The Rise of Overlord
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 07:42:01 PM

It's been another great day, as we saw the campaign surpass milestones like 2,000 backers and $100,000 in pledges. It's amazing to see so many people throwing their support behind this project. So it seems like a great day to talk about how the entire Overlord project came together. To make a game about villains, you need a team of heroes. Here’s a look at the people who helped bring this project to life!

Aaron Mesburne, Game Designer

Aaron is a Seattle-based game designer who has a deep love of board games and video games. Overlord was a perfect marriage of his interests and will be Aaron’s first published design. In the rare moments when Aaron isn’t designing games, he enjoys hiking the Pacific Northwest and taking care of his many plants.

Kevin Russ, Game Designer

Kevin is an experienced game designer and photographer. It looks like 2020 will be Kevin’s breakout year, with three games hitting shelves: Calico, Tumbletown and Overlord. When he’s not designing board games, he’s roaming the west taking landscape photographs.

Chris and Johnny O'Neal, Publishers

"The Brothers Wise" are the founders of Brotherwise Games. While they co-designed Boss Monster and Call To Adventure, they also love working as publishers for talented designers on projects like Unearth, Overlord, and Night of the Ninja. One brother is much cooler than the other, but we'll let you figure out which one.

Matt Paquette, Graphic Design Lead

Matt heads up Matt Paquette Co., a Canadian graphic design studio that specializes in tabletop games. Matt has brought his unique and polished designs to over a dozen major board game, including two Origins Game of the Year nominees for 2019: Tiny Towns and Call To Adventure. When Matt isn't at his computer, you might find him swing dancing or eating delicious baked goods.

Beverly O'Neal, Operations

One of the biggest challenges for any indie publisher is getting everything where it needs to go. As Operations Manager for Brotherwise, Beverly keeps orders moving and game stores in stock. As a Bar Method instructor and mother of three boys, she’s always on the move.

Viyda Ravi Kumar, Marketing

Vidya, a newcomer to the team, helps Brotherwise as a consultant for our marketing and influencer outreach efforts. A longtime video gamer, Vidya recently discovered the joys of hobby board games.

Darren Calvert, Cover Artist

Darren is an Edmonton-based artist and designer whose work includes All Hands on Deck and Dungeons & Dragons: Acquisitions Incorporated. Brotherwise has wanted to work with him ever since he did the limited edition cover art for Boss Monster 2, and we're in love with the cover he created for Overlord.

Bertrand Dupuy, Pixel Artist

Betrand, known as "DaLk" in the pixel artist community, is a talented artist who has worked with Brotherwise games for years. In addition to crafting many of the terrain tiles and sprites in this set, Bertrand led the design of the player and market boards.

Raou, Pixel Artist

The pixel artist known as "Raou" is a man of mystery responsible for many indie videogame projects. This is his first project with Brotherwise, but he played a key role: he originated each terrain design, defining the core look of each tile set.

Dani Oliver and Alberto Hernandez, Pixel Artist

Dani and Alberto are a dynamic duo of pixel artists based in Madrid. They've done some great work on indie video games, including Souldiers by Retro Forge Games. They created the amazing new Boss sprites for Overlord.

Maximiliano "Meisi" Olate, Pixel Artist

Meisi, who also goes by "PomPomKing," is another Boss Monster alum who returned to help craft the look of Overlord. Meisi worked to expand the different terrain tiles, and is on deck to develop more variations if we unlock more stretch goals!

Our project video was edited by multitalented creator Ryan Printz. The video's killer chiptune soundtrack was composed by cosmicgem829, and narration was recorded by Amrit Sandhu. 

We’d also like to mention Greg, Mason, and the team at The Broken Token for creating the awesome tile tower that will keep your tiles nicely stacked and organized. We’ve also been working with the fine folks at GameTrayz, but that’s a story for another update.

Origins of Overlord

Eight years ago, Brotherwise Games was born when two geeky brothers put a homespun game on Kickstarter called Boss Monster. At the time, we just thought it would be neat to self-publish a game, but the amazing backers of Kickstarter took our idea and ran with it. After a lot of luck and hard work, here we are, making games full-time.

Overlord is another project that took some unexpected twists and turns, starting with a game submission. At Brotherwise, we welcome submissions from established and up-and-coming designers. Generally, someone will contact us through our website, then we'll set up time for a face-to-face demo at a convention. When we heard from Kevin Russ and Aaron Mesburne, we were immediately intrigued because we really enjoyed Kevin's last design, Calico.

Aaron and Kevin brought Overlord to us with an entirely different theme: indoor gardening. We liked the theme, but the gameplay is what really drew us in. It's a huge cliché in our industry, but hard to find: a game that's “easy to learn, hard to master.” Overlord feels simple at first, until you realize all the things you could have done differently to improve your score. Once you master optimizing your own board, you start to think more about how to steal tiles or tokens your opponents need. It's the kind of game where you keep finding yourself saying, "I can do better than that, let's play one more."

After we signed the game as “Solarium,” we started to realize that there are already a lot of great games about gardening on the market, so we looked at other themes: building a coral reef, creating a bento box, organizing a shelf of games. But the perfect theme was sitting right under our noses: creating an overworld map in the world of Boss Monster.

We've talked for years about making a spin-off title set in Arcadia. Two recurring thoughts have been switching to a top-down perspective and taking the game to the overworld. In many ways, the Boss Monster theme was an even better match for the game mechanics. Instead of placing pots on plants, you're placing monsters on terrain! And while Solarium was a very complete standalone game, the Boss Monster theme brings a ton of expansion potential. It's not a decision we made lightly, but it's become clear that we made the right choice.

So we’re back with our first Boss Monster-related Kickstarter in over 5 years, looking for your help to make this game the most it can be. If you like Boss Monster, this is a perfect evolution of that theme. If you don't like Boss Monster, this is an entirely new game... more puzzly, less hectic, but a ton of fun. We think it might be the most accessible, broadest-appeal game we've ever published.

 Be a Boss

So thanks for showing up to this campaign, and here's to more success in the next 21 days! Since we made the decision to make this a Kickstarter, we've been working on some great ideas for stretch goals. We're getting very close to unlocking four Boss Cards, which bring a really fun strategic twist to the game!

It's just day two, so you can bet we have more stretch goals up our sleeves! Volcano tiles are up next, and after that, by popular demand... Solo mode! So keep an eye on these updates and be sure to spread the word. Anything you can do to help us drive the success of this campaign will help us pack as much as possible into this game.

If you post about the campaign on social media, tag your posts with #BossMonsterOverlord and #BrotherwiseGames. We'll be following those hashtags, and we'll be sure to say thanks if we spot your post!

You Came To Conquer
almost 4 years ago – Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 11:36:41 PM

It has now been 12 hours since the start of this campaign, and we recently surpassed $85,000 in funding. At Brotherwise Games, our previous first-day record was $75,000 during our campaign for Call To Adventure. We hoped that Overlord would be big, but you guys have blown us away! You vanquished our campaign goal in less than two hours and blew through two stretch goals on the first day. It’s clear that you came to conquer.

 Bag of Holding 

After the initial excitement of the first day, what’s next? Well, get ready for some seriously sweet stretch goals. We started with a fun one, just to get the ball rolling:

This backers-only bag comes in a regal purple-and-gold color scheme, and proudly declares that you’re an Original Backer. Because if you’re going to be crowned Overlord, you should do it with some royal style.

But that’s just the beginning. We know that backers really want gameplay upgrades, and we worked with Aaron and Kevin to come up with some great options. After all, if you’ve seen photos on social media, you know that Overlord is not a small game:

The core components, including 68 tiles and 68 tokens, are nothing to sneeze at. This is a complete game, the full experience that Aaron and Kevin pitched to us. But as we started to work on new tiles and gameplay modes for an expansion, we decided they were too much fun to hold back. So we’ve lined up some really meaningful stretch goals for the weeks ahead.

A Real Scorcher

Our first gameplay stretch goal was unlocked early in the afternoon: the all-new Desert terrain tiles and Sandwurm tokens!

Part of the fun of Overlord is that you’re juggling a lot of priorities. You can never perfectly optimize them, but it feels great when you come close and edge out your opponents. Some terrain tiles reward set collection, like Forests and Camps. Some reward placement, like Caves and Swamps. Deserts reward both! You can generate some huge point values, but only if your Desert tiles are connected.

The Bosses Are Back

Of course, it wouldn’t be a “Boss Monster Adventure” without Bosses. So our next stretch goal introduces a totally new mechanic. Instead of being a Boss in name only, now you get a card to represent what makes your villain unique.

Here’s a closer look at one of our Boss cards. It’s the Master of Dungeons himself, King Croak:

Bosses are dealt face-down, and remain a secret until your use their Reveal ability. In this example, King Croak can draft two tile-and-token sets in one turn… which can really come in handy! But to keep the ability in check, he skips his next turn. Playing this ability is also a strategic choice, because now your opponents know your secret Scoring ability. In this case, King Croak is at his best when he has lots of Dungeon tiles on his board.

More To Come

This campaign is just beginning. There’s plenty of fun to come, and we have some very cool stretch goals up our sleeves. But to really blow the top off this campaign, we need your help.

Please spread the word, whether it’s by posting the campaign link on Facebook, or posting on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #BossMonsterOverlord. We’ve seen plenty of Kickstarter campaigns fade after a big first day, but let’s escape that fate! With your help, we can pack more stretch goals and more excitement into the next 22 days!