Our Marrying Mr. Darcy: UNDEAD EXPANSION is going to be released soon! July 11 to be exact! The folks over at Dark Jane Austen Book Club were excited to try it out and and did a nice write up on the game. They are also doing a GAME GIVEAWAY which will include a copy of the Undead Expansion.
Check out the blog and giveaway here!
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I have been keeping my eyes open for this review and somehow it slipped by me until now! Ah, what summer break will do to you. They got the tone of this game exactly right for fans of the book... I enjoyed Marrying Mr. Darcy. You can listen to the full review here starting at 11:30.
Check out this new review from Marc at Pixelated Sausage. "You don't have to care at all about Pride and Prejudice... it's a solid card game. But if you are into Pride and Prejudice... I think you'll like it even more." Here's a cute write up from Kerry (Ciarrai) at Ciarrai Studios. She makes super cute jewelry available at her etsy page. She wrote a really cute blog about playing Marrying Mr. Darcy. I have to admit that I hardly ever win this game but I am usually so amused that I don’t mind. The funny part is that not only does my husband, Rob, play the game but he is usually the winner. You can check out the rest of her blog here!
Kill Screen is a video game review site that is expanding their tabletop game review offerings. They asked for a review copy of Marrying Mr. Darcy and wrote this fantastic review. Well written and a little snarky. So basically awesome.
"Everyone can be kind and not remove character points from one another, simply playing through the events in tandem, but that’s no fun. Better to get a little dirty, pit the other girls against each other, and slither up to your suitor with a few choice cards in your favor. A healthy mix of expandable mechanics, elegant language and art, and the right group of Austen newbies and experts ready to heighten the mood all conspire to fill Marrying Mr. Darcy with charm." You can check out the full review at Kill Screen. Here is a sweet little blog review from a Jane Austen fan who picked up Marrying Mr. Darcy at SpringCon in Minneapolis this past weekend.
Here is an excerpt: "Ultimately, we really enjoyed the game...As to the undead packet I haven't tried that portion of the game yet but for someone who enjoys 'The Walking Dead' as much as I -- It should be even more fun." Read the entire post here. New audio podcast by Pixelated Sausage reviewing Marrying Mr. Darcy. Check it out here!
Now that I've finished shipping out 1400 copies of Marrying Mr. Darcy, I'm starting to think about the Emma stretch goal. During my Kickstarter campaign, I set a "stretch goal" that at $40,000 I would release a beta test Emma version of Marrying Mr. Darcy. I've been thinking about what form this might take. My best guess is it will be a substantial expansion pack, maybe around 75 cards- all new Event deck, and all new playable characters and suitors.
I've been thinking about who my playable characters should be. There are a smaller number of single women in Emma looking for husbands, so to make the game playable by 6 players I might need to get creative. Here are my current ideas. Emma Woodhouse: Emma might be the only Austen heroine in all the novels who really doesn't need to marry. She is completely financially set and has no need to marry what so ever. I was thinking of making Mr. Knightly the only suitor she could marry, but for high points. I think he'd also have to be quite difficult for her to get, having to earn many character points. (The story is about her growth after all...) Additionally, I feel like Emma should be able to interfere with other players somehow, maybe by being able to swap their character points around if she sacrifices a card from her hand? Harriet Smith: Poor Harriet. She falls in love with everyone and ends up with a broken heart more often than not. I feel like she should get decent marriage points for everyone (like Charlotte) and maybe have a +2 Friendliness bonus at the start of the game. Top suitor is Robert Martin. Jane Fairfax: The accomplished Jane can marry anyone, though her top points are for Frank Churchill. If she doesn't marry, she automatically becomes a Governess at the end of the game for 8 points. (Or something, I haven't done any math yet.) If this happens, perhaps her reputation points count double at the end of the game. Augusta Hawkins/Elton: This gets a bit tricky. We don't meet Augusta until she arrives midway through the book married to Mr. Elton, who should start the game as one of the suitors. Perhaps an Event card in the deck could determine whether this marriage takes place before the proposal stage? Perhaps if they marry mid-game, their strategy changes to ensuring Jane becomes a governess or meddling in other's affairs... Miss Bates: Austen uses Miss Bates as a warning about becoming an Old Maid. I feel like Miss Bates will automatically become an Old Maid at the end of the game, but gets +5 to her old maid roll. Since she can focus on acquiring whatever character points she wants, she should be on a pretty even playing field with the other players. Additionally, since she is financially poor, the other players will have to give her charity in the form of Character cards at certain points in the game. Mr. Woodhouse: Emma's father does not want Emma to ever marry and leave him by himself. This is his greatest fear. He also tells Emma that she must stop matchmaking as it is very disruptive to his company. I think Mr. Woodhouse gets 5 points for every other player that is NOT married at the end of the game. So perhaps when he is instructed to draw and play a character card he instead removes one from one of the other players. Mr. Woodhouse would probably only be used for 5-6 player games. Other possible playable characters include Anne Taylor though the book basically begins with her marriage to Mr. Weston and she has never struck me as all the interesting. Suitors would include Robert Martin, Mr. Elton, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightly. (And possibly Mr. Weston) There is also Emma's sister Isabella and Knightly's brother John, though they are married well before the book begins and makes things confusing with more than one Knightly available. Do you have other ideas? Please comment below! Feedback and ideas are appreciated. Well, the games have finally arrived and I'm beginning to fulfill Kickstarter rewards. I got a few games in the mail today, but the process of fulfilling 1400 orders will definitely take a couple weeks. Here are a few pictures of the process so far!
While the game has been at the printer, I've been working on completing stretch goals and Kickstarter rewards. One of them is a annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice that includes a foreword by myself. Here is a preview of the forward, though it is still a work in progress.
Foreword by Dr. Erika Svanoe I am a Pride and Prejudice fanatic. I’ve seen every movie, television series, and watched or read too many adaptations to count. Eventually, I got the itch to create my own Pride and Prejudice inspired thing. I tried writing some fan-fiction at first, but that was not really my cup of tea. A few years earlier my husband had written his masters thesis on game design and created an educational board game about diabetes management. I watched him go through the process and, like any good spouse, proofread his paper. This combination of experiences gave me the idea to create a game based on my favorite book. I decided this would be the direction to focus my creative energies, and so I designed Marrying Mr. Darcy: the Pride and Prejudice Card Game. Being an Austen super-fan, I thought about making a game that other Austen fans would want to play. What does every Janeite want to experience? There were two main decisions I made early on that ended up staying through the entire design process. First, I decided that the game should have a role-playing element where you choose which lady you want to play as. Don’t we all secretly want to be Elizabeth, or see a bit of ourselves in one of the other Bennet sisters? (Alas, I have more Mary in me than Elizabeth.) The other convenient thing about playing a game as one of the ladies is that they were really in a relatively weak position in society. They had limited options of how they could secure their own comfort. The entire novel is Austen satirizing a society where marriage was really the only respectable option for these characters. So the second idea that really stuck was that a main goal of the game should be marriage. Since the central drama of the book is that the women must marry, this should be incorporated into the win scenario of the game. As the game developed, there were three other main mechanics that took shape in the final version, and were all drawn from either the book itself or Regency society. First, the plot points of the story manifested in the event card deck. There are several critical plot points in the book, such as Lydia eloping, Darcy’s surprise proposal, and Bingley leaving Netherfield for London. Just like in the book, each of these events has significant consequences in the game and in some cases can force players to rethink their strategy. The second mechanic relates to resource management. Daughters of the landed gentry, such as the Bennet sisters, were not able to take on employment. These ladies spent their time sewing, practicing the piano, drawing, and becoming as accomplished as they could. Much of this activity was intended to make them more attractive as potential wives for the gentlemen who might court them, and these activities often ceased once they were actually married. In the game, players must build up their character with various traits to earn game winning points for their own accomplishments, as well as to attract the interest of the various suitors. Finally, the ending proposal stage incorporates a press your luck mechanic. In all of Austen’s novels, it is the man who always holds the power to propose. In the game, players must roll the dice to see if a suitor proposes to them, so the outcome is outside the player’s control. However, as Elizabeth demonstrates with Mr. Collins, a lady always has the power to either accept or decline. This holds true in the game as well. Players will likely be faced with the decision of whether to accept an early proposal from a suitor worth fewer points, or decline and take their chances hoping for another proposal down the line. All of these game mechanics in Marrying Mr. Darcy were chosen to best replicate the experience of being one of these female characters in the book. It is meant to create an immersive experience where players must act with the limited power they have to secure their heroine’s future happiness. The event cards replicate the everyday occurrences of Regency life, as well as the plot of the story itself. Even the choice to make the game playable using cards is meant to replicate the experience of sitting at a card table to entertain your guests after supper as they do so often in Pride and Prejudice. This edition of Pride and Prejudice is intended to be a companion to the game, Marrying Mr. Darcy. The annotation directs the reader to endnotes, which illustrate how a certain card, strategy, or mechanic in the game was inspired by that particular element in the novel. This highlights some of the stratagems of the various characters as they attempt to secure their own comfort and happiness in the book, as players might attempt to do while playing the game. The names of various cards appear in quotations to separate them from surrounding text. |
Erika SvanoeMusician, conductor and game designer. Archives
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