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The First Game About Comics, Now On Kickstarter!

by Jason Thompson

Mangaka: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing ComicsDesigned by Jason Thompson. Art by Ike and Eric "Woof" Muentes. Produced by Jumana Al Hashal. Kickstarter close date: May 25th, 2015

mangaka-frontcover-ike copy

 Comics. How could you choose just one? Mangaka: The Fast & Furious Game of Drawing Comics, is a hilarious, one-of-a-kind game where you and your friends play comic artists competing to earn Fame over the course of 4 rounds of frantic drawing!

Inspired by my time editing Shonen Jump magazine for VIZ, my love of games, and Scott McCloud's books on comics, Mangaka is a fast-paced card game where you draw and write comics in five-minute bursts. While this is a game about drawing, you can still win even if you've never drawn a stick figure in your life. Cleverness, silliness, quick wit and storytelling ability matter much more than your ability to draw. And while the themes of Mangaka are inspired by Japanese comics, you can draw in whatever style you wish, whether you're a fan of superheroes, webcomics, newspaper strips or graphic novels. It's all good!

The core of the game are two card decks: Themes and Trends. (The card and box art are by two amazing artists, Ike (illustrator of the RPG Golden Sky Stories) and Eric Muentes, lead artist of the Steam game Blue Revolver.) Themes represent tropes and story elements, from genre elements like Robots, Aliens and Superhuman Speed, to the bizarre and mundane like Love Triangles, Conspiracy Theories and Desire for Rebellion. You start by drawing three random Themes (over 180,000 combinations) and these Themes are your Obsessions, what drives you as an artist. In game terms, these Themes are the subject matter of your comic.

fantasy-trend

Our inspiration was five-minute comics by artists like Randall Munroe (xkcd) and Joey Sayers (Stupid Dreams). The time limit levels the playing field between people with different skill levels; word balloons are just as valid as drawings, and entertaining stick figure comics win more often than comics where the artist spends too much time finishing that one perfect drawing.

The winner after 4 rounds is the most famous artist, but how do you get Fame? You give the readers what they want: you follow Trends! Starting in round 2, Trend Cards appear, reflecting the fickle whims of the audience. Trend Cards make the victory conditions different each game, combining comic tropes with specific actions you have to perform to get points. "Action Trend" rewards you for each panel with speedlines. "Science Fiction Trend" rewards you for coming up with more made-up sci-fi terms than any other player. "Marvelous Dialogue" (inspired by the Silver Age writing style of a particular comics company) rewards you for writing long (10+ word) word balloons. Whether your readers crave Emotion, Cuteness, Sports or Fanservice, your challenge is to put it in a comic somehow.

After each drawing round, you get to see what everyone came up with. It's fun seeing a comic about giant monster hunter morphs shamelessly into a romance comic when Shojo Trend comes up, seeing a cute cat comic end with gruesome death thanks to Horror Trend, or other weird combinations. It's fun telling stories and playing with tropes, and everyone gets to take home their own finished comic.

science-fiction-trend

I can't remember if my first nerdy childhood memories are of playing 8-bit video games or reading Peanuts, but I loved them both. Later I graduated to roleplaying games and to Bloom County and The Far Side, and eventually I discovered indy comics and the boardgames of the Eurogame boom. But creative games are rare, and drawing games are even rarer, though I've spent many fun hours playing Pictionary and Telestrations, and playing Draw Something on my iPhone. I've never seen a drawing game where you draw comics, or where the drawing involves telling any kind of story like you would in, say, Once Upon A Time.

Mangaka is about reclaiming your creativity. It's like Guitar Hero and Rock Band: you get the thrill of making music but you don't have to be a musician to play them. Try it for yourself by supporting our Kickstarter!

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Jason Thompson is the author of Manga: The Complete Guide, an illustrator of Dungeons & Dragons walkthrough maps, and the creator of the graphic novels H.P. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, King of RPGs and The Stiff.

For more information: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22092473/mangaka-the-fast-and-furious-game-of-drawing-comic


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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