area is somewhat dependent on the final backer totals, since as a new publisher we had to account for the possibility of failure. Currently we're on trend to potentially have an EU fulfillment partner since interest has (thankfully!) been strong in the project. If ultimately shipping values post-campaign end up being a large amount of sticker shock because of only one or two copies going to a given area, we will certainly honor refund requests.
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Jul 12, 2021 20:35
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The campaign ended with an outstanding $17,568 which was 349% of our goal. We had 695 total backers. I'm completely blown away by the support we got. I had a demo night at Miniature Market on Tuesday. I setup two tables and got to talk the game up to shoppers. It was really fun.  The turnout wasn't great, since it was a pretty slow night at the shop, but one of my best friends showed up and we played the two player game a bit. It's a really interesting game with two players. We played without the variant rules, which means that when you're not the shift leader you have almost no information. It's all about playing mind games between the two players and as the non-shift leader trying to disrupt the shift leader's carefully laid plans.
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Jul 16, 2021 15:04
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Haven't had much news to post with the Kickstarter over, but pre-production is happening and my publisher is finalizing the art files. Meanwhile, a very kind Board Game Arena developer started work a few weeks ago on a digital edition on BGA  I'm so excited!!! Alpha might be available as soon as this weekend? Either way, it'll be playable soon and I can't wait to be able to share it with more people. Frozen Peach fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Mar 26, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 07:09
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We're officially in alpha!!!
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Mar 26, 2022 08:09
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Today's update is some of the most exciting news in my design career. Heckin Hounds, is officially in production. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/527566924/heckin-hounds/posts/3679353 It's really exciting, and I've known every step of the way has been progress towards that end goal of having a published game. Every step so far has been the most exciting news in my design career. It's like that Lord of the Rings video where they cut "This is the farthest I've been from the shire" into every step Sam takes But at some point I'll arrive at my destination. A maximum distance from malaise to excitement. Just like Sam and Frodo's journey taking them a maximum distance from the Shire, assuming middleearth is a round world like earth is? Some big LOTR fan is going to jump in here I'm sure. I'm not sure that every release can be more exciting than the last, and the first might be the most exciting. We'll find out as I do more in the industry.
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Dec 2, 2022 01:49
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 10:36 |
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It's Doggo Delivery Day!!!   
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May 7, 2023 01:29
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