TG Design/Production/Publishing: Shameless self-promotion is good, actually

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Design/Production/Publishing: Shameless self-promotion is good, actually

Sarx: May 27, 2007; The Marksman

It's cool to see all the creativity here.

I'm not an indie designer anymore as I now work in the board games industry. I designed an app-enabled RPG/Story Game called Weave, then moved mostly into the board game space. I worked on Disney Villainous, Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger, Jaws, the upcoming Marvel Villainous and Godzilla: Tokyo Clash games and a bunch of unannounced stuff. I'm genuinely interested in being as helpful as I can to tabletop game designers so I just wanted to pop in here and make myself available for answering questions or being a resource.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2020 17:34

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 13:58

Sarx: May 27, 2007; The Marksman

Elblanco posted:

Would I be allowed to toss out a couple ideas I've had for games and get some feedback? I mostly want to know if they're even practical to produce in the long run, but I don't have any experience actually producing games.

I think that's probably fine. There is also a board game design thread if they fall more under that.

I work in tabletop games so I can probably provide some insights either way.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2020 02:24

Sarx: May 27, 2007; The Marksman

Elblanco posted:

Thanks guys! I'll probably copy all this into the other thread too.

So I have an idea for a Robot fighting game that I'm currently calling Mecha Melee. It would mainly be 1v1 gameplay with each player building a robot model out of pre-magnitized parts. They would also have a small board with cards also showing the abilities and stats, as well as being used to represent when weapons and abilities have been used. This board I'm calling the control panel. The game is played on a 3 foot by 3 foot play space with movement being measure with a ruler or measuring tape.

Overall I'm trying to make a game with customization robot model that fight, kind of a tabletop interpretation of the Custom Robo series of video games.

In theory I want them to be 6 or so inches tall, and be able to swap parts so you have your own robot to play. My big concern is that if I ever get to a point where I can produce the game, would this even be possible? I feel like it would require sacrificing detail of the parts, or size or material quality.

I know it probably sounds weird that I'm nowhere near printing anything, but I would at least like to invest a ton of time and energy into making a game that can feasibly be printed one day.

Moving into production on this, it depends how you foresee it. If you want it to be 3D Printable with players putting in the magnets on their own, that's easy enough, but confines your player base to a VERY niche set of individuals.

If you wanted to actually have a factory create this, with the magnets and pieces already assembled together, that's going to be expensive. Magnets aren't cheap, and the labor to place the magnets into all of the minis on the assembly line will really increase the cost over a 1-4 piece assembled miniature. I think you'd probably have to sell it direct-to-consumer, so that you can keep your price point manageable and still have a margin. Kickstarter would love a good gimmick like this though if you put in the work ahead of time, but I'm not sure something this outside-the-box and of this magnitude is a great idea as a first crowdfunding campaign.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 06:18

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > TG Design/Production/Publishing: Shameless self-promotion is good, actually