The almost-1-year retrospective

 This coming Tuesday will be a year since I started this blog, but Tuesdays are insanely busy for me these days so I'm going to do the retrospecting thing a couple days early, when I actually have time for it.

In the past year, here's what has happened with the games that I was already working on when I started:

• The Grand Expedition - renamed to Explorers of Legend.  Had a couple rounds of testing which confirmed that it was too slow, and would need a serious rewrite to rectify that.  I know what I want the rewrite to look like, but actually putting in the work is a daunting task.  Currently back-burnered, let's call it medium priority.
• Neon Knights - first draft is complete, plus I got cover art.  Playtesting has started and is moving at the usual pace of play-by-post.  In-person playtesting has not happened yet.  But hey, it's something.
• The Sum of Its Parts - I've tossed some ideas around, gotten a little closer to figuring out what this game should look like, but haven't done much with it really.  Back burner, low priority.

 

I also had some new things that came along over the course of the year:

• Office Coffee - it started out as a dumb joke, and one quick weekend later it had turned into a complete dice-pool-building game.  Has yet to be tested, most likely never will be (but if someone is really interested I wouldn't say no).
• Dwarven Guild of Engineers - within the span of the past year this went from a random idea in the back of my mind to a completed card game with an actual physical prototype (the only one I've made so far).  Has had real legit playtesting with people outside of my immediate circle, and been very well received.  This is my proudest achievement to date as an aspiring game designer.  Recently submitted to a design competition, and once that's over and I've incorporated whatever feedback I get from the judges, it will be time for the long and arduous task of pitching to publishers...
• Under a Violet Moon - I don't remember how long ago I had the initial idea, but it's just in the last few weeks that I finally succeeded in turning it into a functional game.  Have not yet tested it with anyone else, but I'm hoping to change that in the next month.
  

 

In my first post I gave my reasons for bothering with this blog as "a little bit advertising, a little bit soliciting feedback from my presumed audience and/or other designers, and a little bit holding myself more accountable."  Here's how that has gone:

• advertising - since starting the blog I've gotten a bit over 500 hits, which is about 500 more than I expected to get, so that's cool.  Mostly from North America or Europe, but also a handful each from South America, Asia, and Australia, so that at least proves that a lot of those 500 hits are not just me checking the blog from different devices.  I have no idea if even a single one of those has led anyone to try one of my games, read draft rules, or even just make a mental note to check my stuff again later, but it's something.
• interaction - nope.  Only one post has ever gotten comments, and that was because I was spamming the link in a lot of places and specifically asking people to answer my question on the blog page rather than in a dozen different forums because that would make it easier for me to keep track.  Other than that I have never gotten any kind of feedback from anyone via this blog.  Oh well, maybe next year.
• accountability - yes.  It's not like I'm only continuing to design things so I have what to write about here, but there have definitely been times where I have a free hour, I'm debating between spending it on video games or on design work, and the winning argument is "I should have something I can talk about on the blog so my zero several readers don't think I'm lazy."  And that push has really helped me.  I don't know how quickly professional designers work, but when I started this I don't think I ever anticipated finishing as much as I did in this past year.  Though to be fair, I also don't think I ever anticipated writing games as light as the ones I've done this year.

So, if you're still here, then I'll conclude by saying that so am I.

Under a Violet Moon - ready for public testing

Well, I've been talking about it lately, now it's time to show it off:

Current version of the rulebook is here

Virtual prototype is available here - play in browser, no downloads necessary

More dancing, and hopefully no self-deception

 After my initial solo test of Under a Violet Moon, I've spent the past week coming up with new movement cards.  Tested that out today, felt more satisfying than the initial test, ended with a Villager victory in 12 turns.  No idea how accurate that is for real gameplay, given that hidden information is an important part of the game and I don't have a good way to simulate that when it's just me messing around on the computer.  But it did give me an idea for how tricky the strategy is going to be for the Fae player, needing to balance between capturing enough villagers to have a chance at winning without giving away too quickly which characters are the secret fae.  In any case, I at least verified that the basic mechanics are working how I want them to, so that's pretty satisfying. I just need to make sure it's also fun for anyone else besides me.

I also wrote up the basic text for the rulebook.  It needs a few diagrams though, to explain the movement cards and how capturing works.  Once I have that I think it will be ready to share.  Maybe by the end of this weekend?

Neon Knights cover illustration

Neon Knights has officially jumped into being a full-blown vanity project - I commissioned some artwork for it.  One piece, for the eventual book cover, drawn by the very talented Nicoleta Stavarache.  Here it is with my stupid text added to it:

I'm very happy with the tone this sets.  Now I just need testing to verify that the gameplay actually matches, or at least show me how I can adjust to make that happen.

Keep on moving

 Burst of inspiration hasn't faded just yet - in between various non-game things today, I also spent a chunk of time making movement cards for Under a Violet Moon, and a little time on character tokens as well.  I think I have enough now to put together a proof-of-concept prototype; not the full game, but enough that I at least know it works more or less how I want it to.  One thing that does worry me is the risk of the game deteriorating into endless walking in circles around the board, and right now I'm not sure how well I'm going to be able to spot that, or to fix it if I do.  But I'll see how it works with the dozen cards I came up with so far, and then adjust once I have any idea how this thing looks on the table and not just in my head.

 

EDIT (because I don't feel like writing a separate post for this): proof of concept is successful, and to me messing with it by myself it does feel like there's interesting strategy here.  I'm also quickly spotting that I need a lot more variety in the movement cards, because with the dozen different ones so far it's still really hard to move anyone where you want them.  But at least I can be confident that once I do come up with a bunch more I will have a fun game at the end of t.

Slowing down, and maybe picking up again

After the push to finish Neon Knights I really haven't had the brainpower to do much designing in the last couple weeks.  I mean, I think I earned a break after that, but still.  Not that it's been entirely a break - I've started a playtest on RPOL (setting creation was fun, they're still getting their characters together before the action starts), and I've also gotten recruited onto a small team designing an action/horror game that's looking fun so far, but isn't going to get too much attention on this blog for now since it's someone else's game a lot more than it is mine.

I've also been playing around with some of my other game ideas to see which one might be my next serious focus*, and today I had some inspiration after work which I think answered that question.

Under a Violet Moon is a 1v1 game about fae trying to kidnap villagers during the (unspecified) big festival.  The board is a circular grid, where the villagers dance around the maypole or central bandstand or whatever gets illustrated into that spot someday.  At the start of the game, the fae player randomly determines four of the villagers to be fae in disguise.  Players then take turns moving any pieces they want around the board; cards determine how many pieces and which way they move this turn, but not which pieces, so both players are able to move humans and fae equally.  Fae capture villagers, and villagers eliminate fae, by maneuvering them into specific positions on the board.  Fae win if they capture more than half of the villagers, and villagers win if they eliminate three out of the four fae.

Today's work was sketching out the board and the basic rules.  Next step is to design the movement cards.  Then I can start prototyping and testing.  No idea about timeline; I'm anticipating that movement cards will be one of things I get stuck on and take months until I'm satisfied with even a first attempt, but let's see what happens.

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*No, I haven't forgotten about Explorers of Legend, I'm just not feeling that one currently.  I just finished a rough draft for an RPG, I need to work on lighter stuff for a while.