With Gen Con 2025 almost upon us, it provides me with an excellent opportunity to reflect on everything Office Dog Games was able to accomplish in the last year. At the start of 2024, the Studio didn’t even have a webpage yet, but the team was busy behind the scenes working on our very first games.
Game #1
In May we released World Traveler, a wordy wayfinding game of international travel from Decrypto designer Thomas Dagenais-Lesperance. This premiere release captured the production cornerstones of what Office Dog invests in all our projects. We start by finding great game systems from established and emerging tabletop game designers. Then we invest in premium, original artwork and bespoke components to create a unique gaming experience with maximum table presence. Finally, we go the extra mile with subtle but impactful “small touches” to bring the game experience to life on your tabletop. In Word Traveler, we included custom passport holders and a location fact sheet for the city destinations featured on the game boards.
What we learned:
As our initial game launch, we learned… well, everything. As a studio, we did everything for the first time, and it taught us a lot. The biggest opportunity was for the tabletop industry and the board gaming community to first learn who we were and experience the quality of our games. Every year, amazing studios release hundreds of new game titles. It’s no small feat launching a webpage, manufacturing a game, promoting it, delivering it, and ultimately getting it into the hands of the players. If you’ve enjoyed any of our later games and haven’t played Word Traveler yet, I highly recommend it.
Game #2
We were able to meet with many of you for the first time at Gen Con 2024, when we launched designer Keith Piggott’s River of Gold, set in the mythical world of the Legend of the Five Rings. We couldn’t have been happier with the response the game received at Gen Con. The title featured all the key elements for an Office Dog release. Amazing game play, with one of the most beautiful box covers and play boards ever released. River of Gold garnered industry praise and continues to be nominated for prestigious awards.
What we learned:
We know, we know – the interior component tray configuration of the original game printing. Form must follow function. Putting components back in a box after play needs to be intuitive, fast, and hassle-free. Gamers also invest in card sleeves for their favorite titles and tray sizing needs to accommodate this. We took these learnings to heart on subsequent reprinting, and it is an integral part of our internal review process for new titles.
Game #3
I’m genuinely curious if anyone reading this hasn’t heard of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring™ The Trick-Taking Game yet. Longest… title… ever…. While lengthy, it perfectly informs the player what the game is. And what it is – is one of the most celebrated games of the year!
For many reasons, this game holds a special place in our hearts, including it being designed by Asmodee’s own Bryan Bornmueller. Checklist please: Hyper compelling original stain glass themed artwork – check. Super shinny foil cover – check. Bespoke packaging elements with pull ribbons and custom card wells – check. This game has it all. I could spend paragraphs more gushing about this game, but industry experts and influencers have already done it for me. Please check out their content if you haven’t played the game a dozen, dozen times by now.
What we learned:
We were able to prerelease this game at PAX Unplugged last year. It was our first experience simultaneously supporting a pre-release at a convention and at select retail stores. The hype was real; the demand was overwhelming and the inventory instantly evaporated. It will be insanely challenging to ever perfectly determine how much inventory to bring to a show. However, we will leverage what we learned from these pre-release activations to improve future convention events and work with more retail partners, globally, to offer additional opportunities for future releases.
Game #4
Even before they had begun design work on LEGO © Monkey Palace, Office Dog was extremely fortunate to partner with designers David Gordon and TAM on what would become Crafting the Cosmos. With a game as big as the universe, we had to go equally large with revolutionary new component designs and a table presence worthy of the title. It was no small feat of engineering, but the custom star components will stand the test of time as one of the most eye-popping pieces of any tabletop board game. Yet another recipe for Office Dog success: an innovative new game system from award-winning game designers in a stand-out box and board experience.
What we learned:
There’s a careful balance when creating the size of game components, especially custom molded pieces. They need to correctly align to the size of the game board, to be understood at-a-glance, but not too large as to overly crowd the game space. What size might be ‘just right’ for one player could be too small or too big for another. For future component heavy games, we’ll maximize user testing and incorporate usability feedback into the design of the molds.
What’s next?
That covers all of the Office Dog year one releases leading up to Gen Con. Speaking of gaming conventions, if you visited an Office Dog booth last year, you may have noticed something. The Z-MAN and Unexpected Games booths were in the same area. There was a good reason for this. The internal team behind all three studios is the same group of incredibly talented and passionate professionals. We’re privileged to be able to collaborate with Corey Konieczka, Bryan Bornmueller, and veteran industry designers to bring their games to life. While some of us are more dedicated to a specific studio, all of us contribute to the vision, testing, and release of these amazing titles. Within Asmodee, these three US tabletop studios are collectively known as Studio Big. We even have our own logo:
While this is useful for our business cards, this is not a brand that is intended to be featured on products, in the industry news, or at trade shows. Each studio has its own identity, a core audience, and focuses on specific genres of games. That will not be changing with this insider’s reveal of how the soup is made. It does mean that if you see us at industry conventions at one studio booth, we will be geeked up to talk with you about our games from the other studios. Hopefully, this provides some additional clarity on why The Fellowship of the Ring™Trick-Taking Game from Office Dog and The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship™ from Z-MAN both feature breathtaking artwork, eyepopping components, and a deep connection to Tolkien’s written works.
I am beyond excited for our studios to be sharing more information on what’s releasing later this year, including Office Dog’s The Hobbit: There and Back Again™ from Dr. Reiner Knizia and Disney Stitch: The Fix for 626, a Love Letter game from Z-MAN. You’re going to need to wait a bit longer until we can share more details about Corey Konieczka’s new game system, coming from Unexpected Games early next year. We have big plans for future convention activations, hobby retailer support, and learn to play videos, showcasing this brand-new game world from Corey’s imagination.
Earlier this year we celebrated Corey’s lifetime of achievements, as he retired as Head of Studio for Unexpected Games. I am beyond privileged to be taking over his previous Head of Studio responsibilities. This makes my already lengthy email signature now read: Mike Hummel, Studio Head: Office Dog, Z-MAN, and Unexpected Games. Our studios thank you for all your support and we look forward to bringing you more great games in the years ahead.
With gratitude,
Mike Hummel
Studio Head: Office Dog, Z-MAN, & Unexpected Games
