A little backfire

Received my copy of To Glory Rise. I don't like how the play mats came out. Image on back is too dark, image on front is too dark, markers on the front for the rolled dice are too small. Sigh. These were my first play mats, and I admit I may have wanted to do some research on how dark to make them before printing them. That's one to grow on.

I received my copy of Gridiron Dice as well. The dice stickers are also darker than I would like. Talk about a double whammy. After the contest, and some serious play-testing I will adjust the images and order another copy. I'm fairly certain I can get it right the second time around.

In the meantime, I submitted To Glory Rise to the contest. Let's all hold our breaths and hope that it at least makes it to the finals. That would be cool.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Now that I have finished my goal of completing my entry for the Steampunk contest at Game Crafter, I plan to set my sights to release Some Assembly Required next month, and start putting together the photography for What's With All These Zombies.

During the creation of these games, I want to better document what steps I take and what is involved here.

We shall see if I can live up to my plans.

photos part deux

I've finished using some of the images to spruce up the actual game page. Here's a quick screen shot of what I created. The game images themselves are all almost done. Hopefully the beautiful ladies will add that little extra something to this game to help it get noticed once the contest is over.

It's basically a big experiment, and an excellent excuse to have fun taking provocative images. Remembering all my editing skills for Photoshop has been a big hurdle. But, once I got past that things really started falling into place with these.

More posts, as more work develops.

photos

Got the Steampunk themed photoshoot done this weekend. Now to edit the images and add them to the art for this game. Should give it that extra bit of awesome.

A Few Of My Favorite Things

Here I am writing instructions. This has to be my least favorite part of the game publishing process. Reorganizing my notes into an easy to understand set of instructions is like climbing a damn mountain to me. I can do it, I know I can. I even know that when I am done I will be able to look down and feel the thrill of having completed it. But, that mountain is so big I would just rather do it another day.

This is when I start creating new games. To busy myself with a new project so I don't think about having to complete the old so much. This is why I say I need a staff. One fine day I will be able to turn to a fellow named Johnson and say "Johnson! Do you have those instructions done for the new game?" Ah the future! Ever bright and magical.

A quick look at To Glory Rise

Here are a couple of the play mats for the airships for To Glory Rise.

Here are a couple of the airship tokens.

The idea is a tabletop miniatures style game that is quite similar to Pirates in it's ease of play anywhere, anytime. Hopefully none of the other entries will have gone this route, and I will at least stand out in that respect. My original game design idea was a race to complete a death ray, but it just wasn't all that fun. After a few conversations at work, To Glory Rise started to really take shape in my head. Now to see if the judges like it as much as I do.

Welcome one and all

My name is Patrick Hill. I am a CRM developer by day, and a wanna be board game designer by early evening. I wanted to have a site to track my experiences as an indie designer. I've had my share of personal websites, and blogs in the past. This time I wanted the end product to be something a lot more creative than personal.

I should probably start with what I have done so far. I have a couple games up on Game Crafter, a game publishing site, you can find them here. The first game I ever published, was a card game called Holiday Beatdown. I made a silly game for my family to allow them to play different Christmas characters attempting to beat the snot out of each other. It's rather fun, if rather crude.

The next game I published was for a contest. The goal was to create a game that used resource tokens as a primary component. I made Bottle Barrel Brick. The goal of the game is to be the dwarf who makes the most beer, or digs up the most gold. It took about 3 hours total to rush it together and submit it for the contest. Most of my ideas form rather quickly, and this game was simple enough to get together in a short time.

I did not win. My instructions were terrible, and I had no artwork at all. I later revised the instructions, and will one day soon update them to include images, and an example of play.

The next contest was to create a RPG style game with different characters for the players to use. I designed a rather interesting game that all took place in the final moments of an adventure. However, I reached out to others to create artwork, and write back story for this game. This lead to delays in putting together the final design, and ultimately missing the due date for submission to the contest. To this day, it lies almost completed.

Currently I am working on the finishing touches of To Glory Rise! Its my steampunk contest submission. For this contest you had to include a steampunk theme, and a dice mechanic. I was able to come up with a fairly good idea in a few days. Making it work with some of the restrictions has been a bit tricky, but I think I have done it.

Tomorrow I will order a copy of the game and start playtesting when it arrives. Hopefully I will be able to playtest and make any changes I find are needed before the submission deadline at the end of the month.

I will also be ordering my Gridiron game. This also needs playtesting, and perhaps a bit of tweaking before it is available to the public.

For now, I will return to editing my instructions for To Glory Rise. I want to be sure everything reads through clearly before I try to playtest this.