So I’ve been designing a load of board games recently. Some of which I am close to finishing (the on paper stage). Then I can finally start making some prototypes and seeing just how wrong I was and get some feedback.
So far I have:
- A children’s push your luck dice game with Princes and Princesses you can dress up
- The very rough workings of a super hero dice drafting game (I started this before I even knew about Dice Masters)
- A miniless skirmish/campaign game (because mini’s are expensive to make) this is partly based on the Valkyria Chronicles videogame in terms of gameplay
- A euro style travelling game designed with my brother who has travelled the world and wanted to capture a bit of that in a game
- A tower defence, real-time, card game
- Ultimate Classics, these are micro-expansions to existing games to make them a bit more for gamers. (Think improvements to Connect Four, Snakes and Ladders etc.)
- An attempt to turn a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) into a board game. Very hard to capture that real-time action but toying with simultaneous action selection via programmable boards
- My top priority though is my superhero worker placement game. You’re a corporation competing against others to have the most famous team by the end of a season (a little bit inspired by the amazing Tiger and Bunny anime). You’ll be recruiting heroes and training them up with unique powers then sending them into the city to save citizens and battle criminals. This project is one that I’ve really enjoyed coming up with as there’s not really anything quite like it out there, that I’ve seen anyway
Hopefully I will have a few prototypes worked up soon so that I can get playtesting. If anything actually seems really good then I may approach publishers.
Not sure I’m ready to face Kickstarter and really want a publisher to help polish the game off. Many projects I’ve seen and even some I’ve backed could have done with someone looking over their game a little bit before self-publishing.
Kickstarter is a great platform and is definitely the easiest way to get a game out there, but it’s a bit oversaturated and really 1 in 100 seems any good and even then you take a gamble.
I’ve had some great games from Kickstarter but these have been the ones from publishers, Zombie 15” from iello and Xenoshyft and Zombicide: Black Plague from Cool Mini or Not in particular. The independent ones have been a little lacklustre, the pixel village one I got looked neat but components weren’t great and the game really didn’t have any lasting appeal for me.
So at the moment Kickstarter is out for me and I will try publishers first, but that is a long way off.
I will even try PnP (print and play) for the games that make sense to do this with to see if I can extend the testing out to a wider audience.
I will try to post a few updates as these games progress, I may even get some commission art done from the many artists I follow on Deviant Art. Good art always makes a prototype stand out and entices more people to give it a go.
I definitely want to have a few prototypes for UK Games Expo this year as that’s a great place to get people trying out your games and even getting a few publishers looking at it.
That’s all in the future, for now I need to cement my ideas and get the rules written up before I can do anything else.
Stay tuned for more here and on my Twitter @AbsurdNerdBlog
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