The Origin of Cubyria
When James was six, he attended one of those 1970s summer schools where kids were allowed to wander around unsupervised, like goats. One day he found his way into a temporary structure called ‘the portable,’ which was rarely used, and only by older kids, so he already felt like an explorer nosing around where his presence was slightly taboo.
On a shelf he found a map. A fortress stood between two long arms of a mountain range, and in scrawled calligraphic script it said, “Sir Rogan, you must come with haste! The orcs have ridden down from the passes and we are overrun. We will not hold out long.” Then the same writing, in livid red: “Ignore my blood…”
The red letters suggested a course of action that Sir Rogan was to follow to shore up the defenses of the kingdom, and young James’ head exploded in excitement. Eventually he learned the origin of this mystery, and spent many childhood hours playing D&D.
James was fascinated by systems and procedures, and also rather shy, so instead of taking up the charismatic role at the head of a game table, he would more often recruit his friends to help create new games. The DIY philosophy of the early RPG scene was his natural environment, and he spent many hours tweaking rules and inventing whole game systems before dropping them half-formed on his befuddled friends in one-shots that usually didn’t work. In other words, without meaning to, he was becoming a game designer.
Many years passed. One chilly November day he attended Dragonmeet in London. His latest whimsy was a mini-game to simulate chases in urban environments, something he felt he’d never seen done well on the tabletop. The problem was verticality — nothing captured the mad dash of the Prince of Persia as he climbed walls, scrambled across rooftops and leapt over alleys, without abstracting it all away to realm of ‘storytelling’. How do you portray parkour in a physically compelling way on a flat map? He set the notion aside and enjoyed a long day of gaming. Afterward, walking to the tube in the cold London evening, the notion of stacking cubic, Tetris-like pieces crashed into his brain like Aladdin falling off a roof.
He bought a 3D printer and set to work. The game passed through many iterations, from a chase game to a game of thievery in a decadent palace, until he realized that in every version the most compelling part was the building itself. He scrapped all the rest. Less is more.
He began to feel that this game was publishable, and having never done it before he made all the worst mistakes at once. He filmed a ridiculous Kickstarter video, got a booth at UKGE, and was going to pull the trigger that very weekend until he was saved by couple of kind industry professionals. They said a.) Cubyria is unique and exciting, b.) as you have no community the game will linger in obscurity and never get funded, and c.) if by some chance it is funded, with the manufacturing numbers you’ve shared, you’re going to lose your shirt.
The problem was, Cubyria was designed around 3D-printing, and to match its form in injection-moulded parts would require very complex and expensive multi-part moulds. There was no way to manufacture it without cranking up the MSRP to $300 or more, and this game was not in that market.
This formed a terrible dilemma. There were ways to simplify and cheapen the design, but all of them reduced the aesthetic quality as well. And it was the aesthetics that made Cubyria stand out. James had been told again and again by his convention guests that they’d spotted Cubyria from across the room and had to get a closer look. The table presence was its greatest selling point. Every step down from there was a direct reduction of its appeal. Also - James being James - he had come to love his creation and couldn’t stand the notion of making it ugly into order to sell it.
So, unable to resolve this dilemma, he regretfully shelved the game, hoping that one day commercial 3D printing would get cheap enough that he could manufacture it that way. But so far, it hasn’t.
Then one January night at 4am, James sat bolt upright in bed. A few months previously his old friend Keith had said that he was contemplating a change and might like to move to England. Keith has a whole career behind him in manufacturing, logistics and business. James grabbed his phone and started madly texting, describing the game and the manufacturing problem and extolling the virtues of owning one’s own company, which James knew nothing about. He forgot that Keith was in Denver, for him it was 9:00, and he was out enjoying drinks for his birthday. He called. They had a long conversation and Keith agreed to come out for Airecon and see what the game was about.
Airecon sold him.
So, Keith and James agreed to form Cubyria Games, Ltd. In the past year, we’ve brought Cubyria to eight conventions, reinforcing our belief that we have something special. Keith has bent all his engineering talents to redesigning (and redesigning, and…) the rooms into a foldable version that will arrive flat in the box, in semi-flexible plastic, and snap together permanently, resulting in the exact appearance of the 3d-printed pieces. Thus the moulds required will be simple 2-part moulds, far cheaper to produce, bringing the MSRP down to a reasonable level for hobby gamers. The are applying for a patent on this design.
Which brings us to today. We are poised to bring this to Kickstarter in the biggest way we can. We hope you join us for this part of the journey.