Hey everyone,

Cthulhu Wars is a unique game, there are no other like it. However, it has one major entry barrier: accessibility, acquiring the copies. You can play the core game and have fun with it, but if you want everything the game has to offer you need to acquire many extra expansions, especially if you want to play in larger groups of people. As more and more expansions are added to the game, it becomes harder for everyone to get the same experience from it as getting the complete set becomes a more and more distant dream.

Not to mention the fact that the game can be amazingly complicated to buy in certain regions of the world.

What is the most obvious way to make the game accessible to as many people as possible? Make a digital version of the game.
You could say that there is a digital version of the game already… People play it on Tabletop Simulator. But that’s not a version of THE game. It’s a gimmick, and a gimmick that does not reward Petersen Games for having developed the game, as far as I understand.

I don’t know what is Petersen’s stand on the TTS variants of Cthulhu Wars. I do know that, if it were not for TTS, many people would not even be able to ever play the game. I also know that having that venue is a way to draw interest in people to acquire physical copies, as it happened to me, but it is not ideal.

Cthulhu Wars is already developed from the ground up. The rules are, for the most part, well established. You have 3D models of the miniatures, which you use to manufacture them. People already have an interest in the game, physical and digital versions. There is room for expansions, and the interest to create them. Everything is perfectly in place for there to be an official digital version of Cthulhu Wars.

With a well-formulated system, a system that already exists through the Rulebook, the game can be more easily experienced by people all around the world in the way it was meant to be played. You can find players more easily, gather them more quickly, play more quickly, with a lot less doubts about the functioning of the game.

A digital version would have many advantages and traits:

• It concedes the widest accessibility possible by breaking the game’s biggest entry barrier.
• It does not allow misinterpretation of the game’s rules, which can happen often in the physical form, especially in the beginning.
• It gives you room to expand however much you want by adding more content through updates, expansions or DLCs.
• Any mistake you notice in the rules or balance can be much more easily adjusted, instead of having to go through numerous erratas and production changes.
• It connects people from different cultures and countries together in the same game, without requiring their physical presence.
• By being cheaper, it also allows for many more people to acquire the game, where Petersen Games gets the bulk of the profit.
• You can translate the game to however many languages you want without the hassle of having to produce separate versions for it.
• You can add more challenges to the game by creating pre-programmed battle scenario’s for people to overcome, similarly to chess puzzles.
• The game can have tutorials that teach people the basics of every core rule and expansion.
• You can still have customization in private matches, while allowing for a core, general experience in official tournaments/league/online matches.
• A properly-made AI can fill in the slots of other players if they leave a match, or even be used so one player can practice on his own in skirmish matches.
• A digital version can be sold on every major platform and can even be made available on consoles.
• It does not take away from the charm and experience of owning and playing the physical copy of the game, and…
• Best of all, it makes more people interested in acquiring the physical copies, once they are able to experience what the game has to offer.

Developing a game from the ground up can be complicated. But the game is already developed. You just need to find a software developer that can transform those existing rules into a digital system. All potential actions would be available in the player’s interface for them to choose from when it’s their turn. Once their action is complete and there is nothing more that they can do, the next player’s turn is activated. Ongoing abilities can be triggered through prompts or players’ intervention—decisions can be limited by timers if necessary. The board can be visualized in a virtual environment and the camera freely (or not) manipulated by the players, similarly to TTS. There is virtually no feature that cannot be adapted to a digital version in a fitting way.

If developing or finding a developer to create an entirely new platform (game) seems too complicated, there is also the less ideal option of creating the game as an official Tabletop Simulator mod. Other boardgames’ developers have done that and made their games available on TTS as DLCs. In this case, you’d be subjecting yourself to another platform’s rules, but you’d also be gaining some new gamers and you’d at least start making some money with the players who already play under those conditions. I’m fairly certain most people would be happy to buy a reasonably-priced DLC for TTS if that meant supporting Petersen Games and having access to an official system.

Honestly, I would definitely prefer to have the game available as a separate application, but whatever option best fits your capabilities and desire should be taken, of course.

What do you think of this possibility? Does anyone have any interesting suggestions?
The traits I’ve pointed out are not obligatory, and some of them (such as developing an AI) can be quite complicated for first-timers, but I’ve mentioned them so I could better help draw a picture of what the game can achieve by going in this direction. If the system is made thoroughly with the intention of supporting other boardgames, Petersen Games could even sell all their game lines in their own digital platform, given it’s accessible.

I hope you’ll consider the possibility! 🙂