Stay On Target!

If you've been following this blog for a couple of years you'll know that Codename: Vacuum was the first game I started designing when I got back into Games Design, a couple of years after I wound up Reiver Games, having lost a ton of money in the process. Reiver Games had been a great experience and a lot of fun and I'd met some fantastic people through it that I still consider good friends, but watching your company slowly wither and die kinda sucks the fun out of things and I'd gone off games design for a bit. As the highs and lows of Reiver Games faded from my legendarily poor memory, I started thinking about games design again, and Vacuum was the first of those ideas to be realised in actual cardboard.

I started working on it back in November 2011, and after a couple of years of frequent changes and regular playtests it took a back seat as I focused on Zombology in 2014. I've not really touched it since February last year and despite a couple of ideas during the year, I've done nothing. So much so that this year it didn't make an appearance in my goals at all. Had I not even thought about it once all year, that wouldn't get in the way of my goals at all.

With the NaGa DeMon winners' copies all posted I'm finally in a position to crack on with achieving this year's goals, the largest of which is to become a hobby publisher again.

But instead, I've spent the week working on Vacuum again. I had another four hours of train journeys on Wednesday, this time down to Sheffield and back for my quarterly hospital check-up. I spent that time designing in my head and then starting the graphic design for a new version of Vacuum. The last version was alright, but a couple of the strategies were quite dull and the game took up too much space for what it was.

I've started on a new version which I hope to finish in a week or two so that I can make a copy to take with me to Germany at the end of March. I'm off to Berlin for a conference with work, and I hope to meet up with Konrad, my NaGa DeMon winner two years on the trot and a keen supporter of Reiver Games from back in the day. Konrad has expressed an interest in Vacuum and his feedback on Zombology and Dragon Dance has been really helpful, so it'll be great for both of us If I can get it done in time!

But, I also need to stay focused on my goals, with two months down already, I'm going to have to crack on. In the words of Gold Five: Stay on target!

In other news, Robin David is interviewing me via email for his blog. I'm famous again! ;-p