Here at Sequential Planet, two of our favorite things are tabletop games and anime. As wonderful as these two things are, they don’t tend to mesh well together. It’s sad, but the reality is that we rarely see anime and board games come together. Why is that?
Fortunately, not everyone has given up on the dream of marrying board games and anime. You have to look hard though, because you won’t find anime games too often in the mainstream scene. Brother Ming Games has been hard at work designing anime-themed tabletop games. We got a chance to speak with Brother Ming from Brother Ming Games about his journey, as he prepares to release his latest project: A Persona 5 themed game centering around infiltrating palaces.
Brother Ming started his tabletop journey with trading card games. “I was a huge Yugioh player back in high school. Me and my best weeb friend Eric (who still helps me to this day) co-captained the chess team, and really we played more Yugioh than chess during chess club,” recalls Ming. Before long, the duo designed their own trading card game and printed the cards out to show off at their local game store. Ming describes it as a combination of Dual Masters and Hearthstone that used a mill mechanic in place of mana. “That was a super fun time. It was a blast to create cards and playtest them between ourselves, so that for sure was my very first experience with tabletop game design,” says Brother Ming.
Brother Ming Games gained most of its popularity after showing off its concept for a game based on Fire Emblem Heroes, a popular mobile game. Fire Emblem is a long-running Nintendo franchise, and with a robust cast of iconic characters, seems like it would be perfect as a tabletop game. Ming has been a fan of the series since middle school and thought about the idea of making the series into a game for quite some time. The design work of the game took three to four weeks. “Design is just something that takes a lot of time and thinking, and it’s never concrete. You have to simulate playtests of your designs in your head a lot, but nothing really beats prototyping and playtesting in the end,” says Brother Ming. “Sometimes a great idea comes really easily, other times you just keep scrapping ideas one after another.”
Brother Ming’s favorite anime series is Code Geass, so of course, he has already designed a game based on it. “I do plan on going back and cleaning it up because I cut a lot of corners with that game,” says Brother Ming. The game released shortly after Fire Emblem Heroes after a licensing conflict with Nintendo. “It was really rushed in order to keep my facebook page alive after it got DMCA’d to hell because of the Fire Emblem game,” laughs Ming. Fortunately, the run-in with Nintendo didn’t keep Ming down for long. “I don’t think it’s changed the way I approach my games though, my design philosophy has matured simply due to experience and exposure to game design. All Nintendo did was teach me to never make a fan project based on a Nintendo IP ever again,” says Brother Ming.
Brother Ming is a fan of tabletop games in general, not just anime-centric ones. In fact, his favorite game is Battlecon. “The game is brilliant,” says Brother Ming. The game made such an impression on Brother Ming in college that it pulled him back into game design. Brother Ming focuses on anime games though because of his passion for anime, and he believes that there is a lack of good anime games. Brother Ming acknowledges that tabletop games are largely a Western hobby. “The modern board game resurgence started in Europe and then North America. At the same time, the board game fan base is primarily “traditional” western nerds, which includes the type that un-ironically calls anime fans weaboos,” says Ming.
The Future of Anime Games
Brother Ming thinks that the presentation of these games isn’t exactly helping anime board games succeed. “Most Anime board games that sell really well in the current market are also games with very fanservice heavy art that cater to the most extreme of anime fans,” Brother Ming laughs while admitting that he is a part of that demographic. “I love that stuff, I’ve got a fully sleeved copy of Barbarossa after all, but anime games that don’t have it tend to not sell nearly as well, even if they’re very good games. There are exceptions of course, like Shadow Hunters and Sakura Arms, both of which are masterfully designed games in my opinion, but still, these games are nowhere near as well known as they should be.” Ming’s ultimate goal is to change the way that the board game community views anime-based games. “Board games are still very niche and haven’t caught on nearly as much in Japan where TCGs still dominate the market. So my hope is to expose board games to anime fans one project at a time.”
Brother Ming has definitely exposed board games to anime fans. Fire Emblem, Code Geass, and recently Darling in the FranXX are all franchises that he has made fan games for.
Brother Ming’s next project is based on Persona 5 and is intended as either a solo or two-player competitive game. The board game plays like the video game: Players need to steal the heart of an adult within 28 days. Throughout the game, players will gain resources, earn money, increase social stats, and defeat shadows. The game even utilizes the confidant system that has made the series so popular. The game’s implementation of resource management and visiting various locations use the video games mechanics in a clever way and should make for a great experience for Persona fans.
You can check out some of Brother Ming’s work here. He is also heavily involved on his Facebook page, where he constantly shares updates about his initiatives. You can support him on Patreon as well.
