Back this local duo’s latest game, live on Kickstarter
March 5, 2024
Looking for a light deduction game you can play with anyone from kindergartners to grandparents? Back the Kickstarter for Logic and Lore, the latest game from local duo Darren Reckner and Jason Hager.
If you joined us for last fall’s Game Night Mixer at D20 in Kettering, you might remember meeting Darren and playtesting Logic & Lore, a card game where you enlist the help of dragons to align 9 stars in the heavens.
The trick is, you never get to look at the cards in front of you — instead, you ask your opponent questions to determine what stars are where, as you race to get the correct order in place first.
“I’ve created a good amount of games now, and I don’t recommend all of them to everybody,” Darren said. “But I recommend Logic & Lore to everybody. It has a very versatile design with lots of options and content and ways to play, so it doesn’t get stale.”
The Logic & Lore Kickstarter is not the duo’s first since they began designing games together in 2020. They sold their first game, Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze, to Restoration Games that same year. The publisher successfully took the game through a Kickstarter campaign last spring.
“Kickstarter is really integral for boardgaming space,” Darren shared. “Even a small print run would set you back a few thousand bucks, and you don’t want 500 boxes of a game you can’t sell.”
This campaign is also running through a board game publisher — in this case, Weird Giraffe, which bought Logic & Lore following a board game convention in 2022.
Through the campaign, Darren and Jason will do final development work, revisions, and create bonus content.
Tips and tricks
Darren was introduced to board games as a kid, playing standard titles with family throughout his childhood. In college, he shifted to strategy games and card games. A few years later, he discovered the hobby game community.
“When I became an adult, I just learned people were bad at socializing in a lot of ways,” he recalled. “Things you’d get invited to would be bad for socializing. So I started inviting folks to my place to play these games.”
He met Jason through work, and they began connecting online to play through the top 100 ranked board games. A contest to design a new hero for one of these games led them to shift from just playing to also designing.
“When we got into design in 2020, a lot of people were stuck at home, not going places. But there’s a little piece of magic in playing a board game,” Darren said. “When you sit down, you enter a magic circle. What happens in the game is within the confines of the game. You get to enter this space and be slightly different than you normally would be because the game demands it.”
As their work has grown, so have the Durdlers — their Discord fan community, always ready to jump in and play test a new concept.
“That’s our competitive advantage compared to other designers,” Darren said.
The pair also utilize skills from their corporate day jobs to grow their game design success.
“When we go to a business meeting, we know how it goes. We’re used to presenting and trying to sell an idea to somebody,” he said. “That’s a big thing in the board game industry. Once you select a designer, you’re very tied in — they need to show up, give input, have a good public face. Even in a very creative space like this, there’s a very good case for professionalism.”
Durdle Games expects to have two more games hit shelves this year — follow them on IG to see when they drop.
