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I have a thing called cyclothymia. It’s like a watered down bipolar. It means I have waves of incredible productivity followed by a lowness where I feel like I’m never going to have another idea again. In those waves of productivity, I feel very alive with creative energy and feel inspired by things I see and hear. At some point, you feel like ‘BAM – I’ve got it!’ and at that point, I feel like I need to purge myself of the idea. In that space, I feel I’m able to accomplish things that ‘everyday me’ couldn’t. They told us we needed a distributor, so they introduced us to Asmodee. We really liked them, they said they could distribute the games in the UK for us and then we asked if we could also speak to their US office. As before, you’ll be asked five questions, but you only need to write down the first letter of your answers before unscrambling those letters to make a 5-letter word... will you be the first player to call out the correct word? The idea that someone would say ‘we have this movie, turn it into a game’, I’d love that! I’d find that joyful. That said, the big question with a licensed game is: Is the game going to be any good? I don’t want people to have the experience I had with the Home Alone 2 game. My brother-in-law Laurence hasn’t got a creative bone in his body, but he’s fantastic at logistics. He was also going through a bit of a tough time with his cleaning business. It shut down because he couldn’t send cleaners to people’s homes during the pandemic. He had nothing to do and I had nothing to do, and our skill-sets matched up.
Zatu has an excellent range of games and for most of them the best prices too. Delivery is always fast and I have never received a game in bad condition. 10/10 would recommend. Earlier this year, television and Sony award-nominated radio presenter Matt Edmondson launched a new board game company called Format Games. Well now I’m going to be counting down the days to its unveiling! I also wanted to ask; you’re a TV presenter, you’re a Radio 1 DJ… Do you think being famous has made it easier to successfully launch your own games? We’ve likened the experience to a couple of guys taking up busking on Monday, then being signed by a major label for a five-record deal by Friday,” said Laurence Emmett, Co-Founder of Format Games.letters from the words "moon starer" can be rearranged to give the word "astronomer". Our quiz offers anagrams on British cities, football clubs, Christmas words and famous British landmarks. Matt first entered the game space as the inventor of Big Potato’s Obama Llama, and last year he self-published Ansagrams.
Because of my job on Radio 1, I spend a lot of time creating features and games for the show, many of which are the sorts of mechanics you’d expect to find in board games. Another part of my life is trying to come up with TV quiz shows, and these jobs all boil down to creating killer formats that are easy to understand and fun to play.I come up with games a lot, and I usually don’t do anything with them. When the pandemic hit, loads of my time got freed up. I was going to be making a TV show, that didn’t happen. I was doing radio but from home, so I had loads of extra time. I get bored very easily, so I set myself a couple of projects. One was to make an album, because why not?! It was a fun thing to experiment with. The other thing that kept me sane was one was to try and get one of my board game ideas made.
When I was in my twenties, I played more games. I was sent Bananagrams – which I loved – and I would often play card games with my housemates, but I’d never thought about creating my own game. We caught up with Matt to find out how a career creating formats for TV and radio proved the prefect prep for a pivot into party games. Ansagrams is a fun and intuitive competitive game, mixing general knowledge with assembling words. Let me walk you through what the game entails. Setup We have a game coming out next year called Noggin – which I genuinely think is the best game I’ve ever played, not just invented! – and it has that same kind of thing going on.
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It often starts with simple ideas that you then build structure around. Look at Obama Llama; it’s two things rhyming… Britney Spears using garden shears. On its own, that’s not a game, so that’s why you have to build a world around that concept. That’s what I’m drawn to: super accessible, mainstream party games.
This product will be delivered directly from the supplier and so only home delivery is available. It will usually take 3 – 5 working days to be delivered. Matt, great to catch up. Before we dive into all things Format Games, how did you get into game design? Were you into games from a young age? Well, I love formats. Most of things I do creatively in my life are based around formats. I don’t think I’m particular good at free-form stuff, but if someone says “We’ve got a problem with a quiz show, how do we fix it?”, my brain can figure that stuff out.We did a Dragons’ Den-style Zoom pitch to the Asmodee guys in the States and we were offered a global distribution deal that covers the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They wanted the games I’ve mentioned, plus our newest one, Noggin. We can’t think of a better partner for global distribution than Asmodee. I initially took the idea to Lesley Singleton from Playtime PR. She was the only person I knew from the board game industry because she had sent me Bananagrams. She probably had that feeling of dread when she met me of ‘Oh no, another person who thinks they have a great idea for a board game!’ Great online store for board games. They always arrive perfectly and undamaged which is important to me.
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