About this project
Steal This Game
$50,814
3,017
Imagine for a second that you are selling your latest board game at Essen. You recruited volunteers, set up demo tables, and built up your booth. Your games are selling like cardboard hotcakes. All is well until you turn around, and your shiny new cash box is gone...
This is Steal This Game, based on a true story.
On Saturday, 15 October 2016, around 4 pm, our cashier realized that in the 10 seconds it took to look in our warehouse for a game, our cash box was gone.
For a small indie board game publisher, this represents a significant loss. Besides the financial hit, this has also affected us on an emotional level.
Games are fun. Gamers are fun. They are also some of the most welcoming, generous, and trusting people around. For this to happen during the greatest celebration of cardboard & wood in all of boardgamedom is a devastating blow.
According to what venue security told us when we submitted the police report, this is likely the work of professionals. Fellow friendly publishers have indicated that they noticed similar attempts or approaches by individuals that did not seem to know much about the hobby. We hope and assume that this was not done by any gamer.
THE GAME
This asymmetric nanogame, playable by two players in five minutes or less, fits on a postcard (with two dice supplied by the players). One player takes on the role of a boardgame publisher at a big convention.
The other player is a thief, intent on robbing the publisher's booth — rolling dice, lying, guessing, and shuffling cards.
The exhibitor tries to keep the cash hidden in one of the four cash boxes. The thief secretly rolls a pair of dice and then tries to make increasingly risky moves in order to gain more information about the location of the cash.
If the exhibitor catches the thief while attempting this, the thief makes one last attempt to steal. If that fails, then the exhibitor wins.
UPDATE
New design (work in progress):
RULES
For more details on the components and rules of Steal This Game, download the rule book here (right click and Save as…). Please download this file, as PDFs viewed in-browser may not display properly. This file is the low-resolution version of the final rules document.
VIDEOS
Rahdo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Jb0sUs7PU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFZ57uzcevI
Vitruvian Gamer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSoe7h1FyUo
Board Game Girl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxQJF_QwQRs
Cliquenabend (german)
Hunter & Cron (german)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clNRbiTxmCU
DEVELOPMENT
Steal This Game was designed, developed, prototyped, and playtested within one night, the night of the robbery. And yeah, we actually had fun with it. Here's a taste of what happened:
We are offering some of our games, at or below the SPIEL'16 price. Every little bit helps, and we are happy for any support that you are able to provide.
We have also been able to add some bundles of games. Variations or substitutions are not possible due to stock levels, weights of games and our desire to give you as much value as possible.
To find out more about the above rewards, please visit the LudiCreations website.
We will ship all existing games from our warehouse in Essen, Germany. The postcards may be sent from Germany, Hungary or Finland. EU backers do not have to worry about customs or VAT.
Shipments to backers outside of the EU and the USA will have the base game cost declared as the value of the package (the shipping cost will not be included in the declaration). The postcards are not subject to taxes.
The postcard will be sent through regular mail. Tracking is not offered through this campaign. If tracking is important to you, please contact us via the KS messaging system before the campaign is over.
Please note that we can not take any responsibility for any lost or damaged copies to Brazil, Hungary, Russia, or South Africa.
There is a large number of incredibly talented and even more generous people that we would like to thank.
First among them is David Turczi, who never even said "of course" when asked to design this game. He was too busy putting mechanisms together. A credit to any publisher that has the fortune to work with him.
More to come over the next few days.
Risks and challenges
Well, we could get robbed again.
Other than that, we have only one other outstanding campaign: CRISIS, our major release for 2016. The fulfillment process has already started, and we expect to deliver on time.
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Funding period
- (14 days)