Besides Holding On at Essen Spiel, Hub Games will be releasing Blankdemic, a small expansion ($6) meant to showcase the flexibility of the company’s customizable card game, Blank. Blankdemic cards, designed by Matt and Colleen Leacock, provide a more tactical game experience and are obviously inspired by Matt’s earlier board game, Pandemic.

Then for the UK Games Expo, Hub is planning Mega Cities, which combines Euro-style and dexterity elements in a city-building game. The goal, to satisfy certain building contracts, is accomplished by stacking odd-shaped pieces, made from a variety of materials, over foundation spots marked on platform tiles. To score, players must slide their tiles across the table, over to the city, without knocking down their buildings.

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This game is something else! I saw many fun games at Gen Con but Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr from Hub Games pairs gameplay with a meaningful experience, such as I haven’t seen before.

At the basic level, Holding On is a cooperative worker-placement game, where the players manage hospital staff as they work with heart-attack patient Billy Kerr.

At a deeper level, though, gameplay presents the opportunity to learn something about modern medical care. Each game round represents 1 day and consists of three work shifts. During each shift, the players have to decide between allocating resources to physical care, addressing Billy’s direct medical needs, and palliative care, making him more comfortable and establishing a closer, trusting relationship with him.

But that’s not what this game is really about. What Holding On is about is the troubled life of Billy Kerr. And that is revealed, slowly, through 10 scenarios, during which the players are able to help the patient recover memories of his earlier life. Partial-memory cards with limited text and hazy images can be replaced with clarifying overlays if the right choices in care are made. And while I wouldn’t (in fact, can’t) spoil the whole story, I can reveal that Billy’s history is a complex one involving The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The story, I’m told, is based on real facts and paints an honest picture of a complex character.

The game, then, promises to give players a lot to think about.

Holding On: The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr should be available at Essen Spiel for $40.

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The Creativity Hub, the Irish firm responsible for publishing Rory’s Story Cubes and The Extraordinaires Design Studio is shifting focus from the educational market exclusively to tabletop games. With that comes a new name, Hub Games.

What the company will keep doing, however, is producing products with a unique sensibility.

Hub Games aims to publish games that foster discussion between players at the table and beyond; games with heart. By encouraging self-expression through play and having gamers reflect on the choices they make, Hub Games looks to push past the idea of games being simple entertainment.

Its two latest releases are Blank and Untold: Adventures Await. Blank is a card game reminiscent of Uno, except that the cards and game rules are modified by the players with each play. Thus, over time each card deck becomes a reflection of the people who’ve played with it. Untold: Adventures Await is a storytelling game, a kind-of cooperative RPG in which participants describe a series of adventures using Rory’s Story Cubes in a structure of scenes, episodes, and seasons.

The rights to Rory’s Story Cubes were sold by the company last year to Asmodee.

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