I recently had the opportunity to carry on an email exchange with Mathew Anderson from Petroglyph Games to talk about their Graxia games.

First off. Tell us a little bit about who you are, your background, and Petroglyph games.

My name is Mathew Anderson and I’m the Community Manager at Petroglyph. I bring the latest developer news and information about our games to the community, and in turn give the community opportunities to ask questions about those games, as well as the occasional t-shirt and other contest giveaways for fun :).

Petroglyph was founded by Michael Legg, Joe Bostic, and Steve Tall from a previous studio, Westwood Studios. As many readers probably know, Westwood Studios created the hit series, Command & Conquer, as well as earlier titles such as Dune II, The Legend of Kyrandia, and Lands or Lore (one of my personal favorites).

Westwood was bought out by EA back in 1998 and closed later in 2003. Some of the developers stayed with EA, but many included those listed here, formed Petroglyph. It’s interesting to note that the old Westwood building is just one block down the street from the current Petroglyph building.

How did Petroglyph get involved with board games?

We recently released a cool video that best describes our board game development:

Also this podcast

Tell our readers a bit about the Graxia games, and how the world of Graxia came to be in the first place.

This might be a bit long, but it shares a lot of the lore about the Graxia world:

Fantasy worlds all have common denominators; wizards are arm in arm with dragons; knights charge down on orcs and trolls; and city-states battle each other for control of more land. The world of Graxia has all of that and a great deal more. Guardians present the greatest difference. A Guardian’s abilities are unique to this intellectual property. All of the races of the world have special innate abilities are grow stronger with the use of the magical crystals. Graxian battles take place high in the sky on the floating continents changing the rules of combat and how civilizations expand.

In terms of gameplay, Graxia represents a fantasy based version, and more, of our recently released Panzer General: Allied Assault WWII strategy board game. Instead of tanks, infantry, and other real-world units, you have fantastical creatures and magic powers at your command.

What were some of the key influencers in designing Heroes and Guardians for Graxia?

Straight from the designer:

The idea of Guardians of Graxia came directly from our experience with Panzer General: Allied Assault. While working on that game, we were constantly holding ourselves back because we had to make sure everything in the game had a certain “realistic” and “appropriate” feel to it in terms of recreating a World War II experience. We would say things like, “Wow, wouldn’t it be cool if the tank could regenerate its wounds,” or “wouldn’t it be cool if these guys could teleport way over here?” Things that just wouldn’t work for World War II game. Moving the game system into the realm of fantasy allowed us to let our imaginations run wild.

Sounds liberating! Can we expect more games/expansions in the world of Graxia?

That depends on how well the game is received by the public. If it’s a hit, that’s certainly a possibility we would be open to :).