Hello friends!
You may know me as Gaslands Mike, or maybe Hobgoblin Mike. I’m happy you have found your way here! It means that you are a highly-evolved miniatures gamer and I am pleased to meet you. I have made it my full-time mission to create boutique miniature games for the advanced tabletop gamer. I share my design and development process so you can see what I’m up to.
If that sounds good to you, I’ll just leave this unassuming email subscription widget here:
A fresh start
At the start of the year, I took the objectively insane decision to ditch my job and go full-time on miniature games design. For the last two months, I’ve been uploading regular Dev Diaries to YouTube, with the intent of sharing my journey, and providing a behind the scenes view of my game design process. You can check out the first Dev Diary video here, and I’d really love it if you choice to subscribe to my channel and join me on this (almost certainly doomed) journey into th indie game design wilderness.
Hobgoblin is nearly in print!
My newest game, Hobgoblin, had a fantastically successful Kickstarter in 2023, and the hardcover rulebooks are very close to being in the hands of backers. (No, I don’t know exactly when either).
HOBGOBLIN is a game of brutal old school fantasy battles for people who want to put all their miniatures out on the table in sweeping battlelines and see them die in glorious battle without needing to set aside a whole day to play. I wrote Hobgoblin to be exactly the fast and bloody rank-and-flank battle game that I want to play with my fantasy armies. Big, brutal, fast.
There is still time (just about) to pre-order the game from Electi, by clicking here.
New Osprey game & a textbook!
Right now, I’m working to hit a pair of deadlines with two different publishers. The first is for Osprey, as I have a new wargame coming out with them in 2025. It is a WW2 game of carrier clashes in the Pacific called Pacific Command. The game is currently in open beta, and you can download the playtest version of the game for free for the next month or so by clicking this link.
The second deadline I’m working to this month is for a project that Glenn Ford and I have been working together in secret for nearly two years now. Glenn and I co-host a game design podcast called Rule Of Carnage, where we chat about designing better miniature games. Through our work on that podcast, we found ourselves with the opportunity to publish an honest-to-goodness TEXTBOOK on the fundamentals of tabletop miniature game design. I’m really excited to share more about that book when it releases in 2025.
What do I have planned?
Now that I have my full-time attention on miniature games, you can bet you’ll be seeing more from me. I’m still in the planning phases on the first big release, but by subscribing to this email newsletter, and to my YouTube channel, you’ll see what I’m working on as I work on it.
In the first few months of this year, I have released three games to my new Itch page in early access forms: Rotvärlden: Realms of Carnage, The Floor Is Lava and All The Kings Men. Each are available for $5 from Itch, but are free to my Patreon supporters. If you are interested in what I’m doing and want to see more, I’d be hugely thank you if you considered buying me a cup of coffee a month via Patreon.
I have a ton more games I’m working on, prototyping or dreaming about, many of which you can see on YouTube right now, and I have plans to bring something special to Kickstarter before the end of this year.
Thanks for checking out Planet Smasher Games, which is just me in my shed. I plan to keep Planet Smasher Games as a one-man thing, and I hope you’ll join me on the journey!
Cheers!
Mike