David Smith previews Glimmerdeep, Winsmith's most ambitious game yet - TCbH PAX Interview

0:00 Hey everyone, I am here with one of my favorite people in the industry, David Smith of Windsmith Games. It's the last day of Packs Unplugged and you have unveiled Glimmer Deep. How's the reaction to the game been?

0:12 It's It's been fantastic. Thank you very much. It is an engine builder that has very asymmetric factions and abilities, but in the game, you all are developing your subterranean civilization.

0:25 And this is a game that's coming to crowdfunding in February. That's the plan. Yes, we're planning to kickstart it this February.

0:32 It already looks really sick. The prototype that you're demoing seems to be getting good positivity from uh what I've been seeing as I've been walking around. Now, this is what your fourth game that uh you have at the booth. I know you got more that you're working on and already planning for the future. Uh but at the booth, you got a bunch more here. What's uh what's up with your lineup and how's the reception been to some of the older games in the catalog?

0:59 It's been great. A lot of our games are still selling pretty well. They're solid fun games. So, we have 10gon Tank over there, which is a split and choose uh set collection game with beautiful art around fish uh about developing uh your the most aesthetically pleasing aquarium that you can. We have Junk Drawer, which was our second game. Uh, it's been a solid game for us. We've already had a print run of 4,000 for that game. Uh, that's been doing really well. A fun like family weight strategy game with a lot of replayability to it.

1:33 Shout out to Vicki at Devil's Club in Juno, Alaska, who the junk drawer favorite game in the world. Number one fan. Now, Adventure Party.

1:44 So, uh, Adventure Party. This is a game that we licensed with Smirk and Dagger.

1:48 Um, I'm an avid D&D player. love role playing games, love party games. So, this is a role playing party game in which everyone has their characters. There's 12 different classes and characters that you might recognize.

2:01 Yeah,

2:02 there's no deep mechanics to this game. It really is a party game and a a storytelling game.

2:08 I love it as an entry point to RPGs. You know, a lot of people who follow the channel know that I am a board gamer first and I've always been RPG curious. Uh, but it's it's not a world that I necessarily grew up in. I've played a lot of RPGs at this point. However, this was maybe the most accessible to dipping that I'd ever done and has since become something that I've been able to introduce other non RPGers into the overall concept. Saying that it's a party game is accurate, but I love that the focus is still the the beating heart of role playing. that that's your tagline for from now on. I'm I'm just here to sell your games. Um Okay. So, uh I love talking to you as a publisher, but you design the game. So, I want to talk about some of the process here. What was the the difference in working on designing developing some of your other games compared to this new larger game larger in scope and different audience that you might be targeting with Glimmer Deep?

3:19 So with Glimmer Deep, it's actually of all the games that we've designed and published, it's the game that I've been working on the longest. About three years this game's been in the making. It's gone through many, many iterations.

3:30 Yeah. Um, whereas a lot of these other games, Adventure Party, I actually had the idea for Adventure Party on a night where our D and D session got cancelled five minutes before we were supposed to start. I really had the itch to play D and D, but I also had a design itch. Uh, so the hook of the game really is that loop of D and D, roll a dieice, tell a story. Um, and it just kind of turns it on its head and makes it a guessing game. Also, um, other games, Junk Drawer, 10gon Gallon Tank, both games that they were fun to design and develop, but they're smaller, simpler games. So, Glimmer Deep really has a much deeper uh mechanical system to it, right?

4:10 The development has been taken a lot a lot longer time, a lot of asymmetric factions, unique maps, so a lot more development, too.

4:19 What was the most challenging nut to crack? the hardest thing but ultimately came together in a great way that you're super happy with.

4:28 I think probably the hardest has been how to develop the asymmetric factions. So the core of the game really has three you play five rounds. There's three big phases every round. Excavating, construction, and your production phase where you run your engine. But every faction has two main components to it. They have what we call their their calling. right?

4:50 It is their unique mechanism and in-game like uh victory points

4:54 and then every faction has traits

4:57 that you pick uh a level one, level two and a level three trait and there are multiple ones really the structure of all those factions really took a lot of time and iterations to kind of figure out. Is there anything that you can share about the ambitions that you have uh for Windsmith Games and where you're going to go after Glimmer Deep that uh you'd like to tell our audience?

5:21 Absolutely. So, we've actually signed our first game uh first game that it's not my design. I'm really excited about it. Played this at a unpub convention and it just I lost sleep about it thinking about this game. Uh so our that's going to be our next game. Uh it's still in development. We're hoping to probably kickstart that about a year, you know, early 2027.

5:47 I have played the prototype for this signed game. More details are going to be coming out and I guess we're going to have to do more interviews with you and Tra, uh David's partner to make sure that we cover that. But it is very cool. And even though he lost sleep about it as the person who wanted to publish it, my wife and I lost sleep about it because it was just that fun and we wanted to play it that much more last year at PAX. So David, if people want to find out more about Glimmer Deep, what's the best way of following the Kickstarter and everything leading up to uh the um I guess launching of the campaign?

6:24 Number one, go to our website windsmiths.com. sign up for our newsletter. Anyone who's on our newsletter, you're going to be notified about it. We're probably gonna have one or two, you know, emails out to our newsletter beforehand teasing some of the uh aspects of the game, some of the art, some of the factions. Uh we're actually going to do a a campaign variant when you play solo mode. So, if you're someone who likes solo games, there's a campaign mode to it as well. We're going to play four games with the same faction across our all four maps, but your choices will impact future games uh within that campaign mode. Uh but go to our website, check uh sign up for our newsletter. You will hear about the game a little bit more through that.

7:10 We're on social media as well, uh Instagram and Twitter.

7:14 Awesome. Uh David, thank you so much and I appreciate you telling us about the games and always being a friend to the channel. Absolutely jack.