Now that I had a playable prototype (with a theme and everything!) it was time to show it to more players. This time however, I didn’t have a playtest group. Not only that, it was July 2020, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Everyone was at home in quarantine, and it would have been irresponsible to break it to get someone to playtest my game. Time to get creative!
My cousin Miguel wanted to try it, so I improvised a setup with a tripod and a webcam in order to run a playtest through Skype. Since Cortiça has no hidden information, I could handle the cards for both of us. All he had to do was tell me his move.
Playtesting via webcam on an improvised streaming setup, on an improvised desk (Thank you, Ben!)
It worked but it was not ideal. The tripod had to be very close to the table and I had to be extra careful not to bump it with either my arms or my feet. It was tricky to light the cards without getting glare on the card sleeves and my camera’s resolution was a bit too low to keep up with the text on the cards. It was finally time to take Tabletop Simulator for a spin.
Recreating the game in Tabletop Simulator was straightforward. Once I had properly formatted files (one image with all the card fronts, another with all the backs), importing the cards was a breeze. That took care of the components! At this stage I didn’t want to get into scripting or automation because the game was still in a very fluid state where it could change drastically from one playtest to the next.
All the card fronts in one image, ready to import to Tabletop Simulator
Tabletop Simulator has a lot of potential but its interface often gets in the way, complicating simple things such as tucking a card under another. Even after learning its controls, it still feels like playing a game while wearing boxing gloves. This can affect playtests in a number of ways. Due to its cost and controls, the players who are willing to playtest are often very involved in the hobby. A more casual player would still have to go through its learning curve, and it will color their opinion of the game. In addition, games tend to run longer than they would with a physical prototype.
In this occasion though, it suited me very well. I was even able to find a workaround for several of the technical issues such as its price and interface. Just like my playtest with Miguel, I could run Tabletop Simulator on my machine and share my screen, moving the cards for both players. This allowed me to playtest with people that didn’t own Tabletop Simulator, and they didn’t even have to learn the controls!
Cortiça’s prototype on Tabletop Simulator
All the while I continued playtesting at home with Sara, always patient and supportive. The game took shape as we tried different strategies and made adjustments. My digital notes gradually turned into the game’s rulebook – but that’s a topic for the next article, where we’ll cover the contest submission.
If you don’t want to miss a post, you can subscribe to get them via e-mail:
The first prototype for Cortiça, handmade and still without a theme, or a name.
At the end of Part 1 I had a high level idea of how the game could work, but it hadn’t been tested and I had yet to define what it would be about.
At this point I could either look for a theme to design the game around, or try to get the game’s basic rules to work and then find a theme that fits. The good thing is, there is generally no wrong answer here. As long as they’re in tune in the end, you can start however you want.
Given the strict component count for the competition (18 cards!) there was a risk of falling in love with a theme that demanded more components, or that would make me want to stretch the definition of a worker placement game to the point where it would no longer qualify for the competition. Gameplay it is, then!
There was still one question left to answer before assembling the first prototype: I knew what 13 of the cards will be used for, but what about the other 5? I gave each player an additional resource type to allow for more depth in their actions. The other three were made into public double-sided goal cards which would change throughout the game. These were meant to add variability and to help prevent a dominant strategy, which is when you have a strategy that’s so powerful that there is no reason to do anything else. Watch out for those, they can sap all the fun out of a game!
The first playtest went well. The core system worked, the economy needed another pass (but that’s to be expected!), and the game took exactly one hour, which is a lot longer than I would like. After a few tweaks, it worked a lot better! It was finally time to start looking for a theme.
Putting together a prototype in Affinity Designer
As I wrote in Part 1, I wanted this game to be about a facet of Portuguese culture that I hadn’t seen represented in boardgames before. Turns out, there are plenty of those! After a fun brainstorm session with Sara Mena, we ended with an A4 page full of possibilities. There was one tricky aspect, however…
The core of the game is resource conversion, which could suggest a theme of harvesting or manufacturing something, but there is an extra wrinkle that doesn’t line up with the standard manufacturing process. In the game you use your workers to gather A to turn into B, which you can use to get C. Think of C as points: once you reach a specific amount, you win. There are several ways to turn combinations of A and B into C, but you can also can turn C back into a larger amount of B! That’s because I wanted to give players the option to spend their hard-earned points for a chance of getting even more later on – but will they have enough time to do it? This could also work as a catch-up mechanism, because it gives a losing player a chance to sprint ahead.
The obvious solution would be for C to be money, so exchanging it for B could represent buying it, but since getting C is the goal of the game, that could easily be interpreted as “money is good”, and I did not want that at all. I’d much prefer if my game could help people forget about capitalism for a bit.
Fortunately, there was one theme on the list that could fit all of the gameplay so far: Cork!
Three wallets made out of cork fabric.
Cork is a big deal in Portuguese culture. You may have only seen it as wine stoppers, but has long been used to make tools and the recent invention of cork fabric has greatly expanded its possibilities. Not only can you make things like wallets, umbrellas, hats and even postcards out of it, but it can also be recycled.
So now I have a theme! When applied to my game, the result is: The players will assign their workers to grow cork oaks, extract the bark and process it into different products made out of cork. Players can also recycle their cork, which gives them raw material which they can turn into other products. I also had a name: “Cortiça” (/kuɾˈti.sɐ/), the Portuguese word for Cork.
On the next article we’ll cover playtesting during a pandemic.
If you don’t want to miss a post, you can subscribe to get them via e-mail:
Photo of a cork oak tree in a dry Alentejo field, by António Carrapato
At long last, let’s talk about Cortiça! What is it, and where did it come from?
After Blight Chronicles: Agent Decker wrapped up, I was done. It was such a negative experience that it left me incapable of working on my own projects for a while. It taught me what a panic attack was, even if I didn’t have a name for it yet. Every so often I’d come up with an idea for a mechanism or a theme that seemed interesting and would write them down, but as soon as I started to develop it into a prototype, there would be instant splitting headaches and my heart rate would go up. The message was clear, I had to take a break. This was supposed to be a hobby. This was supposed to be fun.
This went on for a few years.
It had been almost eight years since me and my partner moved abroad for work. I wouldn’t describe myself as a patriotic person, but as time went on I started to miss facets of Portuguese culture that couldn’t be found anywhere else. It was heartwarming to see new, popular boardgames using Portuguese themes but they seemed to focus on just a few aspects of the culture such as wine and azulejo tiles. There’s so much more! One day I brought this up on Twitter and a random user responded with an angry version of “If you’d like to see more games with Portuguese themes, why don’t you make one?”. I think they were just trying to shut me up, but I wanted to make something to answer back. Is it wrong to make a game out of spite?
In June 2020, Button Shy Games announced a new design contest: “Create an 18 card worker placement game. Cards only.“. This seemed impossible! Worker placement games usually have plenty of tokens for workers, currency, resources, sometimes even victory points! How can you compress it all into only 18 cards? It got my brain going. I still wanted to take things easy so I didn’t commit to the contest right away, but I had to see if I could crack this puzzle.
Boardgame designers often get asked “Do you start with the theme or the mechanics?”. In this case the component constraint was just as important. If it can’t fit those cards, it’s no good. So I started to do research on worker placement games. I had to get to the essence of what makes them work, because there wouldn’t be room for much more. Action drafting, timing, blocking, action resolution, collecting and converting resources, multiple paths to victory. In 18 cards…!
This needed a new approach. I figured one way to make sure the game would fit into 18 cards was to sketch what it could look like while in play. This really helped! I still didn’t know what the game was about or how it played, but this let me allocate cards for different functionalities to see how many I would need for a basic worker placement game. After multiple attempts on paper I moved to the computer and sketched something that started to look like a game:
Mock screenshot of Cortiça
There is a central row of action cards with one or two slots where you can place workers. Each player has their own worker and resource cards, in their color. Workers are double-sided so they could be upgraded. Resources are counted by rotating the card. The amount on the top edge is your current total and they’re double-sided, so each card can count up to seven. And the best part is, I have five spare cards!
Now that I had an idea of the general shape and limits of the game, I could start to figure out what it is about, and how it plays.
If you don’t want to miss a post, you can subscribe to get them via e-mail:
Remember this blog? It’s been a while since I posted regularly about what I’ve been working on. Sure, there was the odd update and catch-up here and there, but there was so much that wasn’t mentioned here, from new game prototypes, to a new design being picked up by two publishers and even winning an award before it was out!
Why did I stop posting? Let’s get into it.
If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen me talk about most of these things. It was so easy to tweet a photo or a quick note about something, compared to writing a proper post here, and there was an eager audience that engaged with it. But at the rate that Twitter is imploding, I can’t count on it being there for very long. So I will be turning some of those tweets and threads into blog posts, and possibly turning Twitter URLs into screenshots instead, to make them more future-proof. Also, if you follow me on Twitter I’d like to ask you to follow me on Mastodon instead, because I’m not using Twitter anymore.
I still work in videogames during the day, just as I have for the last 13 years. Doing so has required five international relocations so far, which certainly had its fun aspects but it also meant having to leave my design group and playtesters behind more than once. It’s no coincidence that my games started focusing on smaller player counts. They’re the ones I can playtest at home.
Last but definitely not least, I spent several years working with a very controlling boardgame publisher who kept their eye on my social media and complained whenever I posted about other projects, so I stopped posting – but I didn’t stop sketching other games. I had to. It was the only creative outlet during those years working on games I did not want to make. It burned me out and I’m still recovering, so naturally the pace has had to change.
That chapter is over. I’m not working with them anymore, the games are out of print and the rights have reverted back to me. But I am getting ahead of myself. I’ll have more to say about that later.
So welcome back, and I hope you stick around for the new posts!
If you don’t want to miss a post, you can subscribe to get them via e-mail:
Every so often I look for talks about the process of designing games and only found a few. Maybe I’m spoiled by all the postmortems that happen in the videogame medium but I’d love to see something similar from boardgame designers, especially about working with IP or adapting games from one medium to another.
So when Gamedev Camp invited me to do a talk and let me pick the topic, I knew what I had to do! I went with the design process of adapting SUPERHOT from a videogame to a card game.
I was interviewed by Alice Vilaça for the radio show “Portugueses no Mundo”, which is about the experiences Portuguese people have when they’re living abroad.
If you speak Portuguese you can listen to it on their website or on the subtitled video below.
In addition, here is the transcript in English:
Alice Vilaça: Manuel Correia is 34 years old. He’s from Lisbon and is in Ireland. He arrived in Galway in January 2020 and it was here, in Ireland, that it all began – in 2013, followed by other international experiences. The two years in Ireland were followed by two in Germany, then two more in Sweden, until a return to Ireland in early 2020.
Manuel, is it predefined that these experiences are meant to only last two years?
Manuel Correia: Not at all. It’s just that I work in a very volatile industry and I don’t always have any control over what happens next.
AV: We’ll get to what happens next, this was just a bit of a tease.
2013, Ireland. What makes you leave our country and head towards Ireland, at the time?
MC: I think this needs a bit of context.
I never found a career I identified with in Portugal. I was quite lost for a while and eventually I was able to find a group of people which were also interested in making games. From then on I tried to head in that direction. It took a while but I got there.
I started at a studio in Portugal. About two years later I went to another. And at a certain point, when I started planning the next steps, I realized that there was no other worthwhile studio in the country, at least in my opinion, and I started to look for a job abroad. So when I had the job offer it wasn’t a surprise. It was because I had been sending CVs to other studios for a while.
AV: Was it at this time that you realized that Portugal is small – or at least your industry is small here – that you considered going abroad? Or was the international experience always present in your mind?
MC: It was always present. Games have always been a part of my life and I didn’t know of a single one that had been made in Portugal until fairly late. This lead me to think that it wasn’t possible to make games from Portugal. I didn’t know anyone who did this. I didn’t know of any studios in the country. It felt like a career that could only happen to other people.
That’s why I was lost, because I was looking for a career that resonated with me and I couldn’t find it.
AV: Is it fair to say that you found your path when you got this offer to come to Ireland?
MC: I believe I found my path when I was able to get into the games industry, which was still in Portugal, but I felt limited and blocked. So yes, being able to leave unblocked my path and broadened my horizons.
AV: And what a path it has been!
How was your first experience in Ireland? How was it when you got there? At the time, a different city from the one you’re at today.
MC: Oh yes, different for sure. At the time it was Dublin, now I am in Galway, but I must say it wasn’t completely new to me because I had already studied in the United Kingdom for six months in 2008 and Ireland has a lot in common with it. In fact, I’d say it only has the good parts of the UK.
AV: In any way, it was a different experience this time. You had already studied in the United Kingdom but I believe that the feeling of heading out to start a new life makes the experience quite different.
How was the experience of adapting to this new life, Manuel?
MC: It was very interesting. Naturally there were a lot of cultural changes, it was a new country, one I didn’t know yet. In fact, I moved here without ever having visited before. The whole process of finding this job was done through the phone.
And to add to the new experiences, it was also the first time I moved in with my partner! We lived in different houses in Portugal and took the chance to live together here. So there were a lot of new things at the same time.
The first encounter was already very positive. We found nice people right away. We started in a rented room in the city suburbs, in the home of a lady named Louise, and I remember that one of the first culture shocks, for us, was when she offered us tea and poured milk in it. It was something I had never seen, but it works quite well with the tea that they drink here.
AV: A different habit but sometimes you can see it in movies, when you hear someone asking if they want milk in their tea.
Before we return to Ireland and hear about the experience you’re having now, I’ve already mentioned at the start that you’ve also been in Germany and Sweden. We won’t be able to look into all these experiences in great detail but I will ask for a word, or moment, that defines each of those experiences and we’ll include Ireland.
Let’s start there. How would you resume your first experience in Ireland in a word or a moment?
MC: I’ll go with the word “Community”. Here I met a lot of people with similar goals and values to mine, so I felt very welcome. It was hard to leave and it’s a relief to find them again here, even in a different city.
AV: Germany.
MC: Efficiency. I know this is a bit of a stereotype, but right when I started working at the studio they promised their players that there would be something new in the game every week. If you know how these games are made that sentence is enough to give you vertigo but we were able to do it, at a great cost.
AV: Sweden.
MC: Innovation. I had the opportunity to work with tools which weren’t public yet. Several were secret, related to new technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality, and it was really, really interesting to explore what could be done with them before they were commonplace, before standards were set.
AV: Manuel, were all these relocations caused by your professional life?
MC: No doubt. They were either the result of job offers or ambitions to progress my career further.
AV: So the return to Ireland in January 2020 was also motivated by your professional activity.
MC: Exactly. I was invited by personal heroes, which I’ve long admired, so I could not refuse.
AV: Is it fair to say you currently have your dream job?
MC: I’d say so. I am working at Romero Games, which will sound familiar if you’re into games because it was founded by John Romero, the creator of DOOM.
AV: I confess it’s a whole language I’m not familiar with, but certainly those who are into games will know what you’re talking about.
Manuel, did the return to Ireland feel like coming back home?
MC: Yes, in multiple ways. As I said, it was a chance to work with friends, heroes and people who I already knew but after two countries where we didn’t speak the main language, it’s such a big relief to be somewhere where I can talk to everyone.
AV: Language is a very important factor in an experience like this. The process of adapting and integrating is so much stronger and deeper when you can speak the local language.
MC: Oh yes, absolutely.
For example, English has opened many doors for me but in Germany not everyone spoke English and there were even some proud people who did not admit they did.
No matter how hard people were to deal with, machines were so much worse. Whenever I needed to speak to automatic answering machines in a language I didn’t understand, without the chance to ask them to repeat or to speak a bit slower, it was very discouraging.
AV: In this return to Ireland and with the feeling of returning home, was there still a process of adaption? Was there some continuity to the process which you had begun back in 2013? Was it easier because you (or both of you, because this was something you’ve lived together) already had some experience moving to other countries?
MC: Yes, there was some continuity. Much of the paperwork had already been taken care of in the first time. We had the equivalent of a Social Security number. This was the easiest out of all the relocations.
AV: All that experience must have helped.
How would you define the Irish? Are they very different from the Portuguese?
MC: No, I wouldn’t say they are very different from Portuguese people because they are also very warm, kind and have a good sense of humor. The main difference for me is that they are excellent at telling stories. You can probably tell by the amount of celebrated Irish authors but it’s not just those. This is also true of people you meet in your daily life.
AV: Do you feel at home?
MC: Yes. But really, given the situation, that question is a bit of a trap. Due to the pandemic I have been at home for over a year and a half (laughs), so I very much feel at home. I feel very comfortable here.
AV: When I ask if you feel at home it’s to know if there are any aspects of the daily life there which you find hard to adapt to, so you don’t feel completely at home. Is this happening, in your case?
MC: Not really. If it had been my first time here I’m sure there would be some, but this time we knew what to expect.
AV: You were talking about the pandemic and the fact you’ve been at home for a year and a half. You could say the same is true for a big part of the population. Do you feel that is preventing you from experiencing this fully?
MC: Yes, but I don’t think that is a bad thing. In the other times, after a year and a half I felt like I knew all there was to see in the area. Here, given the health guidelines we’ve had to take it one step at a time but that only leaves us with more to see in the future. I can’t complain.
AV: How is your daily life at the moment, Manuel? Are there still any restrictions? Are things slowly going back to normal?
MC: Yes, exactly. There are still some restrictions and things seem to be getting back to normal. The pandemic started right after I got here (it wasn’t me!) so I didn’t get to see a lot of what normal life was like. It’s hard to compare.
The vaccination rates are rising, some places are reopening with some caution and some controversy, but things seem to be progressing at a good pace.
AV: Let’s look at the professional side of the experience, since it seems to be driving it. We know you work with videogames. You might have worked on some games people are playing at the moment. What do you do, exactly?
MC: I am a game designer. I create videogames and boardgames. It can be tricky to explain to those outside the industry so I’ll compare it with cinema: I am somewhere between a screenwriter and a director. I have to come up with ideas, understand how they work and describe them clearly enough so that the team can bring them to life.
AV: Are you fulfilled, professionally? Or is this a path in which every new project, every new game, offers a chance for higher fulfillment?
MC: (laughs) Both. At the moment I am fulfilled but it was that search that lead me from place to place. The industry is very volatile and it’s hard to control what the next project at the studio will be, and if it will be something you’ll like.
AV: Is there any project which you particularly enjoyed working on, or is the next one going to be the best one yet?
MC: That’s very hard to answer. There are two games that come to mind.
One is a game called Cookout, which is a virtual reality game about making sandwiches with your friends. There are four people around a table and they have to prepare the customer’s orders. That was very fun to make because, contrary to the trend, this is a cooperative game so you have to coordinate and work together.
The other is Multiuniversum, the first boardgame I was able to publish. That one is very important to me because all the games I had worked on until that point had been sold digitally, which makes it very easy for them to disappear without my control.
It’s a lot more fulfilling to be able to hold something I made with my hands. It’s here, it’s in my shelf. It’s mine and I can pass it on to my grandkids. To me that makes it a lot more valuable than the rest.
AV: We can hear that in your smile.
Manuel, when you were a child, if someone had told you that at 34 you would be in Ireland and working in your dream job, would you believe it?
MC: Not at all! As I said, for a long time I hadn’t even realized that games were made by people. They just appeared in stores and they were fun.
AV: Let’s explore Galway! What kind of city is it?
MC: It’s relatively small but very vibrant, it has a culture of arts and music. There are buskers on the streets, but naturally not as many at the moment. The restaurants are excellent and I can’t wait to explore more.
I’m really enjoying it here. It is close to the sea so there are always boats, seagulls and rain. But it’s not as intense as in Portugal. The raindrops seem smaller and most people don’t even own an umbrella.
AV: Since it rains more often the rain itself not as intense as here. When it rains here, it’s no joke.
Have you found a favorite spot in the city, Manuel?
MC: Yes! I think the answer is predictable but it’s a place called Dungeons & Donuts. It’s a boardgame store that also makes their own donuts. They have a large game library and room to play, so it’s a great place to try new games instead of having to buy every single one.
When things were normal I went there every weekend to play with others and it was great. I really miss it.
AV: I started the conversation by asking if the plan was to be there for two years but you said it depends on your professional activity. Is this Irish adventure meant to last?
MC: I believe so, but judging from past experiences I can’t be completely sure. The two years in each place look deliberate but they were never planned. This is always so tied up to how things are going at the studio that it’s always hard to say.
AV: What has been the biggest learning of this game, or this experience?
MC: Learning how to live with this uncertainty. We plan things as best we can and stay prepared for whatever might come next.
AV: Do you miss our country? What do you miss the most from Portugal?
MC: I miss the people, naturally family and friends but I also miss the places I used to go to most often. Train stations, Gare do Oriente, downtown. These are places I like to revisit when I go to Portugal but with the schedule so full of people to meet, I don’t always get the chance.
AV: Due to the pandemic these visits to Portugal have become more limited. Have you been able to travel during the pandemic?
MC: No. We haven’t even tried. In the current situation we wouldn’t feel safe in an airport or a plane, surrounded by so many strangers. The last time we went to Portugal was before we moved here. Mine was in October, almost two years ago.
AV: In the last year and a half, was it more difficult to be abroad? Did miss it more, did you feel like you were even further due to the current situation?
MC: Strangely, no. I’ve been talking to my family more often than I used to, in part because social isolation has also forced them to use apps to communicate, so now I can follow the conversation too! I end up being a lot more in touch compared to when they were talking to each other face to face.
AV: So you feel closer, despite the distance?
MC: I’d say so, yes.
AV: Manuel, the only thing missing is a word! What word would resume everything you lived in these years since you’ve left Portugal?
MC: Horizon. I felt very limited in Portugal and leaving broadened my horizons.
AV: We can tell! Thank you.
Manuel Correia is in Galway, Ireland. He is a Portuguese person around the world since 2013.
Fortune Tellers is a game I’ve been thinking about for eight years.
Back then I tried two different prototypes. The concept had potential but the gameplay had flaws that I didn’t know how to solve at the time. It was enticing and intimidating, much bigger than the ones I had made before. Shortly thereafter I had to move out of the country and left it behind.
I still think of it regularly because the theme makes me laugh and because – as far as I know – there hasn’t been another game like it. Since it’s something I’d still like to play, I guess I’ll have to make it myself. I hope the added experience will help to cross the gameplay bump.
So, what is this game about? Here is the synopsis:
You are the village’s fortune teller. For years people have come to you in search of insights about health, relationships, business and more.
…until there was something you didn’t see coming: a second fortune teller set up shop in the village and your steady stream of clients has turned into a drip. It’s time to put your skills in practice and regain your reputation!
The only way to make points is by correctly predicting the future. You’ll write predictions, place them face down on the table and then will try to get the other players to do the things you wrote. When they come true, you get to say “Aha!”, show them the prediction and get to feel very smug.
The main design challenge in this project is that there needs to be another game to make predictions about. One lives inside the other and they need to work together. The game needs to have actions that can be predicted, but can’t feel too constrained.
I’m swapping the worker placement mechanic of the original for a rondel and an area majority game to emulate word of mouth around the village. Just like with Cortiça, I started by making a mockup “screenshot” of what it could look like during play to help visualize the full game and how many components it would require. This is what it currently looks like:
Current mockup for Fortune Tellers, 2021
The next step is to turn it into a prototype so it can be playtested. Since the pandemic is still going it will have to be digital, which is a good excuse to finally learn my way around Tabletop Simulator to playtest online. Maybe you’ll get to play it!
Here is a quick catch-up of what’s been going on lately:
Empire of Sin
It’s out, boss! Empire of Sin was released on December 1st on PC, Mac, Playstation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. This is several milestones rolled up into one. I had never released a game on a console and now it’s out on pretty much all of them! Also, until now all of my videogame releases had been digital so it’s a special thrill to be able to hold it in my hands (once my copy gets here) and to see it on store shelves.
Imirt
Imirt represents game developers and creators from all disciplines throughout Ireland, both analog and digital. I’ve been following their work from abroad and now that I’m back I want to help. The first step was to give a talk, the second was to run for their 2020 board elections and now I was elected! Thank you to all of you who voted for me.
Now it’s time to roll up my sleeves and start putting those plans in action!
Congratulations to the new Imirt board members – Basil Lim, Craig Stephens and Manuel Correia!
Thanks to everyone who ran in the elections, everyone who voted and to our three outgoing board members – Robin David O'Keeffe, Peter Lynch, and Keith O'Conorhttps://t.co/370FxZZ4O6
Cortiça made it to the top 10 finalists in Button Shy’s 18 card worker placement contest. I haven’t really mentioned this one here, have I? This one deserves its own post. Soon.
For the second part of the catch-up I’d like to talk about digital games. These don’t come up as much here because of NDAs but I do like to celebrate when they come out!
Cook-out: A Sandwich Tale
Cook-out was my main project at Resolution Games. It’s a cooperative game about making sandwiches in virtual reality, for the Oculus Quest and Rift S. It was really fun to work on because virtual reality is in such an early stage that there aren’t many standards on how to do things we take for granted in flat screen games such as menus, which suddenly become complex once they’re diegetic. If a floating menu takes space in the room, then it can also obscure the other players! Suddenly there are wrong ways to interact with buttons, such as from the back.
We wanted to avoid menus as much as we could, and on a multiplayer game this is even trickier because there are moments where players have to decide on things together like which level to play, if they want to restart and so on. That interaction was one of my favorite additions to the game. Instead of having “Yes/No” buttons you use your hands and do a thumbs up to vote “yes” and a thumb down to vote “no”. Once everyone has voted, the game moves forward.
We had to figure it out on our own and with luck, some of our solutions may stick around for future games.
Glimt: The Vanishing at the Grand Starlight Hotel
Glimt was a very interesting project as well. Our briefing was to make a more narrative-focused game for the Magic Leap. We quickly found that one of the advantages of the headset is that it allows you to walk around the scene to see it from different angles, so we thought that photography could be an interesting mechanic to use. Placing props and characters in a dollhouse set also felt very natural so we ended up combining the two: You are a psychic detective. If you can recreate the scene with your props you can look into the past and see what actually happened! Then you can take and bring back photos to prove it.
This time I was involved in the story as well, since it’s so connected to the gameplay. It was fun!
There was definitely a learning curve involved in learning how to use a Magic Leap. Finding our way around the limited field of view, figuring which minimum space would be acceptable, the ideal lighting conditions, only having a few buttons, working around the fact that dark colors just turn transparent…! That said, when everything works, it’s magical.
Empire of Sin
Now I’m in Ireland once again, this time in Galway. I’m now at Romero Games, working with a team composed of both friends and personal heroes! An offer I could not refuse.
Empire of Sin is a strategy game set in 1920s Prohibition-era Chicago. Slip into the shoes of one of fourteen bosses, assemble a gang, build and manage your criminal empire and defend your turf from rival gangs. I had never worked on a game with so many interconnected systems! It’s my first game on consoles, which is a big milestone.
Last but not least… I ran into my own games on Tabletop Simulator! It was a nice surprise, it’s very heartening to know someone cared about them enough to create these modules, especially now that Superhot and Blight aren’t that easy to find.
So much has happened since the last post, I thought I’d do a couple posts to catch up. This one is about my analog projects, in chronological order:
January 7th: I gave my first talk! I was one of the speakers at Run for the Border 2020 in Dundalk along with Jordan Bradley, Pete Mc Nally and Donal Philips. It was a short talk called “So, you’ve designed a board game. Now what?”. It was about the different paths you can follow in order to get your game published, with the suggestion of using print and play as a way to grow an audience before either showing it to a publisher or trying to release a full/premium version of your game.
I’m not used to public speaking so I must have made all the newbie mistakes but the reaction was very positive and I would like to do it again.
May 13: Agent Decker was featured by Shut Up & Sit Down! During the quarantine they’ve started looking at both solo and print and play games and they noticed mine! I’ve been a fan of theirs since their first video nine whole years ago, so this was an honor.
“On the off chance that you’ve not played a deckbuilding game before I would say print off Agent Decker immediately.” – Quintin Smith
July 27: It was a long journey but I finally have my copies of Blight Chronicles: Agent Decker. Nine months after the backers got theirs so I might have been the very last person to get one. Board & Dice decided to make it a kickstarter exclusive after the campaign was over so unfortunately you won’t find it in stores but there is the option of getting the print and play version online.
They even sent extra goodies like the add-ons, playmats and the smaller version!
On the same day I submitted my first entry in a Button Shy design contest, but that deserves its own blog post. Soon. 🙂
Oct 2: Recently I felt inspired to go back to Fortune Tellers. This is a prototype I was working on 7 years ago. At the time the mechanics had some issues but I was enamored by the theme. Now that I have a bit more experience I might be able to do something with it, even if it means I have to scrap the mechanics and start fresh.
This is what it looked like back then.
I can’t stop thinking about this game. I don’t know of others like it, which makes me feel like I am on the verge of creating something original and that feeling is so great that I want to share the process with you. Step one was bringing the blog back to speed.
Games by Manuel Correia 