OU students start gaming biz with Realm of Agennul party Thursday

Mixing burgeoning business skills with the renewed gaming trend, a group of Oakland University students has paired with the school’s Ideas to Business Program to create a new company, Ardent Games.

Their first project is the gamer-collaborative The Realm of Agennul, which is launching its Kickstarter campaign with a free reception 5:30-8 p.m. Thursday at the Rochester campus’ OU Business INCubator.

The City of Anos (Ardent Games)

The Realm of Agennul will be a fantasy-adventure board game for three to six players. Each player must win the patronage of various cities in the realm with the ultimate goal of becoming the Hero of Agennul and Protector of the Realm.

To make players feel more a part of the game, they can take part in creating future expansions. After the initial game is released, players can submit characters, artwork, races, stories, rule ideas and more to the game’s website, where they’ll be voted on by the playing community.

There will be playable versions of the game at the party for people to try out, but nothing for sale yet. If they reach their $18,000 goal, they’ll move into production, as well as enhance the website and start working on expansions. If they surpass the goal, extras could include custom dice and Kickstarter-exclusive characters.

Incentives for donating include signed artwork and copies of the game and its first expansion.

There’s lots of information already up about the game at the website, including character bios, rules and city information.

Take a look and consider donating. It reminds me of the time my friends and I were on a Risk kick back in high school, and we mocked up a board with a naval grid and ship pieces, plus added  Antarctica as a continent. Parker Bros. sent us a nice rejection letter. No Kickstarter back then.

Good luck, Ardent!

Character card (Ardent Games)