Pug Time Pre-Orders

Learn about the Cards and a Quick Update!
about 5 years ago – Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 10:44:23 PM

Hey!

So it's been a couple days now, but we've made plenty of progress! Right now we're sitting at 63% funding as we approach our last week, which starts in just a couple days. Assuming things fall as planned, we should be able to reach our goal and make it so everyone gets to be on Pug Time.

Today, I wanted to talk about the different card types in the game, specifically highlighting what the cards do and the value in attempting to play them.

• Basics: Basic cards are the core cards that get played in the game and are the most consistent. Playing a basic card nets your pug one token in an area of happiness.
• Tricks: These are high risk/high reward cards that provide a ton of value. Your pug will gain two tokens in an area unless someone else has gained tokens in that area earlier in the round. Since tricks always resolve at the very end of a round, this makes it extremely risky as a play, but it also provides more value when it hits than almost every other card in the game.
• Disasters: These are cards that block other pugs from earning tokens in an area and instead give those tokens to your pug. For instance, if you play Smelly Farts on an opposing pug and they try to eat some pizza, you get the pizza instead and they get nothing. These are fantastic towards the end of a game for blocking an opponent and giving yourself a chance to catch up and potentially win.
• Treats: Treats activate your pug's special ability. Every pug has their own special ability that ties the theming and mechanics underlying the ability together and provides a unique method of winning the game, completely different from the rest of the grumble.
• Buried Treasures: These cards allow pugs to store a card to play later. They add a ton of strategic depth and allow players to combo cards together, guarantee success with certain cards (like tricks or disasters), and generally make substantially more informed decisions.
• Adventures: These cards completely shake up the game and usually do something extremely powerful. Each card is generally an amplified version of one of the lesser cards, where, for instance, Tragic Day is a super version of a disaster and Pug Party is a super version of a treat. These add a lot of power and variability in the gameplay such that every game can feel completely different.

I hope that provides a little insight into each of the cards and the different mechanics and strategies you can apply to succeed with each type! Of course, you can always read a little more of the rules or reach out to me if you have any other questions.

We'll be back on Thursday with another update as we hit our final week to talk about a few different things. Until then!

Puggin' Out,

Ben and Peach

Learn About Your Future Best Friend Part 2, and an Update on Black Pugs!
about 5 years ago – Sun, Apr 14, 2019 at 09:29:01 AM

Hi!

First a quick update - the Black Pugs are officially here! We got a huge influx of posts after the last update, and now every game we make of Pug Time for our Kickstarter will include both the Fawn Pugs and Black Pugs! Nice work everyone and thanks for sharing out the game. Now we have one last hurdle - making sure we're able to get to our funding goal. Everything is still trending pretty well and we're gaining a few backers every day, which is awesome. We're coming up on three weeks (which means a little over one week left), and optimally we'd like to be closing in on at least $5000 of funding before we start the final week. We're so close to that already, but we'll need your help to keep sharing out the game to make sure everyone knows it's Pug Time!

Now let's talk about the rest of our awesome pugs!

The Garbage Pug

•  Don’t dig for treats ever. Digging for a treat removes a treat from your hand to get you… a treat. Digging for literally anything else can be worthwhile, and, while most players picked this up immediately (or after doing it once), it’s worth mentioning here.
• Specifically, digging for adventures is a great use of the secondary ability. Although you’re sacrificing a turn to get the adventure, adventures are usually powerful enough to offset the loss of a turn to get it.
• Digging for Land Speed Record, in particular, is a pretty cool combo. If you play Land Speed Record while you have a treat, the Land Speed Record is discarded and when the time comes for your treat to resolve, you can put the Land Speed Record right back in your hand. Basically, a treat and a Land Speed Record means you get to play Land Speed Record twice. If you’re lucky, you’ll draw a second treat as well and get to do it all over again, although it’s extremely rare.
• Generally, save the early treats and use them for the big point gain early, but use the secondary part as you near the end. If you know what’s in the deck, it can be a great move to get the extra points from the two treats early, then use the secondary ability to finish off a game quickly. It might suck to wait for that second treat to come up, but, generally, that’s going to be the best way to win. You just get more value from playing two treats than from doing any other move you could possibly do with the treats, short of winning the game.

The Mischief Pug

•  Try to play the card when other players will be going for big moves. It can eliminate even the best laid plans with randomness. Burying the treat can be very powerful for this reason. If someone is about to get something like a land speed record, you’ve suddenly made it possible that you end up with it.
• Try to play the treat when players are playing additional cards. Because you always deal to yourself first, any extra cards will head your way first as well. For instance, in a 3 player game you might have 4 cards get played. You get to deal one to each player, then the second card gets dealt back to you – essentially giving you twice the value and also taking it away from someone else.
• The Mischief Pug is the only Pug that can really shut down the Strong Pug, who otherwise destroys everyone’s treats. If you know someone is going to play the Strong Pug, consider playing the Mischief Pug to offset some of that power. 

The Smart Pug

•  Try to avoid playing cards that can fail when playing the Smart Pug. If you save them for burying later, they have a much better chance of working.
• Burying disasters and tricks are extremely powerful in this context, as you have a much better shot of landing them when you know exactly what your opponent is playing.
• Sometimes it’s worthwhile to keep a treat instead of discarding it to bury a card. Saving it allows you to run the ability all over again, drawing more cards and increasing your chances of pulling adventures, buried treasures, and more treats. Keep this in mind early in the game as sometimes small initial sacrifices can have a huge impact later.

The Strong Pug

•  Bury treats with this guy all the time. Although it can be powerful and useful to occasionally bury other things, if you get a chance it’s almost always a good choice to bury a treat. No matter what happens you’ll be able to counter even the best moves from an opponent and you’ll get points for doing it.
• He gets slightly stronger in larger games, as it’s more likely players will play a treat or adventure in any given round since there are just more cards on the board. This is negated slightly by optimal play (in that, burying a treat is going to roughly have the same impact regardless of the number of players in the game), but it’s a thing to be aware of.
• For opponents, attempting to bury cards pretty consistently when the Strong Pug is around is a good idea. It allows you to avoid him better than anything. The Mischief Pug can also be a good choice if the Strong Pug is driving you insane, as the Mischief Pug can completely remove the treat from his power. Lastly, baiting out the Strong Pug buried treat can be enormously powerful and allow you to successfully play the stuff you need to play. Playing a trick that would resolve might result in the Strong Pug flipping a treat to stop it, but then you can follow it up with a Land Speed Record, for instance!

I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about the pugs - while the game is pretty straightforward to pick up (as noted by all our reviewers) there's still plenty of strategy and fun for even the most hardcore gamers out there that want to play something quick or in between longer games.

We'll be back with another update in a few days as we finish up week three! We'll give you some insight into the card types and the progress of the campaign at that time. Be on the lookout!

Time to Pug,

Ben and Peach

Learn More About Your Future Best Friend!
about 5 years ago – Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 11:33:40 AM

Hey!

So last update I promised we'd be back on Friday to talk about each of the different pugs and the best approaches for playing them. First I wanted to give a small update on our progress. We're cruising past 50%, and we still have people rolling in. Projections are still looking pretty good that we'll be able to hit the funding goal, but make sure to keep sharing and telling anyone that might be interested!

An update on the Black Pugs: We're so close now at 39/50 shares/retweets/posts with #ItsPugTime so far! Just 11 more and everyone will get the Black Pugs! For our new backers, make sure to share either the pinned post on the Pug Time page on Facebook or on @ceziumgames on Twitter!

On to the main event! Here's a few little tips/tricks about the pugs.

The Brave Pug

•  She’s constantly limited in the areas in which she can earn points because she always has disasters on her, so having the ability to earn points in any area is imperative if you’re planning to play a treat.
• Stacking treats one after the other can be pretty useful. It not only allows more disasters to build up on the board, but if someone tries to block you from earning points in an area, you instead just add the disaster to your pool and earn extra points next turn. If this lets you get to three disasters, even better!
• Playing off the above tip, burying an extra treat can be extremely useful. It’s kind of the “trump” move because if someone does try to block you, you immediately have the response of adding the disaster and potentially clearing all of them.
• Removing disasters even from someone about to win late in the game can be beneficial, as long as you can make use of the 2x or 3x point bonus.

The Curious Pug

•  The Curious Pug has to be very careful about disasters. Although there are only six in the deck, they come up far more often than most people seem to expect. Be ready to bail after 1-2 successful cards and don’t try to get stuff like 4+, unless you absolutely need to.
• This is especially true for adventures. If you pull an adventure, you should definitely consider stopping at that point. Adventures have a solid average value, and so only getting one adventure is still usually worthwhile.
• Be aware of the board. If you pull one basic sleeping card, but you know an opponent has a sleeping trick, consider stopping. You might not get as much as you would hope, but now you’ve for sure stopped your opponent from earning those two sleeping points.
• For opponents, be aware of this treat. Playing disasters on the Curious Pug can be beneficial, especially if you think they’re going to play a treat the next turn. Since the Curious Pug has a little less control over cards that get played as compared to others, the Curious Pug is a solid target for disasters.

 The Cute Pug

•  You can choose any ability when you play a treat, so disasters are functionally less effective against you. If the opponent tries to block your most pointed area, you can just gain one point in a different area.
• Be cautious how you use your treats. Although you can win with any twelve points, you need a treat card to do it. Having 12 eating points is awesome and hilarious, but you can’t win unless you have a treat available. Make sure you account for that if you’re trying to win with that method.
• Try to save your treats for later in the game. Using them early is fine, especially if you have a bad hand, but bad hands are pretty rare early in the game because of the freedom to play anything without opponents trying to find ways to shut you down (there’s just too much variability to try to counter someone early). So, instead, save those treats to gain the double points at 8 points or win the game with different point gains at 12.
• Be safe early. There’s no reason to go big with tricks if you can just build your way up to 4 and 8 by playing a little safer. The Cute Pug gets quite a bit stronger as she gain points, so those first few points mean a lot.

The Fast Pug

•  Try to have a diverse hand when using a treat. If you have all disasters in your hand, the likelihood of matching something is heavily reduced. Having three disasters in your hand, for instance, means there are only three disasters left out there. Stealing one from an opponent is there pretty terrible odds.
• On the flip side, having a trick and basic in your hand is usually a great plan. Those two card types make up more than half the cards in the game, and so stealing a card gives you a pretty decent shot at matching at least one of those things.
• In two player games you’ll want to err towards having more tricks in your hand when stealing as opposed to disasters, while the other way is true for 4 player games. Tricks are much more likely to fail with more cards on the board, while disasters are much more likely to be successful.

I hope you've learned a lot about our first four pugs!  Due to how long this ended up being, I'm going to cut it short, and we'll follow up with the rest on Sunday!

Best,

Ben and Peach

Tell Us About Your Pug's Favorite Things! They Could End Up in Pug Time!
about 5 years ago – Tue, Apr 09, 2019 at 10:34:13 AM

Hi!

We've made it halfway into our campaign now, and we've reached half our funding goal and cracked 100 backers! If we keep going at the rate we're going, we'll definitely be able to make sure Pug Time can happen all the time.

Today I wanted to ask for some advice from you: what are your pug's favorite things? While making the game, Peach and I consulted together consistently to make sure we had her favorite things. We also talked to plenty of people we met in our journey, like Mister Pemberton and Kate the Pug on Twitter. Mister Pemberton was one of the original inspirations for getting black pugs in the game, and Kate helped us figure out some of the disasters, like Mondays and Heavy Rain. Others helped all over the place as well.

So, let me know in the comments what your pug's favorite food, favorite toy, and favorite place to sleep is - if it gets enough support, it could end up in the game!

Our next update should be coming in hot on Friday where we're going to review the pug abilities and how to best use them - get ready to learn about your next best friend.

Until Pug Time,

Ben and Peach