ALLEY CAT GAMES
We catch up with Caezar Al’Jassar about the paw-some Alley Cat Games
We check in with Alley Cat to chat about making purrfect games
For some time now, Alley Cat Games has been the independent board game publisher of the kind of games that fit into almost any collection. From mass market style games such as Kittin and Tinderblox, to new editions in the likes of Tinners’ Trail, to the games that are immediately recognisable as theirs – Dice Hospital, and now Dice Theme Park, it’s clear Alley Cat Games have stamped their paw mark firmly on the industry.
NOT KITTEN AROUND
As with many publishers, Alley Cat Games launched with a bang on Kickstarter. Lab Wars raised nearly £50,000 in June 2016, but it began simply through a casual connection, “originally my wife and I were given a physical prototype from my best friend’s brother: Tim Pinder who went on to design the smash hit Sub Terra with ITB.” Lead developer and codirector Caezar Al’Jassar explains, “we played this on holiday and really enjoyed it and thought ‘we love games, why don’t we give it a go?’.”
What makes this stand out even further from the crowd though, is that Al’Jassar was a post-doctoral scientist at Cambridge’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the time, a career that we can’t cite other examples of leading directly to a future in board games. However, the stretch isn’t as far as you may think, with Al’Jassar explaining that they had “noticed there were no games that reflected the world of academia and its potentially cutthroat nature to it. So, we decided we would make a card game about that.” The game is science themed, seeing you building up your lab, and sabotaging the competitors to gain glory – but of course, you must watch out for competitors trying to do exactly the same to you.
“Eventually we launched it on Kickstarter and it got picked up by huge science news outlets like Nature News, Science but also the Wall Street Journal. The money we raised allowed us to make and send 2000 games and start the business,” says Al’Jassar, “it also taught me that my strengths were most definitely in running a business and product development so I ran with those skill sets and started up Alley Cat Games.”
WHISKERED AWAY
Alley Cat Games didn’t stay still from that point, and just a year later launched Dice Hospital, which has become its biggest and most popular retail game to date. The Kickstarter raised over £150,000, based on a worker placement and dice manipulation game where your dice are your patients. It has a vibe of familiar 00’s video games, and has spawned expansions and recently a theme park sequel.
“Our first two games were designed in house but working with freelance game designers was a real turning point for
Alley Cat Games,” Al’Jassar explains, “when we signed Dice Hospital from Stan Kordonskiy and hired Mike Nudd to do development on it we knew we were onto a winner. Since then we haven’t looked back and we’ve worked with some great names in the industry.”
And whilst you might think Dice Hospital, Lab Wars, and those such as Pocket Pharma sound as if they follow the biology background
of Al’Jassar, in fact, Alley Cat Games has a huge range of topics covered, from cats to chocolate factories to dinosaurs and way more.
“We like to think we make great games across the spectrum but our strength is making a really great product. Whatever size or complexity of the game, we think we know what attracts people to buy and play games – that’s the hope anyway,” he says. With fun games and easy to learn rules, it’s also notable the components added in – from the tiny tweezers in Tinderblox to the varied cat meeples in Kittin. Every aspect of the games are considered and made valuable additions, whilst being different from the game that preceded it.”
“We like to stay flexible and keep things fresh. We work on short timelines so we can adapt to people’s changing tastes in games,” Al’Jassar tells us, “a recent example would be our recent foray into reprints of classic and popular games such as Tinners’ Trail, with another huge one about to be announced.”
Tinners’ Trail by Martin Wallace was highly anticipated, a critically acclaimed thematic Eurogame set in 19th century Cornwall released in 2008. The reprint by Alley Cat Games redeveloped and upgraded it, and was funded on Kickstarter within two hours.
“We enjoy playing a variety of games as a publishing team and it keeps things interesting for us but more importantly, for our fans,” Al’Jassar goes on, “that said, we’re also building our ‘Dice X’ line with sequels to Dice Hospital including the expansions of Dice Hospital: Community Care, Dice Theme Park, and the Dice Hospital roll & write (Dice Hospital: ER - Emergency Roll) as well as some other exciting projects in the works.” These are a notable addition to any shelf, with each receiving highly positive reviews, and offering gaming in this sphere across preferred styles.
“We do such a broad range that they probably fit on every shelf. Our aim is always to make great games so we don’t focus too
much on where they sit on the shelf,
we focus more on how long they can stay in the collection. However, we are probably most known for our light to medium Eurogames such as Dice Hospital, Chocolate Factory and Welcome to Dinoworld.”
Now, we might also add to that list Dice Theme Park, the sequel to Dice Hospital. The game launched on Kickstarter on April 26th 2021, and was funded within an hour.
THE NEW TAIL
Given the range, we were curious as to how Alley Cat Games defined what games would get made and which principles guide this decision. Al’Jassar tells us in fact, there are quite a few, where “most of them are experiential, in that, how can we make players feel – or not feel – a certain way when playing our games?”. These in turn aim to be “highly unique games explainable in a single sentence”.
“First of all, playing the game has to feel unique. There are so many games out there, it is almost impossible for a game to feel entirely different to another. However, there are still so many unexplored avenues of games, mechanics and themes.”
“Secondly, our games are nearly always non-confrontational. We generally believe in indirect interaction and if possible, as many as possible.”
“Thirdly, we don’t generally like to disadvantage newer players. Generally our core lines of light to medium Eurogames have a very good amount of strategy in them, but we usually make them quite transparent in that a clever new player should be able to easily go toe to toe with an experienced player.”
“Finally in terms of what gets picked up by us to sign and publish, the remit has widened significantly as our fan base has expanded. Our core lines are still the light to medium weight Eurogames like Dice Hospital, Chocolate Factory and Tungaru. We see us sticking to this for the foreseeable future as those are what we are most known for. However, we are also expanding into mass market style dexterity games. Tinderblox and Kittin are both small, portable dexterity games and we’ve been blown away by the response to these. Barnes and Noble will be stocking them on their shelves this summer, which we are super excited about. Plus,” Al’Jassar adds, there’s a benefit to being a smaller publisher in this industry, as they’re best able to keep their “ears to the ground in terms of what gamers want to play, as well as being nimble enough to respond to those demands.”
On the other side of that, we asked what design advice Alley Cat Games would give for those pitching to them, as submissions are open at time of writing to do so. It boils down to a simple concept – “inspire me to play your game.”
“We’re gamers too and we want to know what makes it stand out amongst the competition. We love a great thematicmechanic connection, from the patients in dice hospital, with their health represented by the values on the dice; to the actual conveyor belt mechanic in Chocolate Factory.”
“Also, read our games submission page,” he continues, “we keep it up to date with
the types of games we’re looking for. It’s something we feel sets us apart from other publishers in that we guide you as to what we are looking for very clearly. The closer to what the publisher would want, the better.”
NOT HITTING PAWS
When you look at how far Alley Cat Games has come in the last seven years, it’s almost hard to believe it’s still an indie publisher at heart. “As a small indie company we are still heavily reliant on pledges from backers on Kickstarter to get those projects off the ground,” Al’Jassar explains, “with the pandemic still ongoing, and the project management and financial effects on us, this is even more so the case in 2021. With sea freight costs tripling internationally, virtually overnight, our straight to retail products have much thinner margins than ever. With competition between publishers so high, the only thing you can do is swallow those losses and hope for the best.”
Thankfully, Alley Cat Games has sat itself firmly in the market. We asked the game that represents where the studio is now, and the direction it’s looking to take.
“We’re continuing to diversify in the games we’re publishing, and we’re also more and more often working with bigger names in the game design community, so expect to see us continuing to publish gateway games, mass market games, and also some heavier Eurogames
“People will almost always associate Alley Cat Games with Dice Hospital but most recently, the game that’s stood out as a favourite in the team is Eternal Palace, which is so interactive and replayable that we enjoy it even after hundreds of playtests,” And whilst we can plant our feet firmly in the gardens of the Eternal Palace, we can’t help but wonder what makes up the Alley Cat Games future roster.
“Dice Theme Park is the first sequel to Dice Hospital and a real step towards our Dice X line.” He explains, offering us a glimpse of what’s to come, before tantalisingly adding, “we can’t talk much about what else is in store but let’s just say that we see it as the start of something big”