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Finalists Announced for Worker Placement Challenge

The Game Crafter - The Leading Print On Demand Game Publisher

Here are the finalists in The Game Crafter's Worker Placement Challenge:

Treble with Gators
The Mines of Mi Otal
Film Fest
Lair
Build the Skies
Dysplacement
Gopher Glory

Dan Letzring, the judge for this contest, has stated that if anyone who participated would like more feedback, to contact him. However, he provided a spreadsheet that's available on our official Tumblr news article with a rundown of the scores of all of the entries in the semi-finals.

PS - Don't forget that the Gamehole Gauntlet contest is currently running right now and there are 75 days left before the submission deadline. So there's still plenty of time to work on your idea and enter the contest!

Tradewars - Homeworld: Making games is costly

Here is a screen capture of my latest "The Game Crafter" (TGC) Order. A whooping $93.67 for two (2) Game Sets AT COST.

I have other plans for SELLING this game - because TGC is so pricey. I will of course maintain the game for sale via TGC (for online purchases) but I will be looking for other avenues to try and lower the cost to produce and resell the game.

Just wanted to show how pricey it can be!

Consequences in Games

You may have heard me in the past talk about the widespread displacement of consequence-based gaming by reward-based gaming. Party games, and to a lesser extent family games, have always been reward-based (you're rewarded for participation) rather than consequence-based (winning and losing is important, plus more), but hobby games were usually the latter. The change in hobby games started in the videogame world, where most single player games are puzzles rather than opposed games, and so as long as you are persistent - especially when you can use the video save games to try different things - sooner or later you'll solve the puzzle.

Tradewars - Homeworld: Almost complete

As of the writing of this blog entry only four (4) more illustrations are missing to complete the game! Woohoo!!

It's amazing to have come so far from humble beginnings, to an early Art Score of 94%, to now almost completing all the cards in the game.

Because some card backs are used on multiple cards, there still is probably around a dozen or so cards remaining in the game that need to be completed. But in terms of illustrations/artwork, only four (4) remain.

Semi-finalists announced for the Worker Placement Challenge

The Game Crafter - The Leading Print On Demand Game Publisher

The Semi-finalists have been announced for our Worker Placement Challenge. See them at https://www.thegamecrafter.com/contests/worker-placement-challenge

Kingdoms of Immacus: Playtesting with Fire

The Kravix (red) race got a little play testing love the last few weeks and has forced me to reevaluate some of the mechanics in the game. Every time this happens, I am grateful that the play testing sessions are finding little flaws that can be improved upon before release of the game.

Play Test

Play test for my new games L33Ts didnt go too well on the weekend.
Mechanics kind of worked but the game ended up in a look where everyone was just claiming money and nothing else was really happening.
The game went over 40 mins and there was simply too many cards and not enough resource tokens (money).
Spent the weekend trying to fix it and it was mostly a re-write.
So spending some of today at work re writing the rules and adjusting a lot of the cards.

Goals:

150 cards and less.
No tokens or tiles.
Descriptions on cards to be SIMPLE (small sentences and just numbers)

Revisiting Character Boards - Oh my!

Dice vs Bars comparison-256.png

As I sit here prepping files for manufacture, I am looking at the character boards that I *thought* were completed over a month ago and think to myself "what if I change those statistics bars to dice?".

What have I done? lol!

What do you prefer? Bars, 3D Dice or Flat dice?

Ch-Ch-Changes. Pleasing your best audience

*Note: This is kind of a ramble about adapting in business and being open to change.

For any folks that have been patient enough to follow the Pocket Sports journey (thanks by the way), you've seen the style and packaging change from the simple branded & coloured dice pouch to the more retail appropriate tuck box with cards and cubes.

The changeover was on advice from large retailers and people in the games industry a lot longer than I to make a more presentable, secure product to display on shelves for brick & mortar stores. Fair enough.

Auction: Design A Punchout

If you win this auction, you’ll get to work with JT to design a custom laser cut shape that will be available to everybody that uses The Game Crafter. The punchout will have to be something that reasonably more than one person would want, and it will need to fit on the small (3.25" x 5.25"), medium (4.5" x 8"), or large (10.5" x 8.25") punchout slugs we have. The auction ends on May 31st.

PS: If you win this auction, you will be let in on a big super secret, and that secret may influence what you design.

Click here to bid on this auction

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by Dr. Radut