Wednesday, October 11

Welcome To Jack's House Of Minor Cold

I'm getting better! Yeay! Back at work today. Boo!

Well, I didn't get all the copies of Border Reivers finished that I wanted to while The Wife was away, I blame the cold (which stopped me doing anything I didn't want to screw up) and the bad weather (which stopped me gluing). But I did finish six copies, make all but half the tiles for another six copies, and make the tiles for (and hence finish) four copies that were nearly finished before she left. So I did pretty well, especially as I was busy both weekends.

One thing I did manage to get done yesterday evening (once my head had started to clear) was the fourth prototype of Codename: Jorvik. It not only includes the new cards and a slightly different card distribution, but a mock-up of a tuck box, including card insert to stop the cards rattling around. Once The Wife is home I'll post some photos of the tuck box as I'm rather proud of it.

I'm trying to pick up the pace on Jorvik a bit, because if I'm not careful I'll just spend all my time on Border Reivers until it's finished, and then I'll have a few months of nothing to sell until I can get Jorvik ready. I'd like to have both Jorvik and Border Reivers for sale at the same time, as they will appeal to different markets. I need to get a lot more playtesting in, and start mocking up artwork. I've got some basic layout ideas for the cards (from my trip on the train on Saturday), so now I need to start developing those. I'm also going to approach the printer I used for Border Reivers to get an idea of printing costs, and speak to my Dad about getting some more original artwork for the box, card backs, and event cards. I think the main cards will need to have more detailed artwork, so I might have to do that myself in Paint Shop Pro, like I did for the cards and tiles of Border Reivers.

1 comment:

Jackson Pope said...

Blind-playtesting (which is what you're describing) is a key part of playtesting a new game. It's also good to watch (silently) people play the game from the rules and then quiz them afterwards. I want Jorvik to be a bit more settled (once I'm fairly happy with the rules) before I start testing it properly. At the moment it's changing a lot with every play.