Meet Me in Cambridge, MA!

It's been a busy week, but a productive and slightly ill one. I finally heard back from my printer on Monday and was able to send him the files for the FlickFleet preview copies. I sent them on Tuesday (after a bit more work on them in my lunch breaks on Monday and Tuesday).

The art for the ship dashboards is potentially final (pending any negative feedback!) and the rules are mostly there apart from the illustration - which is the one from the box. The box still needs quite a lot of work - the illustration on the front is essentially a sketch at this point, there's no photo on the back and the players/age/time icons are all text at this point. At some point you need to just push the button though, and with my short-notice trip to the US this week I needed to get the art to the printers as soon as possible so that the previewers could get their hands on the game with plenty of time to review it ahead of the Kickstarter I've currently got planned for September. I've run the stuff I've done so far past The Wife, who has a good eye for these things, and my dad, who was an art teacher for 35 years) and they both think it looks good, so I'm reasonably happy at this point:

The first preview copy of FlickFleet

With the files out of the way I could join lunchtime games club in the office on Thursday (for the first time in months!) and then Thursday evening was Games Night - I played eight games on Thursday!

Friday evening I swung by the printers on my way home and collected the printed files. My plan was to spend Friday evening cutting out all the ship dashboards and wrapping a few of the preview copy boxes with their labels. Instead I felt a bit rough all the way home and then was sick while The Wife was getting the girls to bed. I went to be early myself having done nothing - not even cleaned up the house.

Saturday my parents were due to arrive in the afternoon and thanks to my laziness the night before the house was a tip. The Wife took the girls out for the morning and I (still feeling pretty rough) pootled round gently tidying up (pausing only to cut out the ship dashboards for and wrap the box of my personal FlickFleet copy - ready to take to America). My parents arrived in the evening and by that point I was starting to feel a bit less ill, though by 7:45pm I was so shattered I went to bed!

Sunday was a perfect day. I felt fine, and my parents and the four of us went to the beach for the day. It was glorious weather, hot but not too hot and sunny with a light breeze - we spent four or five hours on the beach, building sandcastles, playing in the (rather cold) sea, lounging around and eating ice cream. It was awesome.

Then I was up at 3am this morning (I'm writing this at 5am in an airport cafe!) for my trip to the US. I'll be in the US all week, getting home on Friday. The good thing about this is as a terrible traveller I'll be on UK time all week (until the day I come home of course), so I'll have the jet lag hours of 2-6am every day to work on the box illustration or the kickstarter. It should be a productive week!

While in the US I'm heading to Beantown Light Gamers evening at the Cambridge Center Foyer, 345 Main St, Cambridge, MA on Wednesday (27th) evening. I should be there no later than 7pm, so if you're Boston-based please come along and say hi - I'll be demoing Zombology (I'll also have a few copies for sale at $13 which saves $8 on international shipping) and FlickFleet - now's you chance to try it out ahead of the Kickstarter!