I Feel (Almost) Human Again!

I hope everyone had a nice break for Christmas. I spent most of it lying on the sofa watching The West Wing. And not in a good way. I came down with a stinking cold on Christmas Day. By Boxing Day (which was the day we were spending with my family), I was feeling worse, and when we sat down for dinner the others noticed that despite being in a fairly small room that had just been used for cooking and now had ten other people in it, and despite wearing lots of clothes I was shivering. Yes, I now had a fever :-( I promptly went to bed, and slept on and off for the next few days, except at night when I just lay there unable to sleep. Fun. Still, I'm feeling much better now, still not right, but it's just a cold again, nothing fatal (i.e. not Man-Flu).

Today I'm back in the saddle. I'm working on Sumeria now in earnest. Over Christmas I approached a German artist (who had left me a leaflet at Essen - I really liked his portfolio and I thought his style would suit Sumeria really well). I'm getting together the details for him to get a quote. Then I'm going to get a manufacturing quote request off as well.

I'm vaguely considering moving Sumeria forward. I'd like to release a new game at the UK Games Expo and another at Spiel '09. The original plan was to launch Sumeria at Essen (I think it would be the perfect game for the family audience), but now I'm thinking timing might be an issue. The UKGE is at the beginning of June, I'd want to have the games back from the manufacturers a week or two before hand to allow time for some delay at the manufacturers. It'll probably take eight to ten weeks to manufacture again, so I need to have everything ready by the end of March. If I go with Sumeria first that gives me three months to get it priced up, get all the artwork and final playtesting done. If I go with something else I have three months to choose something, playtest it, choose an artist, get it priced up, get the art done and get the final playtesting done. Sounds a bit tight...