On March 10th, Indiegogo.com will be the launching pad for a niche board game entitled ‘Superpowerful Bonanza’ – a three-dimensional handmade wood and cardboard board game designed to look like a multileveled mini city. The game is meant to be an amalgamation of three popular elements in geek pop-culture: video games, comic books and board games. It was designed by Lue Nuwame (also known as You Tube’s cardboard craft designer The Homemade Game Guru) to play like a classic side-scrolling video game in which players gather weapons, health and powers (using game cards) to defeat enemies and eventually the bosses in each of the game’s five levels.
Superpowerful Bonanza features an array of new superheroes and villains created by Lue Nuwame and drawn by comic book artist Daniel Wong. The main characters include a Mexican-American school teacher and ex-marine turned heroic masked vigilante, a fiery-redheaded mystical heroine from Newfoundland, a tough British-American street cop with high ambitions and a Jamaican mercenary sent by his government to hunt down one of the main ‘level bosses’. A one-shot black and white comic book is included in the campaign to explain the background story of all the characters and game play.
For its creator, the development of Superpowerful Bonanza has been 15 years in the making. The concept was first conceived in 1999 when Nuwame was combating a severe depression. The creation of the game – which started on March 10, 1999 – became his needed anti-depressant and it eventually led to years of inventions and the start of his You Tube channel. For the 2014 Indiegogo campaign, the game’s design has been upgraded to include spruce wood as the base, refined graphics (the original was hand drawn with pencil crayon) and the production process streamlined to allow Nuwame to manufacture multiple copies out of his home workshop.
“This game is something I am passionate about and I want people who watch my campaign to know they will receive something unique and special that reflects the awesomeness of video game play and comic book mythology,” stated Nuwame. “This is a game that saved my life and allowed me to create my own world of comic book superheroes, so I want to ensure each piece is handcrafted to reflect its exclusivity and the fun I have in making them!”
Although there are numerous crowd-funding options to choose from, Nuwame decided to list his Superpowerful Bonanza campaign on Indiegogo.com because of its strong international presence and its flexible listing requirements. With $5000 as the minimum campaign objective and donation perks/gifts that include a one-shot comic book, trading card set, a novelty card game, t-shirts, cardboard and wood editions of the game, character themed beverages and a possible vinyl figure limited to a handful of copies, Nuwame is confident his ‘all-or-nothing’ campaign can succeed within 30 days.
Superpowerful Bonanza will officially launch March 10th at 12:01 am at: www.indiegogo.com. Lue can be contacted at homemadegameguru@hotmail.com or 647 407 2614.
About the Creator:
Luanga Lue Nuwame is a 37-year-old award-winning designer of cardboard craft instructional videos on the Homemade Game Guru You Tube channel. He is also a published author of a children’s book, comic book and horror short story and blogs part-time for Makezine.com (Make Magazine). Nuwame also holds a World Records Academy world-record for making the ‘world’s largest board game completed by one person’. He was born and raised in Toronto and now lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
