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SMT Boardgame Kickstarter Smells Like Suspicious Fish

There's an SMT boardgame. Curb your enthusiasm, you shouldn't back it. And if you did, lower your pledge to like a buck until they clear things up, because as it stands it seems like an incredibly suspect product.

Checking through the Kickstarter comments and Japanese Tweets about the boardgame makes the entire thing seem poorly planned at best. I'll summarize as best I can;

The designer is incredibly infamous in the boardgame community

Naoki Matsunaga, a self-described "board game sommelier", is the designer. You'll find tweets lamenting that "the board game sommelier is involved". Why is he so hated? This thread goes into detail: co_boze on twitter. Part of it is they bashed Werewolf over one game they saw of it, another is they took on a kind of public-face role for boardgames appearing on late night TV shows to talk about them in ways that annoyed boardgamers. They seem to have designed a boardgame based on "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" which ripped off Sid Sackson's 'I'm the Boss". But it's what co_boze talks about next that's really bizarre. The game was apparently banned from most board game cafes and playing spaces. Seminars where people could play the game were hosted, but the venues that hosted these seminars all closed down.

If you keep looking through comments, you start finding claims that his company does multi-level marketing (ie pyramid schemes). To be honest, I don't know if this is true. But even if it isn't, it is really not hard to find people who know of this guy and would really really really REALLY prefer he was not involved.

"Oh fuck, it's THIS guy" is not a reaction that inspires confidence

2. Questionable development and presentation issues.

A regular collaborator with Atlus recently tweeted "The use of AI in Atlus works or derivative works is stictly prohibited." He responded to a reply asking if this was about a board game.

The staff running the SMT BG Kickstarter later clarified the actual -game- wouldn't use AI graphics... but from the looks of it, the promotional materials do.

Dig that... generic metal pipe aesthetic. Nothing screams MegaTen like black plumbing to nowhere.

In totally unrelated news, a board game manufacturer recently tweeted that a Kickstarter used their name without permission, and they're not sure why.

Quote tweets on the post would suggest it was the SMT board game. The comment they are loosely referring to is this:

In a follow-up post, they do specify "The product figures will be made of PVC." and "We will be manufacturing the games in partnership with a factory in China that has a proven track record... " "Figure director Kimura Yuzuru has over 10 years of experience..." and other boring development stuff that I have no issue with. What I do have issue with is how they can say things like they're "considering" which manufacturer to use and namedropping other companies that they're unrelated with. (While I was typing this post, they posted an update that clarified the CMON issue and literally nothing else: here.)

The boardgame is being presented with machine translated English printed on the same cards as the Japanese. But the actual game will have a translator check everything.

they hire translators to localize all game content

Additionally, there was a week long radio silence on the Kickstarter. For reference, Kickstarters are normally very active with the project planners dropping updates, responding to feedback and clearing up any concerns.

Some of the concerns were "How does the game actually play?", a question that would be best answered by dropping a rulebook for people to look at, or better yet showing them an entire run of the game. The SMT BG Kickstarter has boldly chosen neither. Devs have commented the game is on Version 11 and plays well, which makes it strange that they can't share any of it with anyone else.

Actually, when you compare this to how most Kickstarters are run, it becomes very clear the SMT BG Kickstarter is, uh, kinda failing in all possible regards. The first Backer Goal is "Jack Frost Dice" at 2000 backers (not funds raised, BACKERS). Despite getting 300%(!!!) of the initial pledge needed, there are no bonuses or unlocks.

Mind, this lack of information comes after they already delayed the start to supposedly improve Backer Goals and other aspects.

There aren't a shortage of issues - it's ICREA's first boardgame (but not their first tango with SMT; they made the SMT30th Logo, for instance.) The timeline seems totally wack. The staff have been incredibly slow to respond. Cards with tiny font and two languages printed on them. Etc, etc. Maybe individually these issues wouldn't be too concerning. But all of them combined make the product seem incompetently run at best, and at worst an actual scam.

I'm hardly a big influencer in the SMT scene (my biggest contribution is when that fucking succubus gif gets 36k likes on Twitter every 5 months) but I haven't seen any English speaking sources discuss this in detail, when there really should be at least some noise about all of this. Still. if just one of you end up saving 600 bucks on what ends up being a trashfire carcrash project because of this post, then that'll have made the past 30 minutes of typing this shit worth it.

Happy 15th anniversary kingdom hearts!

Kingdom Hearts was released on the Playstation 2 in Japan 15 years ago today (3/28/2002)

grown-up kirby & grown-up bandana dee :]

[The sidequest where the player fights Mara in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne has several references to the previous numbered titles.] [The summoning area references the 4 dolls used in a summoning ritual in Shin Megami Tensei II which goes wrong due to the inclusion of “The Dancing Doll” rather than the correct “Sleeping Doll”. The Nocturne ritual also goes wrong, likely for the same reason] [Baphomet’s incantation is taken from the introduction of Shin Megami Tensei, which invokes the names of God as part of its ritual.]

silly thought: the only food magolor could have on halcandra were rocks

i'm just going to ask, what's your opinion of Tzaphkiel's design?

It's fine! Essentially a clever reuse of the quad-wing template seen on other Heralds. (T)Zaphkiel is a Throne, so an Ophan, and thus the eye seems okay even if I still prefer anthropomorphism.

this outright looks like it comes from devil children/demikids, hey maybe it WAS a design for aitvaras that would appear in those games but they scrap it and i guess either doi or atlus we’re lazy and just re used it

Aitvaras. A.I.T.V.A.R.A.S AiTvArAs

What the fuck is this

the nahobino frost... at this point i dont care since WE GOT CHERUB ON 3 FUCKING D!!!!!!!!

SHIN MEGAMI RISING VENGEANCE WHEEEE

Here are all the new Kaneko models I could see; Cai-zhi, Dis, Pellaide, Cherub, Karasu Tengu, Efreet, Unicorn and Gogmagog.

And here are the returning SH2 models; Halphas, Vritra, Turbo Granny, Nezha, Armaiti, Kudlak, Fenrir, Vouivre, Zun Tun She, Halphas again just for @eirikrjs, Dormarth, Gremlin and Tzitzimitl!

And Then There's This Motherfucker

I don't give a fuck about the rest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!