Mike Lee on RPG Boardgame Mashup, DICETINY

with Greg Micek

DICETINY, an RPG, boardgame, and CCG hybrid from the team at Fakedice is one of those Kickstarters that stands out from the pack.  The graphics, the rewards, and the variety of content makes it one worth checking out.  As the DICETINY Kickstarter campaign enters its final days we thought it would be a good time to speak with the team and get some more details about the game.

Cliqist : Can you tell me a little about yourself?

Mike Lee : My name is Mike Lee and I’m with Fakedice.  I’m the marketing/community manager here.  Since other guys here at Fakedice don’t really speak English, think of me as the go-to guy when it comes to English communication.  I mostly do social media updates, business development and whatnot, but I also contribute some ideas for the game like the name of the game. ^^

Cliqist : There isn’t a lot of information on the Kickstarter page about the team at Fakedice.  Can you tell us about them?  Their history, favorite foods, game dev experience?

Mike Lee : We are seven guys from Korea.  We have three artists, two programmers, the guy who calls the shot, and me who does everything that’s related to English.  We developed a game called ArcheBlade.  It’s a fighting game.  You may ask how can a developer who developed a fighting game develop a digital board game.  We decided to develop a fighting game because we thought that would be fun to make, and same thing with Dicetiny.  We did a month-long brainstorming and picked some ideas we thought would be fun.  At the end Dicetiny came out on top.  We are fans of board games and card battle games like Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering, so that definitely affected the decision.  As for our favorite food, If it’s something delicious and unhealthy, we’re in.  If I can add, being an indie in Korea has tons of disadvantages.  I think going to major gaming events like Comic Con or PAX is very important to spread the word about your game but it costs a lot of more for us to make a trip there.  And as English is our second language, even writing an announcement can be challenging.

Cliqist : What is DICETINY?  Can you briefly explain how a typical gameplay session would go?

Mike Lee : DICETINY is a digital board game with RPG and CCG elements.  On top of that, we put some humors and parodies.  Right now there are four classes and races available and each class has different skills cards it can use.  You can either play by yourself with AI friends or three other real people.  As for gameplay, you first select one of the card decks you have already set up. (Similar to Hearthstone)  When the gameplay begins, you first throw the die, and move the number of spaces according to the number on the die.  And a random event occurs, random evens like treasure, trap, quest, or monster.  You have to use one of the cards in your deck appropriately to the situation.  If you have to fight a monster, you can either attack or run away but the monster will follow you.  After a certain turn, meaning that after all four classes take an action, one turn ends.  After a certain number of turns, a boss appears, and you have to work together with three other classes to defeat it.  If you manage to take it down, your performance is scored based on your gameplay, and the one who delivers the final blow is the ultimate winner.  You also get a random card drop which you can use to build your own deck.

Cliqist : I’ll admit when I first saw it I was really impressed with the artwork, but a bit confused about the gameplay itself.  Is that something you’ve run in to, or am I alone?

Mike Lee : Actually there have been a few people who mentioned about that.  We want to take that as a compliment for being unique and something that they’re not used to. ^^ We were actually a bit worried about that as well so we tried to explain as much as we can in the description of the game in the KS page.  Also we’re at the very initial stage of development, the things we were able to put in the video were limited.

Cliqist : You recently announced the Shovel Knight crossover, how will that work exactly?  Any others you can share yet?

Mike Lee : Because the game itself is very simple in terms of animation and because of it being 2D and all, it’s actually perfect fit for character cross-overs.  It’s very easy for us to implement those characters.  And with parodies and humors being important part of the game, we thought that crossovers would make perfect sense, not to mention the exposure we will get from the fans of the games used.  Since the story of the game is very flexible about that, we were also able to add those characters.  Think of it like Shrek or Scary Movie.  You see tons of references in those movies, but it doesn’t really affect the main storyline.  We wanted to be like them.  Those characters will have card skills that will be familiar to the fans of those games, and we also planning to make a board based on the universe of those games.  We recently announced Aegis Defenders, Legends of Dawn and Battle Chef’s cross-overs, and there are still more to come.  We want to take this opportunity to thank the developers of the games, as they were VERY nice about it.  I think that’s what’s so awesome about being an indie.  If we asked Nintendo, Popcap, or Blizzard if it would be ok to use Mario, Plants vs. Zombies or WOW characters, my guess is they would never answer us back.  We’re hoping that we become famous and someday we will be able to feature characters such as Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin in the game, because we’re huge fans of the shows. ^^

Cliqist : So far the campaign has done well.  Not asking you to toot your own horn, but what are some of the things you’ve done right with regards to the Kickstarter?

Mike Lee : It’s doing well all thanks to our supporters, although the pace has slowed down a lot at the moment. (Please help us spread the word if you read this. ^^)  If there’s anything we did right, we spent a lot of time on the looks of the page, and the design instead of focusing on the texts because most people just scroll-down the page, and if it looks god, then they watch the video.  Before the campaign, we did extensive research on other successful campaigns, and I think one of the things that really stood out was the look of the page as well as the trailer.  I think that’s why we were staff-picked.  Also, the cross-overs really helped us bring backers.  Again, we want to thank the studios for allowing us to use their characters ^^  I think promoting within Kickstarter is almost as important as promoting outside Kickstarter like press release and so on, because I think the chance of backing a project is WAY higher if you’ve already backed a project.

Cliqist : There are a ton of stretch goals on the campaign, all the way up to $470k over your initial goal.  Any chance of some of those happening down the road if the stretch goals aren’t met?

Mike Lee : That’s really difficult to say at the moment because the whole point of launching a KS campaign was to raise money to develop the game, and that’s why this campaign is very important to us.

I think if we reach our first goal, get the game out, and the game generates enough money for us to keep going, then of course we will move on to the things mentioned in the stretch goals even if we don’t reach them.

Cliqist : There’s a lot of scams and undelivered promises on Kickstarter unfortunately.  Can you tell us about the teams’ commitment to deliver on DICETINY?

Mike Lee : Well, we’re bunch of very nice integrits, you can count on that. ^^  One thing we can say is if we reach our goals, we will deliver at least what was promised for reaching those goals.

Cliqist : Can you close us out with a DICETINY inspired haiku?

Mike Lee : Actually

 The die is cast.

Every second feels like

a dog left home alone…

Play with me! in…DICETINY!

Thanks to Mike for taking the time to speak with us!  If you’d like to learn more about DICETINY, be sure to check out it’s Kickstarter page.  You can track its funding progress in our Campaign Calendar.