Re-Exposed

Oh my, it has been too long! Part of the reason I started this blog was to keep myself accountable, if only to myself, and that all fell apart last autumn. Not because anything particularly bad happened - I just got out of the habit. And then, every month that passed without me posting again seemed to make it harder to get back onto the proverbial bicycle. 

But now, I'll write something and see if I can get back into the swing of it again.

As you may have heard, last weekend was UK Games Expo at the NEC, just outside of Birmingham and, as per last year, I went up to spend most of my time working in the Playtest Zone, an area that provides table space for designers to test their unpublished prototypes with players drawn from the expo attendees. I love helping out with this and seeing such a wide variety of prototypes on the tables; these days we even see good numbers of people who come specifically to play prototypes and some of these folk spend most of their day just hopping from table to table, playing and giving feedback.

The Playtest Zone in full flow on Friday

Apart from that I didn't have a lot of time or energy for other things, but I did manage to have a couple of pitch meetings with publishers, for two different games ("Grab Bag Zoo" and "Snails and Grails", if you are interested), each of which I designed with different co-designers, and I eventually was able to play a fun game designed by a couple of young lads, as well as joining in a game design brainstorm (a gamestorm?) with a group of other designers, which resulted in some fun other stuff. 

I was planning on doing some playtesting of one of my games, but that didn't properly work out due to a clash of commitments that cropped up, but I was touched and delighted when someone who had played Grab Bag Zoo at a previous event came and asked if he could borrow the prototype and try it with his friends. I wasn't able to follow their play properly, but it was interesting to just let them try playing with the series of challenge cards in the current version, that step you through the game rules and features over four games instead of having to explain everything up front.

Other major highlights included meeting a few more online friends who I hadn't met in person, which was awesome and delightful, hanging out with some new friends, and of course seeing those old friends I have missed through the pandemic.

And this is it, once again: for me UK Games Expo is not really about the games, it's about the people, who happen to be drawn together by a love of games. I rarely get to play very much when I go (and this year was no exception), but it is always a great reminder of what matters to me, why I like playing games and why I like designing games.

Anyway, this is just a quick post to try to get myself going again. Over the next few weeks I'm planning to start posting again about the various projects I have on the go at the moment and where they are heading.