Travel-Games Raffle and Spotlight: Fel Barros, Dobro and Samba Studios (July 2024)
Raffle Results
The winner of this raffle for a signed copy of Mean Uno…ahem…. I mean Dobro is…… DRUMROLL….. Natalia Zmysłowska. Congratualtions!!!!
A bit about Dobro
Dobro is a fast and fun climbing game where you have 3 options on your turn:
1.) Play a card higher than the value in play;
2.) Play two identical cards, doubling their value;
3.) Play a card with the same value in play to double it!
If you can't play any card… That's bad! Put all cards in play in your Score Pile and start a new climbing.
When a player plays the last card in their hand, the round ends and players receive points based on the cards in the Score Pile. The less cards you have, the more points you get! There’s also this delightfully mean rule…
“If players end the turn without replenishing their hand to six cards, they must take the Forgetful Card and place it on the table in front of them. The card will remain there until another player forgets to replenish the hand or until the round ends. At the end of the round, whoever has this card loses 1 point.” Slamming that forgetful card down on each other can bring such a level of bickering and silliness to the game and can be tailored to your group.
An Interview with Fel
What are you playing at the moment?
I am playing Riichi Mahjong, quite obsessed with it actually. I even released a version in Brazil called FelJong that serves both as a method to teach the game in stepping stones and as a cheaper alternative. I am a big fan of the rummy genre and I do believe Riichi is the pinnacle of what can be done with it depth wise.
What initially drew you to the world of board game design?
I wanted to play tabletop versions of my favourite PC Games. I designed my first two games around 1999. One was based on Ultima Online and the other on Warcraft II, probably old games that most people don't remember but they were quite addicting back in the day. For Ultima Online I used a bunch of Hero Quest pieces and for Warcraft II I used a bunch of Risk pieces, basically trying to bring those to tabletop as I spent an unhealthy amount of time playing them. 8 years later, I still had those two "designs" but when I realized how expensive it was to produce them, I gave up, pivoted to cards-only and created Warzoo, which launched in Brazil in 2014. It is a 2-4 player Battle-line inspired game with Yomi twists. After that, I never stopped.
What are your goals for Samba Estudios?
First and foremost I want to bring Brazil to the board game scene. We have a few designs that exploded abroad, like Sheriff of Nottingham, Cartographers, and lately World Wonders. There are easily 20 games from Brazil released abroad that very few people know they are from Brazilian authors.
That being said, I had this lifelong dream of running a board game studio and giving life to my own designs. Some are really early designs that now could benefit from my 10-year experience in the industry.
There are a good number of your game designs and Samba Studios games on Boardgame Arena, is online play a big part of how you interact with board games? What are your go to games on BGA?
It is not, actually. Not nowadays at least. I started playing in 2006 and I was obsessed with Tichu, Notre Dame, and Dominion, and I played on BSW, a "grandparent" of BGA. I played so much that it was not fun anymore to play against me with a physical copy so I promised I would never let myself 'ruin' another game by playing too much. So, I played a bit of Stone Age and Dice Forge on BGA but I stopped before it spun out of control. As for Samba Estudios games availability, we are in Brazil and plane tickets are crazy expensive so we cannot afford to attend 8-10 conventions a year on the NA/EU circuit. The best way to give visibility to our games was to let them be available online.
Can you tell us about some of the titles under Samba Estudios?
Right now we are working under two main game lines. One of them is called Carteado and it will be a numbered-collection of games using one of the 5 genres encompassed by the term Carteado (rummy, shedding, Trick taking, climbing or fishing). Under this line we have: Charlatão from Alex Pena (self-published as Copper Trickster before) a unique approach to the trick-taking genre where you have incomplete scoring information for half the round. Onda by Arthur Lacerda a ladder-climbing game very ingenious with an everchanging "bomb" and using a clever mechanism to 'highest/lowest card win. Cheez Tricks by Mauricio Torselli initially self published as well another trick taking game also very clever use of objective cards in a very clean and approachable game design. We have a few others being developed but those three are already out there. Our other line is called Misfits. This is a proprietary IP based on Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams work and the first game is called Dungeon Rummy. It will be available on Kickstarter on the 30th of July.
You recently exhibited at DIVERSÃO OFFLINE, could you tell us a little about that? (is it a playing convention or a buying convetion or a bit of both)?
Diversão offline is the is the largest latin american board game convention will complete 10 years in 2025. Around 15 thousand people come every year, close to the Essen attendance. There are tons of playing spaces but it is mainly an amazing convention for editors to display their newest releases. It also hosts the Ludopedia Prize (Brazilian version of the Golden Geek), a prototype section for new releases, a dedicated section to lectures, painting miniatures and most importantly, the whole Brazilian scene gets together during this weekend.
Are there any dream projects or collaborations you hope to pursue in the future?
My dream project would be to work with Nintendo. Since that will be just a dream, the 'actual' dreams I have planned for the future is to work on a line for games with Brazilian themes (we have a game planned for 2026 called Carnaval) and I would love to work with some Comic books IPs.
What are some of your favorite board games to play for fun?
Owning a 300 card game collection my go to is obviously this genre. Favorites would include Tichu and Control Nut. I am a sucker for traditional decks of cards, which I also collect, so Spades and Tranca are high on my list as my favourite way of playing is 4-player partnership games. Besides that, I love playing 2-player games as I enjoy the confrontational nature and absence of kingmaking possibilities so Stone Age, Dominion and Race for the Galaxy come to mind. I am also a sucker for cooperative dungeon crawlers heavy on dice, so Hero Quest and Massive Darkness 2 have been staples here for quite a while.
Are there any genres or themes you particularly enjoy designing for?
Besides card games like Dobro, definitely dungeon crawlers. I enjoyed my time working at CMON a lot there, and World of Smog was my 'debut' in the genre. I love trying to tackle the problems and thinking of emergent narrative solutions. For theme, I do believe my favorite is anything with a sense of humor attached to it. Even if it is dark humor or just satyre, I do believe it is much easier for me as I am a natural fan of sarcasm and self-depreciation. I loved it so much I created an entire IP based on it called Misfits! You can read about it here.
Where can people find out more and keep up to date with your games and Samba Studios?
You can follow us on social media: @sambaestudios for our Instagram and @sambaestudio on Facebook. You can also join our Discord server and most importantly, you can follow our kickstarter preview page!
The Next Raffle and Spotlight:
The next Designer Spotlight will be the wonderful Manny Dominguez designer of The Academy a small box trick taker published by Amigo. Manny has a new trick taker coming to Kickstarter with NO CARDS!!!… we look forward to chatting with him in this blog when the draw is pulled. To get entry into the raffle you will get tickets for every £10 spent in our shop and for following each of our social media pages on Instagram and Facebook and this month 5 extra tickets for Trust Pilot Reviews.
Thanks for taking the time to read the blog, have a great day.
Ben
