Now you can get the print-ready files for Contactics! It is available as a “pay what you want” download. Every little bit helps to fuel my next games!
It is distributed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, which means you can use and remix the game for free, but you can’t sell it without permission.
Without a player, there is no game. Following up on my last article, here’s how I brought my game to the players.
Other than the #Contactics hashtag and posting the game on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, I didn’t have any plans for its distribution.
The official twitter account for Rezzed was talking about all the cool games that would be playable on the show floor, and I mentioned mine. People asked for copies, so I made sure to meet these people and hand them some.
I didn’t want to take the game developer’s hard earned space, so I placed some cards around the food hall and tweeted about it.
There were so many Nintendo 3DS consoles around, I changed my Streetpass greeting to mention the game!
It was a great chance to meet game developers I admire: Rami Ismail (Vlambeer), Mike Bithell (Thomas Was Alone), Dean Hall (DayZ), Ed Stern (Splash Damage), Paul Dean (Shut Up & Sit Down), Team 17, Creative Assembly, Destructoid and Boneloaf to name a few!
I handed each a copy and their faces lit up once they realized what it was!
After coming back, I published my first article on Gamasutra. It got featured, and stayed on the front page for two days! The readers shared it, which lead to the game popping up in a lot of websites.
If anyone mentioned the game on twitter, I thanked them!
This was a big milestone for me. Having learned a lot from reading articles on Gamasutra over the years, it was my chance to help other aspiring game designers.
Next up, I brought it to the first MCM Dublin Comic Con!
I left the coolest one for last! One of the organizers for the Canada Photo Convention saw my game online and thought it would be a great way to break the ice and get people networking.
She asked me for some adjustments to better suit photographer’s business cards, I looked up Creative Commons and, starting from April 22, the game will be at Canada Photo Convention 2014!
Better yet: every person who registers will get a copy of the game and the one who collects the most business cards during the event will get a prize!
I needed a business card.
Soon after booking my tickets to EGX Rezzed I realized there were only a few old cards left. While I could just print more of those, they felt outdated. They were made three years ago and they represent a very different phase of my life.
It was not the first time I had poked around the idea of handing out a game as a business card. I remember checking the prices for printing Carousel to give at events, but the printers would only accept orders of large quantities and that made it very expensive and cumbersome to carry around. Worse of all, if it was cumbersome to the person I was handing it to, that would have ruined that first impression.
I wanted a simple game, which would not take long to learn but dynamic enough to provide different playthroughs. I wanted to prove it was possible.
The following were the main design issues, and how I solved them:
What will the players play with? Can the game be in the card itself? Sure, it could be a crossword puzzle which would reveal one of my contacts when complete, but that wouldn’t be that original and, frankly, it could turn out boring. It would also require some work from the person, and I didn’t want to create an obstacle.
Then I thought of using coins, but this idea was short lived. Even if they were used as tokens, I didn’t want money to be a part of this. Also, it would be too easy for the player’s coins to get mixed, and that could lead to heated arguments.
Then it dawned on me. Business cards! Just like me, the other developers will be networking. Some might be looking for publishers or teammates, and they will be handing out their cards to promote themselves and their games.
My card only needed to provide the rules for you to play, and the cards you collected would form your deck. It fits the networking theme. Better yet, if the winner got one card from the player, it can even facilitate it!
I couldn’t expect each player’s deck to have a unique look, so I used the card’s orientation to define that. One player pays their card in portrait and the other in landscape.
The cards can have so many shapes and sizes but I had to find a way to make them all fit. My solution was to create a system which would filter them into categories. You go down a list of features and you stop once one matches. Each category would have its own special property, which would take effect when you played it.
Initially I had a lot of categories, but I realized it could be really boring to go through the list, especially when learning how to play. The size of the card was also a factor which contributed to having only three (and an “other” category for unpredictable ones that don’t fit the list).
I couldn’t really predict the shapes and features of cards people would be handing out. I made a rough estimate by looking back at the cards I had been given at such events and from print shop prices. Even if these estimates were right, I had absolutely no way to predict which ones the people would have with them at the moment, so I left that open.
This turned out to be a good decision, because that brought deck building to the game! It gave the reward some appeal, and a great excuse to play more than once as your deck improves.
I wrote the rules down and instantly noticed they were a lot longer than I could fit on a card. I started searching out for alternatives (like foldable cards, which would give me four faces instead of two), but Sara Mena quickly mocked up a couple layouts which proved me it was possible. I then simplified the text and used icons to convey mechanics, making it more appealing.
This card represents what I like to do the most, and it was built around a solid core concept: More than just having ideas, I can develop them, use the limitations in place and work with what you have.
It’s exactly the first impression I wanted to convey!
I spent last Sunday afternoon surrounded by fellow creatives at Dublin Gamecraft Unplugged. We had about 4h30m to make an analog game. Yep, that’s right! No videogames this time.
The theme was “Grow Your Own”.
I knew we didn’t have much time or materials but I wanted to make something different. A simple adventure game that physically grows as you play. I ended up with “Grow your own Adventure”: an interactive story where you follow a line, choose your path and your choices alter what comes next.
I started folding to see what I could do with one sheet, and accidentally got to this. Twice! If you had asked me to teach this to you I couldn’t remember how to, but muscle memory brought it back.
I kept folding and realized you can make very interesting “page turns” from just a single cut in the middle of the sheet. It allows you to hide surprises but, most importantly, make choices that change the layout.
I started drawing a line and improvising. Taking notes, seeing how far I could go with it and how many “faces” I would be able to write on.
In the end, I got to something I’m very proud of. It’s an interactive story system you can fit in your pocket. Your choices change it, so there’s some replayability. It comes from a single page, which makes it possible to distribute as PDFs.
You can see the other projects here.
My new game is called Fortune Tellers. It’s about predicting the future.
The idea started as a friend told me he wanted to make a game about Nostradamus. He is a great designer with several published games, but he didn’t know how to turn it into one – just found the theme appealing.
A lightbulb lit in my mind!
A while ago I sketched out a game where you combined words to make stories. While interesting as a concept, it’s too vague for a game. I needed something to narrow these stories to something relevant to the game, so this made perfect sense.
I thanked him, he said “I can take the Nostradamus idea”, but I said it’s still his. I don’t want to get stuck with a historic theme. All I needed was the bit where you predict stuff, because shady fortune tellers sound a lot more fun to me.
So that’s it: a game where you’ll predict what the other players will do during that game. You can get more verbs to predict new situations, and more assistants to do more things every turn. In short, two games at the same time!
I was invited to the latest Arcádia meeting two days beforehand. I didn’t want to wait a whole month to try it out, so I hurriedly made the first prototype. Some parts were improvised, I just wanted to check if it was fun to play – and it is!
The players liked it a lot. The “Aha!” moment when a prediction you made happens is a lot of fun, and something I haven’t felt in many games. Of course, it needs a lot of tweaks, like fixing the game’s economy, making matches shorter and even more types of possible predictions. I’m working on that.
Stay tuned! I predict it will be a lot of fun.
I was asked why I chose to include player elimination in “Sinking”. The question intrigued me. It made sense with the sinking ships theme so I didn’t really think twice. Everyone is sinking and the winner is the one that managed to stay afloat.
They explained to me it’s considered an old-fashioned mechanic which is frowned upon nowadays, so now I can see why and I’ll tell you so you won’t make the same mistake. It’s suited to some games, but not all.
In my quest to try and publish my game I had to further define who my target player is. I reached the conclusion that it’s suited for family play due to the light complexity of the mechanics and rules. Well, let’s imagine you’re playing this game with your kids and one of them loses. You don’t want to tell him “Now go and find something to do while we finish this game”, do you?
I don’t.
That’s why I changed my game.
Now when the first player sinks to the bottom the game ends, and the player’s positions on the water board define who’s second, third and so on. This simple change made it a lot more family-friendly.
“Fantastic Creations: House of Brass Collector’s Edition”, the game I’ve been working on for a year and eight months is now out! It is a light steampunk Hidden Object Adventure for Bigfish Games. The reviews are great and everyone seems to enjoy the fresh ideas we brought into it. It’s currently in second place of BigFish’s Top 10 PC downloads and you can check it out here.
I just closed the box with the “Sinking” prototype for testing in the Ludopolis contest. I really enjoyed the process of creating it so far. The players enjoyed it as well so I’m pitching the game to publishing companies that seem appropriate.
While I was translating its rules I had started taking notes of another idea, this time for a card game. I played around with some ideas for a couple of days until I got to something I believe to be original, accessible and fun. If it’s anything like “Sinking” I should to a playtest right away so can I take the broken parts out and focus on the good stuff. I quickly made the prototype you see in the photo above so I can test it this week. I’m calling it “Carousel” for now.
Recently, the “Arcádia Lusitana de Criadores de Boardgames” was created. The main goal is to share information, resources, provide playtesting and feedback for portuguese boardgame projects. Currently the main discussion platform is facebook, along with regular meetings. Seems there are quite a few more Lisbon-based designers than I thought!
In the first meeting Vital Lacerda tried out my game. He seemed to like it and suggested I switch the placement of the minimum bid silhouettes with the action effects to make it more intuitive. I don’t know how I didn’t think of that before. I laughed and wrote it down right away. This weekend I had the chance to test it and he was absolutely right – it does make it easier to teach and play.
The second meeting is coming up! It will be on the 20th of February and you can find all the details here.
Also, Last week I read Raph Koster’s “Theory of Fun”. If you’re interested in making games I advise you to check it out. The first half is about the human brain and how we define what’s fun for us. The second half points a possible path games should take for them to be seriously respected as an art form.
Here’s a sneak peek of the new player boards! The action effect texts have been resumed into icons, the minimum action costs are clearer now and the colors are more colorblind-friendly. I can’t wait to test these out.
Ludum Dare Jam 22 starts in 6 hours! I’ll be part of Make A Game team once again, we’ll be making a computer game in the next 72 hours. There are more and more submissions every time, and we’ll do our best to stand out.
You can check out “Eggscape”, our game for the previous Ludum Dare Jam here.
Games by Manuel Correia 
