The tales of a casual games designer: Part 11

Well, I made my first sale at Midcon! Whoooo! Now gotta get a move on to finish off my customer's copy! Great feedback from those who played (the level of strategy seemed really high with four player, 20 cyclist racing) and plenty of people who stopped by said that they seriously thought it was pro produced...Which was nice of them! A couple more certain preorders so things are looking up - time to kick on with finishing the typing up of the rule book then!

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 10

So, I've splashed out on spray glue so now the game making is DEFINITELY official. My current maths places the cost of each game at around £17-18 as long as the glue doesn't turn out to be a complete rip-off and run out every night - in which case new glue will be found! It's all ready to roll at Midcon - I'm paying for counters and dice tomorrow (which they can deliver Thursday/Friday) and I've got boxes coming tomorrow. I had cover photos taken on Sunday so I need my photographer friend to send 'em my way and that's that sorted. Things're definitely starting to look closer to completion and about time too!

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 9

Huzzah! My plastic cyclists have arrived! I ordered 100 each of blue, red, yellow, orange, green and, erm, purple (originally pink but they couldn't be certain to continue with enough pink) and after bagging them up into 20 sets of 5 each there are plenty of bonus leftovers which is nice (around 20 yellows, oranges and reds but only 8 blues) and will make future purchases a tiny bit cheaper. Every little helps>

Played a few more games recently, including a game on the mountains stage which went pretty well. Anna's team leader shot away up the mountains but ran out of steam just before the last km meaning he couldn't use his sprint and rolled across the line in FOURTH after being brilliantly overtaken by three hardier and smarter men.

It's starting to get some real interest on BGG now with over 10 people asking for copies including three Americans placing pre-orders already! Nothing like getting some healthy pressure!

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 9

I've decided on the slightly dangerous concept of giving my game an extra 'gimmick' which will be that it will come with a CD with, hopefully, about 40 voice tracks on. If desired, before playing, the players will place the CD in their CD player and set it to shuffle. Then when hey're decided on their teams, the stage etc they play one of the CD tracks at random which will introduce the day's weather and how it will change the stats of certain riders. For example - "Well, it's Bastille Day today and the French riders will be doing everything they can to take the victory on such an important day! For this stage, all French riders can increase oneof their stats by one point", or there'll be bad weather ones that have negative outcomes.

Of course you don't have to play WITH it, but been thinking about it and it adds a nice bit of flavour to the game. Thoughts?

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 8

Well, played tour. with the in-laws last night. Playing games with them is always an interesting experience as my father-in-law (Barry) spends most of any game we're playing going "Oh I dunno, I've got no idea what's going on" before winning or doing something extremely clever while the fabled mum-in-law (Linda) tends to spend about an hour per turn even if it's the simplest of options. Hence the game taking quite a while longer than past experiences.

At Cast Are Dice with four teams of four cyclists one stage took about an hour and twenty to an hour and a half while two player games with the wife take a little less time. With the in-laws playing for the first time it took over two hours which seemed quite a long time, but people vanished for toilet, making tea, getting crisps etc and most of the slow movement was Linda who just naturally plays like that. Still, it's good to see how pretty much non-gamers got on with the game.

Linda won.

She didn't just win, she annihilated the rest of us. We played most green jersey points as a team won which seemed to work well for a one off race, with 65 points available...Linda picked up 40, Anna got 18, I got 8 and Barry got just the 1 which was partly my fault as I tried to force my sprinter through a space that wasn't there, causing a crash with Barry's sprinter which my guy picked himself up from (after missing a couple of turns) while his was out for the rest of the race. Which kinda scuppered his chances of picking up points on the sprints.

He also didn't use his best cyclist to his full ability while Linda seemed to pick up the concept of not attacking too early and waited until I sent two cyclists off (far too early) before latching onto them, recovering her cyclist's energy and breaking away again, sprinting past the line just before the cyclist's health ran down. Anna's best cyclist came second with a massive charge over the last 40km while my two dropepd back (with no more power OR a sprint to help them out at the end). Barry managed to pick up the last finishing point with an exciting last minute charge and sprint which gave him something to cheer about.

Overall, the tactics of the game felt great again, with breakaways being pulled back in and some cyclists dropping off the back into their own group. Two of mine and two of Anna's were in that gorup so we agreed to work together to catch up the leading group which felt great and tactical and an achievement when we'd caught up.

So yeah, although it took longer than expected it seemed to go down well which is good. Just got a couple of design changes to make to the counters and terminology to make things clearer.

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 7

Well here's the first six boards out of nine of the mountain stage, printed in GLORIOUS technicolour! Looking good though I'll need to make a few changes before the final design, mainly revolving around shadows of the mountains.

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 6

Oh yeah, here's an image of the black and white board with the colourful cyclists on it....

Fun fun.

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 5

So, work on Tour (or tour. as it's now known as small letters and random full stops are cool!) has kinda slowed right down this last week, mainly cos I need £40 for cyclists for 20 games and another £50-60 for enough blank dice (12 a game) and counters (120 per game).

Those three parts together will make £5 per game. I also need printing, card, glue and a couple of other bits and pieces that will take it somewhere between £10-£15 - currently at the lower end but bound to get higher. I'm thinking of selling the initial game for £20 a copy and subsequent stage packs (planned to have two more stages per pack with an extra 'home team' and a few new cyclist cards to make the add-ons more appealing) would probably cost people around £10-12 as they won't need plastic cyclists, counters or dice!

I got a good playtest with my wife the other night on the completed stage which is probably gonna be one of the longer stages and JUST about fits on the 9 A4 boards that make up the stages. Playing with just eight cyclists between the two of us I was worried it wouldn't scale well down to it but it worked well and only two of the cyclists tired so much as to be coasting home (both mine and that was a tactical error). The session report is up on boardgamegeek.com under the game entry "Tour".

My wife told me she really enjoyed it which was great as she's hardly a cycling fan, and I've had good comments from friends who have seen the black and white draft gameboards and have said it looks professional.

My new fear are that I've made the corners straight lined rather than curved as photoshop just doesn't work well with curves....It looks OKAY but I think I'd rather have curves. I may go back to drawing and sketching for the tracks and putting it together on photoshop.

I must have a good working beta for Midcon.

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 4

Well, I got to Cast are Dice for the Saturday and managed to say hi to Jack who came over (after seeing my boardgamegeek avatar which I'd printed off and stuck to my back) and introduced himself. Glad he got a decent strike rate with Border Reivers and I hope it continues to go from strength to strength. The start of my Saturday's gaming was The World Cup Game which a guy called Shaun Derrick had designed, sent to a company in Germany to print up and seal and has been selling it himself. He was there hyping the game which I must admit was brilliant and I really enjoyed myself playing it (even though I couldn't quite get England into the final!). I asked him a number of questions about his approach to publishing the game and found out that for the 1000 copy print run it had cost him £13,000!!!!! Now I don't have that kinda money on me and it's one helluva investment and probably why he was selling the game at £29.99. If he'd been offering it at £20 to spread the word from the con then I'd have bought it without a second thought, but £30 is too much just to jump into. I'll buy it, but later in the year (I have birthday and Christmas within ten days of eachother). Anyway I got to playtest my game "Tour" which is a cycling game with a 'similar' mechanic to Formula De but, with the addition of cyclist statistics and cyling tactics (breaking away makes you tire quicker) it didn't seem to suffer from the early leader winning by miles. My cyclist who DID break away early DID win, but only just in a sprint with a cyclist who made a MUCH later break for home, and the other two early breakers were easily gathered up by the peloton around 40km from the end. I got really good feedback on the game and a few ways to finish it off. Mike Hibbert (hear him on the podcasts "The Dice Tower" and "Into The Gamescape") said that when I make the saleable copy he'll definitely be buying it as he actually CARED about winning. He and Paul spoke about it in the most recent Gamescape podcast and were very positive about it. Excellent! Can't BUY such coverage! So, I've charged into production of Tour with aplomb. This section will now keep people updated with news on Tour and a football management game which I'm working on while waiting for parts etc for Tour. THE CYCLISTS: Today I received a sample bag of plastic cyclists from Dice & Games in Suffolk. I've really fallen straight on my feet as they've told me they can provide continued supplies of cyclists for me if I desire. The price was very important as I was needing 30 cyclists per game, 5 in 6 different colours. Thankfully if I buy 600 (enough for 20 games) at a time it works out well within my self-imposed budget which is a weight off my mind. The colours they have are blue, red, orange, yellow, green and PINK (whoo!) and they're attractive pieces. I'll be placing an order in the next couple of days. THE DICE: Another major part of the game 'stuff' are dice. There are dice for 'normal' speed and dice for 'breakaway' speed. I was deciding whether to enclose just two dice per game OR two per player (12 dice). I asked Mike and he told me that geeky gamers tend to be okay paying a little more to have their own dice per player. I'm trying to get coloured dice for each player but they need to be blank as one will have 2-2-3-3-4-4 and the other 5-5-6-6-7-7. Bit of a pain but meh, such is life. OTHER STUFF TO BE SORTED: * Peloton tokens to keep track of tiredness; * Counters to place on cyclist abilities; * Board design, printing and creation; * The box; * Writing up people friendly rules; * MORE testing and feedback!

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 3

As Jack said, First Past The Post works as print and play because it's about 6 A4 pages in total. However the game I've been workign on lately will not be print and play. If it playtests well (I'll be taking it to Cast are Dice hopefully) then I'll be releasing it as "I make, you buy". Something that, as my wife agrees, will make the time I put into creating it a little more worth it. Sure I have to cover costs and some of my time expenses but it should still be cheaper than games on the shelves, and as I'm making it, it will be limited. The game is called "Tour" and is based on the Tour de France. It borrows from Formula De with regards to moving through dice roll - BUT you make a team of five cyclists in a draft with the other players at the start of the game and they have different strengths and weaknesses. You can use "power" to breakaway from the pack but going it alone will eat into your Resilience more quickly and you may well get caught. Stitting in the pack means you don't tire and if you're directly behind another cyclist you get a +1 movement bonus for streamlining. With the normaly roll either 2, 3 or 4 and the breakaway roll either 3, 5, or 7 there's only a small amount of variance in hwo far you go, making tactics and timing more important leading up to the spring finish. I've sorted out the team mats, and a number of player cards (I have to draw the heads of cyclists and scan them in for the cards). My prototype stages are handdrawn on large cartridge paper. There will be two stages per sheet which means people can collect and buy the stages they desire. I just need to come up with a good way of printing the stages - maybe with my father in law's structural engineering printer that prints onto A1 paper.

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 2

Well, I have over 300 views of my First Past The Post entry on BGG and although my own views are in the tens, it means other people ARE looking! Hopefully a percentage will be happy to print it out and give it a try. Anyways, my reason for print and play for this game are numerous but mainly because I see the game as a light filler, the first 'proper' game I've looked at developing and have completed, and one that I AM proud of, but know that it can probably be tested, tried and feedback left. Something I HAVE spoken with my wife about (who'd be much happier if my games invention turned into income, however miserly the amount) is going the whole print and sell approach myself - printing as required on decent quality card with a good finish and put into a well made and printed box. Of course I need a better printer to do that, but if it's a possibility who knows. I think as more games come from my brain, there will at least be one that I think "Oooooh this is it!" in which case I'll look to playtest and then approach a company to produce, although of course games chosen are few, and income for the designer can be very low anyways. My boardgames club was chosen to playtest a game on the verge of full scale production last week and apaprantly it was extremely average. Yeah yeah, there's joy in having a game produced and sold for you, but I want to be PROUD of it, and these first few games I see as paving the way for future successes and while I love First Past The Post and enjoy playing it, I feel there are better games within me.

The tales of a casual games designer: Part 1

As Jack asked me to say something about the latest game I've been working on, I decided that I might as well incorporate it into my own little series. Anyway, I'll be keeping you, the reader, up to date on the positive and negative feedback of my latest print out and play game "First Past The Post". It's gone out to a few people now so hopefully it'll get some positive reviews and gain some interest. I'm not looking for Lost Cities or San Juan mk.II, rather a game that is seen that "Not bad" and "Worth playing again". That'll be success for me as it's my first light game, breaking away from heavy maths invovled in previous attempts. Laters, Luke