KD:M Wired Article

In Kingdom Death players use cards and miniature figurines to navigate a nightmarish world in an attempt to survive.


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Kingdom Death: Monster is a cooperative board game that is equal parts Milton-Bradley and Megadeth album art. In it players team up in an RPG-like setting, playing amnesiac characters trying to survive in a nightmarishly baroque setting. This horror-themed game might seem like a strange fit for the holiday season, but it is killing it on Kickstarter, having has raised over $600,000 with three weeks remaining.
Just as fair warning, Kingdom Death pays homage to over-the-top fantasy art of yore and is definitely for mature audiences.

Kingdom Death’s creator, Adam Poots, might seem like Santa’s most demonic elf, but he started his career as a Brooklyn-based creative director. By day he worked on branding campaigns and websites for Groupon clones, but in his off hours he was an avid gamer. One day in 2008, bored while waiting to be summoned during a stint of jury duty, he read a rulebook for a role playing game and started to imagine ways it could be improved.

Ideas for a game of his own didn’t come about immediately — he didn’t yet have a fully fleshed out concept, but had thoughts about characters and settings. He also knew he wanted his game to have awesome miniature figures as game pieces, so he started designing those pieces. He says “The chance of me ever saving up for a house in New York was ludicrous, so I started with $10,000 in savings and decided to put it into little figures.” The only problem was that while he had a vision for the game world, he didn’t have the skills in illustration or sculpting to realize it — so he hired some help.

“Every miniature is developed by a very important three person team,” Poots says. “I create the concept for a character, then I’ll find an artist, or multiple graphic artists, and we’ll get the concept done and ready to be sculpted.”

Finding sculptors was the biggest challenge. The best artists in the industry didn’t want to work with an unknown, but through sheer determination, he recruited a sculptor by suggesting they try a novel process in the field, 3-D printing. “There was a question whether the fine detail sculptors expected could be achieved by 3-D printers at this small scale,” he says. “We talked to a lot of 3-D printing companies and found a machine called ‘The Viper‘ that could handle the job. In this niche community, I’m 99% sure I’m the first to release a digitally printed mini.” Poots says the majority of his designs are still hand sculpted because most of the digital artists have video game jobs that keep them busy, but things are trending toward digital production.

This technical triumph gave Poots a reputation, the flood gates of sculptors opened, and he now has a couple dozen figurines under his banner. In 2010 he went full time, and found a European production house to cast limited runs of his figures in resin. “My production partner is in France and we communicate with them via Google Translate. From what I understand he is a strange master of his craft type and he does everything in this small village,” he explains. As his product line grew, money followed and he says ”I make way more selling little plastic figures than I did designing websites.”
His business grew steadily for two years and won some industry awards along the way. (Yes, there is an Academy Award equivalent for tiny statues). But Poots still wanted to release a full game. His vision for gameplay evolved as his line of figures grew. “I wanted the game itself to be something you play without a dungeon master, I wanted the game system itself to play the dungeon master role,” he says. “I also wanted the game world to be based around something harsh and let players experience themselves through the miniatures.”

He goes on to describe his design process as an evolution of his prior job. “Game design is very similar to designing a website or app, the flow of a site needs to make sense logically and mechanically, so does a game. I always ask, ‘what’s going to be the experience the first time a person opens the box, what about when they come back the next time, or play regularly?’”

Poots took his project to Kickstarter to raise funds for production and to turn his limited edition resin miniatures into mass produceable, injection molded, game pieces. Even though game companies have enjoyed success on Kickstarter he’s still a bit surprised that they’re so well received on the crowdfunding site. “Most of the successful products on Kickstarter are technology or cool gadgets, my products are old as time itself.”

Even after seeing a solid six-figure haul on the horizon, Poots is still proudly independent, avoiding partners and investors. He says “I’m a one man band, though my girlfriend has been super duper supportive and has spent many of her nights packing stuff with me.” He’s also working with a publisher called “Cool Mini Or Not”, that has also had its fair share of Kickstarter success, to provide fulfillment services.

According to Kicktraq, the Kingdom Death project is now averaging $28,000 a day in pledges. Poots says “It’s making a little over a thousand an hour — I’ll go to bed for eight hours and wake up to ten thousand more dollars.” So now a good night’s sleep is yielding as much as his original investment. He’s unsure what the future of the game will be after the campaign ends, but he is leaning against traditional distribution and would prefer to disrupt the market and serve fans directly. Kingdom Death was designed to scare players, but with this massive success, it might be the traditional game companies that should be fearful.