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.
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 