Hidden Leaders
almost 3 years ago – Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 07:04:42 AM

Hi! Long time no see! This quick update is mostly to point you at our newest project, with some news about SPIEL decks in the end. It so happens Gam'inBIZ is one of the publishing partners in the Hidden Leaders project by the 3 BFFs from Vienna Markus, Raphael and Andreas (BGG Games). The Kickstarter campaign for this lovely game full of heroes, bluff and intrigue, covered in a lovely sauce of extravagant Japanese artwork, will launch this afternoon.

Hidden Leaders is a quick to play card game for 2 to 6 (!) players, featuring over 80 unique cards illustrated by the talented Japanese artist Satoshi Matsuura. We were immediately impressed by both the style and gameplay of this game. It is a refreshing deduction game, with a pleasant light touch and full of geeky humor. This is definitely one of these 2021 projects people will be talking about for a long time.

In this game you play one of the 6 heirs of the deceased emperor of Oshra and you battle to become the new leader of the empire. However, nobody knows who plays who. And that's what makes this game so interesting. Every leader is loyal to 2 of the 4 factions in the empire (the Imperial Army, the Hill Tribes, the Water-people and the Undead). If one of the factions is victorious, so will be their leader. And so in this game you will have to try and make one of your two factions win, to win yourself. That results in a lovely game of bluff, intrigue and take that tactics.

And the wonderful thing about this game is that it was designed by 3 friends who've known each other since kindergarten. They are often found LARPing, that is, when they are not working on their many game ideas. Markus, Raphael and Andreas are not typical heroes, but to us they are symbols of what you can achieve through friendship and perseverance. Check it out on Kickstarter now.

2021 edition of SPIEL.digital deck?

And finally, SPIEL. We all hope 2021 will see an actual, physical SPIEL fair again. Thus far, things are looking good. Chances are there will be an extensive testing regime in place, but a fair should be possible! With last year's success of the SPIEL.digital playing cards still in the back of our heads, we are now contemplating a new 2021 edition, one that we will hopefully be able to hand out to you in person! So, let us know what you think: should there be a new edition? And what should it look like? Did you like the way we organized it last year, or should things be different?

Raffle, ordering more and Tabletopia
over 3 years ago – Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 04:31:05 PM

Good day. This is probably going to be the last update for now. Last weekend was SPIEL.digital. I hope you all enjoyed that? To us, it was an interesting experience. We had fun, but there were some moments we didn't know what to do as well. Still, with all the live streams and the nice people, there was this SPIEL vibe and we're really happy that we didn't have to miss that this year.

By now, we hope everybody has received their decks. Unfortunately, we got some reports by people that received the decks after SPIEL. That's not ideal, of course, but there is still a lot of fun to be had with the decks after SPIEL. And if you haven't received your copy of the deck yet, you can now check it out in 3D on Tabletopia: tabletopia.com/playground/spiel-digital-2020-neuheiten-28c7j8/play-now.

If you would like to get some extra decks, we still have a limited supply available, for sale on our website: gaminbiz.com/game/2020-neuheiten. 

In case you haven't tried, we would want to encourage you to try out the QR-codes on the cards. They will lead you to a website with quite a lot of useful information about the game, including links to shops and to online versions of the game on Tabletopia. Check this card for Wild Cards for instance: 12s.pl/4HA.

Don't forget to enter the raffle

And finally, please don't forget to enter the raffle! Over 150 people have already registered, but we also have lots of games to give away, including Mariposas, Flotter Otter, Fairy Trails, Monster Expedition and many more. Entry will be open till mid-November: 12s.pl/win.

All rewards have been shipped
over 3 years ago – Sun, Oct 18, 2020 at 01:28:09 AM

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay. Last Monday we received the shipment. Due to some technical problems with the truck, we had to carry over 70 boxes of SPIEL.digital 2020 Neuheiten playing cards into our storage by hand. A good substitute for the gym!

The last few days we have been working day (and night) to get all rewards ready for shipment. We ended up sending out the parcels in three waves. So some of you have already received your reward, whereas others are still waiting. But the important thing is: all rewards have been shipped!

SPIEL.digital will start next Thursday and we have good hopes everyone will have received their decks beforehand, although that would be hard to guarantee, especially for the 'remote' destinations. As announced in the campaign, we reduced shipping overhead by sending most of the parcels with the mail service. That means those packages are not traceable, but they should arrive relatively soon. Larger parcels and those sent out to The Netherlands and Germany were sent with track&trace.

We will send out the digital files for the deck (i.e. the Print & Play files) later this week. We wait as long as is reasonable, because we don't want to spoil your surprise. Ideally, you'd receive the physical deck first.

We still have about 2k copies of the game in storage. So if anyone would like to receive more decks or knows of a friendly local game store that would like to get some of these decks, please let us know! It would be a shame to have to throw these absolutely wonderful decks away! 

We just ordered 6,000 copies!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 02:57:16 PM

One more quick update to let you know what we are doing. The last few weeks we have worked crazy hours to make sure all games that should be in the deck actually got in the deck. We made 3D-renders of all game boxes, collected information about the games and made sure all publishers agreed. 

As we stated in out Kickstarter campaign description, this project is borderline madness, but we made it! This morning, all files were sent to the printer and all 6,000 (!) decks will arrive in a few weeks. And we are really happy with how the whole deck turned out. There are some amazing games, some of them fairly well known, others truly hidden gems. It really has become a mini-SPIEL-in-a-box!

As soon as the decks arrive in our storage, we will start shipping them out. That will probably not be a job we complete in one day, so bear with us!

Win a copy of one of the games in the deck!
over 3 years ago – Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 10:51:55 PM

We are currently finalizing the deck. All games to be featured on the deck are known by now (but we won't tell you). The designs are almost ready to go to the printer. And yet there still is some news!

The last few weeks we've had intensive contact with the publishers of the games featured in our deck. And quite a number of them have agreed to contribute a copy of their game, so that we can organize a raffle! In other words: with a copy of our deck you don't just own an amazing mini-catalog of new games, but you also have a ticket to an awesome lottery featuring awesome new games!

Details about how to participate in the raffle will follow. It won't be hard and it will be fun. For those who haven't ordered a copy of the deck yet (or know friends who'd like a deck and a free ticket to out lottery), late-orders are still possible here: https://spieldigital-collectible-playing-cards.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders