Table Tyrant games are made up of Aaron Sparke and Dylan Shearer. Dylan did the hard lifting to answer the questions so let us find out a little about these Tyrants of the Table…
Tell us who you are and what you have designed?
Table Tyrant Games composes of both Aaron Sparke and myself, Dylan Shearer. We have both been working on our own little games for the last few years but came together over Tavern Fame, the short, fantasy-based, press-your-luck bidding game about heroes bragging about their kills in a pub. After preparing Tavern Fame for Kickstarter, we both decided that this was something we wanted to do for a job so we formed Table Tyrant Games, a publishing company that will both design in-house and look outwards to other designers to see what they’re coming up with for us to publish as well.
Well certainly sounds like they have their heads screwed on right and they are looking to help other designers – love it.
What is it that makes you want to design games?
For Aaron and I at Table Tyrant Games, its all about making games that we want to play. Tavern Fame arose out of Aaron’s want to play a fantasy game that would act as a filler. That’s the key. Making games that are fun for both us and the other people who play them.
From the looks of it Tavern Fame is kind of card based? I have seen a role playing game that looks at a similar concept recently too. But it is a British game so I had best not talk about it here!
What are the games that inspire you most?
Everything! Seriously. Aaron and I are power gamers with a wide range of play under our belts. Together, we cover most of the spectrum of games and any that we miss, my wife will play anyway 😛
My kind of gamers.
What makes Australian games different from others?
Honestly, absolutely nothing. Australian games are just as well-built and marketable as every other game out there. And that’s amazing. Australian games can hold their own against many of the US or European counterparts. The beauty of it all though is that this design culture has grown on its own without much external support. We should be proud.
Of course we should be proud – the stuff I am unearthing this month is probably just the surface of a brilliant depth of game designers in our country.
Where can we get your games from?
The best place to get our games is from store.tabletyrantgames.com.au but you should be able to see it in your friendly-local-gaming-store shortly. If they don’t have it yet, tell them to get in contact with us. We’ll get it to them 😉
Neat – just went and took a look. Sounds great and they are keen to sell via my store too 🙂
Are you working on anything at the moment?
Are we ever?! Our big project at the moment is a euro-style production strategy game called Smiths of Winterforge. We teamed up with Jamie Noble from the United Kingdom to bring some killer art to the game. That’s got a major focus for us so that we can hit our planned project launch on Kickstarter in June.
Outside of that, we have a few more games in the works. A drafting set-collection game. A strategic card game. A Miniatures boss-fight game. Not too mention that we’re also starting to look at other designers around Australia to see what they’re putting out and whether or not they are interested in working with us to publish their game.
Anything else you would like to mention?
If you are interested in hearing more about upcoming games from Table Tyrant Games, you can sign up for our newsletter at http://tabletyrantgames.com.au/ and if you are a designer looking to pitch your game to us, keep an eye out on our website and Facebook page. We’ll let you know when we’re ready to get them 🙂
Sounds like we have a couple of entrepreneurial game designers that may grow to great things. I can’t wait to see their product!
A couple of new additions got added to the interview list yet so Aussie Game Design November is not quite over yet. Stay tuned and keep rolling!