5 Risks No kickstarter ever lists, but should.

Recently Reddit, and Penny Arcade Report cited a Kickstarter Campaign which was successfully funded, but failed to deliver the product.  Based on comments and  tweets the game had a lot going for it.  Backers say that the game mechanics were done, that playtest had gotten to final stages.  But the game was still not produced.  There are rumors that they were attempting to start a company using funding from the project.  The kickstarter campaign clearly states that it is to produce a board game, not found a company.  Unfortunately a project is not a company, and if I had to guess I would assume that not understanding this point led to their downfall.

3 Game Production Resources

A quick post today with some links to resources for producing a physical game.  Having started making a card game, which has the potential to be a physical game, it would most likely be a good idea to have some resources around for physical production.  Maybe my game will never make it that far, but maybe yours will.

Play Test Round 1

The Design of my card game is going well.  This week the call volume is high which means time to buckle down at the day job.  Working on this is going to get put on hold.  Lunch breaks are 30 minutes, and I'm picking up extra hours.  No downtime to spend working on Dormouse Games, let alone a personal side project like this.  But over the past couple weeks some play tests were done, and some lessons learned.

5 great Podcasts for gamers.

There are some amazing game design related podcasts.  I'm always searching for more however.  If you have suggestions send them my way.  Here are a few of my favorites.  Additionally check out 198+ Game Design Resources (non of which are podcasts), I checked all the links they still work.

Card Game overview

This is an attempted description of the card game idea.  The inspiration is one part Game of Thrones Ascent, one part Magic: the Gathering, and one part Joshua AC Newman.  The idea here is to create a paper prototype card game and start giving it away.  Just to put something out in the world.  Just for fun,  knowledge, and my own sense of accomplishment.  Here is the beginning.

I accidentally a...

So I accidentally made a card game prototype recently.  My assigned task was to work on the GDD for Steam Scouts: Alchemy.  Which I did work on (GDD's are never finished).  However, inspiration does not follow the plan.  The prototype is a castle building, tactics card game.  After playing a lot of Disruptor Beams great Game of Thrones: Ascent, the card game came to me. I wanted to play stone block cards and build castles a bit quicker.

Gunpoint

The technoir tale of Gunpoint is amazing.  The game itself reminds me of the technology, film noir crossover of Automata by Penny Arcade.  It takes about 3 hours to play through.  Quick to learn and fast paced.  You'll be rewiring lights, and doors in no time flat playing as Richard Conway Professional Spy, Amateur Electrician, Weaponised Jerk.  You can prepare detailed plans of cause and effect tweaked to your hearts content.  Inevitably there are two results.