Brother Ming Games has announced the upcoming launch of his marble puzzle arcade fighting board game, Re;MATCH, on Kickstarter next year. In a thread of tweets yesterday, Brother Ming shared his excitement for the project while explaining that Re;MATCH is based on Sento, an earlier iteration of the game copied “1 for 1” by another designer after a prototype demo at Pax South.
In his thread, Brother Ming writes, “A game so great someone copied it 1 for 1 after playing a prototype demo at Pax South. They’re even calling it my game’s spiritual successor.” He then invites followers to track the project on Kickstarter before diving into a detailed thread on the situation.
In the thread, Brother Ming accuses the designer behind the game Power Well of copying key elements of Sento. The mechanics, such as the 1v1 dueling structure, marble-based combat, HP system, and victory conditions, are described as identical to Sento. He claims that Power Well made only minor cosmetic changes like theme and art direction but did not substantially alter the gameplay.
Brother Ming listed the similarities between Power Well and Sento:
“IDENTICAL Elements:
- 1 vs 1 dueling game where you play as a unique character with asymmetric abilities.
- Same marble tower design and layout with 3 lanes of 5 marbles (with marbles in the same 3 colors).
- Identical gameplay where players take turns clearing 1, 2, or 4 marbles of the same color to activate a 1, 2, or 4 marble attack corresponding to the marble’s color on your character sheet.
- Identical clearing rules where you can only clear marbles from 2 lanes: the middle lane and the lane closest to you, and that marbles must connect orthogonally without backtracking.
- Identical HP system where attacks deal damage to 3 separate HP bars, each corresponding to the 3 different colors of marbles and their move sets.
- When an HP bar hits zero, that color of attacks become disabled, but that color of marbles become WILDs that can be used to bridge and connect your other marbles.
- Each marble you clear as a connector this way restores 2 HP to that move set’s HP bar.
- At the start of your turn, you can re-activate any broken move set at it’s current HP level and immediately regain access to that move set.
- Identical win condition where you must pay 1 coin whenever you lose an HP bar. When you’ve lost 5 coins, you lose the game.
- When you lose an HP bar while you already have a broken HP bar, you must pay 2 coins instead of 1.
- Instant game over if you have no HP bars active.
- Every attack has a kicker ability that can be triggered in addition to the base attack.”
Brother Ming then goes on to share the differences between Power Well and Sento:
- “Different art for different playable characters
- Displaying attack lists horizontally instead of vertically on the character board
- Using health bars instead of health dials to visually track HP
- Different theme of a water well instead of arcade machine
- Metal wish coins instead of cardboard arcade machine tokens
- A gate piece on the tower to hold secure marbles in place when pulling marbles
- Expendable resource instead of a tug of war resource for kicker ability activation
So, of these changes, only 1 can be attributed as design or development work while the rest are cosmetic”
Brother Ming explains that when he first reached out to Myles, the designer of Power Well, he offered to collaborate on the project in exchange for receiving proper credit for his original design. However, Myles ignored these requests before offering only a “special thanks” instead of a co-designer credit. Brother Ming states that this offer fell short, as proper design credit is critical for a board game creator’s career. “Reviewers of their game will not mention the special thanks or see a special role in their discord channel,” says Brother Ming. “They won’t introduce the game as ‘designed by Myles with special thanks to Ming’. People who look up the game on [Board Game Geek] will not see that I designed the system for the game.”
Brother Ming adds “A special thanks is for pets and loved ones, not for the person you’re stealing an entire game design from.”
Brother Ming further contrasts his own experience as an indie designer, working on a tight budget to bring Sento to life, with Power Well’s well-funded debut at conventions like Pax East and Origins. He notes the financial resources that went into promoting Power Well, including large convention booths and legal fees to defend against the allegations.
In closing, Brother Ming announced that, following the controversy, he has successfully reacquired the rights to publish Sento and is rebranding it as Re;MATCH. The Kickstarter campaign for the game is set to launch early next year.
