Announcing "Kodama: the Tree Spirits," a new tree-growing card game from Action Phase Games


Big news! Action Phase Games and I have teamed up to develop a brand new game called Kodama: The Tree Spirits.

 Theme

The forest is growing fast! As caretakers for Kodama, the tree spirits, you must keep the forest a healthy and lush home for your little friends. Over three growing seasons, you must cultivate trees with the right mix flowers, animals, and branch arrangements to make your Kodama as happy as possible. Whoever cares for their Kodama best will be remembered for generations!

History

Earlier this year, I realized that Kigi was my biggest hit on the POD market. It dwarfs all my other products in sales and has been successfully licensed in several other countries now. And yet, it didn't really have much presence in the US. I debated whether I should pursue my own kickstarter or team up with a publisher.

Lo and behold, Action Phase Games swoops in bustling with energy and enthusiasm for Kigi. Turns out they've been playing it a lot in-house and had a real desire to publish something like it. They kept playing and playing and tweaking and tweaking, long before we ever had any kind of formal agreement. They just dug the game that much. If you know anything about game publishers, they rarely have time to play anything casually. I felt honored that they would commit such attention to a game that they hadn't even signed.

Well, I'd be foolish not to work with publisher that has that kind of devotion to the craft of game design. Together, we took the well-loved core mechanics of Kigi, quickly branched them out in a very different direction than the original game. Eventually we decided it was different enough to really be considered a new property with a new theme. Hence, Kodama, inspired by the little forest spirits from Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.

Future

We have Kwanchai Moriya working on art for the game as I write these words. I've already seen sketches and they look amazing. Check out these samples of his past work:



We're in the final phases of development for Kodama right now, just a few more leaves and twigs to prune before we're ready to go. Our plan is to kickstart funding within the next three months and have the game out early enough to qualify for the Mensa Mind Games competition. We really feel strongly that it has a chance of winning.

So thanks so much for your support over the past few years! It's great to see my wacky POD business model actually bearing fruit in the long-term, but I couldn't do it without you. Thanks so, so, so much.

Follow Action Phase or me on Twitter to keep up to speed on how Kodama is growing!

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