Vancouver board game designers smash Kickstarter goal, raise over $782k
A Vancouver board game design duo is celebrating after their latest Kickstarter campaign raised more than 39 times its production goal.
Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim are the creators of MIND MGMT: The Pyschic Espionage “Game.” The hidden movement game about a top-secret organization that uses psychic spies to alter world events is based on the Dark Horse comic series by best-selling author Matt Kindt.
The campaign for MIND MGMT: Secret Missions finished on Friday evening with a total of $782,131 raised from over 9,600 backers around the world, including the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Germany, and more.
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Cormier, the founder of MIND MGMT‘s publisher Off the Page Games, told Daily Hive that he launched the Kickstarter after a series of fortuitous events led to a boom in popularity.
“I’m blown away by the success of the campaign,” said Cormier. “For context, this is the second Kickstarter for MIND MGMT. We just sold out of all our games and a reprint was in the works, but then a new review popped up online from Shut Up & Sit Down.”
“The review called MIND MGMT a masterpiece, and now everyone wanted a copy. Problem was that we had no more left. SU&SD also showed off the fancy deluxe version of the game in their review, which was always a Kickstarter exclusive. So there were no more copies of that in the world either.”
Jay Cormier/Submitted
After receiving messages from interested gamers around the world, Cormier realized that new copies of the deluxe edition had to be made. So he launched a Kickstarter earlier this month that included a 9-card “Secret Mission” expansion along and an option for a special deck of MIND MGMT playing cards drawn by Kindt.
The game immediately discovered a huge following on the platform.
“Everything was moving fast,” said Cormier, whose other designed games include Belfort, Akrotiri, and Junk Art. “I put a target of $20,000 just to ensure we had enough interest in the Secret Mission cards and within six minutes we hit that total. Then in 30 minutes, we were at $52,000, and by the end of the first day, we were over $200,000.
“To our backers from all over the world, I say thank you so much for supporting a small and new publisher like Off the Page Games. With this being my first game as a publisher, it’s really gone a long way to ensuring we can make even more games in the future.”
MIND MGMT/Submitted
Lim is also grateful for all of the support shown by board gamers for MIND MGMT.
“I’m honestly overwhelmed,” said Lim. “Jay and I know that MIND MGMT is a solid game. Great, even. But we also know that 1-vs-many and hidden movement games aren’t for everyone. And that as popular as the comic is within the indie scene, it’s not the X-Men or Batman. So I’m pleasantly surprised that people are as enamoured with it as we are. It’s been a whirlwind campaign.”
According to Lim, who has designed games ranging from JIangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall to The Godfather: A New Don, the success of MIND MGMT can be attributed to the amount of love the creative trio has put into The Pyschic Espionage “Game”.
Sen-Foong Lim/Submitted
“There is a great deal of honesty and perhaps brutalness in Matt’s art style that makes you realize that both the comic and the game are telling an amazing story through their respective mediums without covering it up with eye candy,” said Lim. “Both Jay and I were huge fans of Matt and MIND MGMT before we ever thought of the game and we hope that fans of the comic see that in how we implemented the source material into the game.”
“Working with the comic’s creator directly has been brilliant as well because we get to ask Matt for his thoughts. This is not typically the case with many of the properties I’ve worked on. While I’ve worked on some huge licenses, none have been as rewarding as working in tandem with Matt.”
Though the Kickstarter campaign is now complete, Cormier shared that MIND MGMT can be purchased from local board game stores in Metro Vancouver.
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