Every month we are on the look out for the best Australian crowdfunding projects to support, this month is a Wrestling Card game called "Power Slam" put together by a team of Comedians from the Sydney Comedy Scene.
These three comedians have worked closely together over the last 6 months, throughout the Pandemic to help bring Power Slam! to a table top near you.
What made you want to create a wrestling card game?
Seizure: I've been a big fan of wrestling and tabletop games and I have a little bit of a competitive streak when it comes to gaming. My friends never understood the appeal of wrestling so I decided to recreate that experience in a game to show the excitement behind it all. I think this game appeals to both fans of wrestling and gaming.
Ray: No one can deny the nostalgia they feel about 80's and 90's wrestling. Seizure suggested the theme and Wrestling has enough interaction between players to be a fun, social style game. The more we could play with the move types, the more we discovered cool mechanisms like counters to change the flow, grapples to slow the game down and the Pin Mechanic which seems to be everyone's favourite part of Power Slam!
What were your influences for the game? Both in Wrestling and other Card games?
Seizure: My influences in wrestling started out like most with WWE (wwf back then), but it has evolved to a myriad of promotions including and not limited to AEW, NJPW, PWA, ROH, IMPACT and many others. Wrestling in the modern era has become way more athletic and entertaining than it was.
I enjoy all types of card games. It is hard to just pick a handful but card games I often play would be Coup, Sushi Go, Organ Attack, Werewolf and Fluxx. They're easy to pick up and introduce to a new audience. Don't get me wrong though, I do love a game that can go for hours on length too.
Ray: I don’t have that much of a wrestling Pedigree but I do love card games. I love social deduction style games like Coup, Avalon and Werewolf, I love light Social Games like Sushi Go and Guillotine and I’m particularly fond of Legacy style games like Pandemic and Risk. I think Power Slam! Can fit into that light social game category and hopefully become a crowd favourite.
What made you want to use Kickstarter to launch your game?
Ray: It seems to be the platform to be seen and to launch games these days. The Board Game community loves to be a part of a narrative which really reflects in the hobby. Kickstarter gives producers big and small a chance to deliver a product, work with a community and foster a sense of good will and collaboration. It’s working and responding to inputs in real time and nothing beats that.
Seizure: Kickstarter seems to be the perfect platform to reach a new audience and also have a great community behind it. Since this is our first game, the feedback from the platform's audience will help us shape our future decisions with people who do actually want to see you succeed. Backing a whole bunch of other projects in the past, we feel it's a good and safe environment to help with our project.
How did you find artists for the cards?
Peter: I did the art! The entire team has been friends for years and we all met doing stand up comedy together (I am the funniest one though). After comedy we started playing card games and we all decided to make our own game.
How accurate are all the moves and actions in the game?
Seizure: I want to say the moves in the game are as accurate as they can get. Ray and Peter were familiar with wrestling but not to the level I was, so I would show them moves from wrestling videos and explain how they would work and what category they would fall under. This way we came up with our move sets for our game.
Peter: I had to google the moves to make sure they were accurate. I didn’t know who Lou Thesz was until this game.
What does your team do when you're not making card games?
Seizure the man with the kayfabe name is a comedian, writer and filmmaker who has a cult-like status in the comedy scene and has played and produced shows all over Australia, UK and the US. Ray is a comedian who loves board games. He is super competitive, so much so, no one will play with him any more. This can be traced back to the Monopoly incident of ‘89 which we can’t talk about
here for legal reasons. Pete is a comedian who can “draw good”. He has a diploma in video game design from Tafe which has still never proven to be useful.
What's next for the team after the kickstarter has been fulfilled?
Seizure: Roll in a pile of $10 notes
Peter: Do more art
Ray: I’m going to be able to finally afford a footlong sub at Subway but I won’t let success get to my head. I’ll need to make sure that I work with our manufacturers to get the game produced and delivered in time.
Follow them @POWERSLAMCARDGAME
