Category: Interviews

03/24/18

GrogHeads Interviews Glenn Drover of Forbidden Games

FoG Glenn Drover is launching a new venture, and stops by to tell us all about it ~

Jim Owczarski, 24 March 2018

Glenn Drover has been in the game business for quite a few years now.  Despite an abiding love of historic gaming — notably in offerings like Napoleon in Europe and Victory and Glory: Napoleon — his biggest successes have been lighter fare including time spent at digital developer PopCap.  Earlier this week, he and fellow PopCap alum announced a new venture — Forbidden Games.  It seemed like a logical time to do a little catching up.

So, for the six people reading this who don’t know you, what were the last three games — digital, tabletop or otherwise — you were involved with?

The last three games that I worked on that were published were:

  • Victory & Glory: Napoleon, a lighter grand strategy game of the Napoleonic Wars for the PC, published by Matrix  (Note: I finally finished the board game version, which will be shipping in April, published by Forbidden)
  • Galactic Rebellion, a sequel (of sorts) to Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery, published by Eagle Games
  • WarQuest, a fantasy strategy game (with amazing miniatures) inspired by Divine Right, published by Mr. B Games

Continue reading →

12/12/17

The Tuesday Interview – Dr Ezra Sidran, Designer of General Staff

With a fresh Kickstarter launch, General Staff is plowing ahead ~

Jim Owczarski, 12 December 2017

click most images to enlarge

The folks who follow this site know about (and many of us are quite excited by) the approach of General Staff.  What have you been working on since last we talked?

We’ve been busy getting all the modules necessary for users to create their own scenarios (the Army Design module, the Map Design Module and the Scenario Design module) ready for beta testing. In the process we decided to make some major changes to the underlying file structures and rewrote a lot of code to make the entire General Staff project behave properly in future versions of Windows. We’ve also conducted a survey to select the thirty free scenarios that will be sent to early supporters of the General Staff Kickstarter campaign and researched the maps and Order of Battle tables for the scenarios. And then we’ve been busy trying to get the word out about the General Staff project in general.

Continue reading →

11/21/17

Tuesday “Interview”: The Grogs’ Favorite Tank Games

We asked the Grogs to give us their favorite tank-heavy game ~

The GrogHeads Team, 21 November 2017

Cyrano

This one’s not even close:  Combat Mission in its various iterations.

These are games played with a merciless physics engine that feel every bit as gritty and grand now as they did nearly two decades ago.

I remember getting hooked on the WEGO gameplay and the ability the 3D environment gave you to peek over the shoulders of your digi-troopers and guess at what war must have been like for them.  Multi-player randomized battles to the wee hours of the morning were pretty great too.  What made both x1 and x2 really special, though, was the incredible variety of, yep, AFVs.  I’m not an WWII rivet-counter — I save my O.C.D. for Napoleonic games — but the fellows who designed Combat Mission are and it shows every time you pan around their products; not to mention the remarkable array of modifications available on-line.   There are no CRTs or bog charts here.  These are games played with a merciless physics engine that feel every bit as gritty and grand now as they did nearly two decades ago.  They’ve let me play with some of the most famous tanks of the war and some I never even knew existed.

Others have come for her throne, but CMx1 and x2 are still queen of the battlefield for me when it comes to tank warfare.

Continue reading →

07/25/17

The Tuesday Interview – COIN on Mars!

The designer of the home-brewed COIN-on-the-Red-planet game gives us the scoop on his personal design ~

Brant Guillory, 25 July 2017

The COIN system has taken a variety of odd directions – some modern, some not – many of which we’ve covered here at GrogHeads.  One place the COIN system had not yet gone was to space.  Until now.

A home-made COIN-based game, set on Mars, has started to capture some attention, and there’s some buzz about it on teh interwebz.  With that in mind, we tracked down the creator (wasn’t too hard, he’s on BGG!) and bugged him with some questions about his design.

First, the obvious question – this wasn’t anything official from GMT, was it?  You’re not just part of a, ahem… “guerrilla” marketing campaign, are you?

Not official from GMT in any way shape or form. When I first had the idea for the game I messaged Volko and asked his permission to use the game engine. He was 100% cool with that and said if I ever wanted to publish the game, that GMT would be the place to do it.

As it stands, there is no agreement, formal or informal, with GMT to publish the game.  Ideally, there will be. Otherwise this will end up being a free PnP game.

 

 

Continue reading →

07/18/17

The Tuesday Interview – Steve Jackson

You know, the one with the company named after him…? ~

Avery Abernethy & Brant Guillory, 18 July 2017

Following LibertyCon, the esteemed Steve Jackson agreed to a short interview with GrogHeads.

 

First, the easy question!  What was your single most enjoyable game moment this year so far?

Had to be at LC playing one of the unannounced sneak playtest designs which I will not name for print. Everybody was involved and laughing. Great moment. I do like the chance to play with new people, and when a game clicks it’s wonderful.

 

One of our writers recently put together a big, multi-part retrospective of classic 80s-era Car Wars.  What can you tell us about the new Car Wars in Development?  What Kickstarter information can you start leaking out? 

I really can’t leak a heckuva lot. We had to set CW development aside to get the Munchkin CCG off to print. We are about to pick it up again. It already works very nicely but we want it to be faster, and the collision rule in particular could stand some polishing.

 

Continue reading →