Back In The Saddle

I took most of yesterday off, after working the weekend and to celebrate selling my last copies of It's Alive! Still did a few things, I had to update my website so that people could no longer order It's Alive!, and fix all the references to it being available. I also emailed Ted the latest set of rules I'm trying out for Carpe Astra. I'm still tweaking it, it's very hard to let go when there's several thousand pounds riding on it. It's still getting better (in my opinion) but sooner rather than later I'm going to have to stop and leave it alone.

I got my first bit of colour artwork from the artist yesterday too. It's the new banner for the website. It wasn't a final one, but it gave me something to comment on. There's things about it I love and things I'm not so keen on, so hopefully there'll be a new version winging its way to me soon.

Today I'm going to concentrate on the layout for Carpe Astra again, getting the frames in place so that I can paste the artwork in when it arrives.

It's Alive! Sold Out

I had a great weekend at the Beer and Pretzels games convention this weekend. I was selling It's Alive! during the day Saturday, but after a decent day of sales I decided to call it a day and start playing. I hooked up with Steve K (hiya!) and Neil and we played a bunch of games, mostly new to me as well as a couple of my prototypes. Despite not having a stand on Sunday, I was still able to sell the last few copies of the It's Alive! Limited Edition. I've only got six copies left at home now, mine and five I'm holding for other people.

I'll be going to the UK Games Expo in a couple of weeks too, but seeing as I thought I'd sell out of It's Alive! before then, and I didn't think Carpe Astra would be ready in time (right on both counts!) I've not got a stall there. Instead I'll be wandering around hawking my wares to the various shops and I'm a judge for the Game of the Year award. Bribes in excess of £5K gratefully accepted ;-)

Seeing as I've been 'working' all weekend, I'm going to have a fairly easy day today. I've got to nip into town to pay in my take from the weekend, and get a haircut in preparation for Dunk's wedding this weekend (I'm the best man - ought to look presentable!).

Ich Gehe Nach Deutschland!

I've just received confirmation that I've got a booth at the International Spieltage, at the Messe Essen in Essen, Germany in October. Or just plain Essen for those in the know.

In preparation I've ordered a German language kit as an early birthday present to myself. I did German at school, and was fairly good at it, but that was sixteen years ago, so I'm a little rusty :-(. Even with the course I'll not be competent enough to explain my games in German, so I could do with a German speaker on the stand, seeing as most of the 150,000 people attending the show will be German. Who to ask? I'll need to think on that.

In other news, I'm pressing on with getting a final quote from Ludo Fact for Carpe Astra and I spend a decent chunk of today going through the submissions I received ages ago working out which ones I want prototypes of sent to me.

I'm off to Beer and Preztels for the second year running tomorrow morning. It's a 8:20am train, so that'll mean an early start for me, but it should be good fun, and I've only got nine copies of It's Alive! left, so I might even sell out while I'm there.

Frustrating Week

This week has been frustrating. I'd like to use Carta Mundi to manufacture Carpe Astra, they are both fairly local (so there's less shipping involved) and fairly quick (six weeks if it includes wooden pieces). However, trying to get a quote from them is like drawing blood from a stone. I'm trying to spend money with them, but you'd never guess so, judging by the speed at which the Sales Manager replies to my queries. I guess I'm one of the smaller customers they have, but still the lack of response is really frustrating, and I'm tempted to use someone else just to spite him.

I'm also in contact with Ludo Fact, who were recommended to me by Dean of Ludorum Games. In the time I've been waiting for a quote from Carta Mundi, I've had a quote from them (reasonably priced including shipping from Germany to the UK), and an amended quote after I requested a couple of changes. The only thing that's stopping me choosing them right away is it would take eight to ten weeks.

I've only got ten copies of It's Alive! left and I'm off to the Beer and Pretzels games convention in Burton-on-Trent this weekend. If I don't sell out there, I can't imagine they'll last beyond next week. If I have to wait ten weeks for Carpe Astra then that's ten weeks with no money coming in.

I've started doing the layout for Carpe Astra, doing the text for all the cards, but without the artwork from the artist I can't get much further. I've not had anything else from him since those sketches I've been posting.

To top all of that, I'm still not quite happy with the scoring mechanism for Carpe Astra, I've tried a few things recently, none of them quite work. I was hoping to take a finished game with me to Beer and Pretzels to play with a few regular customers, but I guess I'm going to have to take a prototype, and warn them things might change.

Still, in other news, I played a couple of my submissions with Paul on Wednesday afternoon, and they've got potential...

Submissions - Update

I had a terrible night's sleep last night, so I had just struggled into conciousness when the doorbell rang, it was Parcel Force delivering another prototype. That's the fifth one to arrive. Its arrival reminded me that I still haven't got back to most of the people who submitted games to me just before I went pro.

As a result I've taken some time out of the card layout for Carpe Astra to continue processing my submissions. I've been through the rules for another five this morning (two rejected, three prototypes requested). I need to improve my time management so that I've time to go through them, I've another nine sets of rules to review, plus another five sets of rules I'm still waiting to receive.

Getting a whole heap of submissions like this has been really good, it allows me to be more selective about what types of prototypes I receive. This means I can focus more on what I see the core product lines being for Reiver Games. I'm not beyond branching out a little though, so the occasional abstract or family game might appear under the RG logo too.

Carpe Astra - Character Preview 3/4

I've had the weekend mostly off again (stag do this time). I've spent most of today transferring the card text from the spreadsheet I was using to the layout application. It turns out that even using 12pt text I've got room for more flavour text, so I've been bulking out the explanations as I go. This is good, I was having difficulty coming up with a story that fit the limited space of my first guess at how much text I could fit on the cards.

Here's the third character preview from Carpe Astra:

Representing the colour blue is High Priest Ichthon, from the priests. He's an ancient old man, dressed in the ceremonial robes of the priesthood.

Flavour text: Ichthon has been a priest since adolescence, and over the last five hundred years has risen to the higher echelons of the Priesthood. He is a traditionalist, voting in the council for tighter restrictions on permissible behaviour and is always trying to boost the power of the Priesthood.

Finally the sketch the artist has done for him, which is my favourite of the bunch so far:

It's Alive! Construction Finished!

All day yesterday and this morning I've been making copies of It's Alive! I figured I was best off finishing them all in advance of the Beer and Pretzels convention next weekend, and if I got them finished that would free me up to concentrate on Carpe Astra.

Turns out to be good timing. I contacted those people on the Geek who listed themselves as wanting a copy to warn them that I was running out. Several bought a copy as a result of this (several more emailed me to let me know they wanted one, but couldn't afford it with the current US/UK exchange rate :-( ).

One of the customers who bought it received it yesterday and promptly played it with his partner several times. He loves it, and was quite happy to tell readers of SpielBox that he loves it. The very complementary review has led to several more sales to Germany today - will I have any copies left to take next weekend? In some ways I hope so, in others I don't :-)

In other news, I've just bought Adobe InDesign CS3, it's staggeringly expensive, but the right tool for the job of laying out the artwork for Carpe Astra. I downloaded a free trial several weeks ago, but that's now run out so it's time to put my money where my mouth is.