Interview: Evangelos Foskolos

Welcome back friends! Today we have another interview for you all-this time it is with Evangelos Foskolos. He will tell us a little about himself, his company and some upcoming Kickstarter fun!

Tell us a little about yourself and your company:
I am working around board games since I was 17, I absolutely love playing games and telling people about them.
I was working at a board game cafe before leaving to focus on studies. The same time Stelios, a school friend and me were toying with the idea of creating a game which spiralled to launch a Kickstarter campaign for our first published game, Spells of Doom. Since then we are continuously developing games and game accessories that we publish through Kickstarter or directly to retail. I am always interested in exploring new ideas in game design and we are dedicated to make each of our games beautiful with premium components and artwork.

What started you into design?
I was playing games daily and started having ideas on how to improve games that I liked, but also ideas of games that I would like to play. After creating Spells of Doom with Stelios and seeing that people liked what we had made from scratch, I have been thinking about making games constantly. 

Who are some of your designer inspirations?
I love consuming pop culture in many forms. I love reading, watching movies, series and listening to music. Usually this spirals giving me ideas of a story that would come out nicely as a board game.
Some other times I have an idea about a mechanism that would be interesting for an x type of game. When I have gathered enough notes that can be combined interestingly it is time to get it to the table.

What is your ideal game night? Games, group size, snacks, etc:
I love playing new games! So an ideal game night would have at least one new game, pizza and probably 3 more players.
But I also enjoy getting some classics on the table so there was enough time I would definitely want to have a game of Brass or Mage Knight too. 

What are some current designs of yours that we may have seen out in the gaming world?
The last game I co-designed that was released was Mystic ScROLLs back in 2017, and we are coming with an expansion for it soon.
Besides that I have been involved in developing everything that we have published as Drawlab with the most recent being Alice in Wordland.

What is coming down the pipeline from you in the near future?
Alice in Wordland is getting to the stores next week! We are also in production of Fired Up, our most recent Kickstarter game which is the biggest to date.
We are also currently completing production of the Legendary Dice Bags and we plan to start fulfilling them during March. Other than that we do have another board game to be released this year (to be announced) and we are working with expansions for both Mystic ScROLLs and Witless Wizards.

What do you think will set you apart in the industry?
That’s a tough one, since the game industry has so many talented people! 
I try to make every game the best it can be, regardless of the time it takes us to do it. We also try to treat our customers the best we can, with honest updates, quality customer service and attention to detail. We also want to make quality products and not rush jobs. I hope that would be enough πŸ™‚

What was the first game you remember playing as a kid?
The first one that pops to mind is The Grape Escape. The game was a roll and move race to the end, filled with obstacles that could stop the players. The iconic part of the game was that the pawns were made from play doh from the players at the beginning and could be destroyed when they fell to one of the traps.

What inspired you to design these coins?
The initial Legendary Metal Coins idea came because we wanted to make coins for games, bigger and heavier than anything we had seen and with cool themes. We also wanted the themes to be broad so that players could buy a set and use it in multiple games. People really loved them and we have made 4 more campaigns about them, each time expanding the theme to fit new games that come out or new ideas that we think of.

What are your goals and hopes with these?
We want to create coins that people can be happy to play with. I do feel that they can really help with the immersion to the game since the players feel differently when giving away a cardboard token vs a heavy golden coin with a pirate ship on it.
I hope people will continue to support our coins and keep using them in different ways that we haven’t even thought of yet.

So about the current Kickstarter- What are the details?
We went live on the 10th of March staying on Kickstarter until the 31st. Immediately after the campaign we will start the production back in Greece to make sure we deliver them on time.
During the Legendary Metal Coins campaigns, people can get the new coins first, but also mix-and-match creating their own sets. We are also offering some bundle prices and better shipping rates due to bulk shipping. We also have some cool Stretch Goals in mind πŸ˜‰

Check out the campaign here: Legendary Metal Coins

Any extra information you’d love to share?
It’s nice talking to you through this interview, I am always happy to talk to other gamers about playing or making games. Hope to play a game at a convention at some time.

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