A Bright New Future for Gamelyn Games

Gamelyn Games, the publisher behind the Tiny Epic series, has been sold to Tycoon Games.

Michael Coe, co-founder of Gamelyn, posted yesterday on social media announcing the purchase.

"I'm sharing a monumental milestone: Gamelyn Games, Tiny Epic, and Heroes of Land, Air & Sea are now part of the incredible team at Tycoon Games".

Gamelyn Games was founded in 2011 by Brittany and Michael Coe with the aim of publishing Michael's first game, Lords, Ladies & Lizards. Their first success, however, came from the self-published and crowd funded, Dungeon Heroes in 2013. Also that year, Gamelyn successfully crowdfunded Fantasy Frontier.

The start of the Tiny Epic series came about the next year in 2014 with the publishing of Tiny Epic Kingdoms, designed by Scott Almes. This became their highest funded project to date and was quickly followed by Tiny Epic Defenders.

Since Tiny Epic Kingdoms, the Tiny Epic series has expanded to include exploring galaxies, surviving zombie outbreaks, raising baby dinosaurs, sailing as swashbuckling pirates, and so much more.

In 2020 Tiny Epic Pirates became Gamelyn's highest funded game at over $1.1 million, which was quickly followed by their first straight to retail game, a streamlined version of Tiny Epic Galaxies; Tiny Epic Galaxies BLAST OFF!

Coe wrote on the announcement of Gamelyn's sale that the Tiny Epic series has "become something far beyond what I ever imagined."

Gamelyn Games' mission was to create profound and unprecedented gaming experiences, and their vision was to develop Tiny Epic into the most well-known and respected series in all of board gaming. While that is certainly an ambitious vision, there is no doubt that the Tiny Epic series has had unparalleled success in condensing game genres famed for their complexity and size into surprisingly small and uniform boxes.

Tycoon Games, publisher of Everdell, was founded by Dan Yarrington with the core values to "Be Excellent", "Innovate Always", and "Care Deeply". They also donate extensively to good causes such as Toys for Tots, with over 450,000 games donated to kids and families.

We will wait to see in what new directions Tycoon Games plans to take the Gamelyn collection.

"Dan Yarrington... has been a trusted partner of Gamelyn's for over a decade, helping us fulfill campaigns and representing our games in distribution in the early years. He understands Tiny Epic deeply, and I know the series is in wonderful hands."

Coe confirmed in his statement that Scott Almes will be staying on as designer of the Tiny Epic series.

"The best is yet to come."

 

 

Review: Tiny Epic Defenders - Tower of Terror

I am a huge fan of Scott Almes's Tiny Epic series. I think the man is a genius when it comes to condensing genres that typically span entire weekends and take up multiple tables into sweet little 1-2 hour experiences. Whilst they will never fully live up to the in-depth, crunchy nature of some of their larger cousins, I think they pay wonderful homage to the themes and make them far more friendly to the average table top or cafe. Furthermore, Almes always takes time to ensure there is a suitable single player mode built into the games wherever they will work well. 

I recently got hold of a copy of first edition Tiny Epic Defenders and quite unexpectedly it rose to be one of my favourite quick games. When it comes to condensing a genre, tower defense, into a short, cafe friendly experience, Almes really hit it out of the park with this one. Whilst all Tiny Epic games are relatively low complexity, games such as Tiny Epic Dungeons can often get slowed down by a rule book so thorough that you'd be convinced it cane in a much bigger box. This is not the case with Tiny Epic Defenders. All mechanics have been boiled down into such a neat package the rule book is only a few pages long and can be digested easily right before the first game.

Defenders, is a cooperative experience for 1-4 players, who take on the role of heroes drawn from classic fantasy stock; orcs, elves, skeletons, mages, knights. Each of these heroes come with their own unique special ability, though not all are created equal, allowing for future challenges if you find yourself cracking the formula for success (if you know it, please let me know).

The turn system relies on a deck of cards that are shuffled and drawn one at a time. This deck contains both enemy and player turns meaning each round is luck of the draw when each player is able to take their alloted 3 actions. This helps to keep players feeling as though they are having to play reactively and flexibly in order to keep on top of the hordes of enemies.

Enemy cards target specific areas of the kingdom, which will cause the threat in that region to rise. Should the threat level ever rise to critical point, the region is considered lost and the location bonus action will be unavailable for the rest of the game, plus any future attacks to their region will instead be directed at the capital city. Of course, should the capital city fall it's game over. Players can position their characters in locations and defend them against the onslaught by taking damage rather than raising the threat level of the region. 

Each round of the game adds further enemies to the turn deck, meaning the waves of enemies get more ferocious as the game progresses, culminating in the arrival of a boss enemy. These large monsters require slaying for the game to be considered complete, all while constantly maintaining defense against the unceasing onslaught.

TE Defenders offers a very polished experience without an ounce of fat on it. It takes up very little table space and perfectly encapsulates the tower defense genre into a very small box and quick experience. Of course, this will probably fall short when you are after something to really get your teeth into, but for what it is, it is a very impressive little game.; 

Also in my collection but as of yet untested is the TE Defenders expansion: Defenders Dark War, which expands on the available characters and final bosses, plus the need to defend caravans of refugees fleeing the various realms of the kingdom. Dark War also introduces the Tiny Epic staple gimmick ITEMeeples, small meeple figures that are able to hold even smaller weapons. Ultimately these don't add anything to the actual game play but they are quite cute. Sadly, I have a first edition copy of Defenders, meaning I only have the regular meeples that cannot hold items. If I cared that much I could easily borrow the ITEMeeples from TE Zombies, but I just don't think I'm that bothered.

All in all, TE Defenders is a solid edition to the TE collection and stands out for how neat of an experience it is.