The Gama Trade Show was full of fun and exciting things for the year 2013, starting as early as night one at the open meet and greet on March 18th. A handful of game designers were already putting out demos of their games to try and catch the attention of retailers and manufacturers alike. In case you missed it, read on for some of the show’s great highlights.

Game developers go through a ton of work coming up with brilliant ideas, beautiful concepts for the art and boxes, and find as many people as possible to play test new games to death to make sure everything is just right before putting a game into production. I believe Mirror Box Games is close to completing this task for their first time. They brought their prototype of Chaosmos to GTS in hopes of finding someone to publish their game last I heard. They are in between figuring out if they are just using a company to make the game or selling the idea as a whole to a company to be sold by them. Either way I am excited to see this game come to life. I am not normally a fan of space games, but this one definitely sparked some interest. The galaxy in this game is on the verge of destruction, each of the ten alien characters is trying to find the Ovoid to have a new beginning for their own planet. The game is full of strategy, struggles for power, and, in the end, a war to see who will be the last person holding the Ovoid. Hopefully there will be a company putting this into production in the near future.

On The Lamb Games, a company which has been around almost 9 years now, had most of their miniatures for their new game, Endless Fantasy Tactics. They are very nice models that remind me of old fantasy tactics games. All of the models are able to be played with each other in whatever type of battle group you desire. The Kickstarter ended last November and should be shipping out in the near future for all of its backers. For anyone who didn’t get into the game during the kickstarter, the game should be shipping out this summer for everyone else.

One of the great highlights of GAMA this year was their exhibit hall and panels that were put on during the week. There were over 100 panels starting Monday afternoon on March 18th and running through Friday morning of March 22nd. Topics ranged from announcements on products to new programs that will be available for stores to run. But below we have a hint of what many of the major gaming companies had to show off on the exhibit hall floor. These great booths each displayed and demoed many amazing games and below are some of the highlights.

 

Showroom Booths
Nord Games

Tiny Zombies - This game is on Kickstarter right now and ends April 18th. They had some of the miniatures for the game out on display. Nothing too fancy but looks nice for the size. The game is run by 5 decks of cards that seem like it might get a little overwhelming. There are 6 characters to choose from to try to survive with or be forced to turn and go after your friends also. For $40, it does not seem a bad value.

Worra Realms - This is the first time I have heard of an RPG laid out with cards instead of character sheets. They currently have four to six class decks out that are filled with items, skills and a race to give you the full tabletop RPG experience. From what was explained, you can do as much roleplaying as you would in a normal game but exploring and combat should be more streamlined to allow the less prep time for the amount of adventure the players receive. In April Nord Games plans on having a GM pack available that will support 4 players and the GM. This will include a deck to create a random dungeon as players go through each door.

Gendu Cards

Gendu “The Gentlemand’s Duel” - This is a CCG where you use your deck to place rooms and nouns (creatures) to try to defend yourself from the other player. You get to place one room per turn that will have effect on the other player’s nouns as they make their way towards you. The nouns have different powers, health and speed along with abilities to help fend off attackers and live through different obstacles. Then there are verbs that work similar to spells to support your nouns or defend yourself. A special extra to the game is the blank cards that come in the decks and booster packs. The creators allow fans to make their own cards that get uploaded to the site and are voted on. As cards reach the top, they have their stats and effects edited slightly if needed and are then play tested to see if they will make it into the next set. To see how some of the doodle cards were made into fully developed cards was awesome. This game started on the East coast but seemed to get a lot of attention by distributors, so hopefully we will see an increased interest in this game in the near future.

Castle Games

Fleet Admiral - Castle Games had this game jumbo sized and put up on display at their booth. Seems like a simple enough game where you roll the dice to see the type of mission you go on in order to collect upgrades for your ship and extra crew members that allow you to take on harder missions and level up your ship. The idea behind the game is to save the galaxy from a crisis and the first person to do so wins a large number of points. Along the way you can get help from others, assuming it would give you the advantage you need to win the game yourself.

Space Tub - Space Tub is a game still under development by Castle Games. You play the captain of a bulk freighter flying through space picking up and dropping off cargo. The price of the different jobs changes based on an event deck. To top it off there are pirates and different officials going around trying to stop you from making your delivery. The game board is close to being finalized, but some of the other pieces still need to be worked out.

Grandpa Beck’s Games

Cover Your A$$ets - This company puts a twist on some old card games to keep them both fun and interesting. I have not played a game with quite the same rules before, but the idea of the game is to be the first one to become a millionaire. You do this by collecting pairs of assets that each have a price value to them. After you get the a pair, you place it in front of you. Until you manage to get another pair on top of it though, someone else can find another matching card and try to steal it from you. The game goes back and forth and it is rather fun for a quick family card game.

Smirk and Dagger

Dread Curse - Smirk and Dagger had a prototype copy of their new game, Dread Curse, out to look at. You pick to play the role of a pirate on a ship and depending on your pirate, have different ways of getting or giving gold coins to each other and the bag of coins. The idea of the game is to obviously stay in the game long enough to end up with the most valuable stash. The catch is, there are two black spots that cause you to lose the game if you have either of them at the end of the game. This game looks like it will be a lot of fun and, around the time of its releases, in August it will come out just in time for Talk Like a Pirate day. One of their distributors will be trying to get a kit together to have a special event at stores to celebrate that informal holiday of swashbuckling linguistics. There are a couple of new games and there might be some promos floating around that day also.

AEG

AEG had a full table of games setup with a few of their newer releases sitting up front. One game I am truly looking forward to being really bad at, yet will hopefully have great fun playing, is Maximum Throwdown. It is a card throwing game where you actually throw the cards onto the table and gain points and bonuses depending on what symbols are showing.

SG2M did manage to also attend a few various company panels throughout the week and hear about some exciting things coming in the next year. We’ve already shared details from Slugfest. Check back soon for more news and coverage from this year’s GAMA Trade Show.