The owner of Victory Point Games, Alan Emrich, describes his company as a "teaching company," which works with both new and experienced designers to assist them in publishing their own designs.  This prolific company was showing some of their best selling games as well as new up-coming designs at the recent GAMA Trade Show.  Emrich was kind enough to describe them all to ICv2.

 

According to Emrich, Victory Point Games has released an average of one new game every two weeks for the past five years.  Two of the company’s best-sellers are Darkest Night and Dawn of the Zeds.

 

 

As Emrich explained to ICv2, "Darkest Night is a one-to-four player cooperative fantasy horror game.  A lot of people enjoy the board game Arkham Horror, but it’s huge: it takes up a big footprint, long set-up time, and it’s complicated.  This is like ‘Arkham Horror light’.  It’s teachable: you can get new people to play it and wrap it up in about 90 minutes."

 

Darkest Night, which was designed by Jeremy Lennert, was released three months ago. It has a suggested retail price of $54.95.

 

 

"Dawn of the Zeds is a solitaire zombie apocalypse game, but it’s different than most in that it’s not tactical, it’s operational.  Now, if you’re a wargamer, what that means is it’s a little larger in scope and scale.  You’re defending the city of Farmingdale and five outlying villages, and you have to hold out until the National Guard arrives.  You almost always lose.  You’ll lose seven out of eight times you play it.  But you will enjoy going down in that zombie apocalypse cause the story, this narrative, is really great."

 

The second edition of Dawn of the Zeds, which was designed by Hermann Luttmann, came out last month with a suggested retail price of $55.95.

 

The next two releases planned from Victory Point Games are Star Borders: Humanity, which was designed by Lance McMillan and Alan Emrich, and Tenka, which was designed by Scott Muldoon.

 

 

"A four "x"--explore, expand, exploit, exterminate--game, shrunk down to a 45 minute playing time.  You get all the glory of space empires, with lots of missions and scenarios, it plays really fast. It’s the first in a six-part series."

 

Star Borders: Humanity features the "Grand Imperium" and "Free Alliance" factions.  This is the second edition of this title.  The suggested retail price will be $42.95.

 

 

"This is a game of feudal Japan where each player is trying to amass sufficient provinces to put the emperor on the throne and be the Shogun.  The game plays with a deck of cards with four basic suits, and a fifth, like a Tarot suit.  So there are knights, lords, priests, and provinces--the four suits--and then in the special suit are all the crazy things: from ronin, and ninja, to the empress. It’s a screw your neighbor game.  Think of it as running the 100-dash with pistols.  So, if anybody gets too far ahead, somebody is going to see their back and shoot them.”

 

Tenka is shipping now, with a suggested retail price of $22.95.  This is the second edition of this title.