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I had the extremely good fortune to visit Cryptozoic’s HQ last night. Cory and the entire team were incredibly welcoming and I had a great time. As it turned out they would have been more than happy to let me take a bunch of pictures and ask a bunch of questions, but I didn’t want to impose – I’d accepted an offer to participate in “Game Night” so I wasn’t there as a blogger, nor was I on a mission to unearth new Hex information. I figured I’d relay some of my experiences. Never fear, I’ll go back sooner or later, squeeze the Hex team for new information, and document the visit fully for the community!
Hex: Shards of Fate
I wasn’t completely oblivious to the fact that I was at the “source” of Hex. I got to meet the entire team, including almost everyone we saw in the Kickstarter videos, and spent a good deal of time talking to the developers. They’d just got the art assets for the new loading screen and apparently it’s “beautiful” and “incredible”. I also got to see the UI at a much higher resolution than we saw at GenCon – it looks awesome. The (in)famous paper decks that are being used for playtesting Set 2 were laying around – definitely took a lot of self control to not pick one up and start thumbing through the cards. Finally, I saw what I’ll call the Card Manager” admin tool where all of the cards are defined, art is associated, etc. I may have accidentally seen a new bunny and another robot troop from Set 2… 
Cryptozoic’s Other Games
During my tour I was blown away by the sheer number of games, trading card sets, etc. that Cryptozoic is working on. Most visitors to this site are mainly interested in Hex, as I am myself, but CZE has a lot more going on.
Game Night
I started my night playing The Hobbit Deck Building Game for the first time. Same general rules as CZE’s DC Deck Building Game, but with minor tweaks. Definitely a great deal of fun. The most notable thing was that we were clearly playing with a demo version of the game (with mocked up laser printed cards) that’s been around since the game was in development. I lost… narrowly…
I played a few other games, but the highlight of the game was a marathon “The Resistance” session. For those unfamilar with the game, here’s the description from boardgamegeek.com:
“The Empire must fall. Our mission must succeed. By destroying their key bases, we will shatter Imperial strength and liberate our people. Yet spies have infiltrated our ranks, ready for sabotage. We must unmask them. In five nights we reshape destiny or die trying. We are the Resistance!
The Resistance is a party game of social deduction. It is designed for five to ten players, lasts about 30 minutes, and has no player elimination. The Resistance is inspired by Mafia/Werewolf, yet it is unique in its core mechanics which increase the resources for informed decisions, intensify player interaction, and eliminate player elimination.
Players are either Resistance Operatives or Imperial Spies. For three to five rounds, they must depend on each other to carry out missions against the Empire. At the same time, they must try to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himself/herself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission succeeds (Resistance win) or fails (Empire win). When a team wins three missions, they have won the game.”
I have to imagine the resistance (4)/spy (3) ratio with 7 players has to be just about the hardest level of difficulty for a resistance win. The game is ridiculously addictive. Most of us hadn’t played before, so it was a great combination of flat out lying, nerdy strategy discussions (Ben “wait, I need to go read 100 strategy articles before I can play this” Stoll), and general hilarity.
I can’t thank everyone at CZE enough for making me feel welcome. I had a great night doing one of my favorite things in the world – playing games. I also got some unexpected, and personally very exciting news, about something Hex-related that might happen in the near future. I’ll let on what it is when/if Cory confirms it.
Colin
