No video game, but it's just as much fun! We're talking about Loot Your Brain - The Video Game Quiz. We interviewed the development team behind the game to find out more about the Kickstarter project. But what is Loot Your Brain all about?
Loot Your Brain - The Video Game Quiz is a quiz board game for 2-4 players. In the world of Lootopia, players experience a journey through video game history: From the beginnings in the fifties to the latest games, everything is represented here. 600 questions from 6 different gaming categories decide who emerges as the winner from the game. Our database currently includes more than 6000 multiple-choice questions about gaming. With these, we will supplement the game through an app and later also physically.
The Interview with the Microphant Team
How did you come up with the idea?
Since we've all been passionate gamers since our childhood, a lot of gaming knowledge has accumulated over time. Very often, in conversations, all sorts of interesting facts and myths about the topic suddenly came up.
Since we are also passionate board gamers, we have occasionally played knowledge games like Trivial Pursuit or the Game of Knowledge. In doing so, we noticed that there were quiz games on all sorts of topics, e.g. on movies or on the music of the last 50 years. We wondered why there wasn't something like that for video games as well, after all, gaming was becoming more and more popular and many video gamers also enjoy playing analog games.
So we started thinking about whether we couldn't develop such a game ourselves? We started writing questions and creating game concepts quite informally. At some point we realized that it wasn't just a drunken idea, but that we really wanted to do it. That's how it all started.
What inspired you when designing the game board?
The game board was really a very big challenge. We asked ourselves whether we wanted to do it in a retro style. But then we thought that we are not making a retro quiz. Or should we maybe represent a role-playing world? But that would not have done justice to the wide range of our questions. To cover everything a little bit, we sat down with our design team Stoerfish Studio, who then finally had a very good idea:
It was about creating a world that is divided into various seamlessly interlocking thematic areas from the gaming landscape, inspired by classic level selection screens such as in Mario games with the typical areas such as beginner meadow and end boss level lava. In turn, these should be peppered with gaming references. Many of these references are a little more subtle: Professor Layton's hat, for example, is on a hat stand. Others, however, can be assigned more easily. Everyone should have fun searching and recognizing the references on their journey across the game board. In addition, this should encourage further conversations about the respective games in addition to the questions.
How do you collect the questions for your database?
When we started writing the first questions, we basically just went ahead and wrote down what came to mind. After all, we had played a lot over the years and had a lot of nerdy background knowledge in our heads. This came from Ricardo's huge archive of video game magazines that he has been collecting since the 1990s. Anyway, this first source also came to an end at some point, then we had to proceed more systematically. First we made lists of all the important games that have ever been released, including Wikipedia, and then we thought about what we could ask about these games and what would be particularly suitable for a quiz.
For games that we had played ourselves, it was of course easier, for others we had to do a lot more research and sometimes watch gaming videos for hours. It was always very important to us that you cannot tell from the questions themselves whether we have played a game ourselves or not.
When we felt that we had covered all the important games, it was about keeping the database up to date. Ricardo's magazines are like an anchor point for us.
What motivated you to start the project on Kickstarter?
We think crowdfunding is a great thing in general. How many great ideas fail because there's simply no money to implement them? Crowdfunding is an excellent solution: anyone can simply present their project and if they find people who think the idea is great, they can support them without taking too much of a risk, because they get their money back if the crowdfunding goal is not reached.
For us, the main argument was that we can better scale our game. Depending on the amount raised, we have the opportunity to expand the game with additional question cards, dice, and game pieces. This way, we can expand the game and adjust the edition exactly to the demand.
We chose Kickstarter because of its reach and popularity in the board game community. Previously, we had a mini-campaign on Startnext with "Who's first?", which is atypical for a board game platform. Likewise, our previous experiences as supporters on Kickstarter made the platform choice easier.
What do you think, why should one get this game?
As a gamer you can't go wrong here. We've put so much heart and soul into gaming that every video game lover will be infected with it immediately. We now have so many questions in our database that we can make the perfect selection for the game, so that it will definitely not be boring.
When we watch other people playing our game, we also notice that the questions often lead to detailed discussions about this and that topic, either because it is about an interesting subject, or because, for example, with a retro game, the players reminisce.
When it comes to the questions, we also tried to always include exciting facts that will lead to some "Aha" moments, which in turn will provide more conversation material. We also came up with something nice for the game principle. It's not too complicated, but our special dice and loot box system still leaves enough room for strategic considerations.
What do we think of Keyfuchs about this game?
For fans of classic board games as well as video games, Loot Your Brain offers the chance to spend many exciting and fun evenings with friends. We ourselves had a lot of fun during the test and even the one or the other AHA moment. The concept offers in the later course also the possibility to extend further questions.
So you can imagine an evening with questions and facts about Call of Duty or Super Mario. In any case, we will stay with Loot Your Brain and inform you as soon as there is something new.
