Sadistic Trick-Taker
Number of Players
3-6
Recommended Ages
16+
Time to Play
30-60 minutes
Mechanics Used
Card Drafting, Bluffing, Trick-Taking
Elevator Pitch
Completion Status
A wild cast of violent Imps with special abilities want only one thing out of life, to smash crates full of puppies. Bombs, Ninja Kittens, and even other Imps will do everything to keep you from that goal.
Finished. In the hands of Game Salute. On sale at TGC.
Someone has to smash these puppies...
It began as a break time boredom .txt file being opened and a simple rhyme of sadistic violence. Call it pent up rage or just my sick sense of humor uncaged. This was the poem that created the game design.
In the deepest of pits and the darkest of holes
There’s a clan of mean Imps with some dark twisted souls
For they fight and they scrape for whatever they gets
Until some evil soul armed them all with mallets
For a task that needs doing, and no one knows why
Perhaps over population but yeah… puppies must die
Someone bundles them up, in their nice wooden crates
And they drop down the chutes to their ultimate fates
Thus this cycle continues, perhaps to their shame
Til these violent young Imps turned it all to a game
And the beast that delivers decides to comply
For if fairness what counts, even Imps have to die
So they rush, fight, jump, claw to their ultimate doom
Since some crates now have bombs that will go boom
Now the teams have been chosen for a game meant to please
and the winners the team that smashed mostly puppies…
This version features 15 different Imps for each team, slimmed down Crate Deck cards with new twists and turns, and all the extra crap that didn’t work (Hidden Agendas) is gone. What happened is there is now a smaller, cheaper way to make this game available and thus, I have made this game available for cheaper.
This is a Trick-Taking game in which the goal is to be the strongest Imp in the round and, as such, smash the crate and hopefully score a puppy. The twist comes from the Imp Abilities as well as your team. Everyone will have a team of Imps that, as the game progresses, will suffer untimely deaths. Abilities will also throw in huge kinks such as an Imp who sends the strongest Imp home or another Imp who copies whatever abilities he chooses. Just because you smashed the crate doesn’t mean you’re safe as some crate cards are traps that can kill you or others around you.
The first smash at this concept bombed horribly. With 10 characters, the foundation was there but the timing of the special abilities, the clarity of the special abilities, etc, all that was out of wack. I wanted to make a game that didn’t have borders, etc, but it left a significant problem with the game flow. The other problem was the reaction to the initial “crate cards” which were gory and goopie. So I went back to try and fix the game, adding in a new format to the cards, more detailed/stylistic artwork, removed the gore and showed the puppies themselves, and chopped 3 of the Imps out of the lineup. This worked MUCH better and around this time, I started working on the expansion Hissy Fits.
I debuted the expansion at Winter War, selling a few copies of the original in the auction but the expansion had no packaging or official rules so it was held off. It was around this time that Imps Vs Puppies got its first review, which was a brutal 1 of 10. As this was largely the first real effort outside of Haiku, getting that kind of review was a huge bummer for a while. This actually delayed my fixing of Hissy Fits but eventually, I hopped back on it and got Hissy Fits done. This expansion added 8 new Imps and Ninja Kittens that would hide in crates. I also added card drafts and team gameplay. The final mechanic was three characters which could target other Imps specifically. For the most part, this expansion worked well, and so I began working on the next expansion, set to debut in a bigger set called Crate of Carnage.
Crate of Carnage included the base set, and Hissy Fits, as well as Hidden Agendas. One of the complaints I received from a couple of play testers is that Imps played face down had no special special abilities. This should be fixed so I introduced Hidden Agendas. Special cards you could “bind” to a face down card. Crate of Carnage added a set of these for each team, 3 more Imps, and of course, even more Crate Cards. This set inflated the number of cards to over 200. Part of me was proud of these numbers but Hidden Agendas seemed bloated and annoyingly complex. Worse yet, it didn’t exactly get a positive response from Geekway to the West but Game Salute was interested in seeing this version. I never pulled the trigger and published Crate of Carnage on The Game Crafter because it made me nervous.
Then I received good news. Game Salute is interested in publishing this game but had a list of changes they wanted. I also observed the same changes and thus I began work on Deluxe Edition. I decided to trim the game down significantly, add player aids, removed Hidden Agendas totally. I also reduced the round to 5 phases and even threw in a random game end. Most importantly, I made the game so that it would sell at a price I consider fair. This, by itself, is cool enough, but I even introduced a promotional Imp called the Great Gamblino. That’s where the game is currently at. You can buy it on The Game Crafter right now and I’ll give you 7 free cards.
News came later that Game Salute will not be publishing the game after all due to not having enough time and money on the schedule to handle this release. So it is once again without a publisher.
The History of Imps Vs. Puppies
