Jon and Dirk are paid a visit by regular guest Soren Johnson, who stops by to talk about his brand-new studio ‘Mohawk Games’ and their first project, ‘Mars’, an economic RTS built out of the legacy of Dani Bunten’s venerable M.U.L.E. They discuss the challenges of and goals behind Soren setting up his own shop, and what he hopes the unique game will achieve. Soren also reveals the first game to ever make him cry. And trust us, it’s fitting.
It’s a good time whenever we have Soren on, but it was especially great having him on to celebrate and discuss his leap into indie development.
Soren and I have quite a bit in common, and it should come as no surprise that our plans and goals are fairly similar. Still, we don’t see eye-to-eye on everything and spent part of this episode having a lively debate about the merits of Kickstarter VS Steam Early Access. Give it a listen!
– Jon
Jon Shafer on Design 
Your new game concept Soren looks pretty cool, the world definitively needs more video games with in-depth gameplay that doesn’t necessary involve mass murdering the competition to win.
As far as the design goes, I think it shares several ideas to many Martin Wallace’s board games: competitive yet thematic corporate strategy games built on top of the newer European design ideas. You might find some good ideas from these games in particular:
Age of Industry: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/65901/age-of-industry
This one has the interesting idea that building economic buildings and transportation, while good for you, will also help your competition. It offers a market with resources with value fluctuating over time, depending on the needs of players. Finally, the design offers strong spatial considerations as not all locations are connected to each other.
Automobile: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39351/automobile
If you want a short strategy game, you will need to make sure that every decision counts. Automobile offers a rather in-depth strategy given the fact that each player will only make 12 decisions throughout the game.