Bezier Games

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Royal Collector’s Edition

By Ted Alspach | Founder & CEO of Bezier Games, Inc.

In 2014, Bezier Games launched Castles of Mad King Ludwig. As a very small publisher, this was our 2nd big box game, following the release of Suburbia a few years before. Just like most small publishers, we did everything we could to get the game produced, but our budget was incredibly tiny. Artwork and graphic design in particular ended up getting shorted, but the game was still incredibly well received, and since its publication it has sold more than 100,000 copies.

We started working on a collector’s edition for Castles in 2018, commissioning much better artwork, great graphic design, and determined which of the many expansions that were in development might be ready for it. Of those, the Towers and Royal Decree expansions were deemed to be the most viable, and so we had art created for them and started serious development on both of them, as well as rethinking how the the game’s table presence should be, and what if anything would be special about the Collector’s Edition. We wanted everything to be special about this edition, so we hired a 3D artist to create plastic painted towers that replicated the design of the 8 castles that Ludwig either built or lived in during his life. That same 3D artist created new plastic swan player tokens. We decided early on that the swan player tokens needed to feel solid, but instead of just making them solid plastic, we embedded a chunk of metal into each of them, making them feel really good to handle, and also ensuring that they wouldn’t tip over easily.

Our graphic designer designed new coins, which are incredibly detailed and reflective of the time Ludwig was alive in the mid 1800’s. And like coins at that time, we made these 3mm thick…much thicker than metal coins you’ll find with other special editions of games, so they are easy to pick up, move, and stack onto room tiles in the market.

Because the Favor tokens now had a dual purpose with the new Towers expansion, we made them all heavilyweighted poker chips…the same weight that the first edition of Splendor had, which is as premium as you can get.

We included the limited Polish expansion set of rooms, and also created a C whole new group of rooms that were new to M this edition. Y

We also looked at anything else we CM thought could use improvement based on the feedback we had gotten for the game and its MY Secrets expansion over the years. Gone were CY the zig zag scoreboard, multi-piece market/ CMY room storage boards and long setup times K for including the Swans portion of Secrets, being replaced with a single scoreboard and a better way to include swans that didn’t require any setup time.

People had long wanted to play Castles with 5 players, and while there weren’t enough components in the original game to do that, we made sure it was possible with this new edition.

Finally, we turned our attention to the rules. We made the expansions color coded so it would be easy to find the rules for the expansions you are playing with, and provided all sorts of great examples and detailed setup pages to make learning and referencing rules as easy as possible.

To top off the Royal Collector’s Edition, there are GameTrayz to store all of the components in a way that makes the game quick and easy to setup.

The Royal Collector’s Edition was a limited print run, and there are only so many still available, so be sure to get yours now! beziergames.com

Board Gaming PEDAGOGY

By Justin Spicer

How to Engage Growing Children Through Gaming

The paths in which people enter board gaming are varied, but family is the first entry point for children to experience and get enthused by the hobby. The games they play with parents, siblings, and extended family helps create bonds that they may carry as they mature. Above all else, as fun as board gaming is at its surface it’s also a fantastic and flexible learning tool that matures with children as they transition into school age and well beyond adolescence.

Whether it’s through specific gaming lines that are aimed at making gaming accessible and yet enjoyable for children, or FLGS hosting events that encourage families to explore

gaming together in an environment where they can learn a game together and feel comfortable, there is something children will always be learning by the mere enjoyment provided by a board game.

Building Better Minds

How do children stay in the hobby when they start to grow up, find other interests, and more entertainment options open up to them? Well, parents can rest assured that the benefits of board gaming are plentiful, from helping younger children develop hand-eye coordination, recognize patterns, shapes, and colors sooner, and boost language development. But the benefits for growing children as they enter those school age and adolescence is just as lengthy. Thankfully, publishers are creating games that are meant to grow with these younger gamers and their families. Kids Table Board Games (KTBG) has prided itself on designing “casual games for serious gamers, and serious games for casual gamers”. This includes creating games that grow and adapt along with children and families. KTBG often creates games that are modular, where certain rulesets, pieces, or mechanics can be removed or added to reduce or increase the complexity depending on who is playing the game. “We wanted to make games for adults that kids could play,” Helaina Cappel, co-founder of KTBG, explains. “So we knew that the games not only needed to have aspects of them that were challenging enough for adults and simple enough for kids, but also had to look the part.”

Many of the skills or mechanics that are inherent in more complex games can be found in the essence of KTBG games, not only to bridge the gap between adult and children players in a family, but also to keep children engaged in games that can grow with them.

Steel Sharpens Steel

Other publishers have taken note. One of the hotter trends in games is deduction and detective-style games, which puts players into the situations where clues, information, and strategy collide into games that are meant to add a bit of abstract thinking to the game table. The popular Unlock! series, released via Space Cowboys, has released the first Unlock! Kids. Not only does Unlock! Kids take away the app component of the original series, but it caters the learning and discoveries to be appealing to school age and parents alike.

HABA has found similar success in its The Key series. Each case is not only radically different, but the solutioning involved means multiple ways to find success and solve the riddles inherent in the games. The Keys and Unlock! Kids help teach the value of teamwork via cooperative play, as well as increasing attention spans as everyone must pay attention and piece together information to progress.

Finding Partners Outside the Home

Retail initiatives are just as integral to helping kids to grow up, develop skills, and engage in constructive play. Board gaming already encourages socialization and communication growth but finding new avenues to express oneself is key for adolescents to begin embracing their own self-expression.

Many retailers already have family gaming or kids’ night out events that bring the whole family into the friendly and low-stakes environment of a FLGS. These events not only help bring families together and foster learning opportunities, but they build social and coping skills in safe spaces where adolescents can learn how to win and lose with dignity and grace.

Introducing children to these places early not only builds a sense of community from a young age but provides them the means to speak about board gaming with like-minded people of all ages. Events and tournaments around trading card games such as Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering are also places where retailers provide strong incentives and safe spaces for adolescents to use some brain power in devising strategies to win, but also to engage with older and younger kids (and even adults) to help build and strengthen community.

Staying Relevant

Publishers and retailers both are benefitting from the wealth of pop culture IPs that are inundating board gaming. This is where those outside interests that adolescents develop come in handy to keep them engaged in board gaming. Their journey through a pop culture touchstone can lead them through not only a plethora of different interests, but also a wide array of mechanics, themes, and genres that help them find what they enjoy most out of gaming.

No longer is a cartoon character or a popular series used merely to prop up basic gaming mechanics. Games now leverage what makes those notable franchises special, and turn them into recognizable parts of the game, be it through clever storytelling or an innovative mechanic that blends interests into an experiential adventure.

As children continue to grow as people, board gaming is seeming to mature right along with them. The biggest benefit is the learning that comes along with it, both in enrichment and sociability.