"I love the digital version" of Sentinels of the Multiverse. "It is great to be able to play the game on an airplane, which is definitely not possible with the cardboard version," said Paul Bender, operations director of Greater Than Games LLC in St. Louis.
SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Say you're a fan of the "Sentinels of the Multiverse" comic book card game, but you can't always rustle up three or four of your best mates to come over and play a round or two. Lucky for you, Cleveland entrepreneur Jeremy Handel has created a digital version of the game you can play on your own, with friends, or while traveling.
Sentinels of the Multiverse, the video game, features the same muscled superheroes, the same dastardly villains, and the same ominous environments as the original Greater Than Games LLC story, all rendered in vivid comic-book graphics and sound effects for Android tablets or iPads. A desktop version for Macs and PCs is coming out within weeks.
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View full sizeHandelabra Games' founder and president Jeremy Handel "Our digital game is an exact adaptation of the game," fully faithful to Greater Than Games' original back story, including the longstanding grudges and rivalries among the protagonists, Handel said.
For example, Legacy, Tachyon and Absolute Zero might be pooling their powers against the Plague Rat at the robotics factory. Depending on what cards the players draw, the heroes and villains might be locked in mortal combat, or be forced to contend with an environmental disaster.
But instead of three to five players banding together to fight the bad guys, drawing cards to see what super-powers they possess or what obstacles they face next, the video game lets a single player inhabit all the superheroes at once. The software keeps track of the cards drawn and the players' points, so gamers can focus on what's happening on screen.
When the $9.99 game launched worldwide Oct. 15, it hit No. 3 in the App Store among all apps, not just video games, Handel said.
Handel is so convinced of Sentinels' potential appeal among gamers that he idled his app-developing company, Handelabra Studio, in July 2013 just to launch Handelabra Games and focus on creating licensed digital board games. "We find up-and-coming, independently-produced board games, and help them with their digital strategy," he said.
Handelabra has four employees now, including graphic designer Jennifer Greene in Cleveland, partner John Arnold and developer/composer Jean-Marc Giffin, both in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but Handel said he will hire more if the company takes off.
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View full sizeJeremy Handel grew out his goatee to dress as villain Baron Blade to promote his game at trade shows. Shaker LaunchHouse, which invests in, develops and incubates cutting-edge startups in Northeast Ohio, was sufficiently impressed to support the shift in focus and welcome Handel to its shared office space in Shaker Heights.
A Steam Greenlight campaign is asking gamers to vote on whether it should be available on Steam, and whether they would buy it if it were, at the link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=329666216 The more votes it gets, the more likely it will appear there soon.
Handel just returned from promoting the game at the PAX AUS conference for gamers in Australia, for which he grew out his goatee to dress up as scar-faced villain Baron Blade from the game. PAX AUS officials declined to say how many people attended the event at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre from Oct. 31 through Nov. 2.
The digital version of Sentinels is aimed at the same demographic as the card game: mostly males ages 25 to 35. Handel said it is rated for 13 and older, with the kind of cartoonish violence typical in comic books, "but not a lot of blood, guts or sexual references."
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View full sizeA scene from Sentinels of the Multiverse.With 10 heroes, four villains, and four scenarios, there are more than 9,000 potential battles to fight.
As with the cardboard version, the digital version comes as a $9.99 starter set, to which more characters, more opponents, and more settings can be added with enhancement packs still being developed.
Paul Bender, operations director of Greater Than Games, based in St. Louis, Missouri, raved about the game via email.
"I love the digital version," he said. "I have played it a number of times, in particular while traveling. It is great to be able to play the game on an airplane, which is definitely not possible with the cardboard version."
"The main advantage of our version is the social interaction that comes from playing a game around the table with friends, but the digital version is great for people who are on the go, or who do not want to manually track the various status effects and other information in the game," he added.
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View full sizeHandelabra Games' Uncle Slam presidential boxing game. Handel caught the gaming bug while developing the "Uncle Slam" presidential boxing game.
Christopher Badell, designer and creator of Sentinels of the Multiverse board game and design director at Greater Than Games, said his team met Handel's company at the 2011 Pax Prime gaming conference in Seattle.
He had just created Sentinels of the Multiverse, and the guys in the next booth had created the Uncle Slam boxing game, so they took turns playing each other's games.
Handelabra's John Arnold called Badell a few months later to say they had created a companion app for Sentinels of the Multiverse called "Sentinel Sidekick" that made it easier to keep track of what was happening in the game. They followed that up with a pitch to create a full-on digital version of Sentinels with music, sound effects and animation.
"The results are fantastic," Badell said. "We're definitely reaching a new audience. The vast majority of the people who bought the game right off the bat were already fans of the board game, but more and more," he's hearing from gamers who discovered the game first in digital form. He looks forward to seeing how the enhancement packs he's written and created for the card game get translated on screen. "I'm really excited to see what the future holds."