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Evolving Miniatures game?

3 replies [Last post]
Mon, 01/07/2019 - 16:04
xbustercannon
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Joined: 01/02/2019

Hello everyone,

I guess this will be my first post here, so maybe a bit of an intro?

I love board games, I want to make at least one someday, I think I have a lot of good ideas but have never pursued one of them, so now I'm trying with the one I'll be talking about. (i'm sure this could've been said by alot of people here)

I am working on a miniatures game that revolves around "evolving" minis. Each mini has its own unique abilities and stats that increase and decrease as the game is played over time. After a certain requirement is met, you can then evolve your mini into the next stage. At this time I am using characters from popular sources such as Goku or Megaman to best illustrate how the mechanics work. I may try to pursue permissions for these characters but I know the chances of using them are slim to none, they are simply placeholders for right now.

At this stage in development, however, I am working to get minis made for these characters. Ideally, I would like each mini to be unique to the character. So with Goku for example, there would be a base form mini, ssj mini, ssj mini, and ssgss blue mini.

As of right now, I'd like to try to make this a collectible minis game, but I understand that might not be the best idea.

All in All, you could say this is a loose spiritual successor to HeroScape, but with a little more depth and a collecting aspect.

Thoughts?

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Tue, 01/08/2019 - 09:39
#1
tikey
tikey's picture
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Joined: 03/31/2017
As with everything that

As with everything that involves physical manufacturing you should talk to manufacturers as early as possible to have a sense of costs and, most importantly, constrains.
Mould making for several different minis is not cheap at all, so unless you produce in large quantities it's going to be really expensive. BUT a good manufaturer can give you alternatives or ideas in how to tackle the issue and you can change your game design to accomodate those constrains.
Also you could look into alternative bussiness models and manufacturing alternatives like 3D printing, but you'll be treading new ground there and that's never easy.

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Tue, 01/08/2019 - 09:58
#2
wob
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Joined: 06/09/2017
hi. you say you are looking

hi.
you say you are looking into manufacturing already, is your game (mostly) complete? ie is everything done but the minis? if not i wouldnt make them until everything else is done.
an alternative to minis (they are cool but expensive) might be standees. you can get the bases and include several evolutions per character that you swap in and out. this could even give you more evolutionary options ie make your character big and slow or small and fast.

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Tue, 01/08/2019 - 10:05
#3
polyobsessive
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Joined: 12/11/2015
Game first, chrome later

Hi and welcome to BGDF!

If you want to develop a minis game you can save a shed load of cash early on by making card standees to represent the various characters. I have done this for a couple of games, printing my not-minis out double (one version upside down), folding in half, and putting them in little plastic stands, which I have in a few different colours.

If you do something along these lines you should be able to produce a prototype that looks OK and test it and make a decent game before you worry about manufacturing minis. If you can't make a good game (yet), please don't bankrupt yourself chasing a dream.

On the other hand, if one of the things you like doing is designing and 3d printing minis, go for it, you'll have a load of fun.

@tikey's comment about checking out manufacturing constraints ASAP is also valid, though. If you do some research it may help you in making design decisions, and you are almost certain to find out that making a collectable game is way harder (and thus more expensive) than making one that just comes in one box. Furthermore, if you look into other aspects of the game business, you'll find that marketing and selling collectable games is really hard.

Anyway, good luck with working on your game. I'd suggest just working to make a good (hopefully even great) game first, that plays smoothly and engages its players with interesting decisions and many memorable moments. If you can do that, it will probably be easier to turn it into a publishable game than if you ran out of steam and money as you try to make enough miniatures to fit an incomplete design. And don't forget to have fun!

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