Posted in: Movies, Video Games | Tagged: Andrew Harman, entertainment, Frankenstein's Bodies, Jenny Harman, kickstarter, rpg, Tabletop Gaming

A Little Bit Of Body Swapping – Play The Surgeon In Frankenstein's Bodies On Tabletop

By Phil Harris

Frankenstein's Bodies is a tabletop board game for 2 to 6 players which is currently in the last week of its Kickstarter campaign. The game has been in development for a number of years and the current version has ironed out many play features to create a fast and frantic game which last about an hour. Indeed, when we played, there were limbs flying everywhere.

There is a significant difference between crowdfunding a videogame and a board, roleplaying or war game, the reasons relating directly to the costs of development. For board games (et al.) the games creators tend to have designed the initial concept, play tested this with friends, taken it further a field to garner further reaction, conventions are great places for this… tabletop game conventions of course! This means that the mechanics of the game can be tested and rarefied so that any difficulties can be ironed out and revisions can be made.

Following this is the process of how to fund it becomes more apparent. You need to consider art, card and board design and layout and distribution and with a game like Frankenstein's Bodies they have tried to keep the majority of this in house, to ensure the costs of production and the funds needed to succeed can, hopefully, be met.

With Frankenstein's Bodies, creator Andrew Harman (who is also known for his fantasy and science fiction writing) and his wife Jenny, have taken the game on tour to help promote backing and to date have received a number of good backers.

I caught up with them at Conpulsion, a yearly games convention in Edinburgh which supports local charities, and talked about their Kickstarter ideas.

Phil Harris: Andrew, Jenny, you're Kickstarting Frankenstein's Bodies. Tell us about the experience?

Jenny Harman: Its scary [laughs]. I didn't know a lot about Kickstarter before we started I know a lot more now.

From our point of view as a young games company I think its a really brilliant idea because it allows us to actually raise the funds for printing the game that we're producing, without having to raise the money ourselves. If we had to do that the game may not come out or we'd have to go through a publisher and we want the game to come out and going through a publisher has its own restrictions to timing and you have to find the right publisher that fits the type of game that you're producing.

Andrew Harman: Yep, I agree with that.

Its also a very exciting moment as we're already getting orders in from weird parts of the world like France, Brazil and America which is, not that their necessarily weird parts of the world, unexpected for us. Which is really nice to go from developing this at home to getting it out there.

PH: The game has been in development for quite a while but now you have a product, "ready to roll" when the Kickstarter funds. Do you think that's important for a Kickstarter?

AH: Probably but I think for me its just the way I work. I don't like to make promises that I know I am unsure about keeping. I wanted to make sure there was a game here that was worth getting out. Unless that's done I'm unhappy, as I said, with making promises about things that I'm not sure about. That's why it has been so long in development; to make it right.

JH: …and I think its really important for us, for what we're trying to do, to actually have people who can say, "Yes, we've played the game. Yes, we've enjoyed it and there's something there that we really like." Because I know in a lot of Kickstarters it's those people who are actually passing the word out to other people and its word of mouth in the community that is actually selling a lot of the games.

PH: You're going on tour with the game to gather interest. Whose idea was that?

AH: I think it was mine. Its probably the rockstar in me that decided… nah, its the best thing to do, the only way you know if you're really going to enjoy a game is by playing that game and I've seen a lot of Kickstarter projects where its an idea on a piece of paper and until you see it actually being played in front of people… it comes alive when people play it and I think that's fantastic and really important and its also a way for us to, as a games company (Yay Games) that doesn't have a background – this is our first game, to be able to spread the word, get in front of people and get them talking about it. What better than word of mouth.

PH: So tell me a bit about Frankenstein's Bodies?

AH: Its a game in which you play surgeons trying to put together the finest bodies that you possibly can to impress Frankenstein. Its a board based card game, each player has two laboratory areas they can work on and the bodies you are collecting have male and female parts, there are four different colors, there's a head, torso, two arms and two legs and you're trying to assemble those parts in the best way you can, whilst keeping hold of them.

You can steal them from other people, if you do it wrong it [the body part] can get infected, so its very interactive and people seem to be enjoying it a lot. Which is lovely.

PH: Is there anything else you'd like to mention?

JH: Just that everybody seems to be having fun. I know that one of the things that people really enjoy about playing the game is the bad humor that comes with playing.

AH: Yes the puns are essential.

JH: Yes, the leggy parts. I like the look of your head, those kinds of things. Which add to the game, it adds to peoples enjoyment. The whole point of a tabletop game is the interaction between the players and that is why people sit around a table.

Yes, computer games are really good, I play them myself, I enjoy them but its not like interacting with a group of people, round a table and screwing each other over as much as you can.

PH: Having played the game I'd thoroughly recommend backing the Kickstarter if you can so you and your friends can also take place in a little bit of body swapping.

Phil Harris (@PhilipGHarris) is a games developer who is currently working with One Thumb Mobile on their MMORPG Celtic Heroes. He also writes for Pixels for Breakfast.

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