I don’t know if you’re supposed to make dev logs for tabletop games because I’ve only ever made digital games. But I’m going to anyway for my mobs of adoring fans closely following the development of this game.

Where Are We Now?

We’re in a funny phase of meta development, with a few balls in the air simultaneously. I’m juggling to make this happen. Things I’m working on:

The Website

Obviously, this website. It’s helping me organize my thoughts on the game and also preparing a necessary web presence for a Kickstarter and eventually shop.

Card Game Logistics

There’s a surprising amount of logistics that’s going into actually designing the game. My goal is to sell the game at $19.95. That means that, in order to not lose money, I need to print in a certain volume (to get the volume discount to get the cost per deck down), and work out deck size. The number of cards I create for the game and the way I balance quantity of each card per deck is going to come down to game balancing, but also trying to keep the cost of the deck down–above a certain number of cards the price per deck goes up.

Social Media Presence

I’ve started a Twitter account. A very bare bones one, but an account none the less. With digital games I kind of know the ropes. Screenshots, talking about gameplay, interacting with other digital game developers. In the case of a tabletop game, I’m really in uncharted territory. I’m not sure how much of the game I should show. Once I have some images of playtesting, I’ll definitely show those. Speaking of which…

Playtesting!

Maybe the most important thing… I’m in an awkward phase of, I have what I think is a pretty solid rule set and a pretty solid deck, but I haven’t play tested it yet. It’s possible (but hopefully unlikely) that I’ll test the game, say, wow this sucks, and that will be that. I’m certainly hoping that’s not the case!

This weekend I’m planning on going to Fedex Office to print a B&W plain paper version of the deck, cut it out, and do some playtesting. I’m also working (slowly) at creating a version of the game in Tabletop Simulator so I can play with people remotely. I don’t have a lot of people to playtest with locally, but I have a lot of people who can help remotely, so having it digitized would be a boon.

Where Are We Going

Obviously the game needs a ton of playtesting before it’s even a game. But the roadmap is playtest->PR and Kickstarter->Initial run to Kickstarter backers->exhibit at tabletop conventions. That’s the plan!

Thanks!

Thanks for stopping by! Stay tuned for more updates!