Greater Than Games was showing off a prototype of its new project Spirit Island at the recent Gen Con game fair.  ICv2 caught up with Greater Than Games Design Director and co-owner Christopher Badell to get the rundown on this new board game planned for a 2015 release.
 
Spirit Island is a departure from the normal process for Greater Than Games, as it will be the company’s first game from an outside designer.  Badell explained how the project came to be.
 
“(It’s) the first game that we’re publishing that isn’t my design,” he said.  “It’s somebody else’s entirely.  It’s a game that I saw a prototype of at Origins 2012 and again at Origins 2013, and just really enjoyed what the designer (R. Eric Reuss) was doing.  He and I got to talking and I said, ‘You know what, the intention of the company isn’t even really to be out there publishing other people’s games, except that I love this game and I would love a chance to publish it.  But if you want somebody else to, that’s fine too.  I don’t really care, I just want to see this game published.  I want to see this game exist.’”
 
R. Eric Reuss also designed Asmadi Games’ Fealty. Badell went on to describe the play of Spirit Island.  “It is a cooperative, highly thematic game, in which the game is playing a ‘worker-placement’ game against you,” he said.  “There’s this island and it is untouched by civilization, and the island has some spirits in it.  Then, these invaders come from over the sea and they start exploring the inlands and setting up cities and building settlements and things like that.  And the presence of these people and the deforestation that they do is blighting the land.”
 
Greater Than Games plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign in the next six months to fund the project.  The release is expected to occur in late 2015.  The game is still in development, so a final retail price has not been set, but Badell expects it to fall in the range of $40 to $70.
 
Greater than Games will also be releasing a new expansion for their popular Sentinel of the Multiverse game in Q4 (see “'Wrath of the Universe'”).