Let BSGames Begin! Company startup

Hello.

We are looking for some assistance in getting our dream further along the path to becoming a reality.

Bill and I are combining our creative energies and starting our own board game company. We’ve known each other for just over 20 years and have collaborated on a few personal projects already, each of which, in retrospect, looks to have been practice for this one.

Let’s take a step back, shall we, and I’ll provide some context through a flashback or perhaps a “previously on” segment.

Bill and I met when we worked for Games Workshop at the end of the 1990’s. I liked to think things up and create games, and he was trained in the arts of graphic design and illustration. Together we made a parody magazine to share with our co-workers, full of clever writing and creative illustrations.
  We haven't changed a bit!

Our career paths diverged, though, and he went to work doing graphic design full-time, while maintaining his own graphic design business, www.purplealien.net , and I went to university to get a higher education.

Bill and I kept in touch and took up designing t-shirts together until the website that hosted our boutique shut down.

But our love of games has always been with us, and is now the focus of our creative passions. Bill currently designs targets and logos for the special archery events I create for the archery range where I work part-time (Ontario Centre for Classical Sport ), but we’re now taking our creativity and passion to a higher level.

Cool logos for cool events!

As a middle school teacher, I am looking for and finding ways to keep students practicing math skills without it seeming like a chore. To this end I have developed games. Of course, to make my games, I had to hand-draw boards on paper, or try to use Microsoft Word as a graphics program. So naturally, I asked Bill for help. This is what sparked the idea that we could produce these games for everyone, and not just my students. The idea expanded, and even though the first couple of ideas for games are educational, this doesn’t mean this will be our only focus.

This brings us back to now. We have several games under development, and would like to bring them to market and share them with everyone. Our original idea was to use another crowdfunding site that offers incentives for your help, and we still plan to, but there are things we need even before we can do that.

What we’re looking for is the money to get us started even before we can fully offer product. This would be for administrative costs, such as trademarking our company and product names, and having prototypes made to demonstrate our games.

If you could support us, we would be very grateful. If you can’t support us financially, we understand. It would also be a great help to us just to spread the word. Share this link, check out our website when it is up and running, and check on our progress. Who could you share this with that might be interested? Educators and parents who could use more resources to help their learners with math. Board game aficionados who would like to see what another company can bring to the tabletop. We have many ideas to share.

A more detailed description of our products in development is listed below.  Keep checking back, as we will add progress pictures to show you how much closer each product is to completion!     

Subtract n’ Adder: The Subtract ‘n’ Adder takes arithmetic learning and makes into a fun, game-like experience. Children will see how addition and subtraction work in a visual and kinesthetic experience, as they use dice to generate numbers to add and subtract, and then move the colourful counters to solve the problem. In doing so, they will learn about regrouping, seeing it happen and engaging in the process.

As a bonus to their math instructor, the Subtract ‘n’ Adder does away with the need for worksheets, as students create their own questions!

An image of the board with some dice and counters.

Mathemagician’s Duel: Math is the language that the universe is written in! Now your mathemagician can take command of the magic of numbers to cast spells to defeat an opposing magician. This two-player game will help practise adding and subtracting skills as well as improving working memory as players put together strings of numerals and operators to get to their spell’s casting value first. Once your mathemagician has mastered addition and subtraction, higher levels await! You can augment your magical energies with multiplication, division, and negative numbers, along with new, more powerful and complex spells.

My hand-drawn deck, plus one of the ones I printed on my printer and laminated. These are for playtesting and demonstrating before we get the artwork done for the professionally-printed prototype. 

Universal Turf War (working title): Take command of a group of ruffians from a disparate series of time periods, genres, and themes and fight to gain territory! In this card game, you will be pitting the brawling, shooting, and thinking skills of your gang against another player’s to win territories and capture their gang members. Put together the right force with the right support to win the fight!
 
 This game will feature the fantastic artwork of a talented young artist who has joined the project. Jasmine is looking toward a career as an artist, so we're happy to be working with her and getting her artwork seen. You can check out some of her art here: 
Instagram: @sp.ace.ed.out
Tumbr: @sp-ace-ed-out
Twitter: @sp_ace_ed_out

Protracted Combat: Charge laser cannons, line up the right angle, and fire! In this box, there are many games, both single and multiplayer that all use the same skill: angles. Players declare angles at which to shoot their laser cannons, and then use the protractor to measure their shot to see if they hit their target. Included games vary from a single player destroying invading aliens before they are overwhelmed, to players shooting at an asteroid to push into an opponent’s area. Players increase their understanding of angles while conquering the galaxy.

Don’t Get Glued: This party card game that is suitable for a LARGE number of players takes place over the course of an event and combines the fast-paced action of rock-paper-scissors with the nerve-wracking anticipation of Old Maid! Each player gets a hand of cards consisting of rocks, papers, and scissors, and if you’re unlucky, the glue! Find an opponent and on the count of three, reveal a rock, paper, or scissors card. If your card beats your opponent’s they must take a random card from you. Lose all of your cards and you’re out and safe; the player who gets stuck with the glue loses!

These are the games that we are focusing on now, but we have several others in various stages of development, from an idea, to a basic premise, to a rough rules set. These include a province-conquering army game using words instead of dice for combat, a co-operative zombie survival game that involves exploring and clearing a house, a game in which players become vampires harassing the villagers of a small town, and an army battle game that takes place in a mysterious world with a rich story-filled background.

We are quite excited to be working together on this project, and get more excited with every new idea, and with every step we take forward. Hopefully, with your help, we can take a bigger step and get past some of the beginning financial obstacles to get our business going and make our ideas into realities, and our prototypes into full games available at your local distributors!

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