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13 Oct 2014

Oh yeah, we've got a new game

We've been as negligent as a Rotherham councilor of late - no blog or newsletter for nigh on 6 months, not a peep on Twitter and only the faintest, non-committal murmur on Facebook. What's been going on?

Well we've actually been busy game designing of all things. There's lots to catch up on, but we've just completed some educational game commissions for CAFOD and SOAS (more on that later) and are in the process of working on a rather exciting experiment at the BFI next year.

BUT, even more amazing than all that, we've also been finalising the testing and development of our new game, The Hen Commandments. Five years on from the release of our last, physical game, Crunch, we thought it was high time we brought out a follow-up.

The thing is, despite some entertaining successes with War on Terror and Crunch, we were still languishing in relative obscurity. What could bring us the popularity and riches that we crave? We asked ourselves. For some reason, games about the hypocrisy of imperialism and the failure of capitalism hadn't brought us friends and fame...

So we turned to religion.

And that religion is Heninism. A lesser-known, matriarchal religion which is best known for having a bizarre and disputed trinity consisting of the Holy Chicken, The Great Egg Above and (according to some Heninists), A Greater Chicken Above That.

In The Hen Commandments players are disciples charged with interpreting the often obscure messages emanating forth from The Holy Chicken via the medium of encoded eggs. It's played over 10 rounds and the winner gets to keep the resulting 10 commandments and proceed into the world to start his or her own distinct sect of Heninism.

Quite unusually for us, it can be explained and learned in about a minute. We didn't set out with this goal, but The Hen Commandments might be the ideal drinking game. It was tested with varying groups largely in a pub setting - and, if I'm honest, mostly conceived and developed there too. It brings people together, encourages absurdity, silliness and just the right amount of awkward uncomfortableness. And quite unusually for us, it can be explained and learned in about a minute.

When, What, How?

It's all done! We're just finalising the artwork and need to get it made. However, because we drank most of our remaining funds during testing of the game, we're going to need to crowd-source the production of The Hen Commandments and to that end we're putting together the last bits we need for a Kickstarter campaign, which will commence in the next couple of weeks.

While we're just pulling the last bits together, we'll leave you with a few early peaks at the artwork as it stands ...





