The board games are slowly coming together!
Feedback from Wellycon and boardgame nights is being incorporated into the three games that are in playtest stage - Master Baker, AsteroMiners, and Dragons Wild.
Dragons Wild cards are getting upgrades, and I have lined up a printer for the cards!
The black outline of the creatures has been thickened, and the backgrounds have been muted a bit. Next up is making sure the cards fit at standard 66x88mm, with a full bleed edge, and adding all the numbers back on again. This won't take as long as it sounds, I hope! I have a printer lined up for the cards, so as soon as the cards are ready I'll get a final prototype print run done and tested. The last two steps are to source shipping costs, and then to presumably begin the Kickstarter!
AsteroMiners needs more playtesting! It is up on Tabletopia website for play, in beta mode. I would love to hear from you if you'd like to try it out on the computer! I've also opened a dialogue with a stamp company about making a die for cutting tokens!
The prototype set needs size adjusting, at the moment the hexes need to be bigger and the lines clearer and probably to be set into a board so they don't slide around. Next steps for this game include fixing those two things, printing a handful of changed goal cards, and more playtesting in person. Steps after that include playing with boards and box sizes, and adding bleed edges to the token pictures.
Master Baker will also benefit from the token cutting die when that is ordered, allowing me to cut prices on printing. A card printing place has said they can print the cards, and print but not cut the coins. This will allow me to use NZ businesses wherever possible as well as keeping costs down as reasonably as I can.
I've been spending a lot of time working on the star systems for Star Systems. Whoda thunk I'd use my Astrophysics class? It's been a LONG time since that A+ and I've been grinding hard and tearing my hair out over the maths. I'd like to do a shout out to everyone to search YouTube for Artifexian who makes marvellous worldbuilding videos. Want to know how close your habitable planet should be to its star, and what other planets you can put in your system? Want to know how to make a binary star system with planets that work, and don't just swing around and crash into the stars or get flung out into the great black? He's your man. Still not sure if I want to fork out the money to get Universe Sandbox computer program, but if I do it'll do great visualisations.
And last but not least, I've started a new game over the last two days. Its placeholder name is Pyramids, because you place flat marbles in a pyramid shape during the game. Points will be scored by making lines or other features in single colours on your pyramid. But it's not that easy - each person's turn brings a random element into the game based on a pair of dice that give an action and who it affects. Stay tuned for more information!
