Friday, December 24, 2010

Oldie, but Goodie (and Freebie!)


For the past week, I've been working on game counters I downloaded from Dwarfstar Games.

Remember Dwarfstar Games

I do.  This company, produced several "micro games" in its short run between 1981--1982.  If I remember correctly, each game cost about $5--a great price for an unemployed teenager in the '80s.  Now, thanks to the internet and desktop publishing, the cost of these out-of-print games is even better.  That is, all but one of them are now free downloads: 


Click on the icon of the game for an overview, along with download instructions and links to PDFs.  Of the original eight titles, the only one not available is Dragon Rage, designed by Lewis Pulsipher.

During the original print releases, I managed to buy 3 games:  Goblin, Demonlord and Barbarian Prince.  Of these, I played Goblin and Demonlord with my brother and really enjoyed their simple and straightforward game mechanics.  I tried playing Barbarian Prince, but at the time, with all my gaming friends living close by, I wasn't at all interested in playing a solitaire game. 

Unfortunately these games became casualties of my frequent moves during my military career.  A couple of years ago, I came across the Dwarfstar website and downloaded all the available material.  Other gaming and writing projects have kept me busy, so I didn't get around to printing the rules and counters until recently.

I've always purchased boardgames with an eye for utilizing them as campaign systems, or scenario generators, for miniature battles and role-playing game (RPG) sessions.  So I'm a bit more forgiving of Dwarfstar's "hit & miss" editorial quality control.  My current plan then is to incorporate Star Viking, Star Smuggler and Grav Armor into my Star Wars: Redshift Campaign.

Now that I've been blogging and posting YouTube videos for two years now, I've finally developed an interest in playing solitaire games, especially since Barbarian Prince and Star Smuggler can be story generators for movies or graphic novels.   
So, stay tuned...



Wikipedia has a short entry on Dwarfstar's titles and authors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarfstar_Games

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