Colds

Paul and I have both been feeling rough this week.

But we've managed to eek out some progress.

Paul continuing to churn out ships from the laser-cutter.

To fulfil our website orders.

Me, inching towards the completion of the crowdfunding page.

And, while feeling particularly rough this weekend, cranking out a first cut of the high-ink page for Exodus:

My fourth print at home roll and write.

Rough

This week I've mostly felt rough.

Had a bad cold at the beginning of the week, and then my COVID and flu vaccines at the end.

I've taken a lot of Lemsip!

We've still made progress though.

Paul's been building up stock.

Including of the new Box of Pirate Flicks - so that's now up for sale on the website.

I've been finishing off the Away Team Bingo campaign, ready for Tuesday's launch.

At this point it looks like it's going to under-perform Rocky 'Roid.

I just hope it breaks even!

I've also opened a Gamefound store.

And been working on Jotunsaga.

#

New terrain cards, might make them hexes.

Incorporating feedback from last weekend's playtest with the public, and last Tuesday's trip to Newcastle Playtest.

There's no rest for the mildly ill!

Rules

I’m now in fulfilment mode. 

First up is the print and play rewards due at the end of this month. 

They require the finished rulebook and dashboards. 

I’ve finished a first cut of the rules this week. 

Taking shape!

Next up are the dashboards and finalising the rules. 

The 3D printing and laser-cutting files are done. 

Looks on track at the moment. 

Hopefully early. 

Website sales are continuing very strongly. 

Still no idea why. 

But Paul has spent all weekend in hospital with a serious infection. 

He’s coming home this afternoon though.

Bed

I’m writing this on Sunday.

Which is not unusual.

I’m also writing it from bed.

Which is.

We’ve got just over two weeks until the planned launch of our next Gamefound campaign.

Lots to do.

I could do without being ill.

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

But here we are.

Progress

Paul has been sick between Christmas and New Year. 

He’s still not right now. 

But he’s getting better. 

The last few non-EU playmats shipped this week. 

Freeing up valuable space in his house. 

Next up is starting to tick off the deluxe rewards. 

Meanwhile I’ve been cracking on with the scenario booklet. 

The Rift

Testing the scenarios. 

Tweaking them. 

Testing again. 

I’ve almost finished. 

Next up is some more coding on our internal tooling. 

To save me time that I can then spend on game design. Or graphic design. Or Gamefound pages.

Isolation

With COVID sweeping through our house we’ve been housebound again.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Feels a lot like the first lockdown of 2020. 

Though thankfully much shorter.

I’ve not left the house since last Saturday. 

Nine days. Tomorrow I might finally be allowed out.

I had last week off work too, a combination of sick leave at the beginning and then having to homeschool the girls while they isolated and The Wife was sick.

The girls are back at school now.

The Wife is feeling better.

At least we all had mild cases.

And it didn’t get in the way of our family holiday in a couple of weeks.

My parents have it too this week. They seem to be weathering it well too.

I’m thankful.

A Good Week!

Things are finally on the up! Paul is now well enough to return to work and on Friday posted all but two of the remaining rewards for the Kickstarter (the last two will hopefully go this week).

With Paul able to post games again, I’ve spent the weekend working on the website, preparing to opening it up again and make the expansion available for sale.

A deluxe expansion photo for the website

We now need to work out how to sell the remaining stock left over from the Kickstarter now that our plan of attending the UK Games Expo has been stopped by COVID-19.

Paul and I also had an online games design meeting when we discussed the next FlickFleet Kickstarter, Coalescence and TU:S. Feels like things are moving again!

On The Up!

Things are starting to look up. Paul is recovering from suspected COVID-19, so much so that he's parcelled up all the Kickstarter rewards now for taking to the Post Office, so Kickstarter fulfillment is getting closer.

I've also managed to find some time for both making FlickFleet first edition copies (we've still got a few of those to sell) and playtesting Coalescence with Daughter the First. I'm also considering entering Coalescence in the Board Game Workshop's competition (deadline for submissions: 5th June) to force myself to make progress and get some feedback. Just thinking about entering has spurred me on a bit - I've written the rules down and started drafting a video script in my head. So it's working so far.

I entered FlickFleet in the Cardboard Edison competition in 2018, and although we didn't win (or get shortlisted) we got some really useful feedback and it spurred me on to get the rules written down and formatted, so well worth doing!

Moving Forward and a Flashback

After a worrying couple days last weekend when we heard that both Paul and his wife had suspected COVID-19, and then they went ominously silent, we’ve heard that his wife is back to working from home and Paul’s OK. He’s been wiped out for a couple of weeks now but he’s not been to hospital so it counts as ‘mild’. His condition is slowly improving.

My Coalescence prototype was also slowly improving last week, I've been working on digital goal cards (with new goals and more options), so I hope to be able to finish them off in the next couple of weeks (free time is still very limited) and then print and cut them. Daughter the First played a few games of it at the start of the lockdown and has been asking to play again.

We’ve also been using the weekends stuck at home to sort out some of the piles of stuff left over from our move last summer. The garage in particular is full of moving boxes destined for the loft that we wanted to sort and not just squirrel away. This weekend, while going through boxes I found one containing a lot of Reiver Games prototypes including the final Border Reivers one from 2004:

An 16-year old prototype!

There were also a couple of games I had in progress when I shut it down in 2011 and a Carpe Astra prototype too. A proper blast from the past!

COVID :-(

Just a brief one this week. I've had a reasonable week in Newcastle (including teaching my eldest daughter Century Golem Edition - a leaving present from my previous employer - and playing a game with The Wife for the first time in ages), but I heard from Paul on Saturday that he and his wife (a key worker) both have suspected COVID-19. They were mostly fatigued and at home with their teenage daughter looking after them.

I'm sure you all join with me in wishing them a swift recovery.

Stay safe everyone.

Getting Back Into The Swing Of It

After my full-on trip to the States I returned home to a very busy week at work, with loads of people from America and Manchester (including my boss) over for a meeting. To make things more exciting, I caught a filthy cold on the plane home so for most of the week I felt rough as a dog too.

By judiciously avoiding alcohol on a work night out on Tuesday (I also left at 7:30!), I managed to mostly get over it by Thursday thankfully.

My only real gaming this week was the first Games Night in three weeks on Wednesday when we managed to tick Agricola off my 'haven't yet played this year' list and another Colt Express play towards my ten plays list. It was a fairly quite one - just Ian, Mike and I which meant we could get a longer game in too.

Yesterday The Wife swanned off to Germany for a couple of days for a work conference, so until late Tuesday evening I'm solo Parent-In-Charge of The Daughter. I'm using the evenings after The Daughter goes to sleep to do a bit more work on my German language app (taking shape nicely!) and finally making the next version of Dragon Dance. Last time I played it with Paul (back in 1870-something I think) he had a great idea about replacing the short/long range indicator card with a card that tries to convey a sense of space. I'm going to knock something up tonight and will see if I can get it tested in the office this week.

Next week I'm in Romania for most of the week so, if it works, I'll have some time to knock up a proper version of it in InDesign during my mornings/evenings. Of course Romania means no Games Night or lunchtime gaming club again. I need to spend some time in the country!

The week after Romania is Newcastle Playtest, and seeing as I've missed the last two (holiday in Portugal and conference in San Antonio), I'm really keen to make it to this one, especially if I've got a new version of Dragon Dance for Paul to try!

I Fought the Flu

And I won! Eventually.

So the sickness I was winging about last week turned out to be the flu. The real flu, not man-flu. The real flu. So the beginning of the week was joyous. I spent the first half of the week in bed, able to watch Netflix on the iPad and pretty much nothing else. Unable to sleep due to a bunged up head and difficulty breathing I ended up sat on the sofa at 4:30am on Tuesday (while The Daughter slept! Wasted!) wrapped in a blanket reading the flu symptoms on the NHS Direct website and as I went through the long list, ticking them all off (except nausea & sickness, thankfully), I had to except I probably had the flu. Then I got to the bit about if you have a long term condition, e.g. neurological condition or are immuno-compromised, you should go to the doctor. Seeing as I have Multiple Sclerosis and have received an immuno-comprising treatment for it, I figured that probably included me, so I gave them a ring when they opened that morning. The returned call confirmed I probably had the flu and that I should rest and drink loads of water and I should be aware that it could take me up to ten days (!) to get over it because of my situation.

Thankfully after four or five days I was starting to feel vaguely human again (though pretty weak from not having really eaten for nearly a week). Now I feel fine, and I spent most of this weekend feeling fine too. Which was great, since Easter is a four day weekend in the UK, so I got to spend time hanging out with my family and friends lying in the sun, eating food and drinking beer and playing with various sets of kids. It was a great weekend, it felt really summery too, which considering it's only April was great. It was certainly just what I needed after the flu.

I even had the chance to finish off the next version of Zombology and get it printed out and assembled. It's the version after the NaGa DeMon winners' copies (three of which have now definitely arrived :-) ). I've tried to pare it down a bit further, hopefully streamlining the game a bit more, while at the same time boosting the player interaction and making it a bit more cutthroat. I'd imagine I'll have to tweak it a few times to get things working as intended, but I hope the new changes, once tweaked, will be a further improvement over the NaGa DeMon version. At this rate I'm going to have to start thinking of assembling some blind playtesters before too much longer. I'd imagine that BGG is the place to go for that, I can't imagine I have a large enough readership here to select from (plus, if you're reading this, you're already clued up to some degree and probably a bit biased too!).

Anyway, I'm feeling good about it at the moment. Exciting times!