Curt Covert

Thanks, Tom!
Believe it or not, Smirky is a self portrait I made of myself. ; )

Just got word. Looks like the street date will be 6/8/15. WooHoo

Very clever and fun, Tom! May I share your poem with others as I share the link to this amazing video?

Another great video. I love when the camera passes through the Encounters. Ashtongue the Cruel is a favorite from this set (seen in the video fly by) as is Cursed Goblin (further cursed by not appearing. Ha.) Two creatures that remain on the top of the list for this game that now has over 120 encounters in it!

These are the most amazing unboxing videos I’ve ever seen. Kudos to the whole team for their artistry and effort bringing them to life for the fans! Many thanks!

Humble Beginnings:
Nevermore was borne of a simple notion. Leaving a rather boisterous night of Dealer’s Choice poker one night, I reflected back on the highlights of the evening. I had called for a hand of “Pass the Trash,” as I usually do at least once when we get together – because I think it’s funny. The ‘true poker players’ hate me for it because it turns the game on its head. It forces you to draft a poker hand and pass along cards intended to destroy all hopes of anyone else building anything decent, completely changing what constitutes a ‘winning hand’ and the strategies for play. That struck something in me. In poker, you are all struggling to have the ONE best hand at the table. But, I wondered, what if there were as many as FIVE ‘best hands’ in any given round? What interesting strategies would it open up? And what if one of the suits was truly poison in your hand? The Raven.

The result ended up being pretty cool. Playing it, you will no doubt be reminded of a number of games; a delightfully odd mash-up of Pass the Trash poker, a dash of Hearts, a sprinkle of a MTG booster draft… but very much its own animal. All those familiar feeling aspects make it very approachable for any level of gamer – yet still engages your gamerly ‘out-think, out-maneuver’ brain, while offering a healthy dose of backstabby goodness.

And that’s the Secret Origin story behind Nevermore.

@Andy – Not sure if self-publishing improved this game or not – but interestingly enough, I ended up over-producing this one. Meaning, I spend more on upping the quality of the components, making the game more expensive than the game play perhaps warranted. So, it is now a break even product for me. Kickstarting this one may well have helped pre-pay some of those ‘improvements’, especially the mold costs for the giant custom dice. This is a project I lived and learned a great deal on. Great game. Not the strongest from a pure business point of view.

@ Andy,

Yeah, to both. I would have used game crafter to make my first salable product nicer, for sure. And, if I could have used Kickstarter rather than put a second mortgage on my house for my first game, I absolutely would have. It put my business in the red for a long time. But, I will say this – having had to ‘bet the farm’ with my own cash, I made really sure it was as good a game as it could be before i printed. It was tested, tested again and validated by having people want to buy the game right there and then. One of the downsides to Kickstarter is that I have seen games that sounded more promising than they played. Some needed more play testing to hone them and polish them. If those inventors had to plunk down their own money, there would be far less of that than there currently is. But crowd funding is an amazing resource that I would have loved starting out. I can fund my games myself now, so I haven’t done a Kickstarter yet. But I do have a project in the works that may be beyond my ability to do without help. It may well be my first foray into KS.

As the official Boardgaming.com review mentions, SUTAKKU is a bit of an oddball title in our line. So, once again, a bit of history on the game’s creation for those curious enough to read on.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Sutakku was originally developed without Smirk & Dagger in mind. Over the years, I have also become involved as a designer/inventor in the more mass toy and game industry, pitching ideas to Hasbro, Endless Games, Buffalo games, Mattel and the like. Our push-your-luck dice game was originally built for that side of the game industry, but with a completely different theme. It got some interest from the big guys, but never got picked up. Which I thought was a shame, because it was really simple for people to get into – but had enough meat to keep people interested.

I really loved the game and didn’t want to shelve it, for the first time considering if it COULD be a Smirk & Dagger title. I went back to my notes, where I’d jotted the first inspirations for the game and mechanics, and saw the doodle that had gotten me started. It showed tribal shrunken heads – or in another sketch totem pole head graphics – one each face of the dice, rising into a stacked tower. Headhunter or Totem was the original idea, where players were stacking ‘heads’ on a pole when they stacked their dice. It was a fun idea (not for Hasbro maybe, but for me). Maybe they could be Goblin Heads stacked by players who were Orc Warlords or something.

At the same time, I had been developing a really cool Japanese themed game. My partner, Justin, suddenly got swept up and inspired. Japanese culture itself is a pretty engaging territory with gamers and not a lot of games take advantage of it. He did some digging and found this amazing bit of Japanese folklore, the tale of the Stonecutter. A man who always wished to have more and was never satisfied with what was provided him – and after a meteoric rise, ended up right back where he had begun. Wiser and happier. It was the perfect story for a push-your-luck dice game! And thus, Sutakku was born.

Sutakku, by the way, is the Japanese word meaning ‘To Stack’ and the Kanji symbols on the front of the box, beautifully hand – brushed by Chiyo Nagahara Romei, is how the word appears in Japanese. Chiyo did all the brush art of the numbers on the dice. They were custom made and you will find no better Japanese Kanji dice anywhere. (the others you will find are simply a type face).

In any case, we now had a great game and a perfect theme – and I was still nervous. After all, Smirk & Dagger Games had planted our flag very strongly in the ‘screw your neighbor’ camp. The game didn’t have that. Perhaps, I convinced myself, the fact that the push your luck nature of the game often meant you ‘screwed yourself’ would be enough. I moved forward, hoping fans would permit an expansion of our line in this way.

I was wrong. As I trotted out a nearly completely printed version of the game at the Gama Trade show – and again at our first big consumer show, everyone liked it – but kept asking, “where is the Smirk & Dagger in this Smirk & Dagger Game?” I cursed myself a bit. I should have known better. I’d done such a good job of standing for something in the marketplace that fans missed our hallmark backstabby elements. So, before the whole game released, I stopped the presses. I quickly thought about how I would bring my love of putting the screws to others to this game. Happily, the answer came quickly. The Smirky’s Challenge cards. Ways to make your opponent’s turn harder – but filled with the same risk and reward built into the game already. Your attempt at screwing them – might just turn around and benefit them. Leaving the door open for you to challenge yourself in desperate circumstance.

Playing it with the deck was even better. It only proved the motto of my company, that “games are more fun when you can stab a friend in the back”. And I recommitted myself to that vision with this title – and for all others to follow.

Give it a whirl – and see what you think!
Best
Curt

Hex Hex was my very first published game design and the cornerstone of what Smirk & Dagger Games would become in the minds of fans. And for those interested, here is a bit of the designer’s journey.

Before its creation, I had fully developed three other games which were gorgeous to look at – but horrific to play. The key thing to say about those misguided attempts at game-crafting was that they each played like 4-player solitaire games. They were dull. Inspired themes, that did not inspire players nor engage them in any meaningful way. These were games I labored over for a year or more. And, in the end, they felt laborious.

So, I pondered long and hard about games I myself loved – and what aspects about them I loved most. At that time, Wiz-War by Tom Jolly was a game I couldn’t get enough of. There were constant turns of fortune, gnashing of teeth and great emotional highs and lows. Much of it came as a result of ‘Take That!” style game play. And his was one of a handful that inspired my company’s path.

I imagined, just for a moment, that I was going to open my own board game company. I looked out at other companies at the time – and so few stood for more than simply “we make fun games for everyone!”. But there were a few who had planted a flag. Cheapass Games was definitely one of those who had a real proposition that made them unique in the marketplace and demanded your attention. With a background in marketing, I strongly felt that I couldn’t just be another generic game company if I wanted to get noticed. So, I took my love for emotionally-driven ‘stab your buddy’ games and planted a flag in the ground. The idea of Smirk & Dagger Games and it’s mission came before everything else.

Armed with a new vision, I sought to find the simplest execution of the promise. I wanted a fairly easy, quick-playing, HIGHLY interactive game with lots of ‘take that’ opportunities throughout every moment of the game. A card game seemed the most appropriate to the task. And unlike the labor that was the previous three games, in two weeks I had landed on the first prototype of Hex Hex.

A fast-paced wizards duel was what I set out to create – and it was so fast playing (a hand can take just two minutes or less) that one of the original ideas was to make it a ‘mini-game’. Something a gaming group might break out for a single hand to make a decision or settle an argument with, like who gets to decide what toppings would be on the pizza you were about to order. The winner would have their voice carry the day — and the fact that your ‘points’ in Hex Hex are still called ‘Voice’ are artifacts of that original design.

But, what we discovered is that one hand wasn’t enough. There were so many interesting twists and turns. So many effects – some of which people held but didn’t have a chance to use against someone yet. We’d built in counteractions, twitch mechanics, mid-game rule changes, scoring reversals, so much interesting stuff that people smiled and chuckled over the cards in their hand, as they mused about who would eat their nastiest effects. People wanted to play multiple hands. To use all the fun cards. So we set a number of hands to determine game length and decided we actually had a true card game.

Then we decided to reward people for winning the game by bringing back the ‘Voice carries the day’ idea – and let winners set a ‘Law’ for the next game. Something devious and nasty that everyone might suffer (including themselves if they weren’t careful) much like some of the common drinking games did. It put the game into overdrive – and had people playing at least three games in a session.

Over a year, we got a lot of input, adjusted wordings, tweaked cards and such, but the game remained largely unchanged – and still looking like a viable product. Two things remained – a look and proof that it would sell.

I had begun playing Magic the Gathering by that point (a new game that year) and really wanted to have each spell have unique gorgeous art like magic did. But I’d never be able to afford it. So instead, I used my graphic art background to create a different solution. An opposite one. There were no solid black cards on the market. They might look truly arcane. By using a metallic ink and alchemy symbols (or variants of them) I would have a game that didn’t show what the spells did (like MTG) but cards that represented the mystic tools of spell casting themselves. Cool! Players were drawn in by the distinctive look we’d created.

And then, we were unexpectedly invited by a local retailer we had met a a convention to join them in their small booth at Gencon, to generate interest in people stopping by to shop. But we didn’t have a game to sell yet. Game Crafter didn’t exist – so I went to Kinkos and made 100 black and white copied sets on a rust-colored, recycled card stock. The corners were straight cut, not rounded. And I packed each into a plastic card case and put a $12 price tag on it. When Gencon ended, we had sold nearly all of them. At that point, I thought I might just have a game worth printing.

It took a second mortgage to do it (without Kickstarter being a possibility) and has since seen a couple reprints, a German language edition and it’s current expanded rules set (with game variants) in Hex Hex XL. Still delightfully fast-paced & wickedly mean-spirited in dishing out the fun. I urge you to give it a try.