Greetings from this blustery fall day, which will surely be the end of the gorgeous red and yellow leaves on the Blackgum tree outside my window. In this update:
My whereabouts at PAX Unplugged
Game updates (last week of Undergrove on Kickstarter, Picky Pixie, and the Fox Experiment)
Miscellaneous media
Critter of the month: Pixie Cups
PAX Unplugged
I’ll be at PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia this weekend! Come find me:
Friday through Sunday: 1pm to 6pm at the AEG booth (#3001). Come check out a demo copy of Undergrove. I’ll have some mushroom-y things to sign for people, and AEG will be giving out some amazing bags with Undergrove art on them.
Sunday: noon to 1pm at the Button Shy booth (#4017). Picky Pixie won’t quite be here yet (see below), but they’ll have some of the wallets — so you can buy a copy, get me to sign the wallet, and then receive the cards by mail. And they should have copies of Tussie Mussie available, just in time to use as stocking stuffers!
Game Updates
Undergrove
Undergrove is wrapping up its run on Kickstarter next week! We can definitely use your help getting the word out for the final push. The game should come out in retail next fall, but if you want the deluxe version with gorgeous wooden tiles and a booklet with fun facts about all the mushrooms, now is your chance: they are not planning to make more of the deluxe edition after this first print run. (You can also check with your local game store about whether you can preorder through them.)
Picky Pixie
Picky Pixie is a logic puzzle game made of just 18 cards. I originally designed it with a Halloween theme for my friends’ kids in 2020, when they couldn’t go trick-or-treating. At some point I mentioned this around Jason Tagmire from Button Shy (publisher of Tussie Mussie) and he convinced me to send him a prototype, even though it was still pretty rough around the edges.
Now it’s polished up and ready to go. In a nod to Tussie Mussie, we’ve now got a flower-eating pixie as our protagonist! One player (the Pixie) makes up a secret rule about what they like to eat. The other players offer flower cards to the Pixie, who tells them whether each group of flowers meets their rule for being edible. Can the players guess the rule before the deck runs out?
This is available for pre-order now from Button Shy — and on sale today for just $8! (They do warn, however, that you probably won’t get it until the end of December.) You can also check with your local game store about whether they carry Button Shy games: more of them should!
The Fox Experiment
The Fox Experiment is starting to arrive! Retail release has been pushed back to December 8. I had a fun event at Labyrinth games in DC on Saturday where we demoed the game and sold all 54 of their Kickstarter copies in a couple hours. It’s so fun to see people play the final version!
Miscellaneous media
I’ve played a couple of games of Undergrove that you can watch online:
with Beneeta Kaur (in person)
with Mark Wootton (my codesigner) and Will and Tay from the Wingspan channels Wingin’ It and Tuck & Cache (on Tabletop Simulator)
Alderac has a really wonderful set of short promo videos about Undergrove. My favorite is this one, where a Canada Jay came and landed on the game table as Mark and I were playing outside!
And I’ve done a bunch of interviews:
Tuck & Cache (video)
Cardboard Time (podcast)
We're Not Wizards (podcast)
Rule Breaker Investing (this podcast episode is about games, not investing - with Motely Fool founder David Gardner, who's a boardgamer!)
Game Design Unboxed (podcast)
Board Game Geek Podcast (podcast)
Going Analog (podcast)
Critter of the month: Pixie Cups
Are fungi critters? They’re more closely related to animals than plants, so I’m going for it. Mostly because Pixie Cups are a perfect pick for the Undergrove - Picky Pixie convergence that is happening right now!
Lichens in the genus Cladonia are known collectively as Pixie Cups because some of them literally make tiny little goblets.
This group also includes reindeer lichen…
and one of my favorites, the British Soldiers.
The symbiosis that all of these lichens use is quite different from the process highlighted in Undergrove. Lichens are made up of a fungus and a “photobiont” — that is, an alga or cyanobacteria that can photosynthesize. The photobiont actually lives inside the protective covering of the fungus, allowing them to thrive in what would otherwise be harsh conditions — and they pay some rent to their fungal landlord in the form of carbohydrates. There is ongoing debate in mycology over whether this is a mutualistic relationship or whether the fungi are farming or otherwise exploiting the photobionts. And new discoveries continue to be made about more and more complex systems at work: sometimes a lichen has multiple fungi, sometimes it has multiple photobionts, sometimes there are yeasts and bacteria in the mix. It’s fun to watch people still figuring these things out.
May your (pixie) cup runneth over this holiday season —
❤️
Elizabeth