I Take It All Back

It's been a busy week at ex-Reiver Towers. We were away last weekend with all my family and on our return The Daughter came down with a stinking cold, followed by a stomach bug. This weekend has also been our first weekend with all of us at home without any guests for nearly two months, so we've been trying to catch up on a few things while washing the sick out of everything we own :(

Anyway, back on topic! Next weekend I'm off to America for a week with work so I'm trying to make some Vacuum progress before I go. Last week I had a game at lunchtime with Chief, trying out a couple of new rules that I'd thought of following Tim's feedback. They worked. I'm not yet sure that they are better, but they are interesting. I'll try them a few more times before making a call whether to stick with the old ones or switch to the new ones. The new ones work with the current version as well as the next one, so I tried them out with the current version, pending the new version being constructed.

The new version, is now complete on the computer, ready for printing and cutting out - it's just waiting for me to find the time to get it manufactured. I've got another playtest session on Wednesday lunchtime - in an ideal world, I'll get the game made in time for that session. I've got two nights, it might be possible, fingers crossed ...

To the subject of this post, I was talking a few weeks ago about having Vacuum pretty much working and now needing to focus on simplifying things. Scratch that. It's time to knock it up a notch. BAM! One of the endgame conditions that you can try to score is for exploring the Solar System. In the current version exploration is pretty bland: you get points for exploring locations based on their range - the further away they are the more points you get. But all the ones at a given range give you the same points. Therefore, you always explore at the furthest range you can, but other than that it doesn't really matter which location you explore. Bland. Beige. Neutral. Tim spotted that it was boring. My playtesters at Beer and Pretzels spotted it, but I was clearly too close to it to spot it myself. When I started hearing 'boring' from multiple playtesters, it obviously needed some thought. So I've gone back on my word and started making things more complicated. I've given each location an exploration score that they will give the person who explores them. They generally increase with range, but at each range there are multiple options - so there's an incentive to explore early, and to choose one location over another. In fact, the locations are also being upgraded in other ways to make them even more interesting. Of course, until I try these ideas out I don't know whether they'll make things more interesting or just more complicated. Hence the need for testing and getting the next version made.

With all the trips away we've had over the last few months, I've had this version on the cusp of ready for a few weeks now, if I don't get it ready this week, then I've got to wait another two weeks until my return from the US. The suspense is killing me. I need to get it done in time for Wednesday!

My Juices Are Flowing...

Creative juices that is, before you get any ideas.

Reiver Games, my previous games publishing effort was formed after I got into games design. After years writing tiny bits of computer games I was in the mood for doing something that I could start, work through and finish. I'd played Mighty Empires with some friends for a weekend (and I mean a weekend - we played for 36 hours over three days!). I thought I could create something similar that was a bit less random (I'd been wiped out in a dragon attack after 24 hours of play!) and that played a bit quicker. Border Reivers was the game I created in that vein. On the back of Border Reivers and the perceived success of it (I sold out of the 100 hand-made copies within a year) I was in the designing mood, I started probably five or ten new games ideas, all sorts: an abstract game, an empire game, a beach-combing game and card game about the development of York.

After a year or so, I had another game out, designed by another designer and it was selling much better than Border Reivers had. With a little distance I'd realised that Border Reivers wasn't as good as I'd originally thought. In fact, I was beginning to think it was pretty weak. I'd played it with a lot of people by that point, and some loved it, some liked it and some were distinctly unimpressed. I could see there were flaws in the design, but as both the designer and the publisher I had no distance. I'd not played many games by the time I'd finished Border Reivers: Carcassonne, The Settlers of Catan and Citadels, maybe a couple of others. As I played a wider range of games I got a better grip on what a good game was. At this point I was trying to position Reiver Games as an independent publisher, and I was receiving more and more submissions to publish. The quality of those submissions varied enormously and it was clear that some designers really struggled to understand just how unfinished their designs were. As an independent adjudicator, I could clearly see these games were weak, but as the designer they were too close, too invested in their designs to see the flaws.

Seeing this from the other side made me re-think my own designing. I was that designer too, too invested in my own games to see their weaknesses and flaws. I start to be much harsher on my games, equivocating, second-guessing myself and struggling to make any decisions. Aware of the flaws of Border Reivers and the problems a lack of impartially brought I stopped designing my own games, afraid I'd publish games of my own design, after blinding myself to their flaws. After It's Alive! I published Carpe Astra (with some design input from myself) and Sumeria, neither of which sold very well. As Reiver Games slowly crawled towards the grave I lost confidence in myself, even to choose other designers' games.

Needless to say, designing was far from my mind for all this time. Now, a year and a bit after I went back to work I'm in the mood again. I've got two different prototypes ready to go: Codename Vacuum a Steampunk/Sci-Fi deck-building and tableau driven game, and Proteome: The Drug Discovery Card Game, an idea that sprang into my head after a joke from one of the marketing team at work. What's next? I've a tile-laying game knocking around in my head too, themed around Lewis & Clark's exploration of the American west.

What I really need to do now is get playing them, so I can start the improvement/design/development process. I've a weekly games night that I don't really want to become all about the playtesting (as the games will be broken a lot of the time and not much fun to play), and there's a bi-weekly games club in Newcastle which I don't make it to very often. I'll be going to Beers and Pretzels in May, but before then I could do with a few playtesting nights to get the games into some sort of shape before showing them to the discerning public. I need to find some time in my busy schedule.