Hey guys, and welcome to episode 158 of Maple to Maple.
Today I'm talking with an indie tabletop publisher out of the UK
that has been sharing a really transparent look at what it's
actually like to design and publish games right now.
If you've been following them on Instagram, you've probably seen
just how hands on and personal their journey is, from early
prototypes, artwork, play testing, production updates, and
the inevitable highs and lows of indie game development.
Their latest project is Time Troopers, a solo campaign deck
building game that sends players jumping through history on
dangerous missions to protect the timeline.
It's ambitious, narrative driven, it's clearly a passion
project, and a true favorite of our friends from Get Into Games.
In this episode, we're going to dig into the experience of
designing Time Troopers, what it's like being an indie
publisher in the UK, and how they balance their creativity,
constraints, and the community while bringing any game to life.
Today I've got Lee from Mullen Arias Games.
Lee, how are you? Great.
Thank you. Thanks for having me on the
show. I'm excited to be here.
Yeah, I have been hearing about you and your game for a while
now, obviously from Craig and Becky from getting the games and
she's really been hyping up the game.
Yeah, I think Becky's probably our number one super fan, which
has been very handy having someone who's so vocal about it
on with their own podcast. So yeah, it it's great.
And we have a little VIP group as well with on Facebook with
quite a few people and and, and she contributes regularly on
there as well. So she's she's a lady of great
taste, apart from her choice in husband maybe.
Sorry. Yeah, yeah, Craig, it's, you
know, what are you going to do? But thanks for thanks for coming
on and and being willing to Share your story.
I'm really excited. Hey, tell me a little bit.
I want to start a little bit about you and your personal
journey. 2 questions that I have.
First one is it was the very first board game you ever played
as a child. And then second, what was the
board game that got you into the modern hobby that eventually LED
you to becoming a designer? So, yeah, I think it's quite a
boring story, same as as everyone else.
I think as a child we played lots of lots of games.
I can't remember the first one, but it was always like an
operation and unfortunately Monopoly and and the Trivial
Pursuit in the USI think you call it sorry, over here we call
it something else. Yeah, with that, with that
device that you pop in the middle as well.
So yeah, tons of games. But one of my favourites was who
was Hero Quest. That was kind of the the
transition into rather than just playing on a wet Sunday
afternoon, all of a sudden that was something that you could
proper escape the world and throw yourself into as a child.
I remember playing that thinking games will never get any better
than this. This is fantastic.
Yeah. And my first foray into kind of
painting models with correction fluid and and and things.
As well. In terms of how I became a
modern gamer, obviously as as I as I got older, I played a lot
of sports and kind of moved away from, from games a little bit
and then back to to college and university.
We would play a lot of Risk and, and kind of games and then got
back into it that way. And so I was always interested
in it but had no money being a student.
And then after graduating, I played with my friend Mark and
he introduced me to Catan, which of course is a very easy gateway
game that everyone plays. And again, I was like, oh, this
is great mind. Just takes you right back to
being a child again, that kind of cooperative element of you
all being around the table and fighting to see who was going to
be the winner. And then the more difficult
games I tried, the the more I got into them, probably
accumulating with me playing my first Gloom Haven campaign.
And from there, I kind of thought, yeah, this is
fantastic, it's not going to get any better than this.
And so yeah, that that was kind of how I got into it.
And then it just got stronger and stronger from there, really.
So at what point did you decide to go from being a gamer to a
game? Like diving into game design?
Like how long has that process been for you it?
Wasn't, I've done forecast before.
It wasn't a deliberate decision. So I worked, I had a very
corporate job. I, I worked in, in health, in
healthcare industry and I was a finance director travelling
backwards and forwards to the US and, and other countries across
Europe. And I was away from home like 3
weeks out of four. And then that kind of takes its
toll on you after after a long time of climbing that career
ladder. Sure, yeah.
Yeah. And then in 2020, I was due to
move to, to the US to Chicago full time.
And this pesky thing called COVID started to happen.
And we were told though it'll be, they'll be over in a couple
of weeks, don't worry about it. So we were selling a house and
everything else. And then obviously it didn't
happen. And it, and it as it, as it
transitioned it, it kind of stopped me from from moving to
the US. But what it did do was change my
aspects, my kind of thought process about what I wanted from
life. And I was lucky enough to think
to myself, OK, I'm going to take a break from the corporate grind
and just take some time to myself and think about what I
want to do away from this. And in the background to that,
we'd gone on vacation quite a few times to a place in the UK
called the Lake District, which I was explaining before.
It's it's at one of our national parks, similar to to
Yellowstone, but not as grandiose.
But we just loved going there and me and my wife.
And so I just for fun, really designed a game that out of beer
maps that we could play in the in the pub.
And so the dog was sat down and we were drinking wine and
playing this game that I'd made. And then people just kept coming
to the table saying, excuse me, what's, what's this game you're
playing? And I was like, oh, it's just a
game that we've made-up. And they're like, could we sit
and join you? So I was like, yeah, OK.
And so for my wife's birthday, I kind of surprised her with a
prototype, which which I hadn't locked up and made.
And then the next time we went, we had lots of people around the
table. And all of a sudden I thought
there could be kind of a gap in the market, a very special niche
in the market for this game. So Fast forward four years and
it's in supermarkets all up in that area of the, of the world.
And it's in the gift shops and everything else.
And, and we've sold, you know, thousands and thousands of
copies of that game. And that was kind of my
introduction into, into the gaming world.
But I had no kind of formal training in, in what I was
doing. It's a very basic game if if
you're a player. But what it did do is give me an
introduction into, yeah, this is what I want to do with my life.
And at the same time I was enjoying more and more playing
games and with my business and finance background, the kind of
the things which I think hold some people back from designing
their own game, Like what do I do about tax?
I do, I've set up my own company.
You know, how do I find a manufacturer?
I I already had all of that experience.
So it wasn't, I think as as scary for me to do the business
and the admin side. So, yeah, I suddenly thought
that that could be there could be a career in this and that
could be a company I could set up.
And so we did. Yeah, that we kind of dived head
first. We were into doing a Kickstarter
as well and everything else. And I think it's a good job.
I didn't know what I was letting myself in first.
I might not have have have done it.
And I think I was incredibly naive.
And then I look back at some of the mistakes we've made, which
just cost us a lot of money and a lot of time.
But it's it's a learning curve. But what the one great thing I
would say that if you would say what's the best thing that's
happened to send me out of this is my quality.
What was the best thing that ever happened to you out of
this? You're such a good interview.
I think my quality of life is better, but also the people, the
community and the kind of the customer base and the people you
interact with, the suppliers, people like yourself.
And the kind of industry as a whole is so much friendlier than
that kind of cutthroat corporate world that even like chatting to
other indie publishers, everyone's helping each other.
And that just wouldn't happen in the in the business world.
So it's stressful, of course, but it always feels like it's a
community that I'd never thought existed until I got into it.
And I thought everyone is so great in this community.
And don't get me wrong with still the odd comment from
Kickstarters and things which which which upset me.
But yeah, I've listened to your shows and that it's so positive.
People are generally more positive in this industry than
other industries. I've heard that a lot from both
publishers and designers, like there's a lot of support as
opposed to other industries, people like yourself who came
from 1 industry and entered this one.
So it sounds like the take away is you could be on vacation
where no matter what, it doesn't matter where you are, you're
going to find inspiration to design your own game, right?
Like I think. So yeah, not not in your own
game. Like there'll be people
listening who are good at graphic design or good at
artwork or good at music. And if, if this is an industry
you're interested in, then just pursue it and send some, some,
some work to some people. And if you think it's something
you want to do, then then do it. Life's too short not to at least
have a go. I think a lot of time people are
a little bit embarrassed. They think, oh, my work's not
good enough and you don't have to give it a go.
So, so why not? Why have you got to lose?
Yeah, there it is, guys. Lee Miller just told you life is
too short. You don't have anything to lose,
so go for it. I mean, no truer or inspiring
words have been said, so I love that.
Thank you. That's, that's good.
And, and all the people we've worked with as well along the
way, a lot of then it's like they're like first time in doing
something like we've, we've signed games to our, to our
label and it's like we have two first time designers who have
signed with us. And we have, you know, new
artist Tim Mcclay, who does the music for, for time Troopers.
It's the first time he's ever composed his own music scores,
which is good for us because it means we're getting very cheap.
Right. But also it's something people
are grateful to be given the opportunity to to do these
things as well. And so again, it plays into that
community spirit of we're all trying to build something
altogether. Right.
Hey, so since you brought it up, let's let's talk about that.
You, you commissioned a soundtrack for Time Troopers and
you can listen to it on Spotify. Tell me about that process.
What? First of all, why bother, right?
Know what? Not every board game designers
like I need a soundtrack for my board game.
So I guess that's the first question.
And then what was that process like?
Yeah, so the decision came about because we on a Sunday, I get
together with with people from the company, but also my friends
as well. And we always listened to music
like we were playing the Witcher board game.
And so we were listening to like bar music from from that
soundtrack and everything else. And, and I think a large
percentage, I think it was like 70% of people listened to
something when they're when they're gaming and that and
that's great. But then I was watching a scary
movie, waiting for the, like, jump scares.
And I thought, imagine if you were playing a scary board game
and the publisher was in control of when the jump scare music
came on. Because like, we were playing a
game called Subterra. I don't know if you know, it's
like a little white. Yes, yeah.
And so we used to make our own sound effects when someone would
get trapped by gas or whatever it, whatever it was.
And so that was in my thought process as well.
And so I, I'd always had music in the back of my mind, but I
didn't know whether it would work on a board game.
So Fast forward to when we did Time Troopers.
And because it's a solo game or you can play cooperatively as
well. But when we started the design
process, it was going to be a, a solo game.
And so I wanted it to be a completely immersive experience,
because if you're playing something solo, you can put your
headphones on and listen to music.
But what I wanted was not just to listen to other people's
music, but I wanted just to be in control of what music you
listened to. So that if the mission I knew
was going to get harder and harder and harder, we could
build the tempo of the music to become more kind of intense
towards the end. And we were in control of people
listening to that. So the first time you played,
you wouldn't know that. And so it would completely
immerse you also the the kind of cultures of time troopers.
So you're travelling to all these different eras in the
past. As you say, the music when
you're in ancient Japan and the music when you're in kind of the
Mongolian Empire and, and when you're in Egypt needs to have
different instruments. It needs to have a different
tone and everything. So what I didn't want was people
listening to their own music and then, you know, the theme tune
from Happy Days was on while someone was was fighting
sunrise, which which could happen.
So it kind of became a what if project.
But as you say, not everyone listens to music.
So it had to accompany the game. It couldn't take over the game.
So we couldn't have instructions in there, we couldn't have
anything else. It just needed to be something
which gave you an extra level of immersion.
And Tim Clay, who's a music producer and, and works with us
on the stand, we would reached out to him, say, how would we go
about this? He said he would give it a go.
And he did like a little 20 minute sample for us.
And so we said, yeah, can we have 26 of those?
Well, each one lasting 45 minutes, please.
And when he picked himself up the floor, he, he, he agreed,
yeah, that that process has very much been give Tim the missions
because not only does it have to have the right instruments, but
have to have the right feel. So some of the missions will be
battling. So you want, you know, to hear
clashing swords and you want to hear wardrooms and things in the
background. But then some of the missions,
like in, in Egypt, you have to sneak past guards into a tomb.
So you've got kind of this eerie, you can hear the flames
licking and it's an eerie under score.
We gave Tim 3 or 4 different missions and explained to him
and sat down and he played the, the early prototypes and then he
went, OK, I'll go away and work on the music.
As soon as we got that first track back, it just blew us
away. And, and because this is the
first time Tim's done this as well, he, he just went the extra
mile with everything. And, and so there was I think
one out of 26 tracks where we went, this is not quite right.
Everything else we were just, Oh my God, it's amazing.
And listening to it while you're playing the game as well.
For us, it just makes the hair on the back of your neck stand
up when we were playing and then we were getting really excited
about it. And so we put this, some of
these soundtracks out to our time.
Trooper VIPs, what do you think? And everyone's like, this is
great. This is what we why don't all
games do this? And so, yeah, we kind of
unfortunately, I think we've set the bar for ourselves on on what
we do going forward. So yeah, I, you had sent me the
link, so I was able to listen to the music and soundtrack and it
was and it was, it was cool. However, I have never seen a
prototype. I didn't have the game in front
of me. So there was no context, right?
So I'm just like, so here was my here's my question.
I was thinking about this in terms of the tempo, right?
Because players play at different speeds, right?
So if I were playing time troopers and I select the
appropriate track to go along with it, I know you said like 45
minutes. Like how well is that synced up
with the player experience? Yeah, so Tim's done a great job
of what the scope we gave to him was.
Everything has happened in the 1st 5 to 10 minutes, but nothing
exciting has to happen in the 1st 2 minutes because players
are reading how to set up the rules, they're reading the game.
They're they're getting everything set up.
So you want to be immersed immediately in the in the
context, but what you don't want is to miss something exciting.
What Tim came back to us and said was players shouldn't even
notice that the music's on. So they shouldn't be listening
to it saying, oh, I really like that part of the music.
It should just be happening as they're playing the game.
And so he has this, he did a very good job of playing the
quiet notes as as musicians call them, which is, which is allow
the game to settle and allow it to be subtle.
So the first 5 minutes kind of welcomes you to the world.
And then because it's a 45 minute track, it's on loops, so
it will be like, it might be like a 10 minute crescendo and
then it dies down and then a 10 minute crescendo again.
So that if you finish the game after 30 minutes, you've still
experienced the same music than if you were playing after 45
minutes, if that makes sense. But there's points in there
which are unique because no one will ever finish the game in 20
minutes. But then after that, at any
point, players could finish if they fail or if they look into a
great draw or, or set of circumstances.
So yeah, he he did a good job of keeping the theme going without
people thinking, oh, I want to listen to the music, so I'm
going to keep the game going, if that makes sense.
So it's meant to accompany what you're doing.
And it includes the immersion. If I, if I was to just listen to
it as a standard on track, which, which obviously I have
done quite a lot there. There's a lot of kind of just
echoing notes and enormous quietness because it's, it's on
in the background. Whereas the Viking, one of the
Viking missions for a good five or or 6 minutes, we'll just have
like the sound of sea spray because you're making decisions.
You're not actively sat there going, oh, I wonder what happens
to the music now. So it's, it's a very good skill
that Tim had, which was it should just be in the
background. It shouldn't dominate what's
happening. Right, right.
I love that. That's really exciting.
So now that we've now that we've sold this game to everyone based
on the fact that there's a soundtrack to go along with it.
Because right now all we know is you've got a soundtrack, you've
commissioned that it's solo, There's some deck buildings.
I mentioned that in the intro. Let's actually talk about the
game. So I actually have a copy here
as well and Becky will be very jealous because anyone that's
can can see this. It's just come finished copies
of of just starts to arrive. So yeah, Time Troopers is a solo
cooperative deck construction game where you are playing as a
squad of time troopers who are going back in the past to steal
artefacts. These artefacts are from
different eras, so it could be Cleopatra's bracelet or it could
be a jade carving from Mongolian times.
These artefacts are rich in a dark energy which we don't
understand today, which is very handy because I don't have to
explain it. But in the future they can use
to power the time game. The time time gate is
essentially important because there's only two time gates. 1
is in use by us, the United Nations of time.
And the other one is in use by a gang called the Scorpions.
And they're kind of the baddies of the, of the game.
They're made-up of future conglomerates who don't want to
change time because they're quite happy with how the
future's turned out and, and they don't want to change it
because they're, you know, all rich oligarchs and, and
everything else. So so you can be playing, you
can be going back in time to ancient Egypt, stealthing
through a tomb and playing your your cards to do the actions.
Then the locals take their turn, so you would play your cards.
If you think of it in terms of like a Marvel Champions or an
Arc of Horror, it's very similar to that kind of of play the way
you have a turn and then the locals have their turn.
We call the locals, which are the locals at that time.
But also with any flip of the card, the scorpions can jump
through the gate. And then not only do you have to
defeat the locals, but then also the scorpions and your mission
parameters change. So you might have to do
something then before the scorpions do it.
So they're trying to steal the artifacts as well.
Sure. So no two missions will will
play the same because of the amount of cards we've got.
There's 470 cards in the deck, so there's a lot of game going
on. There's side quests as well, so
you can achieve. So when you're playing a
mission, you can choose to do a side quest.
And we have a ton of unlockable content, because who doesn't
love unlock cards, right? Right.
Come on. And so you can unlock extra
weapons, you can unlock characters, you can unlock
events, or more efficient, the time dials which controls how
much time. Time is a currency in the game
so you can use it to re roll dice as it rewind time or you
can. OK, I like that.
Well, you can use it to see into the future because at the end of
every round, there's three possible timelines and you turn
over three event cards and then you roll the timeline dice to
see which event phase you follow.
And again, if you don't like the result, you can spend a time
token to rewind time and re roll the dice.
But if you spending your time to do that, you're not spending
your time to do actions. So you have to be very conscious
of what you're doing and you're drawing 4 cards and then playing
4 cards. So it's, it's a, it's a good
combination of which characters you put into play because they
all have different abilities, like some of them are good at
sneaking and stealing and some of them are good at combat.
And different missions carry different things.
So there's 26 different missions and each one lasts 45 minutes.
So we have a whole book of, of, of missions.
So there's a lot of game going in into that one kind of box
that we're, that we're selling. And it comes with the big
playmat as well. When you, if you, if you go to
game found and have a look at it, you'll, you'll be able to
see all of the information. But yeah, it's, it's a huge
game. It's taken us like 3 or 4 years
to get to this point. As you can imagine, I'm very
passionate about it, which is why I'm.
Well, of course. So you you mentioned that it's
it's a solo and cooperative. So yeah.
So talk me through that because I understand a solo game, but
I'm like, you know, it's my wife and I, I don't play solo games
very much at all. But it sounds like from what I
understand is like my wife and I could play this game
cooperatively. So how would that look
differently from playing it solo?
So it would be the same. So what we did was we were
trying to make a solo game in in the UK, we call this the Love
Island Test. I'm not sure if you get Love
Island in the US. We were looking for a game that
you could set up in 5 minutes, play in 45 minutes, and then
pack it away in 5 minutes while someone else in your house is
watching TV that you don't want to watch.
So we thought there was a scope in the market for a board game
that players wanted to play whilst someone else was, was
spending an hour for ATV programme.
You didn't want to play so you could play it on Wednesday
night. So it's, it was a solo game that
would fill that void of waiting for your next game's night.
And also something that would bespoke to you.
So we could both play this as solo players and have completely
different journeys. Like I could say, oh, wasn't it
great when you unlocked a samurai sword and you would say,
I never got a samurai sword, I got a Viking shield because we
made different decisions and the book is like a choose your own
adventure as well. So you, we, we would have
different experiences. So how it would work as a as a,
when we were play testing it and putting it in front of people,
we would get people like Craig and Becky and other couples sit
down and we'd say, OK, we'll do a demo for both of you.
And then we found that they were having conversations like, oh,
well, if we unlocked the shadow, then Shadow is very good at
stealing. So let's unlock shadow now and
then we can keep her in the deployment zone.
And then someone else was saying, yeah, but if we do that,
we won't have enough money for a reroll.
So it kind of became a cooperative game as much as they
were talking through the decision making process, talking
through what cards to play, talking through the journey.
And because the mission book has an side of intro and out infill
and exfil text, it's got it's a story driven as well.
So then we also hit upon by complete, it wasn't by design.
I don't want to claim the credit for it like a father and son who
said they would do this instead of a bedtime story because they
would read the you read the infill text and it's like the
beginning of a story. Then you play their mission and
then when you finish you read the the end of the story and
then you turn the page to go to the next mission or you make a
decision to go to the next mission.
Now the rumour is the rumour though.
I I know you said you're not taking credit, but the rumour is
you did that on purpose. I'll, I'll, I'll take the
credit. We did it kind of, it was a
happy coincidence that that's how it worked.
And so then we started to market it as a solo and solo
cooperative game because everyone we spoke to them was
going, oh, this is not a solo game, It's a Co-op game.
And we were like, well, we designed it as a solo game.
But the more play testing we did, the more we would get
couples doing it or, or like a father and daughter or like 2
friends even saying, Oh yeah, we would just like buy one copy and
play it together. So by by accident, it became a,
a really good cooperative game as well.
We even had a a teacher because there's a lot of obviously
historical data in here and it's all accurate or as accurate as
we can make it. And so we even had a teacher
saying, a history teacher saying I might let like four or five of
my class play this because it would it's it's fun, but they
would learn at the same time, right.
It's like an end of term kind of reward or something.
Yeah. So yeah, it's it's it's kind of
good because it expands the market.
But that's how you and your wife would play Co-op too, OK.
You'd read the story together and you would make decisions
together. OK, so nothing mechanically
changes in whether you choose to play with someone or solo, It's
the same exact, OK. Exactly.
It's the same game. We we had a couple of strangers
playing together because we were double booked for one demo and
one person took responsibility for the locals.
So it's like one person took took the decisions for the bad
guys or we're doing the dash balls for the bad guys and the
other person was doing that. But of course that's that's
personal preference. If you're playing it solo,
there's no mechanical difference whatsoever.
OK, all right, well now see now that that's that's a heart
warming and positive to hear because when I first heard about
your game, I was like, this is a solo game.
It's never going to hit my table, right?
But I like that there is that cooperative nature.
And then it came out through the play testing process.
So with that in mind, was there a moment during that process of
play testing where you started to notice this trend?
Did you have to make any tweaks or changes to the game in order
to accommodate that cooperative nature, or were you able to just
keep going with productivity We. Didn't make any changes to the,
to the core game, to the kind of playability into the mechanics.
We didn't. But what we did have to do then
was kind of think about especially children because what
so, So what we did go back is originally we thought it would,
this was going to be more of a sci-fi kind of adult game.
And throughout play testing, we, I think we underestimated how
smart kids are these days, right?
So what we did was go back and look at the wording, especially
in the instruction manual and kind of make that count as many
words as we could. So think about how to get back
to basic language. But in terms of the core game,
we didn't make any changes at all.
We didn't, we didn't need to. There was some some cards which
had some some gory element to it, which we then decided to
remove based on on feedback as well.
We were like, I don't think you need that.
It's a good game without kind of the blood.
And that would rule out me that was only like 1 card.
So we took that out, but we didn't have to change the
mechanics because it just works as it was.
So yeah, this story mode as well.
We then made more choices like in terms of like, so once you
finish Mission X, what do you want to do next?
Do you want to go and fight dinosaurs or do you want to go
and see what the gladiators are up to?
So we put more choice at the bottom so that if people were
playing it cooperatively they would have to make decisions
together rather than just turn the page and play again.
So I've heard a lot of you've described a lot of historical
settings that are in the ancient world, both Asia and Western
Mediterranean. How much history is covered in
the missions? Like how far, how close are to
modern times does it go? And we have 8, there's eight
different time zones or 8 eras around this.
And so each one has three missions.
So for instance, if you go to Egypt and the first mission
might be you go through the gate and you have to find the temple.
And then the second mission would be you're in the temple
and you have to defeat the guards.
And then the third mission might be you then have to steal the
amula and fight the scorpions. So it's kind of a narrative
driven those 3. So there's three in each of the
8I. Let's not forget any of these
now. It's so so we have the Viking
era, we have ancient Egypt, as we said, the Mongolian Empire,
the late Cretaceous period, which is dinosaurs obviously of.
Course. The Roman Empire, the Aztecs and
the Conquistadors, you jump right to the middle of that
battle and Edo, Japan and the Samurais.
And then the final one is the future.
So that one takes place in the future, which is where the
Scorpions and the Time Troopers fight in the final three
missions. But you can only defeat them if
you've unlocked all of the right criteria from the other
missions. So the better you do in the lead
up to those last missions, the easier it will be.
OK. All right.
So it sounds like there's a lot of opportunity for expansions in
the future. This always comes up, it's
always a thing. And we're asking people in play
testing. So yeah, we've we've got there's
a lot of history in the world, right?
So we've. There is.
We've got a lot of scope to to do more if there's if people
want it. We've left space in the box
deliberately so that you can sleeve the cards, but also so
like we did do any expansions, you could just drop it straight
into the into the box without needing more.
So we have thought about that in the future.
If you read the story, which I can't tell you too much about,
then there's there's potentially a story to do that as well.
Yeah, we, we've been fooling around with some things we could
we could do, like the Ice Age and Saber toothed tigers and,
you know, lots of things going on, lots of history which we can
touch on. Right, Yeah, because I noticed
like the the medieval world, there's not even mentioned.
And I'm like, oh, you could. Yeah, there's a lot that.
Was listed as well, You know, what could we do?
That was a medieval world, Joan of Arc, of course, that was
Africa, which we touched on, which we could do.
We toyed around. He was doing a moon landing
version, so there was a mission on the moves.
So yeah, there's tons of stuff we could we could do.
Of course, going back so far in history, it means you don't have
to worry about copyright and other things as well.
And also we tried to deliberately stay away from
anything which was too likely to upset anyone from a cultural
perspective or anything else as well.
So we stayed away from like walls and things like that and
obvious areas. But yeah, there's still a ton of
history. We could do more.
So I'm thinking about other board games and game designers
who have set their their board game is set in a historical time
period, right? And I'm just thinking about, and
maybe this isn't a question so much as a suggestion.
So yeah, I'll, I'll work it through and we'll see what you
think. So, and of course, this is going
to give me an opportunity to talk about my very favorite game
of all time, and that's Obsession by Dan Halligan, whose
game is set in the Victorian era.
I was thinking, could you work with Dan or other publishers and
like pull so that their board games, their material were in
these missions in future expansions?
Like, is that something possible?
Is that something you, you know what I mean?
That would be really cool, yeah. I think so.
And it depends the artwork. So, so the artwork we have, this
is, is probably the best artwork we've ever done.
And what we had to do was, was do it in eight different blocks
because we wanted the artwork to be a different style for each.
So the short kind cards would be like Japanese ink and Blossom,
which are in there. But then the dinosaur cards,
obviously we want it to be more dark and kind of the dinosaur
hidden. So yeah, we've used a big art
team for this. But the graphic design on the
cards are phenomenal. Rob Ingall, who does the graphic
design has done our awesome job on that.
Pierre, who was who led the art team did a great job.
So I think the the artwork in board games now is is key
because that's the first thing people see.
So you can't see a mechanic. Oh right, the artwork grabs
someone and then the mechanics keep them there is is what we is
what we kind of our philosophy. So if people are walking past
the demo table at Gencon or where where it is, there's
thousands and thousands of games.
So you need someone to walk past and go, Oh, that looks cool.
And then if it is cool, it keeps them there.
If not, then they'll go away. But if you don't get that
initial hook, so it is, it is something we could possibly do
with that as a, as a hook is to use artwork from, from other
games and other styles. Once it's established.
Another area, we another era was kind of like the Renaissance
period and, and kind of Da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci and all
that kind of era. And there's a there's a there's
a few board games that have got some really cool art around
around that as well. And an obsession would be good.
Try and spread the errors globally apart.
Unfortunately, obviously there's a lot of history.
Well, not unfortunately that's that sounds bad, but.
There's a lot, I know what you meant.
There's a lot of history in Europe and not a lot of history
in other continents for us to share around.
So we may have to do something with Australia as well.
So maybe Easter Island or the OR the, yeah, something like that.
So there's, there's tons we can go at.
It's it's great. But yeah, I'm always on the
lookout for great artwork because I think that's the
that's the thing that draws people in.
Right. No, I totally agree with that.
I was also thinking about Thomas Oleg's game Galileo Galilei,
which took over the world last year, which has some really
unique artwork as well. Like, how cool would it be to
pull in that style of artwork, those characters and, you know,
interact with them in some way in a mission, in the.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time travel, Time travel.
Is that something that you're just a big fan of?
Was that like a, was that because, you know, time travel's
divisive? People either love it or they
hate it. I kind of go back and forth.
Is that always something you had an affinity as a fan?
And you're like, I want to do a game in time travel.
Like talk to me about that. So I like the escapism element
of of of gaming on the immersive experience you have.
And I've played a few solo games.
Well, when we started designing, I guess there were very few solo
games around. But more and more now it's it's
become everything has to have a solo mode, whereas this was
designed as a solo game. And sometimes the solo mode
sucks because it's just an add on to say that it's a solo.
I'm not mentioning any games. So the time travel element came
because it's something which to start with, I like the
historical escapism. And so we were going to design A
Viking game and then we're kind of like, oh, there's tons of
Viking games. And then it started out as a
concept between Mark Palette, the designer and I of saying,
wouldn't it be great if you could design A game where you
took control to play a game. You took control of the Vikings
and I could control of the samurais and then we could
attack each other and then, and then that transplant transpired
into, Oh well, what, let's build like 8 or 9 different armies.
So you could have Mongolian empire and I could, and I've got
Archers and you could have a different.
So we, we, we kind of spitballing around that
escapism. But then it just became, well,
well, in what context would they be fighting each other?
How could we get this to work? And so we came up with a time
travelling idea. And then as we were just
spitballing this, it just what we wanted to do then was kind
of, Oh yeah, rather than make two people fight each other, let
them be the good guys and and we can and we can go from that.
So time travel was the convenient vehicle for us to
immerse players in tons of different environments and
worlds that we thought were great and that we wanted to play
games in those eras. So we have Viking games and we
have games about samurais, but what we wanted to do was play
like 3 missions and then go, OK, that's enough, let's move on to
the next era. OK, that's enough.
So time travel, I think we didn't set out to build a time
travel game. We built out, we set out to
build a game and tons of different eras and and and
immersive experiences and time travel was the vehicle to do
that. OK, so how much research did you
have to do in time travel to make this game work
mechanically? A lot.
And not, not just, not just from us, but also in terms of getting
a like a cultural advisor to, to make sure we weren't doing
anything, especially around something which could be
sensitive. So we, we have a, a mission
around the, the Aztecs and the, and the conquistadors.
And so we don't, you jump into the middle of this battle and
say 1 mission you're fighting the Aztecs and the next mission
you're fighting the conquistadors.
And in the next mission, you're fighting them both together
while they're fighting each other.
And so we were very careful. Not well, we did the research
and obviously we know what happened, but we were very
careful to kind of not point out some of the genocide and other
things which is going on because it's it's kids are going to be
reading this. But also we didn't want to get
in trouble with anyone and upset anyone.
So it's a game. It's supposed to be fun.
But at the same time, the last thing you want to do is, is, is
offend anyone's reading up about some eras.
We made missions for some eras. And then the more we read about
it, we were like, we we we can't do this because if we want this
to be a proper experience and we're going to have to put the
historical facts down. And the historical facts are
just not conducive to a family sitting around playing this
game. Sure.
Yeah. So we so we took some content
out and but some of it, like the late Cretaceous period, was just
annoying. I I really wanted T Rex in the
game. And Mark really wanted velocity
Raptors in the game, but there was an inconvenience that they
didn't live on the same continent or in the same time.
So we got that whole screw, screw it, no one will know.
And we were like, yeah, well, we kind of.
Somebody will find out and get mad at you.
Yep. So we had to choose an either or
to make that work. And yeah, but in researching the
game, like the, we call it ancient Egypt, which cause
Cleopatra is, is, is in the game.
But actually then when we looked at it, we realised that
Cleopatra lived closer to us today than to when the pyramids
were built. It's like 2500 years BC.
So there were little things like the more research, we thought
this is a really cool fact. So we've put those facts on
cards in the game and, and historical information about the
area you're playing in is in the book as well.
Just little tidbits that we that we pulled as we were, as we were
going through. Like I always assumed the Romans
wore the red, a kind of fluffy centurion helmet.
And then as we were researching it, we realised they never wore
red. It was purple because purple was
kind of the, the, the, the colour of, of, of Caesar.
And but it was incredibly expensive to make things purple.
Little things like that. We would have to go to the
artist and say, can you make it purple?
And he's like, oh, no, Centurions wore red.
And I was like, yeah, can you just make it purple?
Can you make a purple cloak for us instead of a red one?
So things like that slow the game down.
And I doubt 99% of the people will care.
But doing the research, we, we know it's there and then we, we
know it's, it's right. But that's that's probably
errors in there we're we're not aware of because it's a game at
the end of the day, it's not a historical thesis.
Right, right. The challenge?
The challenges for you and your listeners is to find some
historical inaccuracies. Also want it to be accurate, not
just because we want accuracy, right?
But I think you had mentioned it, you had teachers, they could
use it in the classrooms by being attentive to the detail,
by being accurate teachers, educators can use them in the
classroom. Which then leads to more sales
so that they can be used in the classroom and more exposure.
So yeah, you know, there's a business component to why you
want it to be historically accurate.
It's more fun as well if you if you unlock these kind of Nuggets
as you're going along and things like that.
So yeah, it's it was pretty good.
Absolutely, absolutely. OK, so you've got more Inarius
games. I wanted to ask you this.
Talk to me about the name of the company.
I feel like there's AI feel like.
Not really. There's we set up the company
obviously I explained about the Lakes game.
So it was myself and my wife originally.
And then I have two brothers who one's quite handily a graphic
designer and the other one is a great salesperson.
And so the three of us and my best friend Mark were the ones
who set the company up along with my wife.
So four of us were, were all called Miller, which is my
surname and Molinaris is Latin for Miller.
So we went with, so we went with Molinaris games.
It's it's as boring as that, I'm afraid.
I have a degree in Latin and I do not know that, so that's
pretty darn interesting, to be fair.
It's the question we get asked the most at Commons and
exhibitions is what can I can we just ask why I'm on?
And also it's really hard to spell.
So the amount of times people have tried to like e-mail us or
find our website and it's spelled wrong.
So if I again, if I could use my own time gate, I probably would
have called it something else. I also see that you've got two
titles that are planned to be released this year in 2026.
Is that right? Can you talk about them at all?
Yeah, we we have a new prototype arc today, which is before the
rain. So I don't know how much you
know about this this game, but yeah, we're we're going to bring
before the rain outs to to do kickstarts campaign in for
probably April and then it will be available at the cons in the
summer. So before the rain is well, it
looks beautiful. I don't know if if people can
see this or not, but it's we used Hannah Bailey, who's a
famous illustrator who did games like planted and other games as
well. And so it's a push your look
game. So what you're trying to do is
you are a hive of bees and you are going to collect as much
pollen as possible. And so you would play a card
from your hand, and I would play a card from my hand and you
would have a pollen count on it, one to five at any point.
Instead of playing a pollen card, you could play your Hive
card, which means you'd take all of those cards and all those
points. OK.
But at the end of every flip of a card we also turn over a
weather deck and it'll be sunshine or rain or storm.
If you ever have 3 rain out then the rain washers will pollen
away and you can't collect any cards.
So it's a push your look against both your opponents and against
the weather as. Well, nice.
So it's a really easy to play card game as I've just
explained, dead easy to play. But of course the push your look
element means you play over 3 rounds.
So if after the first round you're behind in points, you can
push your look a little bit more in the second round and third
round. There's also different flowers,
so there's 5 different flower types and each one you can
collect pollen, score bonus points and things like that as
well. So really easy to game.
So we've got that one coming out in the spring and we think we're
going to do very well with that because it's a very easy to play
small box game, which is beautiful and easy to play.
And then we have another game called Little Frankenstein.
Was that the one you were referring to?
No, I didn't know the titles. I just saw that right before the
recording. I saw you had two games coming
out and I was like, oh, I got to ask him about it.
Yeah, so we have a, it's a cool little game.
This is a bit of an exclusive because I've not talked about
this to to anyone before. In around after the end of the
summer for Halloween, we have a game coming out called Little
Frankenstein where you have to, it's a set collection game where
you have to collect body parts of monsters to build your own
Frankenstein's monster. So we will have things like the
Swamp Thing and Dracula and mummies and zombies and evil
robots and of course, Frankenstein himself.
Absolutely. The artwork is kind of anime
cutesy style, really vibrant colours so that kids can kids
can play as well. So you'll be dealt cards and
it's a choose one card and pass them around and kind of drafting
and collecting cards. But there's also power ups,
things like swap the body part for someone else's body part or
just love things out. So really easy to play, fun
game. I would take the type of game
that you would play at the start of a game's night.
But again, we're trying to tap into a niche market of a game
for Halloween that we don't think there's that many quick
games that you can play with, with the whole family for, for
Halloween. Yeah, we're excited about that
because the mechanics are really easy to play.
But again, the artworks great. We've we've hired an anime
artist and it's it's fantastic. Yeah.
We'll share that. I'll share a couple of those
pictures with you and you can share them online if you if you
like. That'd be absolutely, yeah.
They're with along with time troopers there.
We try and do two or three games a year and they're the three
games we're doing in 2026. OK, so I'm I'm curious about
especially so AI and AI art is it's a very hot topic right now.
How easy or difficult is it for you and Molinarius as a as a
whole to find artists for these titles once you're ready to go?
Is that relatively simple or is it a real challenge or Yeah.
I think it's easy to find artists.
It's it's hard to find great artists who not that aren't
talented, but who understand what you're what you're looking
for. So I'm, I'm a terrible artist.
So I tend to just like scribble on bits of paper and then say
this is what we're looking for. But in this it's a bit old
fashioned and a bit 90s, but I I like to create like a mood board
or something like that. Sure.
And send it on to the artist to say we kind of like this vibe
and this thing and but you know, it's very important that the
artist always puts their own spin on it and their personality
comes through. AI artwork is a big no for us.
I understand why it's there. And when I say it's a big no for
us, I think that's a world of difference between using AI or
using stock images for prototypes and things which you
are you are doing inside. So if me and four or five of the
team working here on Time Troopers, you don't want to go
and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on on artwork and then
go actually that doesn't work scrapping stuff again.
So we will just go and grab images of like The Witcher or
something which copyrighted or so we could have inadvertently
have grabbed an AI image because we're just grabbing images off
online. But that's only for the
prototype. We never put anything
commercially out there that has any AI artwork in it for two
reasons. One, there are too many good
artists that need help and our support in the industry.
And we're a indie publisher, so we're never going to be rich
doing this. We're not Asthma Day or, or
anyone else. But what we can do is help the
community around us. And that includes artists and
musicians like TM. We could have just used AI and
downloaded some music tracks. So it's important to support the
community. And I think the wider gaming
community like yourself and, and listening to some of your
podcasts previously appreciate that people like cool art and
they want to know who the artists are.
And people like to know that it's not AI art.
And I think there's still a push back for if there was games that
come on to Kickstarter or, or, or game found at the moment as
soon as it's, I know one came out quite recently and it was,
it was just full of AI artwork and, and it just got kind of
review bonds and, and things like that.
So the community's not ready for it.
And I think that's because most of the people who are into board
games are creative people and, and they understand it's
important for us to support artists.
So it's easy for us to find artists in that way.
And it's just the communication piece I think is the is the
hardest piece to get through what we're looking for.
But that's what I was. So I've, I've talked about, I've
featured, we've talked about this so much on the podcast
about the community of gamers, the community of content
creators, of designers and publishers.
I don't know much about the community of artists
specifically for board games, right?
Like, is there a deep, robust, vibrant community of artists
that do a lot of work for board games that if someone were
designing their first game, could easily plug into and find
the right artist for their game? I.
Think this is where the beauty of of having friends in the
community help. So I'm on a discord group with a
lot of UK indie publishers. We actually have some Canadian
and American people in there now as well.
And so it's relatively easy for me to jump online and ask
another 40 or 50 publishers to say hey we're doing a game about
beehives. Does anyone know anyone that's
really good at watercolor art? Because that's the style we're
looking for and and we share resources between US.
And so like most industries, word of mouth is very important
because I could go online and search for a watercolor artist
and I'd I'd be lost in, in a sea of searches.
So having other people recommend you is good, but also you can
give people a break and try. So things like Fiver, perhaps
some sites like that aren't necessarily great for artists.
I understand that. But what you can do is send a
requirement to six to seven artists and say we're looking
for a watercolor beehive to six artists, can you give me your
image? And then the one that's the best
you can then go, OK, great, we've got a project that you
might be interested in. So you're giving 6 people a shot
at it. Yes, you're paying them for the
artwork to do that. But at the same time, once you
find someone that's really good, you can then work with them for
the entirety of the project. And then you start to go back to
that disco group and say, Hey, I've got something who's really
good if anyone wants to use them for a future project.
So it happens by chance. We also have people to come up
to as a convention and leave us artwork and leave U.S. business
cards and things like that for for art as well As for games and
for all sorts like translation services into different
languages and things like that. So because we're a small
company, we like to give people are shot, even if we've not
worked them before. But once you find someone great,
we stick with them. We have the same graphic
designer that we've used for every game so far.
And we and we have artists that we've used on three or four
games. Even though the style is
different, we know that they can adapt to what we're what we're
looking. For sure, sure.
Well, well, thanks for that because I was, I was really
curious about the art, the community of artists in board
gaming. And so that's a piece that I,
maybe I, I have inadvertently underrepresented on my show and
I'm always looking to expand that out and be more inclusive.
So I think thanks for sharing that with me.
So tell everybody where they can find you, Molinarius, where they
can find time troopers on all the social media platforms and
yeah. Sure.
So you can you can head to molinarius.com and download that
great music we were talking about earlier.
And Troopers is currently in the pledge manager stage on Game
Found. So that will be fulfilling in
around 30 days time from now. I think.
So, yeah. So you could skip all the boring
waiting and just jump straight onto Game Found, put your pledge
in and get your copy so you're not waiting a long time like
other people have been. And yeah, that that's kind of
we're at Modern Art Games on Instagram as well on Facebook.
We're not sociable enough to to do all of the kind of packs and
everything We're we're still working on that sort of stuff.
But yeah, it's I would say more on rs.com is probably the best
place to go. Well, fantastic, Lee, thank you
so much for joining me and sharing your story.
I, I know I'm, I'm now I get the excitement.
I get it. So Becky, when you're listening,
I understand time troopers. Super, super exciting.
Guys, don't forget to like and subscribe.
Please send me your comments. It's been great this year so
far. It's been a great start.
Those comments really help me keep my energy level up to keep
providing you with the same level of content.
And as always, be kind to each other and let's play more games.
Games.