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Laker

Over the past 6 months I have been working on a new board game: Laker. Laker is a board game simulating shipping on the Great Lakes for 2-6 players. Well, yesterday I finished production on a video for Laker for an upcoming kickstarter campaign.
This morning I uploaded it on youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx6PGFoMU1Y&feature=youtu.be ) and tied it to my facebook page and website.

Comments

The Board

The board is my 2nd generation prototype and with all such things I have already modified the colors for easier viewing.
It is a cloth board, which is a more expensive but I love the way it comes out.

Nice board idea

Brian,

You made me cringe when you tore that board in half! :P

The material board is an original idea. Post up an image of the 2nd generation prototype so we can all see what changes you have made to your game!

Note: if the publisher picks up my game "Tradewars - Homeworld" be certain that I will be sending you a couple copies of the game...

Right now I'm waiting for the latest changes (only 9 Tactic cards). When I get those, I will mail the prototypes to the publisher (hopefully in two weeks).

Cool Game

This is a really neat game. Good video. Please send me a message when this hits Kickstarter.

The video board

Morn not for the hard board that was sacrificed for the video, it was an old trivial pursuit board. I'll use the parts foor other game prototypes. The cloth board in the video is the 2nd generation. I'm working on the 3rd generation design which will be slightly larger (about an inch or 2 on each side.

Dumb question, but...

Where did you find a 3D printer to print your pieces from? What company or do you own one?

3D printer

I invested my 2012 tax return and purchased one from solidoodle.
I call it a plug and pray system. But seriously it is not plug and play by any means. It had taken 3 months from the time of purchase to get everything figured out correctly and put mods on it to improve the ease of adjustment. My first big project on it for myself was masters for 3D terrain pieces for settlers of catan. Which I the made molds and cast myself a set.
I mainly use it to create prototype pieces along with some production pieces such as the plates with the cargo piece names on them. I print in ABS plastic.
If you look at my website (www.cotproducts.com)on the pocket conflicts page you will see 2 other games I print parts for. The games are: Iron and The Slot.
I also resin cast pieces for games. When I am in production the ship and the bases of the cargo piece will be resin cast. This is due to economy of scale as I can turn out castings far faster than 3Dprints.

Crunching numbers

It has been soo much fun. I have entered the final stages of number crunching and awaiting final quotes of costs. After all the purpose of any business venture, even game creation, is to make enough profit (gasp!) to be worth my while to continue.

One of the biggest comments I have found about problems using a kickstarter is that the costs of doing it was under estimated. Thereby the person running the kickstarter had to pay out of pocket to complete the project. As some if not most of you know developing a game alone can involve quite a bit of out of pocket expenses which in all honesty you don't think about recouping because we enjoy the project we create.

Test Runs/Scheduling

As I am probably going to self publish/distribute I am testing small production runs of the game parts that I manufacture. I am finding this to be an aid in estimating completion/shipping dates for the game.
For example I have to 3D print 30 cargo pieces, cast 6 ships, and print out event cards, money, etc.
While I may have the printing on cardstock and paper done outside the house I still want the ability to do ii in case of emergency.
I have done product development in the past and this type of scheduling/ cost analysis helps with determining profitability.

While we all create games we love to play as I said before it comes down to making a profit and paying for the time you used on the project.

Hi! Thoroughly enjoyed your

Hi! Thoroughly enjoyed your concept/video, it's very well put together. Are you looking to produce the game as is? I just ask cos I've noticed that the design on your components are understandably prototypey and undesigned?

And doesn't doing your own 3D printing for production purposes drive the price WAAAAAY up?

tuism wrote:Hi! Thoroughly

tuism wrote:
Hi! Thoroughly enjoyed your concept/video, it's very well put together. Are you looking to produce the game as is? I just ask cos I've noticed that the design on your components are understandably prototypey and undesigned?

And doesn't doing your own 3D printing for production purposes drive the price WAAAAAY up?

I am tweaking the board design slightly.
As I am self publishing the components will be very close to what you see.

Yes the per piece cost of 3D printing would be more expensive than injection molded pieces...except for the following facts:
1) sheer expensive of die work for injection molding with muliticolor plastic
2) to cover the costs of said work the production run would have to be huge.
3)you have to have the money up front to pay for such work.

At the present if I was to do a game only spinoff from COT Products it would be called Shoestring Games.

got me thinking

Tuism got me thinking. For laughs and gigggles I am going to get a quote for tooling for an injection molding die for the game pieces while still working on the original concept of production.

slogging

This past week has one of those where focus is lost and life's other concerns have pushed game production/development to the back burner. I hope to start testing my casting molds next week. I have 3 more boards like in my video to build demo games with as soon as the other parts are acquired/printed/made.

At the same time another game design concept is filling my mind. More on that later.

Slogging part 2

Is it slogging when you are walking through quicksand?

maybe a better title is games take a holiday when life bears down on you.
keeping the focus on a project when challenged is always an issue.

Just rejoined the ranks of the unemployed while dealing with health issues.

Hopefully things will start moving forward again soon.
I'll keep ya'll posted.

Meanwhile as I can I have 3 more demo sets to get put together.

thought I'l share

I was on BGG and someone was asking about printing for a prototype game board. Well I thought I'd share what I did to prototype my Laker board.

I created a Jpeg of my rough art in a free program called Photofiltre (kind of a freeware Photoshop), then used Microsoft Publisher to make a poster of the size I wanted. I finished up the board in publisher then printed it and pasted it onto a foamcore board. This gave me a playing board to test without great expense.

I was going to paste in some pictures of the 2 prototypes but couldn't do it. does anyone know a way to add in pictures to the blogs?

Revised

The Revised board for Laker has been ordered. I am hoping to have it in time for Protospiel being held at the end of July in Chelsea Michigan.

The new version of the board arrived

The new version of the board arrived. I like the look. check it out on my COT Products page on facebook.

Protospiel Chelsea Michigan

Well I've been hustling getting Laker ready for protospiel this Fri-Sunday. I have 4 prototypes made up to get opinions on different box art, event card backs, etc. I know that all is ready so I am probably forgetting something that will show up at the last minute. (doesn't it always?)
I am truly looking forward to this.

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blog | by Dr. Radut