Yomi on G4TV Tonight

For the first time ever, the X-Play television show on G4TV is covering a card game rather than a video game. Fittingly it's Yomi! The coverage airs tonight on G4TV (on X-Play) at 6:30pm Eastern/Pacific.

As you probably know by now, Yomi captures the mind games involved in high level fighting gameplay in card form, along with several mechanics such as dragon punches, fireball traps, and even Guilty Gear's "burst." You can get it at www.sirlingames.com, find the rules at www.sirlin.net/yomi/rules, and you can play it online completely for free at www.fantasystrike.com.

Yomi won Game of the Year from The Dice Tower.

EDIT: Here's the web version of the segment.

Yomi Online Rankings

We're trying out making online Yomi matches best of 3 instead of best of 1 in the free online version at www.fantasystrike.com. You can leave feedback about that here.

In this system, think of taking the opponent's like down to 0 as winning a "round" in a fighting game. So when press Quickmatch and find an opponent, you play best of 3 "rounds." You can't switch your character between rounds. After someone wins a "game" (meaning they won best of 3 rounds), you can get a rematch. If you rematch, the loser can switch his character, but the winner cannot, as is customary in fighting games. Rematching can be good to do for your own personal improvement, as it will let you get deeper into the nuances of playing against a particular opponent. If they are exploiting some bad habit of yours, you might never really figure that out if you don't play a longer set. Up to you though!

The main reason our system was 1 round before instead of 2-out-of-3 was just time. If it takes 15 minutes to play Yomi, you'd have to set aside 45 minutes to play a best of 3, which is unreasonably long for the default way to play the game. Looking at the data, an average "round" lasts between 8 and 9 minutes though. This is shorter than we expected. If you figure that half the time a best of 3 will go to 3 rounds and half the time it will end in two rounds, the average for a best of 3 set is 22.5 minutes or less, which is acceptable for us to try. The benefit of more rounds is that you have more time to get a read on the opponent and exploit their weaknesses, so it's a better test of skill.

Leaderboards

We're resetting the leaderboards now, because of this change. From now on, leaderboards will be showing people's perforamnce in best-of-3 situations, rather than best-of-1. Congratulations to garcia1000 for taking the top spot on the first season's leaderboard. Garcia's hobby is making statements that sound plausible, but that are actually false. Also he plays Lum and is a poker master in real life. (Those two things are plausible and actually true.)

Stats from Season 1

Here are the stats for ranked games (with mirror matches exclude) by character:

Midori	2238 / 4238  52.81%
Geiger	2358 / 4492  52.49%
DeGrey	2731 / 5257  51.95%
Lum	2202 / 4310  51.09%
Rook	2367 / 4689  50.48%
Grave	2516 / 4987  50.45%
Argagarg2592 / 5172  50.12%
Jaina	2503 / 5107  49.01%
Valerie 2486 / 5231  47.52%
Setsuki 2924 / 6436  45.43%

Yomi's balance has held up remarkably well, so we're very happy about it. It remains closer balanced than any known fighting game. What's interesting about these stats is that Midori is often ranked last in tier lists while Grave is often ranked first. Grave doesn't even crack the top half of the chart here though, and Midori is #1. That said, all these percentages are very close anyway.

Now let's look at those stats ranked by popularity instead of by win-rate:

Click to read more ...

Yomi Pre-orders, Again

It's been a frustrating wait to get new Yomi sets in stock, but they should be here and ready to ship out in late May. You can pre-order them now, here. Incidentally, I was also sold out of Puzzle Strike, but I managed to get ahold of a just a few copies before the next print run arrives (also late May, along with Yomi), so that's actually in stock right now.

Also remember you can play Yomi online for free on our development server here.

Yomi Cursed Cards

The cursed cards are a set of new, alternate character cards for Yomi. You don't actually need these or anything, and they won't help you win. In fact, they will help you lose because they weaken your character! You can use them as a handicap against weaker or beginner players, or you can play cursed vs. cursed characters for a kind of hilarious lower-powered game.

The cursed characters all have a different epithet, too.

Grave, Wind Warrior -> Rusty Warrior.
Jaina, Phoenix Archer -> Phoenix Arsonist
Midori, Mentor Dragon -> Scrub Dragon
Setsuki, Ninja Student -> Outfoxed Ninja
Rook, Stone Golem -> Tiny Golem
DeGrey, Ghostly Diplomat -> Debaucherous Diplomat
Valerie, Manic Painter -> Depressed Painter
Geiger, Precise Watchmaker -> Careless Watchmaker
Lum, Gambling Panda -> Unlucky Panda
Argagarg, Water Shaman -> Savage Shaman 

You can get a pack of these coveted (ha) cursed cards for free, just by pre-ordering Yomi from sirlingames.com by Friday, May 13th. If you do, you'll automatically get them with your order.

If you are late in ordering, or if you already have Yomi, you can still get the cursed cards. They're just $5 in my store, so no big deal. (One per customer.)

Bundle

If you want to get Yomi, Puzzle Strike, and Flash Duel Deluxe all in one go, there's now a bundle to save a few bucks. Check it out.

Retail Stores

If you're a brick-and-mortar retail store (anywhere in the world) and you'd like to carry Sirlin Games, just contact Dan at Salute@GameSalute.com and he'll arrange it with you. You can also contact Dan if you're a customer who just wants to see Sirlin Games in your local retail store. If there's a store near you that you'd like to support (possibly because it holds great local game nights and events that help build community) then let him know about that store, and we'll reach out to them!

Where Did/Would You Buy Sirlin Games?

I'm basically sold out both Yomi and Puzzle Strike, but I did get ahold of a very limited quantity of each at www.sirlingames.com. The next print runs are on their way, and I'm planning to support your local hobby game stores even more from now on. I'd like your help though.

You can help by filling out this survey and letting me know where you bought Yomi and/or Puzzle Strike, and just as importantly, where you'd *like* to buy those or future Sirlin Games. If there's a great local game store near you that you wish carried Yomi or Puzzle Strike then let me know! Maybe you'd like to have a gathering place to play for fun or in tournaments. Or maybe it's just a great game store that you're proud to support.

On the other hand, if you ARE a retail store owner, I'll refer you to Dan Yarrington, CEO of Game Salute. Sirlin Games is now a proud member of Game Salute, and you can contact Dan about purchasing and promoting Sirlin Games for your store, as well as details about becoming a Game Salute Select Store (it's a good thing!). You can e-mail Dan at Salute@GameSalute.com or call at (603) 401-2080.

Don't forget to fill out that survey. Thanks!

Yomi Is Sold Out!

Last week, I sold out entirely of complete Yomi sets! This really caught me off guard because I was expecting my inventory to last like a year or at least a few months, but it sold out in the very first month of release. Thanks for all your support and I'm glad the game was received so well.

Unfortunately, I won't have a new print run finished and ready to ship for about 3 months. (Like I said, I was caught off guard by this and have been scrambling to get manufacturing going again.) You can still find the game in your local stores for a bit, but it will run out very soon. I'll start taking pre-orders for the next run in a week or so. The next run will be exactly identical to the first run, but customers who order from sirlingames.com will get a little bit of an extra in the form of some "cursed" cards. (They are not part of the real game and are for joke purposes.) That's my thank you for supporting my company rather than supporting online retailers.

I will leave you with Drake's Flames glowing review of Yomi! Thanks everyone for helping make Yomi such a success!