Joey Vigour designs and publishes games

After 5 long years, the expansion for Chaosmos is nearly upon us. I’ll be showing it a bit at Gen Con (although my booth – Vigour Games #566 – is mostly about GROWL). Observation: Some of you seem to play the game as a thematic exploration/combat Ameritrash game. So you play the game and have fun […]

GROWL has finally begun arriving all over the world. Europe and Australia are finally shipping, so even very remote backers should have the game this month. See the FAQ if you have questions about the game.

I’m hard at work on Dirtside, the sequel to Battlestations, to be published by Gorilla Games next year. But I also had some time to get design work on The Temple closer to done. Spying, hoarding, deceiving, stashing and sneaking… now with diplomacy, machinations, alliances, betrayals, and wild new abilities! The Temple is an expansion […]

GROWL PRINTABLE VERSION [EDIT: No longer available.]   GROWL FAQ Here’s the latest FAQ, which includes the latest rules for high player counts. https://joeyvigour.wordpress.com/GROWLFAQ DARK UNIVERSE playtest kit (2-3 players, 5-10 minutes) Here’s a 2 or 3 player bluffing/deduction/memory game I designed (with Jeff Siadek) inspired by the classic Universal monsters. The name is obviously […]

What comes in the Howly Growly Box? (4-10+ players)  Fur bag, magnetic hinged box with slotted inserts.  10 punchboard tiles, including 1 “Start Player” tile  84 card deck (10 extra tile cards, 8 Nights, 8 Final Nights, 12 Gold, 5 Salve, 5 Charm, 8 Wound, 4 Wound (6+ players), 4 Wound (9+ players), 12 Bite, […]

– WHAT IF SOMEONE CHEATS? • The game uses the honor system. Don’t play with people who can’t handle that. – WHY IS THE DECK FACE-UP INSTEAD OF FACE-DOWN? • Playtesting has proven that if the deck is face-down, players forget to publicly reveal the card they draw before passing it. Playing with the deck […]

By Joey Vigour (Designer, Chaosmos & GROWL) To celebrate the INSANE FINAL DAY of my Kickstarter game GROWL I am reposting a hugely updated version of my social deduction/hidden roles game list. Despite what some hardcore tabletop gamer “friends” may say, social deduction is NOT a withering genre, but an ever-evolving one. The mysteries are […]

Chaosmos has an incredibly rich mythology but it’s very subtle in the way it is integrated into the gameplay. The planet Sykloakis is the home of Neeksi, a female scavenging bile-tract parasite who makes her home in a series of giant megafauna ungulate creatures (the Great-Hosts) which have evolved in symbiosis with the Merdivz (the parasites) […]

It is only the things we don’t understand that have any meaning… In all chaos there is a cosmos. In all disorder a secret order. CARL JUNG The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious Rolling dice or shuffling cards is the gamer equivalent of summoning a demon of chaos. It’s a prayer for the cosmic intervention […]

There seems to be a backlash against video games that feature detailed graphics and complex mechanics, but have extremely linear and passive story-lines. Board games can suffer the same fate; snazzy art, long rulebooks and expensive components are not the most important elements to an awesome board game experience. To me the very best board […]