Game designer David Sirlin says pandas play better poker.
I claimed I had a floosh – four of a kind – but I was lying. You didn’t challenge me on it when we ended the hand, so now I get all the gold and a Panda Lord to help me out!
Sirlin Games launched its Pandante Kickstarter today with a goal of $30,000. The goal of the Pandante Kickstarter is to manufacture the game, which has already completed design, development, testing, and artwork. A gameplay video using a demonstration version of the game is provided on the Kickstarter page, and the full rules are also already available. The Kickstarter aims to produce a basic and a luxury set of Pandante. The basic set will include the deck, six player boards, and the rulebook. The luxury set will include everything from the basic set, a dealer chip and a custom set of 240 ceramic poker chips, featuring similar artwork. The luxury set also includes a custom poker deck, with the same graphic style as the Pandante deck.
Designer David Sirlin seems to have an itch to retool existing games, like his redesign of chess for the Ouya, Chess 2. Sirlin aims to make poker more fun with Pandante by reducing the need to fold, reducing player elimination, and introducting some new mechanics. At its core, Pandante is like Texas Hold ‘Em poker, but with a few key changes. Like Texas Hold ‘Em, you are dealt two cards, and you make the best five-card hand you can out of those and a shared pool of cards. Unlike Texas Hold ‘Em, the deck has six suits numbered one to ten, players use special abilities, and the system for bluffing and challenging bluffs makes constantly lying a big part of the game. Winning a hand by lying earns you a Panda Lord card, which gives you an advantage in the next hand.
Sirlin Games has published three tabletop games, Yomi, Flash Duel, and Puzzle Strike. Sirlin Games successfully completed and shipped Puzzle Strike 3rd Edition and its expansion, Puzzle Strike Shadows, via a Kickstarter campaign in 2012. Puzzle Strike simulates puzzle games like Puzzle Fighter using deckbuilding mechanics, with chips used instead of cards.
Source: Sirlin Games
