Last year saw us launching Conspire. We are extremely proud of that game, so 2018 is going to have a hard time following that act. Luckily, we have two awesome new games in the works, some con appearances, new Seattle meetups, and the revival of an old favorite.
Far Away won our little poll last year. The goal is to make a deep, impactful, two-player game. It needs to be easy enough to understand and play (Pandemic-level), but have more lasting appeal than the card games that dominate the two-player scene (Lost Cities, Jaipur). To that end, the game focuses on the cooperative aspects of exploring an alien world. Players help each other survive and thrive. They control the ecosystem and decide how strange creatures interact with each other and the new arrivals. There is a fun catch to all this jolly cooperation: players can only talk to each other when in the same hex. We really wanted to give the appropriate level of loneliness for a game about two people lightyears from other humans.
Grave Error is a collaboration between CPG and Neil Schnepf of Table Flip. Mediocre ghost hunters get possessed by a vengeful spirit and must traipse through a surreal manor to find relics from their friends’ tragic pasts. With mechanics of storytelling, hidden-movement, and hidden-role, Grave Error plays with the balance of spooky horror tropes and your inherently comedic narratives as you battle the spirit.
Both these titles represent our foray in more “traditional” board games. Cherry Picked Games’s motto is “only the sweetest games”. We refuse to be confined to our preexisting genres or themes. We want to use what we learned making our other titles in new spaces. All CPG titles focus on the player and what they bring to the table. Far Away and Grave Error will take full advantage of our fans’ creativity, desire of vibrant stories, and ingenuity.
Expect prototypes and print-and-play versions of Grave Error and Far Away in the coming months. Our plan is to get these preliminary versions out, then use the feedback to polish versions for Kickstarter. Be sure to sign up for our mailing list to get updates.
The other potential Kickstarter coming this year is for a second print run of Drink! We have nearly sold out of the initial thousand copies. This reprinting also includes expansion packs. Finally, we are going to give you more cards to fill that box. We will field some surveys and develop the expansions you need for your copies of Drink!
Last year, we sponsored a local Seattle game night, the Ravenna Board Game Night (updates on our meetup page). Our bi-weekly event has developed an excellent regular culture and routinely gets new people stopping by to check out the best in modern tabletop games. This year, we are starting a new event, Story Games and RPGs at Hellbent. This monthly event will share these niche games with a boarder audience and get people telling amazing stories with each other over a pint of delicious beer. For those of you not in the Seattle area, we are going be publishing a series of articles on how to start up a board game meetup and cultivate a good community.
Finally, we want to share our list 2018 convention appearances. CPG will definitely be at KublaCon in San Francisco, CA and SHUX in Vancouver, BC. We are considering returning to Evergreen Tabletop Expo, DragonFlight, and WagonCon (costs permitting). We may also make our first journeys to LANtasy in Victoria, BC and GameStorm in Portland, OR. Are we missing your favorite conventions? Please let us know so we can meetup at them.