Board Game Designers Forum

Over the past 8 years that I have been seriously pursuing a career in game design I have found publishers for my abstract , family, children’s, party, and euro style games. What’s funny is I haven’t done one of my favorite types, the Dungeon Crawl. Back in the 80’s my friends and I played any we could find being DnD fiends. I still enjoy them today but rarely get to play one.

After all these years I’m finally getting around to it, but not just one, I am doing two at the same time. Why two? Coincidently there are two reasons for this.

http://www.globalgamespace.org/index.php/prior-art/

There are several programs I have not seen before. I have several play testers in other states that I gave up working with because programs like Thoth & Vassel are cumbersome to create games in and have plenty of limitations.

I’m hoping one of these will fit my needs. As I have time to test them, probably over the holiday break, I’ll post my opinions of them on this thread.

Nitro Dice finally got a positive review. Ok there was other but they were more middle of the road.

http://fathergeek.com/reviews/nitro-dice/

and it’s extensive coving rules (he made a few small errors), game play, components, and art. Art is the only problem he had with it and its understandable, he has young children and the art is kind of PG.

If you read this blog regularly, i.e. when I post something you’ll know that I have been working on New Eden, previously known as Eden 1157B, for years and have had the worst time of getting the mechanics to work. I was hoping to self publish it this year and have once again missed my deadline to do so.

For those unfamiliar with New Eden here is an overview.

I have been demoing games for a long time for Mayfair Games, ElfinWerks, and occasional others, and I’m fairly good at it. I now have the pleasure of demoing my own game Nitro Dice. Well it’s a pleasure when it goes well at least. This time it didn’t.

Minion Games had Nitro Dice for sale at GENCON as well as demoing it in the evening. So far the only new comment at BGG is from someone that demoed it and decided it wasn’t for him.

I’m eager to see a full fledged review but I’ll likely have to wait for at least a few days if not longer until people get together with their gaming groups to play what they brought back from the show. I know when I get a new game it is often moths before I get a chance to play, sometimes much longer. I hope I don’t have to wait months.

All things considered I think it went well despite not being able to get many people to play Nitro Dice. We could only demo it at night and only had one production copy, the only copy in the US, which I now have in my possession. Those that did demo it were enthusiastic and pretty much everyone said they wanted to get a copy. My favorite comment was “It reminds me of Speed Circuit, except its fun.” That made me chuckle even though I think speed circuit is fine in its own right and the only thing I see in common between them is the racing theme.

I have been looking forward to having Nitro Dice released at Origins 2011 for some time. Due to a delay with the printer it looks like we won’t have sales copies available :( so the people pre-ordering will be the first to get their copies. They might even have them before I get my copies depending on the speed of their local post office.

We will still have demo copies so those that are interested can at least try it out. If you are curious stop by the Minion games booth (#129) or in the open gaming area in the evenings where we will be demoing it.

My design diary for Nitro Dice Street Racing has been posted at BGG. Those of you that have read my posts over the years probably have heard bits and pieces of the story. If you’re interested in the whole shebang here it is.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/2237/designer-diary-nitro-dice-a-l...

Catastrophic hard drive failure

1.46 Gigs of game design files recovered

Getting an external drive so it’s easier to back this stuff up!