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Ahhhhh why didn't I find this thread sooner. It just hit me that TG would probably have a board game design community. I've been shopping my prototype around publishers for the past two years to no avail, but most recently with AEG for their Big Game Night 2020 Women Game Designers theme. Hoping for the best there, but might end up Kickstarting myself in the next year.
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Nov 30, 2018 13:15
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So I came up with this idea a while back about a game about losing. Except I wanted losing to be more than just winning with a lower score golf style. I wanted a game where you felt like you were trying to lose, but by doing so you won. Both the feel of winning and losing all at once. I have no idea if I accomplished that goal, but did come up with an amazingly fun blind-hand (the mechanic Hanabi and Bomb Squad uses) trick taking game where you're trying not to win any tricks based on what little information you have about your own hand. All wrapped up in a cute theme about dogs and capitalism  https://walkingdoggos.com is my terrible placeholder site with a sell sheet. Frozen Peach fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Nov 30, 2018 |
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Nov 30, 2018 14:01
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silvergoose posted:That sounds super cool. Have you ever played losers chess or the like? (trying to lose all your pieces, you must take a piece if you can, you choose which if you can take more than one) I can't play normal chess. I can't imagine having to think about how to play losers chess, but I've heard of it. It's definitely close to the feeling I was trying to get out of my design.
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Nov 30, 2018 15:19
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I took the plunge and made the decision to attempt to self publish using The Game Crafter. It started as an experiment to see if I could put together a good prototype for pitching and demoing, but now I've pretty much decided to just run with it. My game's first copy is in production at the facility right now, and in roughly 10 days, assuming I like the results, I can make it live for sale. In preparation I've put everything up on Board Game Geek (though my designer credit hasn't been approved yet, nor have the links to the official site and store). I'm super excited right now, and super anxious about seeing the produced copy. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266382/walking-doggos
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Dec 3, 2018 22:33
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No sign of my first production copy yet... but these came in the mail today!   I feel so official!
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Dec 6, 2018 19:31
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My first copy came in today and it's so beautiful! It's everything I hoped it'd be.
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Dec 8, 2018 05:58
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I sold the first copy of my game to a rando last night! Godspeed rando, I hope you love it.
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Dec 18, 2018 18:07
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So back in July of last year AEG announced they were looking for Women Game Designers to have their games published at GenCon in 2020. I submitted my game, Walking Doggos, to it and never heard anything back. I pretty much gave up hope and ended up self-publishing on The Game Crafter because I was hard up for money and thought every penny helps so why not? I've sold 2 copies so far, one to a friend and one to a stranger, and I bought 6 copies for myself to demo with. So much for getting extra cash. Then January came around and I got an email that blew my mind. AEG wanted to talk to me more about Walking Doggos! They asked me a bunch of questions, all of which I responded to along with mentioning that I've the game on The Game Crafter. I was terrified that I burned my chance by self publishing, and considering it's now March and they hadn't gotten back to me I assumed I didn't move onto the next step in the process. UNTIL TODAY!!!! I just got an email from AEG... they are going to call me on Skype next week for me to pitch Walking Doggos to them! I'm so nervous and excited. I might get to get it actually published and on shelves for a decent price! I mean, it's just a pitch meeting, so there's still a big chance that nothing will come of it, but there's a small chance they'll like it! I'm going to die of anxiousness.
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Mar 15, 2019 23:53
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oh god the person I'm interviewing with is AEG's CEO, John Zinser. I just assumed it'd be with someone in their acquisitions department or something. NOPE.
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Mar 16, 2019 00:17
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John Zinser was awesome to meet and talk to. He seemed to really get my game and gave me great feedback on my pitch. Unfortunately they decided to pass on publishing the game due to already having a few trick taking games in the works that won't necessarily get published either. He did say to keep him in mind for my next designs, which is pretty awesome to hear. I got a few things in the works still with Walking Doggos though, and some more publishers to email and hopefully meet with at Geekway to the West this year. Trying to stay positive! Meanwhile I have 3 more game designs in various stages. Another card game, a worker placement, and a ameritrash horror themed game.
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Apr 1, 2019 23:27
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Skyl3lazer posted:Is anyone a pro on kickstarting games? I know it's a complicated process, but how time intensive is it to deliver alone? Like, I have a full time job, is it even remotely possible to handle something like that on my own? I've read a lot of Jamey Stegmaier's Kickstarter blogs, and it's definitely doable, but drat if I think I'm capable of doing it myself. More power to you and anyone else who does it though. I'm working on my second prototype right now. It's tentatively called Black Hat CTF, and is a hacking themed game where each player is trying to patch and clean their own computer while hacking other players' computers. I've had two really good play tests, but neither have culminated in a full play through of the game yet. 
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Apr 23, 2019 08:18
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So I'm at Geekway, and walk into the Play and Win room to find that almost all of my copies of Walking Doggos are checked out. I decide to go on a mission to find a copy being played and to introduce myself to the players and ask how they liked it and what their thoughts were. I'm walking through the main hall and find a copy sitting on a table with a filled out play and win card next to it. Awesome! I hype myself up to not be terrible stupid and awkward. Then I see who's sitting at the table: Jamey Stegmaier. Jamey loving Stegmaier played my game. All hope of being cool and not awkward is thrown out the window. Before I can even speak, he sees me there and says "Hey, Mattie! We just played your game! It was really good!" I about died. We ended up talking for like 10 minutes about game design and what I playtested in the game and how different scenarios worked out and about some of the decisions I made in the design, but in the end he really liked it! A few days later, I'm sitting at Geekway HQ taking a break from the rush of everything, and log into BGG to see if anyone rated it, and that's when I found that Jamey himself rated my game a 7! I tweeted out a screenshot because I was so excited, and he responded to me with this: https://twitter.com/jameystegmaier/status/1130273512596418562 I have no idea why he thought I'd not want the publicity of being in one of his videos, but "most innovative" of the con is an amazing thing to hear. I'm insanely happy right now.
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May 21, 2019 02:07
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You can never have too many doggo themed games 
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May 26, 2019 19:26
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Going to GenCon tomorrow morning. Most of the time I'll be working the Indie Game Alliance's vendor booth, which will be really fun, but during breaks I'll be attempting to pitch Walking Doggos as well as my newest prototype, Black Hat Capture the Flag, to publishers. Black Hat Capture the Flag is a hacking simulator turned into a worker placement/action selection style board game. Each player starts with a bare bones computer and 4 hackers, and must find and patch the computer's vulnerabilities before their opponents. Meanwhile, each player is also using the vulnerabiltiies they find to send exploits to other players. Here's an early prototype being played at a local game design meetup:
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Jul 30, 2019 21:50
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GenCon was amazing. I did publisher speed dating as well as pitched to some publishers on the show floor. Lots of great responses and feedback. The most important of which was to rename my game to White Hat, remove some of the take-that mechanics, and replace it with a trading mechanic. This speeds the game up, encourages more social player interaction, and the new name fits more thematically. I spent last night getting most of the game added to Tabletop Simulator. I still have some work to do, but it's getting there. 
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Aug 7, 2019 13:55
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White Hat: Capture the Flag is now on Tabletop Simulator. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1827367585 It turned out gorgeous, but I'm awful at organizing the tabletop to look pretty. Not sure how well it plays on TTS yet, but it should be playable at the very least.  Rules are available at https://whitehatctf.com/downloads/WhiteHatCTF.pdf
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Aug 9, 2019 17:04
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Darth Brooks posted:
TTS is surprisingly easy to learn. Its definitely a tool that can be used for prototyping, but I'm much more of a physical designer. Its hard for me to play and get a sense of how the game feels with clunky fake physics. In other news I got an email from a publisher in St. Louis that wants to meet me and try out White Hat. They're going to be at Pixelpop Festival, which I'm conveniently exhibiting at! This is huge for me. I have no idea how to prepare for a meeting like that though. I can't just write it off as another interview like I do with pitching. I'm late night anxietying over it and I still have a whole month to figure things out.
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Aug 14, 2019 04:49
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:wouldn't it be an elobrated pitch where you are also presumably going to play the game? It more comes down to how much polish and how many changes I should make to the game before they play it. They've seen the pitch and a how to play video from a point before GenCon. Between those points I made several changes to the game, so my panic comes down to do they want to see the game exactly as it was at the time of pitch, or does making improvements and further polishing to make the game better mean they'll want to see a better version. At this point I'm assuming they'll want to see the best version possible, and from talking with other designers there's no bad that can come from making changes between pitching and meeting. There's also the fact that I'm just nervous about a new kind of meeting. It's one thing to play a game with randoms at my local stores, or with coworkers or friends, but taking it to actual publishers is a different level of pressure that I'm not sure how to deal with and prepare myself for. I'm not sure what kind of questions to expect, what kind of experience to cater the game they play towards if at all, what kind of polish and perfection they'd be expecting. There's just a lot of unknowns that are burning through my head making things more complicated. I realize a lot of this is just anxiety in general, and nothing I can really prepare for, but anxiety just be that way.
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Sep 6, 2019 16:58
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PixelPop day 1 complete. Shout out to the goon who got to play White Hat with me and the publisher that I'm courting. My humble table:  I don't want to talk too much about how the meeting with the publisher went, but I'm feeling pretty good. I don't have any definitive news but we'll see what happens. PixelPop is a blast.
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Sep 15, 2019 06:53
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The publisher I met with at PixelPop decided they wanted to play my prototype some more, so they're having me ship my only copy for more playtesting. This is huge and I'm freaking out. I'm so close to being published.Rexides posted:Hey all, I want to run an idea I had with the thread. The concept of the game is middle eastern caravans transporting goods from Baghdad to the port cities of Beirut and Acre, with players accruing points for every successful trip. This sounds like a really interesting take on a pick up and deliver game. I like a lot of the ideas here. Maybe to add some more player interaction have players be able to "steal" goods from other players? IDK. Might make it a bit too mean, but if i you had a way to mitigate being chased down it'd be kinda fun.
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Sep 23, 2019 14:48
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I got some amazing feedback from the publisher I've been talking to. The fact that they haven't given me a no yet is huge. I really want this to end up working out. quote:Is it possible to represent vulnerability discovering/patching in game mechanics? So I spent this afternoon and this evening putting together new rules for discovery and patching, centered around having hackers doing qa testing. Though I might rename it to pen testing. IDK. I'm going to be at miniature market tomorrow for geekway micro, so if I'm lucky I'll get a good playtest in.
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Oct 26, 2019 05:17
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It's been far too long but I finally got a solid play test in. It went awesomely. The new QA Test action felt great for discovery of vulnerabilities. Unfortunately I found players were not taking risks and immediately dropping all their QA testing before any patching happened. This resulted in a fix for discovering but ultimately patching was left alone. This resulted in a mid game tweak to the rules for patching that required more QA testing to be done after patching to verify the patch. Effectively the final solution to the problem posed by the publisher was adding two actions too the game: Pen test, for discovery, and QA test for patching. Other considerations that I need to didn't some time thinking about: Alternate ways to end the game. For example should Bitcoin be a limited resource that ends the game when it runs out? If so I need to do a lot of math to figure out how many Bitcoin should be available per player. Changing how cycling cards out of the application offer works. I'm thinking of removing the end of round cycle and giving players the ability to flush the entire offer as an action. Will need to play test this. Regardless I'm extremely close to having the design finished. It felt great today and I think I even won over my strongest critic. Frozen Peach fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Nov 11, 2019 |
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Nov 11, 2019 09:48
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silvergoose posted:Yourself, right? Hahaha no. I tend to get really excited and overly love the games I'm designing. Even when they're failing miserably. There's one guy at the board game designers meetup that's just never had the game click because he's not techy and hears all the tech lingo and just can't grok the game because of it. 3rd play for him was a charm. I think I've gotten better at teaching it to non techy people.
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Nov 11, 2019 13:44
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I didn't get a no from the publisher I've been talking to, but I did get an email that they're putting a hold on submissions. I'm going back to pitching. Sent in a few submissions but I'm trying to come up with other companies that it'd be a good fit for.
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Feb 5, 2020 01:20
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I had an awesome play test of White Hat this past weekend and think I've finally solved the end game and scoring mechanics. Instead of converting everything to bitcoin and bitcoin to bonus points, bonus points are handled by secret goal cards that get passed out to each player. This gives each player something extra to work towards beyond just racing to patch all 4 vulnerabilities. At the end of the game the goal cards are revealed, and every player scores each card. I also tweaked the patching mechanics a little bit. Instead of Discover and Patch, there's Discover, Confirm, Patch, Release. Splitting it up further like this made the system less clunky, and a bit closer to the real world workflow. Discover, which is spending the code blocks, only has to be done once, rather than repeated on a failed die roll. Confirm is the die roll, that unlocks the ability to peak at a vulnerability card. Patch is spending the application cubes to patch the vulnerability Release is getting the QA/Pen Test dice back to 6. The game is built on The Game Crafter now as well, so it's easy to have new prototypes printed up. I enhanced the artwork a bit, and set it up to print tokens and everything. I'm excited to get my first print. Sadly, the prototypes cost $200 which makes them too expensive to actually try and self-publish the way I did with Walking Doggos. Oh well, I really want to get this professionally published anyways. It's going to happen. I believe.
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Feb 27, 2020 16:01
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Grace Baiting posted:That's super cool! Your game* has always sounded neat to me (please specify how much of each player's cryptocurrency gets hacked/exit-scammed at game end tho), and good luck!! I really want to include some anti-cryptocurrency mechanics, but I can't figure out a way to make those fun. Maybe if I get published and they want me to make an expansion that'll be a feature of the Black Hat expansion. Walking Doggos is great fun
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Feb 28, 2020 15:47
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One idea I had was a event deck. Each turn you read an event card that makes random poo poo happen. That'd allow me to have all the players have the same bad thing happen to them. Early editions of the game allowed you to hack other players' computer and run code on them, which I'd love to bring back in an expansion. You could then steal resources from players, or utilize their CPU resources for your own gain. Definitely stuff I want to bring back if an expansion happens, but for the first edition I quickly discovered I should polish the core before adding more mechanics to the mix.
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Feb 28, 2020 16:23
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"A hacker realizes he threw out a hard drive storing your bitcoin wallet. permanently lose a hacker as they search the local dump or lose all your bitcoin"
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Feb 28, 2020 17:22
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Another awesome playtest tonight. The new end game scoring cards made a HUGE difference but were almost too easy to accomplish. I made a few tweaks to the cards and hoping that makes a difference. I also found a few minor timing issues with the new changes from my last playtest that were ironed out by redesigning playerboards a bit. I'M SO CLOSE!!!
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Feb 29, 2020 06:49
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Prototype 3.0   The blue/purple/pink cards printed out darker than I expected. Future versions will have more differentiation of color. The CPU tokens are slightly too big for the player boards, so those need reprinted in a smaller chit size. Otherwise it's a huge improvement. The GPUs turned out great, but I need to see if I can cut them manually or if I have to take it a step further and figure out the cut pattern templates for The Game Crafter. As an experiment I ordered the acrylic meeples and wooden cubes from The Game Crafter with this release. I decided wooden meeples are far superior, and to go with 8mm wooden cubes for application resources, 10mm acrylic transparent cubes for CPU/GPU cores, and 8/12mm cubes for code blocks and cryptocurrency. Version 3.5 is ordered with those changes and I'm pretty happy with how my prototype looks now.
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Mar 1, 2020 05:02
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Reprints came through and turned out amazingly. I even went a step further and made custom cut lines for my GPUs so they'd be even better. 
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Mar 6, 2020 18:53
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PMush Perfect posted:Are there any plans to make a TTS module? I’d love to play this. IDK if that’d rankle your publisher, though. A slightly older build is up on TTS right now: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1827367585 I need to update it with some changes that I've made recently.
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Mar 6, 2020 22:33
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pseudanonymous posted:This is a cool thread. The Game Crafter has a ton of pieces and cards and such for sale.
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Mar 30, 2020 17:56
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I have a pitch meeting tomorrow with a major publisher. I'm freaking out! Wish me luck!
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Apr 1, 2020 04:32
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Grace Baiting posted:also STAY SAFE + HEALTHY It's over Skype but yes
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Apr 1, 2020 04:44
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A swing and a miss  Onto the next pitch! (Whenever that might be)
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Apr 2, 2020 05:18
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Sarx posted:The face time is still super valuable so don't see it as too big of a loss. Are they a publisher that has a public list of what they're looking for? Or were you able to leverage that information in your pitch? One thing I don't miss about my brief time freelancing was having to just kind of toil in the dark and hope there were publishers out there who wanted the same things I wanted to make/play? Publishers are getting better about putting that information out there, but sometimes you can get it out in a meeting. Facetime is super valuable, you're right. The company I pitched to has what they're looking for, and loved what they saw from me. They just didn't think they'd be able to market it and give it the attention it deserves. It was also too heavy for what they're ideally looking for in a game, which is disappointing but understandable. The feedback I got on the game itself was invaluable, as well as their feedback on my pitch. Honestly the pitch went great. It was amazing practice, and the guy I was pitching to said to never hesitate to send him what I'm working on. I still have one company out there with a copy of the game, that is my first choice as a publisher. We'll see if they bite once this pandemic mess calms down.
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Apr 2, 2020 13:41
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Sarx posted:I'm at that part in the cycle of the year where we're pitching and starting all new projects in our studio (though now working from home). Is anybody starting any new projects? Do you find starting new projects easy, or is it one of the more difficult parts of your process? Depends on how you define "starting a new project." There's a grey area between not having a project, and having a project, that I can't define. My current design came about because a friend of mine and I were talking about game themes and he mentioned that he wanted to see more hacking themed games. Does that count as the start of the project, or does the point where I had an idea for a game based on that theme the start of the project? It wasn't until months later that I went from "friend thinks theme good" to "huh I have an idea for a game." It doesn't feel hard to get started, assuming there's a project to start. Once I get an actual idea for a game, I can run with it pretty quickly. For me, the hardest part of design is the polish. The tiny tweaks during the final stages of the game seem to take the longest and are the hardest to playtest. PMush Perfect posted:
I know, right? It's wild. Anyways it's 2:30am and I just figured out a huge fix for one of the nagging issues I had with White Hat. One of those super tiny tweaks that just makes a whole chunk of the game somehow better. I'm excited.
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May 9, 2020 09:33
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Check out Nandeck, http://www.nand.it/nandeck/, as well. It does everything Component.Studio does, but for free.
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May 18, 2020 20:15
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 07:28 |
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If anyone wants a PNP of my game, Walking Doggos, it's now on my website (https://walkingdoggos.com), itch (https://afrozenpeach.itch.io/walking-doggos), and BGG (https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/201788/print-and-play-files) I've been meaning to finally just release a PNP copy for a while now, and COVID is a convenient excuse to get off my rear end and actually do it.
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May 19, 2020 05:15
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