Empire of Sin

Cortiça Part 4 – Design Challenge

boardgame, boardgame prototype, competition, Cortiça, designer tips, Empire of Sin, game design, Imirt

The deadline for Button Shy’s design challenge was fast approaching so it was time to prepare the materials to submit. The cards and rulebook were in a good state but there was one thing left to do: the pitch video. These videos are an important part of the process. Button Shy gets so many submissions for the challenges that they need these short videos in order to speed up their triage process. They’re also great practice for the designers so they can learn how to pitch their games and the video itself could be sent to publishers.

There were a few technical challenges. It was hard to find a place that didn’t create glare on the cards so I ended up recording on top of our bed, which meant I had to be on my knees. I had to rely on the camera’s microphone, which isn’t the best and left the sound a bit muffled.

Am I really that hard to understand?

I took the chance to try youtube’s automated subtitle feature, which is handy but gets confused with Portuguese names and words. Still, it was quicker to correct the transcriptions than to write everything from scratch.

Given the constraints, I’m happy with how it turned out. It gives you a quick overview of the game’s theme, rules and an example turn from the middle of the game, with five seconds to spare from the three minute limit.

Cortiça’s pitch video for the design challenge

I must add that I kept working on the game after the contest so these rules and cards don’t match the published version (spoilers!). I left it up as an example of a simple pitch video for other designers and people like you who are curious about how the game came to be.

Despite the demanding briefing there were over 150 games submitted to the design challenge! I was very happy that Cortiça made it to the 10 finalists but in the end the winner was Food Truck Feud, by Jay Yeates. It’s since been published by Button Shy as À la Food Cart.

Button Shy’s announcement video with the finalists and winner

At that time I was living in Ireland, and was a member of the board for IMIRT – The Irish Game Makers Association. One of my tasks was to help organize the IMIRT Irish Game Awards, which spotlight games made in the country. That year we were short on nominees, including for the Best Analogue Game category, which only had one. It was suggested I submit Cortiça.

I checked with the board before submitting because it could be seen as unfair since I was part of the organization, but since I was not a member of the Jury or part of the judging process, it was approved. I didn’t expect much because the other nominee was a published game with professional art. Mine was a tiny prototype, 18 handmade cards and rules in a ziploc bag.

Cortiça won Best Analogue Game and was the runner-up for Best Game Design at the Imirt Irish Game Awards 2020! 

They’re so pretty!

One of the big winners that year was Empire of Sin, by Romero Games. It won the awards for Best Game Design, Best Game Art and Best Technical Achievement, and was the runner-up for Best Game Narrative, Best Game Audio and Game of the Year. I was one of the game designers on the team! That was my day job. Cortiça was created in my spare time.

You can check the full list of winners and nominees here.

But that’s not where Cortiça’s story ends! There’s a couple more posts left to go.

This design diary continues in Part 5 – Publishers.

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Quick catch-up

Cortiça, Empire of Sin, Imirt

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!

Cortiça

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.

Digital catch-up

Agent Decker, Blight Chronicles, Cook-out, Empire of Sin, Glimt, Superhot

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.

If you want to see it in action, the team has been streaming it regularly on Paradox’s Twitch channel and the preorders are now live.

Tabletop Simulator

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.