Thursday, June 18, 2009

Armor of God Resurrected!!!

Well, I've recently been working on the Armor of God. Originally it was a game for two players only. Phil at Covenant Communications said that two players games aren't likely to be accepted by them for publication. Plus the Guild is having a competition that will take place during A Gathering of Strangers this year (July 10 & 11)! So I started redesigning the Armor of God so that it would play with 2 to 4 players.

I was able to have it playtested on Tuesday the 9th at the Guild meeting. That was great! I didn't play. I just explained the game to the four who volunteered to play it. They enjoyed playing, said it was fun and that it kept them involved. They also had a lot of good feedback that I've gone through and incorporated into the design. I love having a group of people this close that are willing to play others games and help them improve them.

Also, I was searching around online for images that I might possibly use to at least have a decent looking prototype to take to the competition (so far it's just been 3" x 5" cards cut in half). I came across some awesome artwork! Tony, in Kaysville, designed some Armor of God cards for his young men and young women. I contacted him and he gave me permission to use his artwork in my prototype!!

Here are 2 of the cards that I put together using his stuff. I'm no artist, but having Tony's artwork definitely made these (hopefully I haven't detracted too much from his stuff)! Thank you Tony!!



I just finished sending my files to Steve at BluePanther yesterday. He's going to print the cards for me. That way I'll have a hopefully really nice looking prototype.

At A Gathering of Strangers a set of judges will play all of the entries in the competition and they'll choose a winner! The judges come from the world of publishing, and elsewhere. There are no guarantees that anyone, not even the winner, will get their game published, but it's never bad to have those in the industry look at your game.

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Monday, June 8, 2009

Google Group Project

10:57 AM by Mike · 0 comments
Last Monday I proposed a little group game design project. I wanted to design/create/publish a game that we, as a group, could really call our own; a game that would be designed by all of us (as much as each of us could contribute anyway); a game that we could possibly publish ourselves after it was all complete (and sell through our www.zionboardgames.com website). So, I proposed an idea for a cooperative game where each player would play a missionary from the Book of Mormon during the time of Korihor. Players would be playing against the game itself, or Korihor, as he moved around to various Nephite cities proclaiming his gospel and beliefs.

I was super surprised at the discussion that ensued. I put the proposal up on the group site Monday morning around 9 am. Now, a week later, we have had a total of 73 replies. We have gone from a general conception or basic idea for a game to a couple of files that we are going to be using to playtest the game. Obviously, this is the first version for playtesting, so I'm sure there is still a long way to go. But this has been done by six or seven of us from the group. Most of us have never met face-to-face. Some have talked on the phone, others have just emailed back and forth. There are a couple of us who are members of the Board Game Designers Guild of Utah and we have actually met each other.

Anyway, I am just very excited about this whole project. I think it will definitely be something noteworthy, if we can pull it off: A game, designed by a group of people over the internet, that is fun to play and available for purchase by anyone in the world!! That would be totally awesome!

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Monday, June 1, 2009

Hagoth Art Update

8:22 PM by Mike · 1 comments
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So, Scott is working on the art for Hagoth and he's sent me a sketch of the box cover art up to this point.















This is still a work in progress obviously, but he's moving onward and upward!! Seth has sent him some suggestions (I've also been able to add my input), so hopefully we'll have more updates soon!

Anyway, this is me excited about the game (trying to share that excitement with the world) and really looking forward to having it published and out for others to enjoy!

What do you think about the box cover?

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