Kim Brebach is fairly active in the communities that I have seen around the traps. It is time to see what games of his I am going to be playing in the future.
Tell us who you are and what you have designed?
I’m Kim Brebach. I’m now Director of a new Australian publishing company Good Games Publishing.
I designed our first game; MONSTROUS – a card throwing game of mythic mayhem. You are a wrathful god chucking thematic tactically powered mythic Greek monsters at mortal city targets. This is my attempt at a thematically immersive and actually strategic dexterity game.
I’ve designed 2 other games I hope will see the light of day. But I really enjoy developing games too. I’ve now got the perfect job to do that 🙂 But we are also publishing a bunch of other peoples games from Australia and probably elsewhere.
Good Games (despite being an evil competitor of mine – LOL) are doing a brilliant job in the local market of bringing games to the table. I am super impressed from the releases (press) that they have made over the past few months. So if you do not live in Tassie and can’t get Games On Board merchandise (which actually uses Good Games as a supplier anyway) then visit one of their stores.
What is it that makes you want to design games?
I started playing games where you make your own thing within the game; an RPG character, and RPG campaign, a CCG deck tuned against the meta game etc. After moving into board gaming from there, making whole games seems a natural progression, and its never been easier. I also get inspired by problems in games I play. Making my own seems an antidote to those.
What are the games that inspire you most?
Generally thematic and interactive games with minimal downtime:
- A Game of Thrones board game.
- Cyclades
- Chaos in the Old World
- Evo
- Panic station
- Sushi Go
- No thanks
So many games I have yet to play.
What makes Australian games different from others?
Not much in my opinion, I don’t see an Australian design school… But maybe because the scene is so new here we have a larger proportion of new designers who seem to focus on smaller simpler shorter games so they can get their names out there fast?
I am not certain that the game designing community is new. All the way back to when I started gaming in the early 1980’s there was a strong Australian presence amongst Tabletop Boardgame Designers. Perhaps I should do a bit of an investigative piece and show the history that many people seem to be oblivious of.
Where can we get your games from?
Monstrous and other ‘Good Games’ will be available in most game retailers throughout Australia from Jan / Feb 2016.
If you want it fast you can pre-order it from http://secretbasegames.com/monstrous/pre-order-monstrous
Look for our RELEASE THE KRAKEN! expansion on Kickstarter in January too. You will be able to get that bundled with the base game.
Neat – just went and took a look. Sounds great.
Are you working on anything at the moment?
We just got back from looking at game submissions at PAX Melbourne so I’m working on a bunch of fun games one way or another now.
Anything else you would like to mention?
Thanks for doing this for Australian game designers. There is a renaissance happening here great to have some shout outs 🙂
It is my pleasure. While I play a lot of games from over the pond it is solidly because I have not had exposure to the great games that we are putting out from the point of view that they are Australian. I think we really undersell that point and it is something that we should be promoting as opposed to hiding from.
Two more profiles to go people.. Tune in tomorrow to find out who is left to go. Keep rolling!