Getting In The Zone

Volunteering at the Playtest Zone at UK Games Expo is always a privilege and a pleasure (if one that completely wipes me out, both physically and emotionally), and I get to meet so many game designers, from folk working on their first ever design to old hands with many published games.

I had several conversations with people saying something along the lines of, "I'm working on my first game design and would like to bring it in for testing next year, do you have advice on how I can get there?" Similar things came up in the conversations each time, so I thought I'd summarise some of the points in a blog post.

This is all just like, my opinion, man.

An experiment from 10 years ago that didn't
go anywhere: musical chairs, the board game.

Just get it played

How much effort you put into building a prototype is down to you and what you enjoy doing, but the sooner you get a game played, the sooner you can start finding the problems with it and focusing on the fun parts. You don't even need a "complete" game: even if you are planning to make a huge, multiplayer 4X game, setting up enough for 2 players to play a couple of turns can at least help get things on track. If you spend months - or years - theorycrafting or creating all the content you might need for a published game, you may find yourself doing immense amounts of work that is just wasted. You'll almost certainly learn more about your game from the first 10 minutes of playing a crappy first version of it than in any amount of thinking and planning.

Don't sweat the prototype

This is related to the previous point in that, early in the process especially, if you have put a lot of effort (or money) into building a prototype, you might be less willing to make changes that could involve modifying or even scrapping the components you made. But even when it comes to public playtesting somewhere like the Playtest Zone, don't worry about it. Looking around, you see some folk with prototypes that look professionally printed, but also there are people with components that might have been printed on a home printer onto regular paper, or maybe even hand drawn components. It's all good. Sure, put in some effort to make it so that the components are decently neat and don't get it the way of playing the game, but other than that, whatever you have is awesome.

There is a piece of advice that I have heard a bunch of times, and that I often repeat: your prototype shouldn't look more finished than it is. If it looks shiny and professional, it should probably be around the final iterations; if you are in the early stages, rough and ready helps your players understand that there are a lot of changes to come, and may encourage them to be more forthright with their feedback.

Go to designer meetups

Here in the UK we are fortunate to have the Playtest UK network that runs meetups all around the country separate from the presences at various conventions, and I'm certain there are other groups around. There are other groups elsewhere in the world too. I'd really recommend going along to one of these if you can, bring along a prototype in whatever state you can, and make sure play other designers' games while you are there. Just being with other designers, seeing how they playtest their own games, and generally talking shop can be really instructive and encouraging.

I often tell people about the first time I went to a playtest meetup in London. The first testing slot had me playing a game by a designer who had, at that point, had a couple of games published, and since then has gone on to become a very well-known part of hobby game design. We were just a couple of turns in and some parts of the game were clearly not working properly, so the designer just took out a pen and modified a load of the components so we could carry on. This isn't the most exciting anecdote, but the impact on me was huge: I saw for the first time that experienced designers (or at least some of them) are OK with their games not working and with changing things on the fly. If it's OK for them, it's surely fine for me. It's just one example of how you can absorb skills just by being with other designers if you have the eyes to see.

Oh, and many of us have impostor syndrome at these sort of events, especially when we are in a room with far more experienced (and better-known) folk. It's fine. If you have designed a game, even if it doesn't work well yet, you are a game designer, and everyone you meet at this sort of event (with very few exceptions) will treat you as a valued peer. 

Nobody makes their first jump

As with everything else in this post, this is not a hard and fast rule, but the first game you make is unlikely to be commercially publishable, let alone a success. If you think about people in other creative endeavours, they will all have been learning the craft for years - decades even - before getting anywhere. Think of your favourite writer; they will have been learning to write since their early school years (sometimes before) and practising regularly until they were finally published. While you might be able to revise your first game design into a great form, don't count on it. If you are in love with that concept, don't be afraid to step aside and work on some small, simpler designs that allow you to practice the craft before going back to your main project. 

Coincidentally, while I was first trying to write this post up and attempting to find the right words, Matthew Dunstan posted a video on YouTube on developing your craft as a game designer, which covered a lot of what I have tried to say here. I'd really recommend giving that a watch - as well as all his other videos, if you have the time. His final point put me in mind of a TV show from my childhood called Why Don't You...? The show had a very catchy slogan: "Why don’t you just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead?" Still applies.

Of course, there is so much that could be said, but I feel that this stuff is probably a reasonable starting point. Please do feel free to comment if there is something you would say to someone working on their first board game design.

Up to Eleven

Looking back I see that my first post in this blog was in April 2014, so I've been blogging - albeit sporadically - about tabletop game design for eleven years. As this is a nice, round number, I figure it's probably worth a look back - and also a bit forward. 

I have a spreadsheet, on which I record all the games I developed as far as having a playable prototype and note its status, etc., and the earliest entry on there is from 2013, so pre-dating this blog. At present there are 58 entries on there. It misses a few entries, like some speed-design exercises done at an event last year, but it covers most of what I have done. Plenty of these games have had a test or two and been buried, never to be seen again. There were a good number of these games, however, that went through at least a few iterations of playtesting and improvement before being shelved, and I'll have a think about some of those in a bit.

I make it that eleven of these projects have got as far as being pitched to publishers. Some of these were a bit speculative rather than in any real expectation of getting anywhere, but four of them actually ended up being signed. Three of these fell through for various reasons - one of which did have a 30-copy limited edition made first though - leaving the one that is now out on shelves and available to buy.

5 prototypes. Clockwise from top left: Corlea, Invaded, Explore & Settle,
Boogie Knights, and in the middle, My Name is...

Thinking back over the past projects, there are plenty that I would like to go back for another look at. I went through something like this a couple of years ago, but I'm a bit more positive about game design in general than I was back then, so here are some of the ones that come to mind...

Boogie Knights is the first game that I took to a public playtest event, in 2015, and helped introduce me to the Playtest UK community. It was a game that I got to a state where it pretty much always went down well with players, but it felt like something was missing. I think there were some unnecessary complexities in it and a fresh look might find how to straighten it out.

Explore and Settle is a terrible working title for possibly the heaviest game I have designed yet. I think there was some interesting stuff in the game with resource management and map building that could have potential. It might actually be that a new title is the main thing needed here!

My Name is... is pretty much the polar opposite of the last game, and is a mind tangling party game with just a deck of cards and very few rules. For some people, this game just worked amazingly, producing laughter and agonised groans in equal amounts. There was never a satisfying end or win condition for the game though - in this sort of game, scoring and winning is rarely that important for most groups, but that aspect does need to be there for it to be sellable.

Corlea is a midweight Euro-ish game based on a real example of iron age people in Ireland building a wooden road through a peat bog. 

And finally for now, Invaded, my long-running white whale of a game with an interesting concept of being a competitive game with a players being residents of a land under attack from a powerful, non-player colonial force. I never really got this one firing properly, and have had thoughts about remaking it with squirrels, but I dunno... should I get back to it and take advantage of years of more experience, or just consign it to the archives?

That question applies to all of the games really, but I think I left Invaded in a state that is most in need of work before being worthy of a playtest. The others, though, maybe I can get them out and onto the table to see what can be done with them. 

To be fair, though, the last time I did a review of games I could get back to work on, it didn't go anywhere, so let's say that by UK Games Expo (which is just a month away), I'll have at least one of these games in a playable state and will see if I can get it to the table there, if not before.

The State of Play

So, it's another new year and I guess that's as good a time as any to reflect a bit and think a bit about where I am from a game design point of view. How did the last year go, and how am I planning to move forward?

Well, I'll start with the biggest point from last year: I signed a game with a publisher. I haven't been given the nod to start shouting about this yet, but will give you the lowdown as soon as I can. The publisher has been showing some early copies of the game at trade shows this month, so it should be imminent. This is exciting stuff, and I can't wait to tell everyone, but patience is important as part of building a good working relationship.

The Castle War as it was around August last year.

Other than that, I worked with another designer on a game based on one of their past (unpublished) design that developed into something significantly different, and we have already pitched that to a publisher, who has taken a prototype for evaluation, and we are hoping to hear back in the next month or two.

Ongoing project, The Artifact, about which I have posted here a number of times, is chugging along. I've been working with co-designer Alex Cannon mostly online, though we have met up a couple of times and played the game, plus have both managed some physical tests with other folk. The game is feeling like mechanically it is pretty much sorted, but one aspect, a "project board" that effectively handles the scoring and victory conditions, is proving tricky to get right. I think we are close though, and we are hoping to be able to pitch it for publication some time this year.

My card game, The Castle War, has also made some significant progress, in partnership with a publisher. The game is not officially signed, but I am content with how we are moving along with this one, and the game is finally feeling pretty solid. 

The other game I have done significant work on in 2024 was Sympolis, my card and dice cooperative game. In a similar way to The Artifact, the core mechanisms of the game are working well, but I've been struggling to get the finishing details locked down; in this case it is how to balance the challenge so the game feels like it builds to a tense culmination. Unfortunately, here I don't have the luxury of a co-designer to work with on these issues. I have some ideas that I am experimenting with though, so I'm sure I will get there.

Reflecting on this for a moment, I think that I am learning that I am stronger at working on a core engagement than I am at delivering a punchline. I have had playtests of Sympolis, for example, where the players have really been chewing on the challenge and engaging strongly, only to be disappointed when that tension dissipates into an unsatisfying endgame. I think this is partly because I am inclined to just sketch out a rough endgame and leave it like that while I do everything else. This can work fine when it's a straightforward duelling game, or a classic "play ends, then count up points" Eurogame, but not so much in most of the games I have worked on lately. I should watch out for that.

More generally, how was the year? Well, aside from the obvious high points, I have picked things up a fair bit from the lows I reached a year or two back when the get up and go had thoroughly got up and gone. I'm still not good at organising playtesting sessions, but I have been to some good events (a couple of invite-only playtesting weekends, for instance), and have got back into the swing of regular meetups with a couple of other game designer friends. I still have a long way to go in really getting back in the proverbial saddle, but the direction of travel is correct, I think.

So for this year, I think it should be more of the same, and probably more more of the same. I'll be meeting up with designers, attending a small number of conventions and games days, volunteering at the playtest zone at UK Games Expo, and hopefully actually sorting out more regular playtesting locally. Maybe even pitching a game or two. I've been really feeling good about collaborations with other designers - some have worked well so far, and some not so much, but that's to be expected - so I'll keep looking for opportunities to work with others.

I'm also tinkering around with roleplaying games a bit more again, which is a hobby that used to take up most of my time before I switched priorities into board games. Hopefully I'll get to play and run RPGs a bit more than I have been. The "random table per day" challenge I set myself last year was roleplaying-adjacent, and I'm thinking about working with some of that material to see if I can turn it into something more.

Other than that... I'm not really one for new year resolutions, so I think keep on going, be kind to myself, and try to help others... that'll have to do for now.

Newish Year, 2024 Edition

While I have done a lot better at blogging over the last year than I did in the previous couple, I still get myself caught in a trap of not wanting to write anything up unless I have something significant to say, and then worrying that the posts I do write and publish aren't "worthy" in some way. 

But that was never meant to be the purpose of this blog - it was meant to be a place for me to write things down in public, whether they increase the sum of human knowledge or not. The act of writing and publishing helps me solidify thoughts and somehow builds a little accountability into the way I do things. 

And actually, I do get comments and feedback from a few people, occasionally on the blog itself, but more often on one of the other social media platforms I share it on. If you are one of the people who has responded in some way, thank you, it's really appreciated.

Anyway, we are now a few weeks into a new year and, while I'm a bit late, I guess it's time for a little reflection and looking forward.

I do feel I turned a corner in 2023 and started getting back into the swing of game design work. I'm still moving very slowly, and being very bad at organising playtests, but it's better than nothing. So this makes for an obvious action for this year: to do more playtesting, especially face-to-face. I have a couple of people in the area who have expressed an interest in helping out with this sort of thing, and I need to get back in touch with a few old contacts, and maybe something can start happening.

I've also done some more proofreading, mostly for game rule books, but not a huge amount. This is something I enjoy doing, which improves my own rule writing (I think), and seems to be appreciated by the people I do the jobs for. I feel that this is a handy side-hustle too. I'll plan to keep doing this as and when the opportunity comes up, maybe pushing myself to do a few more jobs through the year.

Over the last year or two I've also got back into reading roleplaying game material. I've been playing a bit, but mostly reading. This is something that has always been the case for me: acquire what I can, read lots, play some. The thinking is that reading rules, game philosophy, world building, adventure or encounter design, etc. all feeds into the melting pot of ideas. The same goes for board games to an extent, but the playing aspect feels a far more efficient way to absorb the ideas in that case. 

The whole RPG reading stuff has actually got me started on a new "do something every day" project like I did in 2019 with drawings. This time I am creating an RPG-style random table every day, the sort of thing where you roll a die and it tells you something random in a given category. I'll probably write a post about this later, but I feel it is actually giving me some exercise in one of my current weaknesses: creating thematic content. At the time of writing I'm 21 days in and doing OK.

Other than that, events I am planning on going to this year so far amount to the Bastion convention next weekend (for chilling out, kicking back, and actually playing stuff), a private game designers event in February, and UK Games Expo at the end of May and beginning of June (where I'll be mostly crewing the Playtest Zone). I'm sure other stuff will come up, but that's a good start.

So, in the spirit of getting this done and posted, I'll finish off here, before I end up... <fzkt!>

Sen's Lens

You may have come across Sen-Foong Lim, an experienced game designer with an impressive portfolio, and part of the Ludology and Meeple Syrup teams, as well as plenty of other cool things he has done. Well, he recently shared an image titled, "Your Board Game Critique. Things I'd probably tell you if I had playtested your game", I believe initially on Facebook, but it soon started getting passed around on Twixxer, Bluesky, and I assume other bits of social media too. I gather there was a bit of pushback due to the slightly blunt language, but I was instantly taken by the truth of the document. I have heard most of the points Sen makes aimed at my own designs over the years, as well as at other people's games.

A day or two later, Sen released an updated version with slightly softened and also tightened up language, but making the same points, and I've added this version below.

I first saw the list just before a planned chat with Alex, who I am working with on The Artifact, a game project that I need to blog about again soon (though this post kinda counts). We're working through some structural ideas at the moment and trying to figure out if we are on the right path, and Sen's points proved to be a really useful starting point for discussion. We went through the list, point by point, and had a discussion about whether that criticism applied to our project. 

So, is there too much going on? Is anything detracting from the core experience? Maybe - we have a couple of elements that are currently a bit extraneous, but overall we think the game is about the level of intricacy we want.

Is the audience ill-defined? We have to admit that we're basically making a game that we'd like to play together rather than having a strongly defined target, which probably isn't great for when we get around to pitching the game.

Would the game be painful to manufacture? We don't think so - despite having been developed mostly in virtual form, it is manufacturable with a pretty standard number of cards, a few punchboard sheets for tiles, and not-that-many additional tokens (maybe wooden, maybe punchboard), plus a board, so while it won't be a budget game, it shouldn't be a problem.

...and so on. We got to identify a few things that need further thought, and had some good discussion  about some other areas that should help us move forward. We've both worked on assorted games before, and this game has been through a good few playtesting loops, so we were pretty sure we wouldn't be too far off the mark here, but it's interesting how revealing it can be to just work through some of these basic points.

If you're working on a game yourself, I'd really recommend having a look and asking yourself to answer honestly to each point: does this apply to my game?

 

Twenty-one Today (and Beyond)

Frankly, I have no idea what 2021 has in store for us. The Covid-19 situation has an end in sight now that vaccination programmes are in progress, but it's going to be months -- maybe the rest of the year -- before life can begin to return to normal and even then, it's going to take a long time for a lot of people's lives to recover. Add to that the fact that Brexit is beginning to affect us and who know how that will pan out in the longer term; already it is difficult to send post in and out of the UK and some peoples' livelihoods are coming under threat from international trade and travel problems. Basically, it feels like we are in a holding pattern, waiting until we find out what is going to happen.

On the positive side, so far our little family has stayed healthy and our main incomes have not been threatened, so we are in a very privileged position on the balance of it.

Early work on a game with squirrels, co-designed with Dave Mortimer.

In a discussion on plans for this year a week or two back, I said that for my part I wasn't intending to make any specific plans or objectives, but will be thinking more in terms of a direction of travel. One friend suggested that I should probably nevertheless come up with some SMART* objectives. He was probably right, but right now I'm sticking with my looser thinking.

So what is this direction of travel then?

Well, I have been talking about getting involved in collaborations for years, and 2020 was the year that this actually started to happen, with Grab Bag Zoo and Snails and Grails getting going early in the year, and Squirreled Away and The Village on the River at the end. I'm now in the early, brainstorming stages of another collaboration too, which looks promising. So, one of the major strands is to lean into that, work with those co-designers to make the best games we can, but also learn more about the process and figure out what I contribute to a collaboration. I know I can and do add to these endeavours, but I've not got to the point where I can really describe my strengths and weaknesses.

Other than that, I have signed up as a mentor for the Tabletop Mentorship Program (at the time of writing, applications for both mentor and mentee positions are open -- check it out), having talked to a few people about their experience in it. I'm not sure if I will even be allocated a mentee, or how things will go, but I will give it my best shot and hopefully be of some help. If all goes well, it seems like something that would be good for me to keep doing after the initial 3-month run.

Pitching games... I'm not worrying about it too much at the moment. I have a feeling that a game or two should get to a solid, pitchable state over the coming months, and if so, we'll give it a go. As a result of the lack of conventions last year, it seems that a lot of publishers are receiving pitches via some sort of online meetup, with game demonstrations via the likes of Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia, which means there are potentially more opportunities which may in some ways actually be better than a physical pitch (for a start, nobody is trying to keep awake and hydrated in a noisy and crowded hall), so maybe we can roll with that if am appropriate game gets to the right point.

And while I am thinking of conventions, I'm not at all confidant that there will be any this year, and if there are any, they are likely to be shades of their normal selves. I have a room booked for UK Games Expo, which would normally be the highlight of my year from a gaming point of view, and where I would catch up with a lot of friends who I don't often see elsewhere. I have, however, made sure I have a room booking that can be cancelled, so while part of me really hopes to go, the greater part of me recognises that, even if the event takes place, it may not be appropriate or possible to go. The same goes for other events I might otherwise be going to. I really miss catching up with friends, doing face-to-face playtesting, chatting with publishers, designers, and gamers, and all of that. All of this stuff will just have to be a "wait and see".

In other, adjacent areas... I have been enjoying reading history books over the last couple of years (mostly early medieval Britain/Europe) and these books have been generating occasional game ideas, which is cool, and I'll continue this reading. I'm currently reading about Eleanor of Aquitaine (wife first of Louis VII of France, then Henry II of England), who was clearly a formidable character in her own right, and have a book lined up about Isabella of France, wife of Edward II of England, and who also had a rather colourful life. 

Also, maybe I'll do a bit more proofreading training. We'll see... I've continued to do the occasional proofread or rule review, and will keep doing this as and when.

So, that's as much of a plan as I have for 2021 other than I'll try to blog a little more often. Let's say I'll aim to do at least two per month. See, that's pretty SMART!

* SMART is a way that management consultants and trainers tell you to organise your objectives and has been expanded in a load of different ways, usually something along the lines of Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

That Was The Year That Was

I toyed with doing a "2020 hindsight" joke, but this way I can maintain the moral high-ground by telling you how restrained I have been, right?

So, 2020, yeah, that was an interesting experience. I started off the year by kicking off with one collaboration on Grab Bag Zoo, a game that absolutely needed face-to-face, physical prototyping, but which we managed to make a little progress on at various times during the year, including getting some really helpful feedback from a publisher. 

A Grab Bag Zoo player board in March

Another project started earlier in the year was Snails and Grails, with Dave Mortimer and Alan Paull, which started up at the last convention I went to, HandyCon. We managed to get a bit of face-to-face work done on this before the lockdown, and then shifted development online, mostly using Tabletopia. This actually allowed us to do maybe a bit more testing together than we might have managed otherwise, but we found some weirdness in the system, largely due to the fact that the game uses slightly weird shaped tiles, which never quite worked right in Tabletopia. I've been meaning to try setting it up in Tabletop Simulator to see if we get similar problems or different ones, but never quite got around to it.

The start of the Covid-19 lockdown in March put an end to playtesting as we knew it, as I rely heavily on people outside of my family for even initial tests. I leaned into this a little by taking part in the BGG 24 Hour Design Contest  for the first time in ages, and making a game designed to be a roll-and-write game with a 2-player, head-to-head aspect to it, which could be played over a voice or video call, and while this had many flaws it worked OK and gave me some practice at a style of game I hadn't worked on before. 

I also had an experiment with a "multiplayer solitaire" game that was literally that: a patience/solitaire card game that folk could play simultaneously, but which allowed cooperation between players to clear their tableaux by matching cards by other players. I didn't get far with this one, but initial tests suggested it was plausible. I might go back and have another look at that some time, as it could be interesting.

Early on there was a UK-centred group who had an online playtesting session on Fridays, which I attended a couple of times, but this ended up stopping after a while, and I never got around to joining with any of the other online playtest groups, and over the summer months my motivation and drive steadily declined, particularly when it came to getting people to playtest my games -- or even in playing other people's games. 

That said, I did build up a decent amount of experience in Tabletopia, and with the help of nanDECK, I can now implement a playable prototype on that platform pretty quickly. In fact, I have also done some work with Tabletop Simulator, and am building some more confidence on that as well, and have the necessary incantations coded into nanDECK so that I can output card images suitable for importing to either system now.

"Role World" in June. Using Tabletopia (or similar)
is a boon for getting nice pictures of prototypes.

Through all this time, I did continue to work with Braincrack Games on Scurvy Crew (which is now almost certainly getting a new name). There is still a lot in flux on this at the moment, but Lewis at Braincrack is now leading the development on this and the game is undergoing some pretty major changes, though most of them are actually not cutting as deep as they look at first. One of the most exciting parts of this is now pretty much set: crew cards have personal objectives, and during play you may exchange them for more experienced versions of the character, so you will see the available crew in the game growing and developing over the course of a number of plays.

On the subject of continuing projects, I also made some progress on The Castle War with some guidance from Alan Paull, making the game somewhat more complex and, we think, deeper, but leaving a few rough edges that now need further attention.

Continuing the random wander through the year, obviously physical conventions were off the menu after March, but most organisers came up with some form of online alternative, and I went to a few of them for at least part of the time. UK Games Expo, moved to August and then virtualised, was the one I spent most of my time with. Most of what I did was just watching streams of talks and panel discussions, something that I rarely get to see at real conventions, and this was fun, even though I didn't get much out of the event. It did introduce me to Twitch streams though, and since then I have watched a few streams by various people and have enjoyed the way some of them are a sort of interactive, punk rock TV show, with communities emerging in the chat channels. When it came to Essen Spiel time in October, I even made my Twitch debut as a guest on a stream with Alan Paull of Surprised Stare Games, discussing the Snails and Grails game we are working on.

There were other games, too, including two that involve squirrels: one a new collaboration with Dave Mortimer on a game aimed at families with kids, and another being a reworking of my long-standing white whale game, Invaded. Also a couple of attempts at a game with puffins in, a weird, world building game, a take-that game about a medieval throne war and the roll-and-write game that appeared from nowhere last week at IDLEcon.

Another thing that happened is that my game, Giftmas with the Grimms, which had a very limited (30 copy) print run back in autumn 2017 under the name Giftmas at Dungeon Abbey, has returned to my hands after the publisher decided to not move on with it. I could have reclaimed the rights rather sooner (there was a time-out clause in the contract, as is always a good idea), but decided not to worry about it and see how things went. We decided to call it a day though and the rights are back with me. I've been tinkering with a few revisions (and playing with fresh art, just for fun), and we'll see if anything happens with it.

Updated Giftmas character cards.

I'll also just add a note that in the last couple of months or so of the year I made a bunch of new friends and contacts largely through the streams hosted by Bez Shahriari, Michael Fox, and Matthew Dunstan, all of whom are lovely people who are really supportive and encouraging, and I very much recommend you check out their Twitch streams if that sort of thing appeals to you.

So how did I do against what I was planning back in January?

Well, I did say that I wasn't expecting to do much pitching, if any, and that turned out to be the case. In the absence of physical conventions, a lot of publishers did become more amenable to online pitching (particularly using Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia to demonstrate the games) but I wasn't in a position where I felt comfortable doing this. I wouldn't be surprised if this became more normal for pitch meetings going forward though.

The collaboration side of things definitely moved forward pretty well, with a few more on the go now, and I'm really enjoying this and am totally open to discuss more team-ups for the future.

Playtesting was pretty terrible for the year: a few online sessions here and there, but only a few face-to-face over the first couple of months (and one in the late summer). That's the way of things though.

And finally, I said I would make a puffin game. Well, I did build something over a couple of iterations, and got some playtesting done with others, but didn't get anywhere I was even slightly happy with.

So, that was most of 2020 from my game design point of view: very much a curate's egg of a year. It sucked in a whole bunch of ways, but there were some definite positives, and I'm trying to focus on them for the year to come.

One Day at a Time

I know a lot of people have had it way worse.

I know it isn't a competition.

I also know that I am struggling, and have been for some time.

It is over six months since I have been to the office where I do my day job, and since then, said day job (which I am able to continue to do reasonable effectively from home), game design work, game playing and playtesting, and get-togethers with friends have almost entirely taken place in the same little room.  I am fortunate that we have a house with a garden and other rooms to sit and do stuff in, but the reality is that most of my waking hours are spent doing things in this room, and almost all of that involves looking at a computer screen.

My wonderful wife made this badger for me.
It makes me smile.

This is an environment that I was pretty positive about at first, with the challenge of creating games that could be tested remotely, and learning about technologies like Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator was interesting and opened up more opportunities, but the longer we have gone, the more I realise that I really rely on the energy of other people sitting around the table and the physicality of the game, whether playing a published game for fun or working on a new design. 

Most days, by the time I finish work I often have little energy and motivation to do anything more, particularly without the payoff of seeing other people moving components on a table. As a result, my productivity in the last few months has been shocking. 

It's not all down though. A few weeks ago I was able to meet a game designer friend face-to-face for a few hours and as a result I have been managing to get some work done on developing (or butchering) one of his projects to see what happens if we remove a couple of the play elements in an attempt to streamline it. Even this has been moving very slowly, but it is at least something.

I have also been reading a bit more than previously, mostly books about medieval history, so there may be some game inspiration on its way.

This post doesn't really have a point. I don't have any epiphany I can pass on, or advice I can give, it's just me feeling a bit sorry for myself. 

I will say, however, that whoever and wherever you are, I hope that you and your loved ones find a way through the current troubles, however they are affecting you. If you want a chat and have my contact details, please feel free to use them; otherwise, look me up on Twitter (@harperrob).

What's my 20?

Having looked backwards a few days ago, I guess it is time to look forwards to my game design plans for this year.

A significant part of the early part of the year is likely to continue to be development of Scurvy Crew, which may end up with a different name, and which I am still actively working on in conjunction with Lewis of Braincrack Games.

I forgot to mention in my roundup that, while I did pretty well for organising playtesting sessions for the first part of last year, I pretty much sucked for the second half. Every year I say I will try to get better at managing playtest groups, and this year will be no exception.

Collaborations... Now this is something that is big for me. I have been saying for some time that I have wanted to collaborate with other designers. This is partly in order to learn from others, but also because I seem to be more productive in many ways when I am bouncing ideas back and forth with other people. I have had a few collaborative projects over the last couple of years that have nearly, but not quite, got going, but it is looking like 2020 is going to the year of collaboration for me.

Over the last few weeks I have been discussing ideas for a light "tactility" game with another designers and this week this finally turned into a playable prototype that I tested with a couple of other folk, and the other designer, Mike, is really enthusiastic at his end, so I have a good feeling about this.

The first play of the "pulling animals out of a bag" game -- and it wasn't terrible.

I also have a get-together with a couple of other designers in a few days' time to work on a potential joint project that we are all keen on, so that's another thing.

Another thing I forgot to add to my retrospective post the other day (which is increasingly looking like I did a really poor job of!) was my collaboration with Tom Coldron, with him doing some development and testing of my old game Boogie Knights and me looking at his game Elvic.  I still need to have some further discussions with him but it was an enjoyable process for me and I'd be well up for doing similar things in future.

How about pitching games? I'm not sure this year, as it may turn out to be more of a "load up the queue" year, so I might not end up with pitchable product by UK Games Expo. I'm just going to wait and see on this front.  The "tactility" game I mentioned above could easily get to a pitchable state by the summer -- or totally crash and burn, only time will tell. Other than that, I would love to get one of my older projects (maybe Corlea, which has been rattling around for long enough) up to scratch in the next few months, but with the planned/possible collaborations, it may be that I have enough on my plate as it is.

Finally, something really specific. This year I'm going to create and illustrate a small card game involving puffins. After all the drawing of puffins last year, and a few general comments along these lines, I figure this should be a fun way to carry forward some of that art practice. I only expect this to end up as a print and play game, but we'll see how things develop.

N...n...n...n...Nineteen

Happy new year!

So, looking back on my plans and intentions from last year, how did I do?

I said I would share more games as print and play prototypes, and utterly failed at that. 

I also said that I would continue to read up on historical events (I have mostly been reading about the middle ages, focussed on the C9th to C12th), and have a number of ideas jotted down in a notebook, so that's something. I did say that I would make some of these ideas into prototypes, and I failed to do this (mostly), but am sure I will develop some of these concepts.

Sometimes research for a game involves playing with a pile of toy animals.

The reason I said "mostly" there is that I have talked with a couple of game designer friends about the bizarre "medieval battle snails" that appear in various medieval manuscripts, and did make a light card game prototype inspired by this as well as a very rough version of a more serious boardgame on the same theme.  Neither went beyond that, but more recently I have been discussing with these same friends something more solid, and we are planning to get together very soon to see if we can rough out the basis of a collaboration.

I also didn't do another proofreading course last year, but I have the intention of signing up for one in the next few weeks.  I have worked on a few rulebook proofreading jobs over the last year; they have all been pro bono, done for people I really wanted to help out, but I feel I should probably start charging soon.

So what did go according to plan?

Well, I successfully ploughed through the year drawing a picture on paper every day and sharing a scan of that picture on Twitter.  This did contribute to wiping me out a little some evenings, meaning that I was short of energy for other things, like game design. Overall, though, I feel really good about this whole project -- I think the average quality of my pictures improved a bit during the year, the speed of my work certainly increased, and I got to experiment with some different media along the way. Plus I am very proud of a few of the pictures.

Other than that, a year ago I was talking about wanting to work on a couple of my game projects, and that was a definite success, with Scurvy Crew now signed (and in development), and The Castle War still with a publisher who has not given a final decision but has said some positive things, and I will be seeing them next week so will be able to discuss it at that point.

I mentioned collaboration earlier, and something else came up towards the end of the year. I was chatting with another designer at Dragonmeet, and ideas started bouncing around. We've been exchanging emails on this since and are working on an initial version of the game (I'm just waiting for the arrival of some components), and hope to meet up soon to see where we can take the idea. This is something exciting for me, partly because the collaborator is such a nice guy, but also because it is a style of game I probably wouldn't have approached on my own. 

In summary, then, 2019 didn't really take the shape I had originally intended, and for various reasons I had spells of being unproductive, but overall things went really well for me. 

Mid-Year Musings

We're now just past half way through 2019, which seems a good time to do a little reflection to see how things are going this year.

Well, the big, rainbow-striped elephant on a bouncy castle in the middle of the room is, of course, the fact that I have a game newly signed for publication and another being evaluated by a different publisher, so by rookie game designer standards, that makes this year a rollocking success right away.  I'm happy to take that all as a win regardless of anything else.

Other than that, though, how are things going?

My basic plans were to "enter contests, pitch more games, work with other people more, playtest more", and I have had mixed success with that. I've only entered one contest (a 24 hour contest), and have talked about collaboration with a couple of other designers but we've not really got anything off the ground yet. I have done pretty well with playtesting with other designers (trips to London as well as more local sessions), but been less successful at organising playtesting sessions with "normal" gamers.  The pitching has gone well though: I have only done limited pitching so far, but I have had the good fortune to be aiming the right games at the right publishers so far, with one game signed and one still being evaluated.  On that last point, if you are interested, I haven't chased it up as it has only been a little over a month and, from talking to other designers, it seems that two to three months seems a sensible timescale for follow-ups.

A recent playtest of Scurvy Crew, coming along nicely.

I'm still reading assorted history books, albeit slowly, mostly based on the early middle ages (Saxon to Angevin), and the plan was to take some ideas and turn them into games, and I've not got any of that done yet, but a few stories are making me think and I may find a game in them sometime. For instance, there is Henry the Young King, basically Henry 2.5, who was crowned co-king but pre-deceased his father so was never king in his own right, and spent much of his (brief) adult life touring Europe with a spectacular entourage, competing in tournaments.  Or the fascinating Nicola de la Haye, who held several normally male positions, including Sheriff of Lincolnshire through the reigns of Henry II, Richard I, John, and Henry III. I'll still intend to make something built on these or similar stories.

Sharing playable games online was another aim, and the only non-contest game I have shared was a couple of iterations of Scurvy Crew, which is one that has been shared in various forms over the years, but as it had been languishing for a long time, I'll count that one.  Still more to do though.

Aside from game-related objectives, I have continued in my exercise to draw (and share online) something every day.  As I write this, it is day 190, and I have a folder on my laptop with 190 scanned drawings in it, which feels like quite an achievement.  Many of the pictures have been of puffins, and I have joked a few times that I will make a game about puffins using some of these pictures; ideas are starting to come, so this may actually end up happening.

Aside from puffins I've been doing assorted exercises like,
for example, these longsword guard positions.

Finally I was planning to keep working on developing my proofreading and editing skills. I have proofread a handful of rulebooks so far this year, so keeping it ticking over, but I have not been pushing it too hard.  I do need to take advantage of my "Society for Editors and Proofreaders" membership and take another training course or two, though.

So overall, while I haven't made too much progress in my original plans, I am progressing overall. Just reviewing here is quite useful to remind myself of how I could keep myself moving forwards.

The Road Ahead

OK, so I have these standing objectives that pretty much roll over from last year: enter contests, pitch more games, work with other people more, playtest more.  This is all good stuff, and I'll keep working on that, but I should probably think of something new to focus on in 2019.

One thing that comes to mind is that Castle War has whetted my appetite for making historically-based games, however loose that basis is, and I have recently been enjoying reading history books, so I will plan to make more games based on historical events that I read about.  I have decided to keep a notebook with me when I am reading in case of sudden inspiration (this really is something I should/could have been doing beforehand) and I am sure that will result in a few notes being made.  Making this into a slightly more measurable objective, I'll plan to make at least three of these ideas into playable prototypes through the year.  The number three always seems a nice one for this sort of thing.

This has nothing to do with game design, but it turns out I enjoy drawing puffins.

Something I've not been so great on over the last year or two is actually making prototypes available in a print and play format -- apart from the ones I make for contests, that is.  There are all sorts of reasons for this, but if I did so, it would mean that I always have games in a state where I can send them to interested parties.  I'll do better at this in 2019.  Shall we say three games that are not contest entries will be shared online (probably via a "work in progress" thread on Board Game Geek) through the year?

In the non-gaming part of my life I have a project on the go that I am refusing to admit is a new year's resolution: I have bought myself a sketch book and have been drawing something in it each day, with the intent to keep going for as long as time, patience, and willpower allows, and just drawing whatever I fancy on each occasion. So far, so good (at the time of writing, I'm on twelve in a row), and if you want to see my very amateurish art exploits, I'm sharing each picture on Twitter, on the principle that telling people you are doing something makes it more likely that you will do that thing.

I am also planning to continue getting training and practice in proofreading and editing skills.  I see this as "game design adjacent", a skillset that is useful to game publishers and may allow me to help people out more.  Plus I enjoy it and developing new skills is always worthwhile in itself.

But first up, Castle War and Scurvy Crew both need a little attention, so I'll be getting on with them, and there's a 2-player game contest on BGG that Castle War might be a decent fit for, if I get my arse in gear...

Rear View

Happy new year! As is traditional, it's time to take stock of where I am, what I am doing, and where I am going.  So let's kick that off with a look at how last year was for me from a game design point of view.

In my forward-looking post last year I set myself six objectives.  These were all pretty woolly (not bothering with SMART stuff in this part of my life), but were at least something that would help me in a direction of travel, at least in principle.

Here are my hands, trimming rules sheets (or, at least, pretending to do so for the camera).

My first two objectives were about pitching my games and putting myself out there.  The first of which I definitely achieved by dint of presenting my game, Invaded, via the speed-dating event at UK Games Expo, which was a great, if extremely tiring experience. Objective two was to arrange a few pitch meetings (primarily at UKGE), and in the event I only had one of these pre-arranged, plus another that was a follow-up from the speed-dating.  I'll count this one as a partial, but need to try harder.

Next up I was hoping to take part in the 24 hour game design contest on Board Game Geek at least three times, but only actually managed two, so that's another "try harder" grade.  I also intended to try for a bigger contest; I fell short of getting into the Hippodice contest or any other higher profile event, but I did submit to the BGG wargame contest, so I think that gives me a pass mark, though not a distinction.

I also wanted to do some more collaboration with other designers.  I didn't manage to progress the projects that I had started off with others the previous year, but I did get something new started, and we got around a couple of early iterations.  I'm not sure if this game will actually get anywhere, but I have an idea of what to try with it next, so hopefully in the next few weeks I'll give that a go.

Finally, playtesting, that perennial challenge.  I got to the monthly Sunday meetup in London most months of the year, plus managed to have playtesting sessions at UK Games Expo and Dragonmeet, had a few other playtesting opportunities here and there, and hosted "official" playtest sessions at my house 11 times.  This isn't bad really, but it's nowhere near enough to make real progress with my projects, so I need to work on this.  One of my problems here is my lack of confidence and willingness to lean on people for playtesting.  I don't think there is really any way around this other than learning to ask for help more and cultivating the right sort of relationships.

I say finally, but there was more to my life over the last year, even some bits that weren't related to gaming, but I'll try to keep more or less on topic.

An interesting thing for me was turning Egge on Thine Face from a 24 hour design project to a print and play game with commissioned artwork, and then getting some nice copies made to give away to friends as gifts.  This extended my experience a little with creating an art direction document, preparing files for print, and so on, all of which is somewhat outside my comfort zone, but I now have a slightly better understanding of now.

I continued my occasional proofreading exploits through the year, and ended up signing up for an introductory course in the art.  I still have the last module of the course to complete (I plan to do that in the next few days) but have enjoyed it and learnt a load -- particularly learning a load about how much I don't know.  I'm planning to take a follow-up course, but already I feel that my approach to proofreading has moved forward a fair bit.

These last couple of points have reinforced my personal conviction that I do not want to be a publisher, but learning a bit more about some skills that are useful to publishers may be good for me in general, particularly if I ever try to make a living in this business.

I have had a few spells of just struggling to get motivated to do anything, but I'm finding that talking to people is often a help, but otherwise just trying to be kind to myself and not worry about it seems the way forward.  I have started getting back to reading books about history (lately it has been mostly early medieval Britain), which is proving to be an interesting diversion and also a source of inspiration -- one of my new games last year was inspired by one of these books.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has playtested any of my games over the last year, and everyone who has given other help, advice and support, including you for reading this blog!  You are all amazing and part of what makes game design such a great hobby to be part of. It's hard going at times, but it's the people who make it all worthwhile.

Tricky Business

I recently saw a conversation on Twitter about "WTF is a trick taking game anyway?" (and similar discussions there and elsewhere over the years) and it was really one of those things that reminds me that everyone has different knowledge and experience. Even within hobby gaming, not everyone understands things the same way. I was brought up regularly playing games with standard playing cards, including several variants of the Whist family, the archetypal trick taking games, so the concepts of tricks, trumps, bids, and keeping score on a pad of paper, are just totally natural to me. It is easy for me to forget that other people aren't used to this sort of game.

5♠ was led...

So, what actually is a trick taking game?  Well, it can vary, but in general...

• Most trick taking games are played using cards, and almost certainly usually using a standard 52 card, 4 suit deck (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs).
• Players usually have a "hand" of cards, dealt randomly from the deck.
• A "trick" usually consists of each player selecting and playing one card from their hand. In most of these games, this play happens one at a time, in sequence around the table.
• Most trick taking games pay attention to the suit of the cards, and you very often have to play the same suit as is lead by the first player, if you can.
• Somebody wins the trick, very often the winner is the player who played the highest ranked card of the suit led by the first player.
• Many trick taking games have a "trump" suit, which is usually interpreted as a suit which beats any other suits in a trick. There are many variations on how a trump suit is decided.
• There is usually a scoring system, generally based on either the number of tricks each player wins, or the actual cards that are won in tricks.  Usually a full game consists of several "hands" where cards are shuffled and dealt afresh each time, and scores are recorded and added up to determine the overall winner.

Over and above all that common stuff (and, for each of those points, I feel certain you could find something that could be described as a trick taking game that breaks the "rule"), there are loads of variants that crop up more or less commonly.  For instance, in the game that I was taught as Slippery Anne (better known to the world as Hearts), the objective is to take the fewest tricks and score the fewest points, but you get a huge bonus if you manage to take all of the tricks. A load of games (in particular, several Whist games) have players bidding for how many tricks they think they can make, and score according to how well they achieve their "contract", 

There are plenty of really cool aspects to this style of game. For me, I love the aspects of figuring out what cards other players have, of trying to "finesse" to win more tricks or points than my hand might naturally be worth, the tension of playing out a hand, and the pace and tempo of most of these games when they are played by experienced players.

Thinking about this reminds me that I have never designed a trick taking game (other than by stretching the definition of the genre to the point of breaking), not even just applying a skin to an existing game, so I think it is about time I changed that and tried making one.  Challenge on...

To be continued...

Some Games I Wish I'd Invented

When I play some cool game, I often end up thinking, "I wish I had invented that," but with some games that thought runs way deeper, and a game exudes some sort of perfection, where the designer has absolutely nailed something and I end up dreaming of being a good enough designer to come up with something as wonderful.

I've been thinking about the games that have this effect on me, so here is a list of a few of the games that I wish I had invented, or even was capable of inventing. Maybe one day I'll get there...

No Thanks!

Image credit: mikehulsebus @ boardgamegeek

So this one is the big one for me. It's a game that consists of 33 cards with numbers on and a stack of counters, and that's it. Each turn you have one decision to make: do I take the card from the middle of the table, or do I put one of my limited supply of counters on it? Collect the lowest total score and you win. The genius here is the simplicity of that decision, while it still carries so much weight, the fact that runs of numbers only score the value of the lowest card in the run, and that nine of the cards are removed for each game, giving just the right amount of uncertainty for a satisfying game. Why nine cards? I can only imaging vast amounts of playtesting resulting in the perfect number. When I teach the game to people, there is invariably a general, "OK, is that it?" when I explain, and then a few turns in an unmistakable expression on their faces as the emergent subtleties start to dawn on them.

I have, on more than one occasion, said that if I had a time machine, I would use it to go back in time and "invent" No Thanks! before Thorsten Gimmler does. I am totally serious about this, it is my ultimate aim in life. Failing that, I want to make sure that as many people as possible buy the game, in the hope that Thorsten can afford to buy a yacht with the royalties.

Tsuro

Image credit: aldoojeda @ boardgamegeek

You place a tile, you move your "dragon" along the line on the tile, you try not to get forced off the edge of the board.  I can teach this game to pretty much anyone in seconds, thanks to its rules being pretty much intuitive from the components, and it always results in laughter and a great time had by all. There is player elimination in this game, which is usually a bad thing in modern game design, but games usually last only about ten minutes and my experience is that defeated players generally want to come back and get their revenge.  With two or three players, Tsuro is a mellow, relaxing game, but with the maximum eight players, there is chaos and carnage from the start.

The real genius of this game is that most people pretty much intuitively know how to play as soon as they are shown the components, and while it won't satisfy someone wanting a deep strategic challenge, it is a box full of beautifully presented fun.

Coloretto

Image credit: kalchio @ boardgamegeek

Quite a lot deeper than the previous games, Coloretto is about collecting sets of colours.  When it is your turn, you either take a row of cards from the middle of the table and end your involvement in that round (there'll be another in a minute, until the deck runs out...) or you draw a card from the deck and add it to one of the rows.  It's a really simple concept, but I think it has two little bits of genius: the way you draw and fill the rows of cards and have to do so in a way that, ideally, isn't too advantageous to the other players, and the fact that at the end of the game, three of your sets count in your favour, while any others count against you.  The implications of the simple rules are beautiful, and make this a really challenging game, despite its basic appearance.

Coloretto has spawned other, bigger, games with the same basic mechanisms, like the very enjoyable Zooloretto, but for my money, this little card game beats almost everything else for me and is another perfect game that I wish I could have thought of.

Deep Sea Adventure

Image credit: Skombie @ boardgamegeek

At first glance, this is a great big nope. You roll dice, move your diver, then decide if you want to pick up a piece of treasure or not. What is there to like in a roll-and-move game like this? Well, quite a lot, as it turns out.  The genius of turning the roll-and-move diving game into a tense, press-your-luck game by having a shared air supply which is depleted more quickly as players pick up more treasure makes this into a really compelling game. And that there is a once-and-done decision to turn back just makes the whole thing sweeter.  You get to take part in three dives, and only make a few meaningful decisions during each, but the sweet pain of having to live with your bravado or cowardice makes Deep Sea Adventure so much more than the sum of its parts.  This is a game where a lot of the enjoyment comes from egging your opponents on to take greater risks, from the schadenfreude you feel when they fail, and from the buzz you get that one time you manage to get back to the submarine, heavily laden with treasure.

I totally wish I had thought of this one. Who would have thought it could work so well?

Flamme Rouge

Image credit: aldoojeda @ boardgamegeek

Racing games are an old staple of boardgaming, but they are not something that usually gets a lot of attention among "hobby" gamers, but cycling race game Flamme Rouge quickly captured my heart. At a basic level it is straightforward: you have two cyclists in your team, and for each of them you draw a hand of cards with movement values on them and select one to use; selected cards are gone forever, and the rest will be recycled in a future round.  The genius here, though, is in two simple rules that somehow manage to represent and distill the essence of competitive cycle racing. First, after all bikes have moved, a group of cyclists that is exactly one space behind the group ahead gets a free move to catch up (slipstreaming).  Secondly, any rider at the front of a group adds a low value card to their deck (exhaustion), meaning that later on they will have options reduced and may have to ride slower at some time in the future in order to recover. There are some neat rules about hills too, but these two are enough to leave me in awe. Capturing the theme so neatly in just a couple of easily understood rules is something I can currently only aspire to.

Final Thoughts

I find that, while I wish I could design an intricate and complex ludological artifact like Anachrony or Terra Mystica, or some smooth and satisfying middleweight Euro like Concordia or Calimala, I find that the games I am most in awe of are those small, lightweight games that just do one or two things but do them so well that I can't imagine a better way to do it. I am so often amazed by the creativity and resourcefulness of other game designers that I wonder if I will ever be able to create something that can come close to matching them, but right now I can't stop making my own games, so I just have to hope that one day I will be worthy enough to join these greats.

Milestones of Obsession

Sometimes I think about what classes as being a success as a game designer, and what classes as being successful for me.  I do harbour an idea at the back of my mind that it would be lovely to actually be able to earn a living designing (and otherwise being involved in the publication of) games, which makes it a rare hobby for me that I would even consider such a thing. But I also recognise that very few game designers do earn a living from the business, and to do so requires a lot of work and dedication, some great skills, and a whole dollop of luck.  I can safely forget about that as anything other than a "wouldn't it be nice..." aspiration and get on with my life otherwise.  More realistic would be the hope that at some point I will be able to earn enough from designing games that I cover my expenses in doing so and maybe even fund my unhealthy game acquisition habit.

A little more concretely, I have come to realise that there have been a number of milestones that I got a bit excited about when they happened, and a load more that I am looking forward to, many of which are achievable, but some are extremely unlikely, to say the least.  So, in the spirit of distracting myself from doing something more productive, I made a list of some of the milestones I could think of...

• Have an entry for a game on BGG. ✔ This was I Know an Old Woman, in 2015.
• Have someone other than me logging a BGG play for my game. ✔ Same game, though this was a personal friend.  It was last year's March Hares that was the first with plays logged by a complete stranger to me.
• Have someone rating my game on BGG. ✔ As with the logging, March Hares was my first game rated by strangers, but IKaOW got a rating first.
• Sign a game for publication. ✔ Nearly a year ago, not one, but two games!
• Have a physical copy of my published game. Still waiting for this, but should be in the next few months.
• Receiving royalties for the first time.  Hopefully before the end of this year.
• Have someone with more logged plays of one of my games on BGG than I do.  It's actually close on March Hares, but not quite there - I think I need a professionally published game (coming really soon...) to achieve this one.
• Have a game with enough BGG ratings to have a ranking.  I believe the threshold is something like 35 ratings, so fingers crossed.
• Have a BGG top 1000 ranked game.  I don't think my first two released games will exactly set the BGG ratings alight (not really the target audience), but I can hope for this if I manage to get something released that works well for the hobby game market.
• Have a "1" rating on BGG from that guy who rates almost everything a "1".  It's a badge of honour!
• Have a BGG top 100 ranked game.  This is one that I doubt I will ever achieve as it is quite an exclusive club, but if it happens I suspect I'll be buying the drinks!
• Have a game published that is a collaboration with another designer. I'm hoping to make progress with collaborations one of these days, so it could happen.
• Be published by more than one publisher.  If the plan to start pitching games in earnest this year, I might be able to tick this off in the next couple of years or so.
• Have someone asking me to sign their copy of one of my games.  ✔ This has actually already happened -- someone who bought one of the preview copies of Giftmas from us at Essen asked for an autograph. A weird feeling.
• Have a game published in a language other than English.  No idea how likely this is, or how soon it might happen, but it's possible if one of my games does reasonably well.
• Have an expansion published for one of my games.  Well, Shooting Party is eminently expandable, and I can think of some expansion options for Invaded, so it could happen.
• Have a game I designed reviewed by Tom Vassal.  Or any video reviewer really, but Tom would be a kinda landmark, I guess.  (Maybe bonus points if he throws the game out the window.)

OK, so that's a bit of time wasted.  Maybe now I have that out of my mind I can get on with something else now... :)

2018, Here We Go!

Having looked back at how things went for me last year, it's time to look at what I hope to do this year from a game design point of view.  Several of these are pretty much based on things I either didn't do, or only partly achieved last year.

First off, pitching and pushing my games.  A couple of objectives...

1. Having failed to do so last year, I will get more organised and submit one of my games for showing at UK Games Expo via either the Wyvern's Lair or the Speed Dating event (or both).  Even if I don't get picked, the application process would be good.

2. I will try my best to arrange at least a small number of pitch meetings with publishers at UK Games Expo.  It would also be cool if I could sort out something similar for Essen, but I'll count that as bonus points rather than the main objective.

Bonus objective: I will try to make this work!

And relating to contests...

3. This is more or less a "carry on" one, but I'll aim to take part in the 24 Hour Design Contest at least three times during the year.  With other stuff going on it's easy to ignore this, but I really consider it a useful exercise, and a great way to give myself manageable challenges to keep myself from getting stuck in a rut.

4. A little more ambitiously, I'll aim to enter a bigger contest.  The one that comes to mind is the Hippodice contest in the Autumn, so that is the big target.  Again, this isn't really about winning, but about the process, and if I get some useful feedback somewhere along the line that is even better.

General design, development and testing...

5. I will be a bit more proactive with the couple of collaborative projects that I have more-or-less on the go from last year and see if they can go anywhere (it's entirely possible that they are dead ends, which is fine, the same as with my own projects). Furthermore I'll get talking to more people and aim to get at least one more collaboration started by the end of the year.

6.  Playtesting.  Last year I did a lot better than I have previously, with two groups of fine individuals who I periodically managed to lure into my games room to test prototypes, and I went along to Playtest UK meetups when I could, but this still isn't enough.  I'm not going to put a specific target on this, partly as playtesting is relying largely on the goodwill of others and I don't want to overimpose, but I will try to do more playtesting than last year -- and smarter playtesting to make the most of what testing I do manage to do.

Let's see how we do with this...

What I Did on My 2017

Performance review time! How did I do against those plans and objectives I gave myself last year?

So I said I wanted to have a portfolio of at least a couple of "pitchable" games, and also that I would have at least one pitch meeting at UK Games Expo.  The latter didn't happen at all, and the portfolio isn't really there yet, though I could probably start pitching Invaded if I found the right publisher, and I think Boogie Knights is pretty much locked in, so notwithstanding another edit of the rulebook, I have one in the portfolio!  Grade E: some progress, but missed overall.

I was also planning to submit a game to the Wyvern's Lair at UKGE.  This was looking like it was going to be Invaded, but development of that got thrown way off by a Crazy Project, of which I will write a little later, and as the submission deadline approached, I was so far off a stable game that I just backed out.  This was definitely the right decision, as development of Invaded since then has made it a far better game (in my opinion) than it would have been if I'd rushed in a submission.  Grade F: I'm totally OK with this, but it's still a stone cold fail.

This is how I spent quite a lot of my year.

Next up, collaborative designs, of which I planned to get involved in at least one...  Well, I have started two of these, but neither have progressed very far yet.  One is a cooperative game based on another designer's initial ideas; I got an initial prototype running (though it was very dull) and handed it over, where my partner has brought things along a bit further, but we haven't moved it on since then.  The other collaboration was based on a series of jokey conversations at UK Games Expo, which resulted in a not-entirely-serious but sort of plausible idea for a dexterity-based worker placement game; in this case I have made a very basic prototype, but not enough to hand over yet.  So, steps in the right direction here.  Grade C: OK, but must try harder!

Rulebook assistance...  I didn't do much of this in 2017, but I provided occasional comments on people's work in BGG forums, and did a couple of more thorough (though still informat) reviews of prototype rulebooks in the spring.  I also had a request for assistance from someone (Plan Play Games) who I had helped in the last couple of years, who wanted a proof read of the English translation of their planned Essen Release.  I was happy to help again, and as a result of this and my debut trip to Essen SPIEL (more on which later) I am now the proud possessor of a copy of this game (Photo Finish -- it's a speed puzzle-solving game) as well as their previous year's release (Peter and the Grown Ups -- a memory and bluffing game), both with my name credited in the rulebook. Always nice when that happens!   Grade B: good, but still room for improvement.

That pretty much covers what I had planned, but plenty of other things happened.  I've had a bit of an up and down year from a morale point of view, so I'm going to concentrate on positives here in case I need to remind myself in future that I did achieve quite a bit.

The highlight of the year has to be that I signed not one, but two games for publication, one of which has been available to buy in a very limited (30 copies!) edition at Essen.  As you may recall from earlier posts, the first of these games is Giftmas at Dungeon Abbey, which is based on the print and play game I made as a party favour back in 2016, with totally awesome new art, and the other is Dungeon Abbey: The Shooting Party, which was effectively a commissioned design based on a thematic outline document that the publisher, Cubicle 7, showed me.  I don't know the exact production status of these games, but excitingly, both games are starting to show up in online retailers (I've only seen US sites so far) for pre-order, so clearly information has been released to the distribution channels.  I'll be shouting about this a lot when I have any more information.

I mentioned a Crazy Project earlier, and that was the Shooting Party game, which derailed everything else I was doing during the spring, trying to get it to a state where I could hand it over to Cubicle 7.  In the second half of the year they were doing more development of the game in-house, and I have had the opportunity to give feedback and make suggestions. The last time I saw the game it was looking good and I really enjoyed playing it, so I'm really looking forward to seeing the final version.

Another huge highlight for me was my first trip the the SPIEL games fair in Essen, Germany.  I first heard about this in the early 90's, and have always wanted to go, but time, finances, and insecurities always conspired to stop me. This year, however, I tagged along with Cubicle 7 to help on their stall, which resulted in me spending four days explaining assorted game to anyone who was interested, primary among these was the recently released Cthulhu Tales storytelling card game. This was actually really useful experience in explaining the salient points of a game and its main features rather than precisely how to play -- in other words, effectively making a pitch.

UK Games Expo was also a fantastic experience.  I spent a lot of my time volunteering at the Playtest UK area, which earned me an exhibitor's pass, meaning the ability to enter the hall ahead of the throng each morning, which in turn meant that I could have early morning chats with assorted people before they had to turn to business.  Aside from that it was fascinating to help out at the designer-publisher speed dating event, where I could see just how intense such an event could be -- it's a real trial by fire, running through a 5 minute pitch with a dozen or so different publishers in very quick succession.

Last year I also got back in the saddle regarding the 24 hour game design contest on Board Game Geek, submitting four games, and winning twice!  The contest is far more about taking part than winning (and it has been seen in the past that, should you care, it is not hard to astroturf your way to victory) but getting a win from time to time is really good for morale -- and I have certainly had at least my fair share of wins.  At Easter, I also gave a short talk about my experiences with the contest at the "BG Dev Con" event, and I know it inspired at least one other designer to have a go themselves, which is gratifying.

Another bonus for the year was that I found another game designer working for my employer, and we ended up regularly having lunch together and playing a game, testing one of our prototypes if it was available and suitable for a quick play, or doing a "show and tell", playing a short game that had some interesting feature that we could discuss afterwards.  Unfortunately he has now moved on to a new job, but the experience was both fun and very useful. (Check out Woodstock Games if you want to see what Phil is working on.)

Finally the games themselves.  I've worked on quite a few games over the last year, some of them quite intensely, and some hardly at all.  As it stands though, I have Invaded, Boogie Knights, and My Name Is... all into a pretty stable condition, a bunch of older designs (like An Angel on Top, Treasures of Atlantis, and now Scurvy Crew) dusted off and developed a little more, and a heap of new designs that have some potential (Roll Move Race, Shenanigans Express, and Dirigible, to name but three).  It's also pleasing to get two more games added to the Board Game Geek database: March Hares, and Giftmas at Dungeon Abbey.

There's all sorts of other stuff that I could talk about, and while I haven't achieved everything I wanted to do, and I did have dead time where I got nowhere, I think I can be happy with how things went last year.  It's a good foundation which should set me up to really push forward in 2018.  And that will be the subject of another post in the next few days or so...

2018-01-04 Edit to add...
I forgot to mention that I have been a bit better at arranging playtesting sessions at my house, and I owe a huge thank you to those fine people who turn up for the occasional-Monday and occasional-Tuesday sessions.  You have all been awesome and helped so very much.