Spreading the word to others about games we like is one of the more rewarding aspects of the hobby. This is great – if you already have a finished product. It’s a lot easier to talk about games in finished terms since this is how most of us experience them. But it takes a lot of effort to get them to that point. Only a small percentage of games become the final product you see on shelves, complete with their meeples & minis, dice, blocks, and a whole lot of cardboard. Game designers may have testers needed to fine-tune their game, but they traditionally lacked one vital component to take their dream from prototype to a box in your hands: funding. With the rise of crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, it’s opened new doors for designers to raise the money they need.
Here at The Cardboard Republic, we take special interest in the independent game developers. You never know when one of them may be the next big hit, and even if they aren’t a runaway commercial success, they still may be a lot of fun. Sure, not all games that go through crowdfunding sites are winners, and it can be daunting to search blindly. It’s hard enough to spread the word on games that already exist in the marketplace; it’s entirely different when the game isn’t yet a reality.
We want to help bring attention to those that we feel are worth a look, but we cannot approach an unfinished game with the same criteria we do for our full reviews. Instead, we are providing a much shorter, more concise glance at ongoing or finished games that have earned the Seal of the Republic. These often will be on crowdfunding sites, but it is available to any independent game development in process. We think they are worth taking a look at, and maybe afterwards, you will too.
