This video is guys shipping a game backed on KickStarter.

This aspect of game creation seems like a whole lot of no fun. Not to mention how expensive it is. A third of the wholesale cost for Archon Arena will be shipping.

Our search for artwork is underway. Finding a great artist to bring a game's vision to life is not just important, it's essential. Good artwork will literally make the difference between a game being adopted or it withering on the vine. How does one go about finding a suitable artist?

Putting an ad in the classifieds is probably not going to yield many results. You need to go where the artists are. Online, one such place is deviantArt. Thousands of pieces of art are uploaded to the site daily. You can browse people's portfolios and find the style of art that you want. Then place an ad in the forums. A ton of starving artists will likely respond within minutes. This is the phase I found myself in earlier this week. As I weed through the candidates, there are a few things I would have done differently up front.

First, as I said, having found a number of favorites first is important, so you and the artist share a frame of reference of what you expect. To do this you need a free account. Fortunately, I set one up a few years ago. I imagine some people would be turned off by a "newbie" coming on looking to hire.

Another key is to have what you are looking for as detailed as possible up front. Many artists are leery of giving a set price since the amount of work can vary considerably depending on the details. It's frustrating to get a lot of responses and not have prices, so there's no way to really compare or budget. Also, one thing I initially overlooked was specifying a commercial license. Some people charge differently than for personal pieces.

A big important item is to be prepared for record keeping. You will want to be organized from the beginning. Check out a respondent's portfolio. If you don't like what you see, ruthlessly delete their response. Keep a list of the best candidates and try to nail down exact quotes. Realize that many of the people are in foreign countries and might have limited English. Try to communicate simply and directly.

To deal with all the hassle I was encountering, I ended up making a page on this website. It lists all the commission details, including mock ups of the expected artwork, and it has a form for the applicant to fill out. They have to specify what job they're interested in and, importantly, list a price range. All the responses are nicely arrayed in an online database, so I don't have to do a lot of the record keeping. I wish I had done this right away.

All this being said, I haven't completed the whole process yet. I'm sure there will be some more snags along the way, but maybe my experience so far might help someone else make their first steps toward getting that artwork that's just right. Or if you have other advise, leave a comment.

We had our first multiplayer play test of the new game. The most important takeaway- it was fun!

Compared to D&D this system has far fewer stats and rules but much more opportunity for strategy. The fatigue mechanic works well on limiting the players' options. Combat movement is a little complicated as is turn sequence, but we refined them as we went. When playing again, things should go quite smoothly.

The remaining issues are balance- the point system I used for creating characters needs some tweaking, and speed- our battle took over 2 hours. I'd like to get that down to around 45 minutes. Once the combat system is fully fleshed out we can proceed to populate the full tile-based board game. Plenty of work, but lots of fun.

I Thought There'd Be Zombies! actually came a few days ago. It was printed and shipped faster than expected, so I was pleasantly surprised. Hearing the mail carrier ring the doorbell was like being a kid on Christmas morning!

Though I'd unpacked the game and looked at everything, tonight was the first time I've had a chance to play "the good version". Unfortunately, I made two errors in ordering. The first was not a big deal; I forgot to get pawns and a box insert. For pawns we just used D&D figures. The second problem was more serious. I forgot to change the quantity of rubble empty cards from 1 to 7, so instead I ordered blank empty cards. It's still playable--we just use the existing cards and call the rest of the spaces empty--but the oversight was annoying.

With the near production quality prototype the game played well. The cards fit nicely in their spots. The chips I ordered are a good size and thick enough to be manageable. The board is great. It looks just like a "real" game. There is virtually no seam in the quad-fold board when it is unfolded. Considering I did all the graphics in a few hours, I think it turned out quite well.

And a great thing about tonight's playtest, we found a couple points to clarify. The rules had seemed pretty solid, so it's good to find a bug or two to let us know we're still working. :) Now I just have to get more people to play. We haven't done a four-player game yet, and the balance might change things considerably. Overall, though, the game has progressed nicely, and I'll be happy to pull this prototype out on game days to playtest further.

I don't imagine anyone cares, but just to keep a record of these things, I figured out answers to some of my previous problems with TBD.

First, movement. I mentioned the problem of diagonals and my partial solution of a grid with octagons overlaid. I found an easy way to handle diagonal movement. It is only allowed within an octagon, not between them. This perfectly fits the movement I wanted and is an easy way to express and understand it.

As for the deadly nature of the game, I decided that one-blow character death would be no fun. I've devised the following mechanic- on any attack, the defender can choose to make one of the wounds "superficial". It lasts through the battle but not beyond. To do this in game terms the player must discard a defense card face down so it is removed from play for the battle. I like this because it imposes a penalty, gives the player more options, and will often avoid the one attack player kill.

I feel like battles took too long, so I'm lowering the base to hit target from 14 to 10. I also devised a point system for character creation. It will take some tweaking, but it's a start.

I have a "play date" set up for Sunday, and perhaps we'll get to TBD. It'd be the first test with another person, and we'll have to see if it's any fun!

As I continue to playtest TBD, I've been thinking about the process of playtesting itself. It seems to me it's a more complicated process than at first it might appear.

A good playtest should have conscious goals in mind. In my experience, the nature of these goals changes as time goes on. Playtesting can be broken into stages.

First, there are usually solo trials to test out game mechanics and refine the overall theme of the game. These may be split into mini tests to see whether a particular aspect will work. In ITTBZ for example, this involved refining and ultimately eliminating a weather mechanic that was a base part of the early game.

When solo testing indicates that the game is playable, it's time to invite other people. It's important to have open minded playtesters who will be willing to give constructive feedback and realize the game is a work in progress. The key to this phase is to determine: is the game fun and does it have potential. If the answer to either is no, it may be time to scrap the idea or radically rethink it.

If your game survives this far, you enter intensive regression testing. This means shoring up any weak spots and making sure the mechanics are rock solid. A later subphase involves searching out and correcting any minor niggling errors.

Usually the intensive playtest involves a core group of people who are able to dedicate the time to play regularly. In this last phase, it's time to spring your baby upon the world. First, introduce the game to people who have never played before. Often explaining the rules to a fresh set of ears will bring up questions or ambiguities that have gone unnoticed up until this point. Finally, have people play the game with no assistance from you, relying solely on the written directions.

Obviously the fine tuning of a game may continue even beyond when it is published. Keeping in mind the outlined sequence of testing can help you get to that point. It's a long journey from concept to complete game, but in the end it's worth it to sit down and play your very own creation.

The concepts and base mechanics for the new game have come along nicely. I've gotten to the point of solo playtesting, always a difficult, time consuming activity. As long as the game is decent it can also be fun.
Today I played a battle between a halfling thief type and a giant, one of my favorite stereotypical battles. The first time, the thief tried to stay in close and avoid the giant's club which requires more space. Unfortunately, this didn't work out so well because he only got one attack while the giant slowly beat him to a pulp.
The second battle, the halfling avoided the slow moving giant as long as possible. This meant the giant was more fatigued (fewer cards) than the halfling. Unfortunately, through one fairly lucky set of rolls the giant bashed in the halfling's head in one swell foop. I had expected the giant to win, but it would have been nice for the halfling to get in a hit or two first.

So here's a summary of what I've figured out and what I'm still working on, in no particular order.

• I think the basic mechanics are sound, but the characters had too many cards. Even when running around the room they only slowly got winded. 
  
• Fitness/stamina is super important and may be difficult to balance. I settled on a base recovery of 1.
  
• The game can be very deadly! Not sure if that is good or bad. 
  
• Having defense free, fatigue wise, might be the wrong choice. I'll have to try it the other way or find a way to "half do" it. I guess even if you're resting you'd have your defenses up, but actually dodging would be tiring..
  
• Movement is a PitB. Using diagonals as a single move is silly, but the alternative doesn't work well either. I devised an octagonal grid with squares overlaid that is mostly mathematically sound, but it might be too confusing. 
  
• Balancing everything for this game is going to be tough. For my next series of tests I'll try to make equal characters, probably the standard halfling thief, human fighter, dwarf cleric, elf archer, and or gnome mage. If I can get them pretty balanced it will go a long way toward figuring out the monsters. 
  

Those are the main things I thought of. For now, the game is going as TBD. We'll see how it continues to pan out.

Inspiration can come from all different places. Sometimes we ask for it, other times it just happens. So far this new game concept is a combination of the two. As mentioned in the last post, working on a mech combat game was inspired serendipitously by a chat room conversation. Now this new update to the idea has been largely inspired by comments from my friend Paul; comments I asked for. (Thanks again, Paul!) (Read the comments here.)

My takeaway from the feedback was 1. doing a Battletech clone is problematic, but 2. some of the mechanics I envisioned are worth pursuing. Honestly, I had qualms about the first problem right away. It seemed difficult to do a mech-type battle game without copying Battletech. Further, though I was into BT for a time way back in middle school, I have hardly played it in the last 20 years. So while working on even these very early brainstorms I was trying to think of a different genre that would work equally well, but nothing seemed to fit.

The other day I was in the chat room of The Game Crafter, and a couple people started talking about an idea for a mech battle type game ala Battletech but with cards. It wasn't so much the specifics they mentioned but just the theme that got me thinking about some interesting mechanics for such a game. This post contains my preliminary ideas. It may be a bit rambling, so bear with me.

My primary goal with the games right now is to play test as much as possible and hopefully get some interest amongst the local gaming community. Last week was a board game event for the grand opening of Game Universe's Menomonee Falls location. I was sick and couldn't attend. Today was a game day at Board Game Barrister, where I played After the Fall a couple months ago. I, of course, had to do my civic duty and watch the Packer game first. When I arrived, there was nobody in the location, and the doors were locked. Very disappointing. Let's hope the gaming gods change their outlook and start shining down upon me soon.

Update: I got a quick response from Glenn at Board Game Barrister. Apparently nobody showed up, so they left early. I must have just missed them. The good news is they have such things about once a month. Next time..