Carcassonne Central

Inspector Moss 2: House Arrest

I have mentioned this game already on a couple of other threads, but I thought I would it warranted a topic of its very own.

You might have already read the progression of The Gaston Game from a entry into a BGG contest to being picked up by a publisher.

Well, along with my Gaston Game co-designer, Rebekah Bissell, we designed Inspector Moss 2: House Arrest as a solo game for the BGG Solitaire PnP Design Contest.

Inspector Moss 2: House Arrest is a pseudo-deduction dice game. In the game, you will play as Inspector Moss, who is trying to identify a murderer by eliminating all of the innocent parties, and then arrest him/her. During the game, you'll explore a 25-room house, consisting of tiles. On each tile, you will find either a suspect, evidence that can be used to eliminate suspects, or something to assist you in solving the case in time. Several dice are used for movement and collecting evidence and assistance, but not using a typical roll-and-move mechanic.

I just wanted to share the news that Inspector Moss 2: House Arrest has just won 1st place in the design contest, by quite a large margin.

For those that haven't seen it, go take a look and try it out and perhaps give us some feedback. There is also a Vassal module available if you do not wish to print the components. We'd love to read any comments and we will also be seeking ideas for making this game into an interesting co-op shortly.

Solitaire PnP Design Contest Entry thread and notification of winners: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/644090/solitaire-print-and-play-contest (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/644090/solitaire-print-and-play-contest)
BGG Game page: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/100089/inspector-moss-2-house-arrest (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/100089/inspector-moss-2-house-arrest)
VASSAL version: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29462732/Inspector%20Moss%202%20House%20Arrest_ver2_final.vmod (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29462732/Inspector%20Moss%202%20House%20Arrest_ver2_final.vmod)

Congrats man!  That's great news!

Congratulations my friend. I will definitely give this a try some time.

Thanks. It seems to be generating a bit of attention, which is great for the game. The more people who play it, the more people we have to help with the next phase of it - making it co-op. We've got some preliminary ideas of how a co-op might work, but others might be able to come up with a really great idea.

I am currently trying to get it reviewed in blogs, podcasts etc., on this side of the pond, so we'll see what happens.

Have you thought about using Kickstarter for this or any of your other games?

Well, certainly not for this... yet. As this is a solo game, I doubt that in its current form it would sell very well. However, if this could be made multi-player (as a co-op) then maybe.

We have a game that is currently out on external blind playtesting which we have thought about self-publishing, using something like the Kickstarter route to get the funds together, although I think that first we'll go the submission to a publisher route (in fact we have a specific publisher in mind for this game).

Nice blog post by Matt Stevenson regarding the game:

http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/4666/just-gaming-around-more-yucata-plus-trying-out-v (http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/4666/just-gaming-around-more-yucata-plus-trying-out-v)

Edit: If you get a chance, just thumbing the article will help :)

... in breaking news...

Rebekah and I are now in early talks with an iOS/Android developer.

We are considering having an real artist (I'm a pretend one) redo all art from scratch.

Also, the name might be changing in the near future - nothing major, just dropping the '2' from the name. This is because people are searching out for the first game and to be honest, it has some playability problems.