SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – ABC4 digital recently reported on Utah’s rich community of local game stores. A small-scale board game publisher is now hoping to bring board game development to Utah.
Oh No! Games was founded by three friends with a passion for board games. ABC4 spoke with Ian Watson, one of the founders. Watson says they thought they could “fix issues they saw in other games” by making one themselves.
Watson and his cofounders also have “normal” full-time jobs and have been working on the side on Oh No! Games for almost five years. Their idea for their upcoming original board game “Dragonwake” is five years in the works as well. Oh No! Games started seriously developing the game in 2019.
Watson describes “Dragonwake” as a “game of social deduction” like popular party games such as “Mafia,” “Werewolf,” and others. The game’s tagline is “deception, deduction, and dragons,” hence the name. The game takes place in a fantasy setting complete with dragons and secret cultists.
Like many small-scale board game publishers, “Dragonwake” is being crowdfunded on Kickstarter with a set monetary goal. Watson differentiated their business model from similar ones saying that potential funders won’t be charged until their financial goal is met, and then will be guaranteed a copy of “Dragonwake.”
Watson says Oh No! Games has already received the first 1000 copies of the game from manufacturers in advance of the crowdfunding goal. They expect to fulfill orders within six weeks of reaching their goal, depending on the status of the global supply chain.
Crowdfunding for “Dragonwake” goes live on May 24th. While the “Dragonwake” project is reaching its end, Watson says he and his co-founders already have plans for “games 2 and 3” to publish.
“We’d love to grow and we love making board games.”
