Weirdwood Manor is an award-winning interactive book series for kids ages 6 - 12 years. A runner-up in the 'Best of 2015' list complied by Apple, Weirdwood Manor is a beautifully illustrated picture book, a stunning animated movie, and a challenging series of games and puzzles -- all wrapped into one app.
A must-have for your virtual library. Now available for iPad and iPhone from the App Store: apple.co/215Y8oM. Get all 6 books of Volume 1.
Did Oliver get his powers back? Because I thought he was stuck in bed the manor after the dragon thing happened. Or is the story separate from the app?
These jerks just alpha-gamed poor Bethany with complete obliviousness. She knew what she was doing, but Mike just took over her turn like she wasn't even there, after respectfully letting James have his whole turn uninterrupted. She totally lost interest as soon as she lost her autonomy, and neither man even noticed. I feel sorry for every woman in Mike's life.
Hi may I ask does the discount on the warden cards apply for forging dices, using personal skills, and recruiting companions all in one turn? or only for one effect? and also when two scarabs blight a room, will they be removed immediately or must we defeat them before restoring the room?
Got mine a few days ago. I’ve played it 3 times so far, and it’s been AMAZING! Such an awesome game, LOVE the theme, time mechanic, art, standees, EVERYTHING! Looking forward to showing it off to as many people as I can 😆
@@WeirdwoodManor we played it today! Was amazing! We won on day 12…just.. components are beautiful and its really fun with interesting choices! Thankyou😉
It's a fun game but I have yet to beat a single game we've played. It seems really difficult as we play through it. Can never do enough damage on the monsters
Glad you’re liking the game! Here are some notes from a play tester… The different monsters require slightly different strategies... but here are some suggestions for how to beat the monsters: -Clear the throne room. The character that clears the throne room should get enough scarabs and XP to get extra dice, and cause extra damage in battling the monster. -Have 2 characters in the room to attack the monster. That way if they spawn scarab(s), hopefully one character can clear the scarab(s) and the other can attack the monster. -Support one character to max out their dice. We’ve had good success in helping one character attack the monster, either by moving them around the manor or giving them resources (with powers or certain rooms). -Wait to attack the monster until one or more characters have more dice, and possibly companions. Even though the monster gets more powerful in the mid game/late game, the characters typically will also get significantly more powerful by gaining dice, XP, and companions. -If possible, plan attacks by a character to be on their 4th turn so there are multiple matching icons on their cards played above their board. -Depending on which monster you are playing and their powers for causing the players to lose the game… you can have all the players attack the monster one after another. There is some risk with this as the monster can attack players on the monster turn if they are all in the same room, and you may need to leave some players out of the battle to take care of spawning scarabs.
Glad to hear you're enjoying the game and yeah, it definitely can be challenging. =) Making certain you have extra hits and blocks when battling monsters is definitely import and I think the other reply on this has some good advice. Matching bonus icons on your played cards, adding companions, gaining and using Tactics Cards, forging more dice, and using certain powers can produce some devastating attacks. Good luck and we hope you'll keep battling! =)
game looks fun, can't wait to get my copy. wondering if there's too much.. flexibility? in using some of the skills and cards - e.g. being able to use them "at any time." you folks know the balancing better from playing multiple times but it would add more weight to your actions and more risk/reward for having to declare some skill/ability/card usage prior to rolling dice and maybe save the any time abilities to have higher costs or limited usage or some inhibiter. love the mechanic letting the bugs run away which takes priority over damage
Just backed the game, and wanted to watch the full playthrough! The gameplay looks solid and exciting. FWIW I agree with Room and Board's comment on the doorway art. Has there been any confirmed changes for improving the transition art to eliminate some of the second guessing on the day rotation? Also a couple quick gameplay questions; 1) @27:20 how was James (Oliver) able to place a card (Lore-master Meditation) on top of the already placed morning card? 2) @1:24:00 You mentioned that when you reach your max health tracker you receive 2 xp. If/when you lose a health and then gain the max health condition again, do you get 2 xp again, or is that a one time achievement reward?
Check out our KS updates and you'll find that yes, we have done a rework of the room and corridor connections! Re:rules... 1) James played Tactician's Gambit in that spot, which let's him draw 2 more cards to his hand and then play a card overtop of Tactician's Gambit. 2) You get the 2 XP every time that happens.
I just backed the Kickstarter. The design looks incredibly ambitious for a (more or less) first time designer, but it looks like you pulled it off! Please keep doing what you’re doing and make more games and expansions :)
Some thoughts. The thief seems super strong. Taking their dice seems to make them not pose any threat. Too strong? Seems like attack dice are the best ones to add to your pool. You can knock eachother out simultaneously though it seems so I guess there is value to defense dice. Are there incentives to build your dice pool differently or you basically do it the same each game? Movement seemed unintuitive at first and hard to read on a zoomed out board but it is interesting. The monster activation card gives some info on the back which is cool. Do players normally take this into account on their turn? It seemed mostly ignored here. The game length seems like it could be really variable based on lucky hits by the players or unlucky draws by the monster. The time tracking seems cool but completely irrelevant here so there is no real reason to manage the time track and you can just match your symbols how you like. The game seems a bit open ended at the start with your only objective being to power up. Having specific rooms you want to flip back or companions you want to gain or specific resources required to get a new die would give more direction at the start. Maybe those things are already there and just weren’t explained at the start? There can definitely be an alpha player but you always get to roll your own dice so you still get some ownership of your turn. Do the players ever feel in danger? How hard / right do the other two monsters make the game? This guy seems like tutorial enemy. Hoping for ways to scale up the difficulty for the different monsters because only having 1 hard monster doesn’t make for much replayability.
These are all good ponderings and questions. I’m the play tester in the video and I can answer some questions and provide some details. Wally (the thief) is a strong character, but it takes some work to get in the groove with the way he steals the dice. It took me many play throughs to get the hang of how Wally worked and I don’ think he’s overall a stronger character than the others. Wally can only ever steal 4 dice maximum. In a game against the Ogre, by the time Wally has reached level 4 of the Thief’s Gauntlet, the Ogre is probably angry or enraged (meaning he battles with a minimum of 6 or 9 dice), there are probably a few blighted rooms, and he may have extra dice or extra hits. It’s not uncommon for the Ogre to have a hand of 8-10 dice or more. If Wally can only steal 4 of them, the battle is not easy to win. As Wally levels up his Thief’s Gauntlet, the monster will also be levelling up too. It’s possible that Wally can use a spell or two, or get help from other characters to increase his odds, but that’s balanced across all characters. Choosing which dice to forge is a major part of the game. Forging attack dice makes does help deliver more hits. But it may mean that you take hits too, and lose health, or lose forged dice. Taking hits in battle can slow a character’s progress by reducing health (and hand limit). Forging the balanced dice can be a great tactic, to try and get the burst icon in battle, which triggers a special action unique to each character. Defence dice are helpful… to reduce the damage taken in battle. My experience is that different players forge different dice based on their personality or strategy for the game and character in that moment. The top side of the monster activation card is definitely referenced. Knowing if the monster is going to try to move, spawn scarabs, or battle… is vital information. It can give a chance for players to leave a room (or move Lady Weirdwood) if the monster is going to attack. Or open or close a room if the monster is going to move. Game length was pretty similar for our play throughs… winning or losing. The biggest variability seemed to be number of players and the amount of decision making and discussion. Time tracking and managing the rings is a big deal. In this video we are all very familiar with the game so there wasn’t a lot of discussion about it. But in a normal game there is a lot of discussion about moving time and which time of day to play the card to and which slot in that day to play to. This can change with 4 players, especially with the outer ring, as the day can move between a player’s turns and they can be trapped if they don’t have a way out (portal, or spell or room move card). This game is open ended at the start and not all strategies for your player will go to plan, based on scarab monster movement, rooms blighting, battle success… etc. I have started this game many times with ideas of what I would do for strategy, and had to change drastically as options changed. Other players could be affected by an alpha player but as you’ve pointed out, they do get to roll their own dice and they will get to make many individual decisions for which cards to play and which XP tracks to go up. Yes the players often feel in danger. It’s common to take damage in battle, it’s common for the monster to attack back in his turn and it’s common for the monster’s other win conditions to be on the edge. This play through is not a true representation of an average game. It was played by the designer and 2 game testers who have been involved in the design and have played it many times. We played the simplest monster intentionally for ease of understanding for the viewers.
Thanks for the thoughts Tom. We're getting to this a little late (so busy with the KS) but I think James has done a great job of adding some perspective so I'll point people to his reply!
Nice..one to keep an eye on. May I ask if you're planning to have a solo mode in the game and in what form? I can see that it is fully co-operative which means it could be soloable, but are there plans for a dedicated solo mode etc? Looking forward to the KS campaign
The game plays 1 to 5, so yes, it is soloable and we’ve tested it as a solo game too. No different rules required though we recommend playing solo with two characters, which adds a lot to the experience because each character has different abilities to take advantage of. But you can play it with just one character if you want a higher challenge-especially against the harder monsters.
As a matter of fact, we will be posting a video of the board being disassembled on our Instagram soon (greyridgegames) so people can understand that better!
Supercool playthrough, I didn't have time to test your game at Essen even though I walked by many times. Love the mechanics and the high dopamine exchange of fun rewards for the players and overlapping abilities.
Looks interesting. Any ETA on Kickstarter? I know 2023, but Jan-Feb? Later? Also are there going to be miniatures (deluxe), and expansions and all that extra stuff? Estimate on Cost? I do have one other question though after watching some of the video where do the kids come into play that are all over the cover? The player cards you guys are using are totally different from the ones advertised. Just curious. :)
We’re aiming for a Spring Kickstarter (hopefully April) and will be finalizing and announcing the date towards the end of January, so I hope you stay tuned. =) We will be offering a Standard and Deluxe version of the game (the Deluxe will have the acrylic standees and not minis). I appreciate many players love minis (we do too), but we’ve had an incredible reaction to the acrylic standees at conventions when people see them in person and we feel they show the character illustrations off really well on the table. As to the cards, everything in the game is consistent in artwork and illustrations of course but Weirdwood is a broader universe we created that we’ve published books in and made mobile apps for, so sometimes we’ve pulled in some artwork on our RU-vid from those. Oh - and we are not planning full expansions as part of this KS, but rest assured we are working hard to make certain we can offer some cool goodies, stretch goals and great pricing on the pledges! We want to make certain players feel like it is worth their dollars and trust in us when they make a pledge! =)
@@WeirdwoodManor Thanks for the response! Our game company is also considering Acrylic Standees so I understand exactly where you are coming from. I signed up to be notified. We will be supporting your game :) Happy Holidays!
Thanks! We've definitely had a number of play-testers make a similar observation - and we’ve tried to focus on adding a lot of variability so that “puzzle” feels fresh from game to game.
Thanks for the feedback Gozzy… It’s worth keeping in mind that as the designer of the game, I have played it many, many dozens of times (as has James, one of our longest-serving play-testers) and so knowing the ins-and-outs of each assymetrcial character, I think we’re both trying to keep things moving along for the video by making a lot of suggestions; especially in the early part of the play-thru as I explain a lot of the game mechanics. In our testing, there is ceraintly a lot of table-talk and suggestions of what could players do and discussing options - but given the asymmetry of the characters and the weight of the game, especially against the harder monsters, we’ve not seen much quarterbacking; it tends to come from all quarters as the game progresses. We’ll be working on getting other videos released by other content creators, so hopefully you’ll see more of that with players who don’t have 50 or 100+ plays under their belt! =) Anyway, I appreciate the feedback!
You've done such a good job with this series. I feel very fortunate to have discovered it. One thought: Have you considered creating digital components and playtesting the game on Tabletop Simulator? That's one way to iterate quickly without having to create new components as well, and not having to get out the markers, rulers, and scissors if you just want to make a few changes. Another bonus is that it facilitates remote playtesting, since you can play it online with gamers around the world, with several iterations able to be played at once, etc.
Thanks! We'll actually be starting work on a TTS version of the game soon and will be sharing it with testers and the broader community when it's done!
I'm just starting to look into this project and looks great! I dont know anything about the gameplay but love the time mechanic, can I just say that if the board had an electronic component where it randomly moves and speed up time by itself I would back this in an instant!
I second the older comment, the games behind you give me hope this new game will be as great! Love the humility! Game looks super interesting with its modular board! Just stumbled onto your project on a FB ad!
Top notch production! Just stumbled across the game on fb and blew through the series on making it. The quality is well beyond the views it has so far, so hopefully more views and interest keep coming as you get further along the marketing phase. Saw the final board and it looks awesome!
Haha, yeah! We attended our first conference in Toronto (Breakout 2022) to start showing off the game for the first time and had a great response! We're all feeling very humbled! =)
@@WeirdwoodManor the gencon 2022 video I saw looked pretty awesome. He two rotating rings and ease of moving rooms is exciting. Scarabs look really good. Looking forward to seeing or hearing more soon and you did a great job explaining the game.
This series is really great. I think what would help a lot of people is a discussion on the specifics of your mechanics and how you come up with them - things like specific statistics, etc. For me, it's pretty straightforward to sit down, make a simple game sketch, connect mechanics to theme, etc. What's difficult is coming up with the player powers, stats for all kinds of things, etc. It's what holds me back on, literally, all my designs. Frustrating! Anyway, great series.
Great to hear you’re enjoying the series Ruben - and thank you for the suggestion too! It’s always tough to decide how much detail I’ll get into on any given topic but I have thought about maybe doing an episode when the game is further along, recapping some mechanics and some of the more interesting details of how I got there. In the meantime, always happy to answer any specific questions too!
Fantastic to see a real board in motion! To make sure the scarab movement ended up well distributed, did you start out with some math, or just keep modifying and testing your educated guesses?
Great question! I started with some calculated parameters around the number and configuration of openings in the rotating corridors, the number of turns in a game and the volume of scarabs I hoped to see over the course of the game. I then ran the test based on those initial parameters and I'd record the results. I'd then adjust some (or all) of those parameters and re-test, recording the results until I got a a distribution that felt roughly consistent, but still with some nice variability from test to test. It took a fair bit of testing and adjusting... a couple dozen times or so in these initial tests.
The game board looks great from what I can see on bgg. The variability of being able to randomize the starting layout is great, as well as the option of expansions with different rooms that can be added. I love the fact that you might be able to scale the number of monsters as you can in the game horrified. Being able to play competitively cooperatively or semi cooperatively would also be amazing because then it can lend itself to a far greater range of audiences and depending on your mood you can choose whichever variation you like. Well check out the rules make that you posted now thanks
Thanks! We are really striving for a design that can offer several ways we might expand the game - and offers a good degree of variability along the way!
Would love to hear your thoughts on the long comment I left on the last video. Looking forward to watching this one and will edit once I finish it. I think the titles of the videos should change slightly to attract people interested in board game design, because they are very intriguing but I doubt people will have an easy time stumbling onto this series. Edit: I get ideas by playing games, reading books, walking my dog. The problem is that ideas often come randomly, and I have to write them down immediately or else I forget them. The struggle is figuring out how to fix a game that hasn't even been prototyped and tested. I can predict that the game won't be interesting, because it will be the same types of actions each turn of the game and you don't actually feel that much more powerful. There is some sense of improvement, but the cycle of actions doesn't change much. Really looking forward to the next episode :)
Another interesting process video. Thank you I don't know anything about weird wood except what I've seen in these videos hearing about the order and I think they're called the Guardians immediately makes me wonder whether it should be a co-op game or a competitive game but given that the target audience is youngish cooperative seems to make sense but I haven't watched the end of the video yet so I'll edit this comment again later I love to know what other games you played other than shadows over Camelot. I wonder if Harry Potter Hogwarts battle, pandemic, forgotten Waters we're included especially since forgotten water has an integrated app that helps with the storytelling aspects A map of Kingswood already sort of reminds me of the board in Lords of water deep and seems like a good starting point as a place to set the stories it could be app integrated, but again I haven't read all the books Looking forward to hearing more about ideas for the game. I think if it's a cooperative game and everyone has their own individual deck to work from players might have powerful cards they can play to help beat the bad guys but the more they play of those it could start to imbalance the balance between the Fay world and the real world so they have to work cooperatively to make sure they don't play too many and too Short a Time. I'm not sure I like the idea of semi cooperative because let's say it has to do with how many bad guys you've defeated or moved off the board it might be times where it's beneficial for the individual player to stay close by and get rid of some bad guys there even though the group as a whole might need that player to move to a further location because there's a more pressing crisis over there and that could cause tension On the other hand I will say I think with a cooperative game the problem of quarterbacking is definitely something to worry about. I like games like gloomhaven and space alert where there's imperfect information. There can be discussion about what the group as a whole wants to do but it can't talk about everything they have in their hands. Space alert has a cooperative game is interesting because it has an app that can be used but is not necessary to the game. However there isn't a lot of story imbued in the various missions they're thematic but there's not much story. I think if you could create a number of missions and a sort of campaign the app could help with that and it could be actual story involved. On the other hand it would be nice if those replayability after the campaign has been beaten, so like Joe slacks relics game there could be another final mission that has variable setup and different levels of difficulty with the players continue to play afterwards if desired. If you made it this far thank you for reading I hope you're able to comment. This has been a fun exercise trying to think about the implications of these ideas.
Thanks for those great thoughts; I love that idea about playing too many strong cards affecting the balance of the game! As for the coop or semi, I agree with a lot of your observations. I like coop as a direction more because I think it dovetails nicely with the lore of the world and how the characters there work together; but things like quarterbacking are something I’d like to address. I enjoy Spirit Island and Mage Knight (in coop mode) in part because I feel there’s too much information to make quarterbacking viable; though those come at a cost of added game complexity.
@@WeirdwoodManor part of my concern with this game right now relates to the length of the game. 90-120 is a big ask especially if the target audience leans closer to the 12-14 age range. I love that the bgg entry is available now so that I can look at some of the tidbits there
Some interesting tidbits here. What was the hardest part of ideation for this game? Did you have game ideas in mind already long before this? Did you have a player count in mind? Age range? Co op? Thanks :)
I think one of the hardest parts during ideation - and I find is often the case - is keeping the ideas from other participants flowing and making certain everyone feels comfortable enough to share any idea; no mater how crazy it might seem. Part of running a good ideation session is really being a good facilitator - and as such, I try not to introduce any of my ideas or get in the way of what is coming from the group. So yes, I had some things in mind coming into it but focused on hearing what the group was interested in.
@@WeirdwoodManor so basically you're the dungeon Master in that you are a benevolent facilitator even if you don't always allow everything. Rule of cool applies.
Step 1: Designer establishes that he is good at everything. Je vous écoute. Les jeux derrière toi me donne l'espoir que le jeu serait intéressant. SDJ dans le futur?
