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Can you make a flowchart that fits on one page of paper and allows you to come within a couple of points of a human? If so then there's probably an issue somewhere.
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Dec 17, 2012 16:41
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Usually it's not a good sign if early playtests all result in very close games. Obviously it's good if the players feel they have control and contemplate their decisions carefully, but that doesn't necessarily indicate that the game has real depth. A common problem in Euro games is "illusion of choice," where the players merely feel they're making significant decisions, but the game ends up guaranteeing a close outcome by its construction, so the actual impact of the decisions is small; despite its popularity, after one play of Troyes I kind of felt like it suffers from that problem. In fact, especially when they're first learning a game, people's thinking time about a decision is almost entirely uncorrelated with its impact on the outcome. It has a lot more to do with whether the difference between options is qualitative or quantitative, and how immediate the effect is. Taking a hypothetical war game as an example, a decision between building air units and tanks is likely to be taken quickly by a beginner, while a decision about how much funding to put into training is likely to cause paralysis. With the building decision, the effect is immediate and qualitative - I'm either going to have some tanks to use next turn, or some planes, and those units presumably allow me to do very different things. When it comes to the amount I'm spending on training, though, I've got a spectrum of options, and the difference between one and the next is a small, quantitative difference in the amount of money I have available for the next few turns, and how effective my infantry is a few turns from now... there's no clear-cut "this or that" difference to latch on to, and it's going to cause a beginner to stall. For experienced players, maybe the training decision can be made quickly, because they know right away what ballpark they want to be in, and that going one level too high or too low is only a small mistake, not worth fussing about... and maybe the planes-or-tanks decision is worth thinking over for a few minutes. But the difference is that the experienced players are thinking productively, whereas the newbie taking his time over the training level decision is merely agonizing. So yeah. Try to determine if your players are taking time about a decision because they're actually thinking about which of several distinct scenarios they prefer, or whether their time is being spent just trying to see a difference between two options that produce very similar results. xopods fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 17:16
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xopods posted:So yeah. Try to determine if your players are taking time about a decision because they're actually thinking about which of two or more distinct scenarios they prefer, or whether their time is being spent just trying to see a difference between two options that produce very similar results. Fair enough. The game has a drafting phase and a card play phase and I certainly think that there are real and important decisions to be made in the first phase while the second may seem a little more obvious or illusion of choice. However with some of the luck based elements coming into play here (should I roll that die and try for more points or leave it alone to be safe?) as well as objections (basically counterspells) creating some tension of when and what order to play things in I would imagine that there is real analysis going on. Only repeated testing will yield answers!
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Dec 17, 2012 17:21
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quote:A common problem in Euro games is "illusion of choice," where the players merely feel they're making significant decisions, I'm really feeling this right now. Our group had a bit of a Tigris & Euphrates binge, and moving back to other deckbuilders and what not the choices feel very fuzzy. Instead of making huge swings to board position each turn, you're grinding out small statistical advantages. Is there a good term for this kind of distinction? But yeah, It's hard not to go a little AP playing T&E - you don't really get any softball choices.
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Dec 17, 2012 17:30
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So, still hammering out details on the dice building game. I've solved one problem and found another. I want the game to be about taking risks. One way I thought to do this was to have player resources dedicated to both setting up getting "victory points," and other resources spent to capitalize on that. The risk is in timing: if you set someone up to be scored upon but someone else comes along and spikes what you set up, you not only lose what you set up, but someone else gained from it. My initial issue was how to allow for that kind of timing. I originally had one type of die face be a "mark," which would set you up. Another was a means to attack, to capitalize on those marks. I never really likied the "mark" faces because they just seemed like clutter on an otherwise simple attack/defense mechanic. My solution was to eliminate the "mark" faces and use attacks for both: when you succeed at an attack, you can either mark the defender or cash in whatever marks they carry (yours or someone else's) for victory points. There are other options for successful attacks, just to add to the strategic depth of the game (adding bad dice to the defender's collection, making the defender discard dice, for example). The problem I now have is in what to do with the vacated die faces. I had all the die types and all their faces planned out, but now the "mark" face is kaput. I just want to make the most of the components and add to the existing mechanics, so I'm looking for something interesting from the sudden space I have in the dice designs. So far, the die faces I have are: "Attack" "Defense" (to draw the aforementioned Defense Tokens) "Legion" (can be used as attack or defense) "Denarii" (currency, to buy new dice or draw more for next turn) "Draw" (draw and roll more dice) "Reroll" (reroll it and other unused die/dice) "Cull" (remove an rolled, unused die from your collection) "Discard" (forces an immediate discard of a rolled, unused die. Only on bad dice). I have the basic attack/defense, a way to build an engine, a bad face I can use for bad (or for good but risky) dice, and some basic dice game utilities. I guess I'm just looking for something fresh that adds to the game's theme of risk. One idea I have is to make it a gambling mechanic. The die face would let you risk victory points you already have to earn more. You roll the die again looking for...something, and if you get it you gain VPs, but if you don't you lose what you risked. Other players could risk their own VPs to bet against you, to gain something if you fail. Another idea is to incoprorate "the Prisoner's Dillema" as a different form of gambling. If the face comes up, you pick another player and both choose "win" or "lose." If both choose "win," both gain 1 VP. If one chooses "win" and the other "lose," then the "lose" player gains 2 VPs. If both choose "lose" they both lose 1 VP. While I like the idea of gambling adding risk, neither of these mechanics are related to the other mechanics other than their use of VPs. That's ok, I guess, but I'm not totally sold on either of them. I'm just thinking aloud here. Does the gambling thing sound good? Any other ideas?
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Dec 17, 2012 18:20
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jmzero posted:I'm really feeling this right now. Our group had a bit of a Tigris & Euphrates binge, and moving back to other deckbuilders and what not the choices feel very fuzzy. Instead of making huge swings to board position each turn, you're grinding out small statistical advantages. Is there a good term for this kind of distinction? I don't know if there's any established terminology... I sometimes talk about "games of small margins" where you win by being just that little bit more efficient than your opponent at every move, as opposed to dealing a decisive blow. There's nothing inherently wrong with small-margin decisions, but they do raise some problems... they up the learning curve of the game, because it's harder to see how and why one person is winning. They also feel drier, and it's harder to fall far behind, it's also much harder to catch up. They also tend to work better in two-player games without much luck... because if the impact of your strategic and tactical decisions is dwarfed by luck or gang-up factors, the payoff is too small to put much effort into them. You also have to be careful about mixing small- and large-margin decisions... you can end up with a disproportionate amount of AP time spent on the decisions that have the least effect on the actual outcome of the game; Power Grid can sometimes suffer from this, with some players choosing their power plants more or less on a whim, but then counting costs meticulously in the grid-expansion phase to see if maybe there's a way they can get that eighth city for $1 less than the way they're thinking of...
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Dec 17, 2012 19:08
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It'd term it "optimization games" - tiny adjustments that will win the game, but generally aren't obvious to new (or maybe even intermediate) players.
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Dec 17, 2012 19:15
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Ugh, another two rejections. That's me down to one last publisher now. Apparently it's a 'Fun and unique concept' but the pirate theme limits it to the hobby/niche market. I'm not really sure what that means but welp. Sorry for the no-content  post. It's just a bit disappointing  .
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Dec 18, 2012 03:43
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quote:Apparently it's a 'Fun and unique concept' but the pirate theme limits it to the hobby/niche market. Perhaps this has an easy fix - instead of just being pirates, the game could assign a variety of identities (perhaps even more than one per game round). Makes it much more replayable too, though I suppose you'd have to ditch the props. Or maybe you have to go even broader for this to work. I think there's probably a market for a game that assigns a variety of situations, roles, and rules/objectives to teams in a party setting (ie. each player has one team member compete each round, while the rest of the players act as judges). In one setting both players might be trying to be good pirates who score based on their natural use of certain words. In another, you're a robot and maybe you get points for getting the other player to say a word from your secret list. You could take this all kinds of way - and all the activities don't need to be super amazing, you just have a lot of them of decent quality supported by a broad, simple framework and a few helpful components (timers, etc..) Overall, I think if you're going to sell this as a party game you need to be providing more potential content. People can sit around and talk silly without buying a box - you've got to be providing a bunch of humor-fuel.
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Dec 18, 2012 04:06
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Ugh, another two rejections. That's me down to one last publisher now. Apparently it's a 'Fun and unique concept' but the pirate theme limits it to the hobby/niche market. I'm not really sure what that means but welp. I think that means they like the idea of a party game where people have to expound on a given subject using words on cards that are thrown at them... they think that the pirate theme is just too narrow, which I'd agree with. Why not expand the game into something with three types of cards... draw a subject and persona card first (e.g. "An anecdote about a near-death experience" + "as told by a cowboy") and then people throw the word cards at you as you go. That's fit better for the general party game audience. (EDIT: I see jmzero suggested basically the same thing. I also agree with him that the game needs firmer objectives.) Anyway, don't get discouraged by rejections... the odds of having your first game get snapped up were very slim. Keep pluggin' away, eventually something will resonate with some publisher or other. xopods fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Dec 18, 2012 |
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Dec 18, 2012 06:46
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Yeah, that's a good idea. Will I be able to resubmit a game after I change it up like that? I know the odds are basically 0 in getting my first game ever published, I just didn't expect the rejections to be so rapid fire. In 2-3 days about 2 months worth of work got thrown out the window. Just sucks to have it happen so quick I guess.
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Dec 18, 2012 14:39
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Honestly, you're pretty lucky that you got the rejections so quickly and with feedback to boot. It stings, but you'll get used to it, and it's better than getting no response at all. Now these guys all know who you are, and you have a better idea of what they want, both of which improve your odds the next time. I wouldn't submit a slightly changed version too soon after the first, at least not to the same publishers. And if you're feeling bummed about the rejections, I wouldn't even work on the game for now. C.f. what I said in the OP about getting married to your first idea. Come up with some new ideas, and if a year down the road you feel like you want to come back to the core idea of Parley and do a new twist on it, do it then. As I've said a few times before in the thread, ideas from my older not-quite-good-enough games constantly work their way into newer, better games.
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Dec 18, 2012 15:20
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Right. I have a couple other games in the works right now, so I'll finish off the last submission I have for Parley and get working on those in a more focused way. My current main game is the robot fighting thing I mentioned early, and that's coming along well. I'll shelve Parley for now, rework it sometime in the future. The 'Role + Situation' card idea is good and I think I'll just lift that wholesale.
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Dec 18, 2012 15:37
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Oh, regarding objectives... it seems like a hard game to give a real scoring system; that would require adding some kind of team guessing element or something, and I don't quite see how it could work. However, it occurs to me that you could target a different market entirely. With my role + scenario cards idea, + your element of other players tossing the guy word cards, it seems it would be an amazing tool for aspiring improv groups to practice with. Of course, I have no idea what company would publish such a thing, but if you presented it that way and found the right person to pitch it to, then I think you'd get a lot more interest than presenting it as a regular party game. EDIT: OH! OH! How about this: instead of throwing word cards at the guy, everyone has like three or four face up in front of themselves, for everyone including the storyteller to see. His objective is to use as many of the words (in a plausible way) as he can in three minutes, whereas everyone else's objective is to get him to use their words rather than anyone else's. To that end, the spectators are allowed to ask questions (essentially helping him out by setting up ways to use their words). For instance, I'm telling a story about a first date, in the voice of a mad scientist, and you've got "motor oil" in front of you. Me: So the waiter - a fool, I will destroy him! - seats us, and... You: Wait... this date of yours. To be clear, was she a real person, or... Me [studying your cards]: Well... well I thought so. Until that impetuous fool of a waiter returned to take our drink orders - the nerve! - and you know what she asks for? MOTOR OIL! You then ding a bell (or whatever) and flip your card over to show it's been scored. xopods fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Dec 18, 2012 |
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Dec 18, 2012 17:07
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xopods posted:Oh, regarding objectives... it seems like a hard game to give a real scoring system; that would require adding some kind of team guessing element or something, and I don't quite see how it could work. No lie, I would absolutely play this. I would also want the excuse to do it as a pirate, cowboy, or vampire, but would play it as-is. Edit: The other players might need restrictions, though, in the questions they asked, to challenge them too. Is Taboo the game with that? Anyway, something like that.
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Dec 18, 2012 18:29
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It seems like the kind of game that would be hard to play competitively... even Taboo, there's a lot of grey area, people just have to be reasonable about how much they bend the rules. That's why I say it's probably better as an improv tool than a real gamey game. Like, even if you had a list of taboo-style words you couldn't say, it would be hard to prevent the questioners from hinting too directly, unless they took it upon themselves to leave their questions open-ended. I mean, in the above example, it's a bit less fun (and funny) if the questioner asks more leading questions like: "Your date didn't happen to be a robot, did she?" "Oh, why yes, she was!" "How did you find out?" "When she started leaking motor oil! That bumbling assistant of mine failed to tighten her screws!" and less funny still if they just ask: "Did your date order anything unusual to drink?" "Yes, motor oil! She was a robot!" But the nice thing about party games is that most people don't take them very seriously, so you can leave it up to groups to self-police things and develop their own general sense of exactly how leading you can be.
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Dec 18, 2012 22:56
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Explicitly not allow leading questions? Have someone yell "Objection!" and whoever is the "judge" for the round decides to sustain or overrule it.
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Dec 19, 2012 04:54
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All fantastic ideas guys, thanks. I've got them down and when it comes time to rework the game, I'll be including most of them in some way. I kept the game purposefully free of a lot of this stuff, the idea was to make a game as simple as possible and keep it that way, and it seemed to playtest well with that in mind. The way I saw it, most other party games are way less complex than Parley is right now anyway. I understand that previous comment about how people can have sillyfun time by themselves, but that's all any party game is, really. CAH is just madlibs, Once Upon a Time is just storytelling with more madlibs, Aye Dark Overlord, etc etc. Evidently people want more these days, oh well. You guys have been great feedback. If anyone wants to play Parley as it is now, let me know. On to new things! Super Robot Battler is coming along nice, and I'll have my first playtest ready by Thursday.
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Dec 19, 2012 15:02
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There's a game called Aye, Dark Overlord! which has some similarities to the game you're discussing, you might like to check it out. It's a fun game but it's rather unstructured and requires people who are prepared to get into the mood of the game. The basic rules have a couple of odd restrictions that we didn't like so we ended up pretty much making up our game with the same concept and cards. There is a more structured ruleset included as well, which just sucks and shouldn't be played. \/ \/ \/ Oops, I am dumb .
Tunga fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 15:35
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Not that it was a bad post, but he did mention Aye in his post. 
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Dec 19, 2012 15:45
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Tunga posted:There's a game called Aye, Dark Overlord! which has some similarities to the game you're discussing, you might like to check it out. It's a fun game but it's rather unstructured and requires people who are prepared to get into the mood of the game. The basic rules have a couple of odd restrictions that we didn't like so we ended up pretty much making up our game with the same concept and cards. There is a more structured ruleset included as well, which just sucks and shouldn't be played. Aye was actually one of the bases for Parley, and I implemented a couple changes to it that I felt fixed the Unstructured feel of the game, as well as the need for people to get into the 'mood'. Parley opens with everyone having to do their best pirate Yarrr, and combined with the silly hats and eye-patches I included in the game, it was fantastic for instantly getting everyone into the feel. Its one of the elements I'm most proud of in Parley.
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Dec 19, 2012 16:04
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silvergoose posted:Explicitly not allow leading questions? Have someone yell "Objection!" and whoever is the "judge" for the round decides to sustain or overrule it. This makes me think you could have a competitive version of the game. One player is the prosector, one is the witness. The prosecutor describes the crime scene with their evidence (word cards, probably from a limited suset) and their version of what happened. The witness describes the same crime scene (possibly with more words) in a way that explains it all with no crime, or someone else doing the crime. Then of course the judge fits in well. It may be best as a theme card like cowboy.
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Dec 19, 2012 16:07
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modig posted:This makes me think you could have a competitive version of the game. One player is the prosector, one is the witness. The prosecutor describes the crime scene with their evidence (word cards, probably from a limited suset) and their version of what happened. The witness describes the same crime scene (possibly with more words) in a way that explains it all with no crime, or someone else doing the crime. Then of course the judge fits in well. It may be best as a theme card like cowboy. That was kind of my thought process, yeah. Maybe have a Phoenix Wright themed game with that sort of gameplay.
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Dec 19, 2012 16:45
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silvergoose posted:That was kind of my thought process, yeah. Maybe have a Phoenix Wright themed game with that sort of gameplay. Reskin the simple card game "BS", or whatever the PG version is called. Add in some extra cards, change "BS" to "Objection!" and *boom* instant Phoenix Wright. "1 Clue..." "2 Pieces of Evidence..." "3 Eye Witnesses..." "OBJECTION!...gently caress!(takes the player's 3 eye witnesses)" PaybackJack fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Dec 19, 2012 |
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Dec 19, 2012 17:01
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Railing Kill posted:So, still hammering out details on the dice building game. I like the idea of gambling VP away. I used something similar in my own idea up thread. I think your "earn to spend to earn more" mechanic is almost there. I don't exactly know how many dice you roll at once in this game (or how dice building games work, frankly), but maybe to encourage bigger risks, players can put up a victory point if they roll at least X amount of dice? If they succeed on the action, they keep the victory point, and can also roll Y more dice (or reroll Z bad results). If they fail, they lose the victory point. Or give it to the other player. Whatever balances it out. (If I were to name this mechanic, I'd call it "Hubris".)
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Dec 19, 2012 23:32
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ZebraByNumbers posted:I like the idea of gambling VP away. I used something similar in my own idea up thread. I think your "earn to spend to earn more" mechanic is almost there. "Dice building game" is the nonsensical term coined (as far as I know) by Quarriors. It's is called so because it plays like a deck building game, but with dice: you get a set of dice at the beginning of the game, but use those to buy into better dice during the course of the game, and use those to eventually win the game. These games tend to be about how efficiently you develop your unique means to win, rather than being given all of those means at the start of the game. My game has players roll five dice per turn. There's ways to get more, and ways to get dinged and have less to use for a turn, but that's more rare. I decided to go with the Prisoner's Dilemma for the last die face. The rules in general seem solid enough to start testing, and I have the components sketched out. Time to start making some dice!
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Dec 20, 2012 01:58
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A true "dice-building game" would have you literally building dice. You'd have custom plastic dice with indentations into which you could snap individual die faces that you purchased and swapped around.
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Dec 20, 2012 03:55
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Haven't seen a mechanic like that during play, but the Lego boardgames have you build the dice before you start.
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Dec 20, 2012 04:15
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AgentF posted:Haven't seen a mechanic like that during play, but the Lego boardgames have you build the dice before you start. One of them does have that mechanic actually! It was either the Minotaur's Labyrinth, the Dragon's Pass, or the Pirate's Treasure one, but the mechanic let you add colored pips to the side of the die you rolled until it was full. Then the colors on each face corresponded to actions in the game. (I want to say it was dragon pass, and it was movement for that color figure.)
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Dec 20, 2012 08:56
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Playtest report for 12 Angry Dice. A bit later than I would have liked but you play when you can play. I played a couple games tonight and it was pretty fun! My buddy and I both plan on playing it again. We did make a couple modifications after we played it, which we think improved a couple basic things: 1) Instead of a linear progression for points we did a bit more exponential, so that instead of 1, 2, and 3, the progression was 1, 4, and 6. This helped make the divide between the points at the end a bit larger while making the game feel more dramatic. Inverting my opponent's 6 to a 1 felt a lot more damaging when I was gaining 6 points rather than just 3. 2) The Freeze card seemed...weak. We found that freezing a card for a turn didn't effect the other's strategy, so we tried changing it to a round, using pennies to mark the frozen dice. It ended up being pretty effective. Locking in a red die in the last round was crucial to my eventual win, blocking my opponent's red major shake-up. I liked this game and I can't wait until you add some flavor to the cards to make them feel more like a courtroom game.
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Dec 20, 2012 10:04
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lighttigersoul posted:One of them does have that mechanic actually! It was either the Minotaur's Labyrinth, the Dragon's Pass, or the Pirate's Treasure one, but the mechanic let you add colored pips to the side of the die you rolled until it was full. Then the colors on each face corresponded to actions in the game. (I want to say it was dragon pass, and it was movement for that color figure.) A buddy of mine and I have an idea for an epic Lego game along these lines. Each player would have their own personal die to roll along with a generic die each turn. The personal die can be modified by adding die faces to it as you find them along the board. The game would play kind of like Talisman: a race to the middle of a big board, but when and how you get there is up to you. You can take a risk and go early (with less useful stuff on your die), or you can adventure around the board for more and better die faces to give you a better chance at the center. Also: Minotaurus and Creationary are both pretty nifty games and people should check them out. I am told the out-of-print Lego Pyramid game is designed by Rainer Knizia, so there's that. But, yeah, Lego games are literally "dice- building." Quarriors and the like just use the name because of the similarity to deck building games.
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Dec 20, 2012 16:08
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muuphish posted:Playtest report for 12 Angry Dice. A bit later than I would have liked but you play when you can play. Thanks for the feedback! The change on scoring is an interesting one and probably one I'll try (knew I would at some point). I wanted to keep the scores close in the game but maybe spreading them out a bit more will help out. I'm experimenting with a few changes at present and I'd love to hear your thoughts at first glance. 1. I've modified the small single and medium double cards to make them more interesting and harder to ignore when drafting. a. Small singles now move a die 1 pip +1 per card of that color that you have played that turn. So if you play a small single yellow after playing a yellow inverter and a medium double, it would move a die 3 pips b. Medium doubles now let you split up the two pips of movement if you want to, giving it some flexibility making it harder to ignore c. The large triples remain powerful but more limited in scope I wanted to bring all of them more in line so it wasn't so simple to just toss the small singles off on your opponent as junky cards, but depending on what the hand looked like you would have to really think about it. 2. Objections don't work automatically anymore. I found that objections were likely the most powerful card and first card drafted in each hand. To make it a little more interesting I've tweaked it to require a 2+ roll on a d6 (separate, not a juror) for the first objection played. If you play a second objection, it'll require a 3+ ect ect...I'll also be testing out having it require a higher roll for EVERY objection played, not just your own, which would really increase the strategy in terms of when in the turn you played them vs. waiting for your opponents power cards.
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Dec 20, 2012 18:27
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Railing Kill posted:I am told the out-of-print Lego Pyramid game is designed by Rainer Knizia, so there's that. Funny thing about this, there's a copy at my FLGS that I've considered every time I've been in the market for a new board game. Also, I talked about it a little in the last contest thread, but I'm going to post a link for Unpub here because the annual con is coming up next month and, at least last year, there were some games there for blind play tests. http://unpub.net/unpub-3/ Also, Unpub/Cartrunk is a local and I've helped with various play tests over the last year. They're cool guys and really like trying to expand board gaming in general. /plug
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Dec 21, 2012 03:42
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12 Angry Dice Test report. Had a great game with the new versions of the cards. I think they make the decisions a lot more interesting in the early draft phases. I also love the new objection cards and it made a huge impact on this game. Final score in this one was Me:21 Wife:9 I'm pretty sure this was a result of several strategic and tactical errors on my wife's part and I'm pretty sure at this point that the game doesn't just play itself with obvious choices. The really interesting bit was that this would have actually been 30-6 if my second and final objection of the turn hadn't been overruled by me rolling a 2 when I needed a 3+.
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Dec 21, 2012 16:45
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Work on board game ideas is slow, but I should have a prototype of Super Robot Fighter for basic playtesting after Xmas. That aside, two new ideas I want to shop to you guys, and a few more links/resources. Both are still pretty loose and not fully developed, so excuse any vaugeness, I'm pretty One Project Minded so these back burner ideas just get any auxiliary brainpower till I get around to them. Idea 1: A drafting/worker placement game with a conspiracy theme. At the start, deal out x Objective cards. These will basically be variants on 'Get X Points in Y Region' with the odd 'Kill X' or 'Build a Y' thrown in. These get shuffled then dealt out at random. At the start of every turn, each player then bids/drafts a character or organisation, each comes with their own stock of Workers or cards that can be played on the various regions on the board. Game ends when someone hits their hidden victory. I want to somehow promote sneaky sneaky long term plans, backstabbing and such. I'm not sure how to go about that with this game, need to think on it. Idea 2: A cross between the exploration aspects of Betrayal/Mansions of Madness combined with the co-op mechanics of Ghost Story. You'd control 4 exorcists in a haunted house, tasked with dealing with the various ghosts. Trick being that the longer you stay in, the more ghosts appear, the riskier the game gets. You're semi-competing to see who can take out the most ghosts before escaping the house, stay in too long and get eaten by Ghost Mans. Not sure how I'll do powers/interplay on this one. Every other game I work with has bloody cards do I might just have it dice/abilities based, maybe. Also may need a Ghost master or something. And now, some links Every site on earth that lists 'Open Submissions' is so half assed its not even funny. Heres everything I've found, and some that I've posted in this thread beforehand. I'll just start editing and updating this post instead of posting links over and over. Fix up that second post Xpods http://www.indieboardsandcards.com/publishers.php - Indie Board and Card Games http://www.wishingtreegames.com/submit-a-game.html - Wishing Tree Games http://www.atlas-games.com/information_writer.php - Atlas Games http://www.brain-games.com/contacts/for-game-designers/ - Brain Games http://cocktailgames.com/en/cocktailgames/faq - Cocktail Games http://rprod.com/index.php?page=contact-2 - Repos Games http://www.rnrgames.com/ContactUs.aspx - RnR Games customerservice@alderac.com - Alderac info@nestorgames.com - Nestorgames - Does not like card games submissions@playrooment.com - Looks like they like simpler, younger people games mostly ideas@cambridgegames.com - Super Simple, non collectable stuff, no custom models. contact@indieboardsandcards.com - Cool people, according to Xopods contact_us@asmodee.com - Asmodee Games max@otb-games.com - Out Of The Box Games - Party games, simple stuff, etc) Obviously, most of my links are very small publishers, some with a major Party Game focus. Good resource for this is to go to BGG, look up the genre that your game is in, then just sift through some of the recently published things and pull up the Publishers. Generally BGG has some info about them and a link to their homepage. Nemesis Of Moles fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Jan 2, 2013 |
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Dec 21, 2012 22:02
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Sorry, I'm face-stabbingly busy this month... like I said, I'll try to do a more comprehensive collection of links from the thread + my own research and do a proper second post in January. For now I just copy-pasted your list of links, and threw Minion Games in there, who I think I mentioned but you didn't include.
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Dec 22, 2012 07:04
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Also, Gamesalute takes open submissions (though they're temporarily closed till after Jan 1). This isn't actually to publish your game, but to effectively help you get your art, graphic design, production, fulfillment and kickstarter guidance all set up for you. Basically they do everything a publisher does (and supposedly at a higher margin for the designer).
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Dec 23, 2012 02:58
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Thread's been quiet over the holidays, presumably because I've been busy scrambling to meet my deadline, and everyone else has been busy stuffing themselves with turkey/latkes and playing with Christmas/Hanukkah gifts. Just to try to get conversation started again, is anyone making any game design-related New Year's resolutions? Brainstorm 31 ideas in 31 days in January? One prototype a month for 2013? Finished design ready to pitch to publishers by the end of the year?
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Dec 31, 2012 15:52
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I've been bouncing around an idea for a "card-building" game. Quick gist: players are given a bunch of set, basic cards, and then a certain number of random transparent cards that clip onto those base cards. There wouldn't be any particular order to these, you'd just slap on as many as you'd like (there might be a practical limit in terms of legibility - you'd have to be able to clearly see to the bottom layer) to randomly replace (or modify) effects, characteristics, parts of the name, parts of the picture, and parts of the cost. There'd be no real attempt to balance possible outcomes, and indeed a lot of the fun would be assembling "broken" cards with absurd effects. Countering this tendency would be: 1. A very, very short time limit for assembling cards, and rewards for having multiple, varying cards in the end. It would hopefully be normal for players to just throw together a few last cards at the end and hope they work. 2. Mechanisms to directly limit the effect of a single powerful card (ie. this card has won this much VP, so now it's gone) The natural thing to have these cards build is obviously monsters, and the game I'm considering now for the actual "play" part is a very basic game of monster combat. I'm thinking this part should be fairly quick and simple (and the only decision basically "what order to play my monsters out in") to focus time on what I think will be the more fun part (building cards). I think the ideal would be 2 teams of 2 players, so that players could have interesting interactions in terms of splitting their shared pool of random cards (by resource types, function, combo options, etc..) The theme I'm considering now is fairly light and open, a universe ruled by the 4 elements: Necromancy, Money, Lightning, and Booze. I've thrown together a starter list of cards. Things kind of seem to work OK and result in fun, goofy cards. My next step, I think, is to print off some test cards to see whether it works physically. I'm thinking the base cards will have plastic poles on the top, and the modifier cards will have holes that line up. To start I might just use binder clip things, but I don't want alignment to be an issue. I think some of the fun here will be just the tactile fun of assembly.. if that isn't fun (or is fiddly) the game will really suffer. Any thoughts?
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Dec 31, 2012 19:25
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Sounds like a lot of complexity in the components. Would be really hard to manufacture. Is there something you're doing with the cards that you couldn't do with e.g. little boards with space to put 1-4 smaller cards or tokens on top of them? The only thing remotely similar I can think of is one of Richard Garfield's stranger games, Filthy Rich, which is about covering up other players' advertising posters with posters of your own, and uses a binder with four of those standard plastic sheets for holding trading cards (3x3 cards per sheet).
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Dec 31, 2012 19:42
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