Ares Magazine: Mission Viejo, California (01 January 2014) – One Small Step Games launched its Kickstarter campaign today for Ares Magazine, a full-size magazine that will include 80 pages of fiction and other content that wraps around a pull-out and ready-to-play board game.
The Kickstarter campaign offers various pledge levels featuring subscription options and add-ons—some of which will only be available for Kickstarter backers. For example, a limited number of pledges of $750 or more will get a pledger’s caricature on a playing piece in War of the Worlds, which will be included in the first issue. OSS also released details about the flagship game by game designer Bill Banks: A two-player game of conquest and survival that takes about 60 minutes to play, War of the Worlds pits the military forces of Queen Victoria against diabolical Martian forces under the command of the evil Martian overlord.
The Martians have huge tripod walkers, flying saucers, death rays, missile bases, and giant monsters at their disposal. They can also elicit help from gullible human proxies. The humans rely on conventional infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and perhaps a hero for their defense. Fortunately, the human player may get assistance from a mad scientist who can field an Infernal Machine that the Martians won’t find amusing. The Martians have a choice of five different victory conditions. Part of the challenge for the human player is to determine the Martian overlord’s true objectives to thwart them.
As the project has developed, many recalled SPI’s science fiction and fantasy oriented game magazine published in the early 1980s. “We think it’s great that so many people remember SPI’s magazine, Ares,” says OSS Games’ Michael Anderson. “But we’re not SPI and it’s not 1983. We aren’t trying to recapture our teenage years and we’re not trying to clone a T-Rex. We have not come down with the nostalgia bug. We’re driven by something different. We have a vision. The vision is of a new product — one that makes sense in 2014.”
Anderson notes that readers now get much of the content of SPI’s magazine online. “Our magazine will focus on the fiction and the game at the expense of some of the other material that was fashionable during the Reagan administration,” says Anderson. Readers can expect about 60 pages of new fiction with 20 additional pages of interviews, articles, and advertising. The magazine will wrap around a complete board game, composed of a rule book, a few hundred die-cut playing pieces, and a large map. All of that will be wrapped up and delivered to subscribers’ doors. OSS will provide an e-reader version of the non-game content. “We hope you share our vision,” says Anderson.
The success of the Kickstarter campaign will put the magazine’s production into gear with a target mailing date of 01 May 2014 for the first issue.
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