Playtest, tweak, rinse, repeat. I think I'm starting to tire of this cycle.

So, a lot of my energy lately has been going into improving the visual appearance of Manaforge. Sure, there are the constant playtests, and making balance tweaks and improvements feels like a neverending process. But improving the game's appearance is my primary focus right now. The game's cards are done, but I need to put effort into the rest of the game's visual elements: the main game board, player mats, rulebook, player aid sheets, and the box cover.

Success!

I had my first playtest of Manaforge on Tabletopia last night! It was interesting, to say the least. A few bumps to be sure, but just the fact that I can now host playtests for my game, regardless of where the players are, is awesome.

Stuff that went wrong:

• Even though the playtest had a set start time, it took about a half hour after that before everyone was in the virtual room. I guess punctuality is harder to enforce when you're not physically there.
  
• One player had a flaky internet connection and dropped out of the game a couple of times. Tabletopia remembered who the player was so they got their seat back when they rejoined, but it still disrupted the game a little.
  
• All the players had TeamSpeak, but not all of them had microphones. It made back-and-forth communication a little slower.
  
• Even though the rulebook was readily available, not everyone read it. I still had to explain the rules at the beginning of the game.
  
• Tabletopia assigns unhelpful player names such as "Player12131" to non-members, so it was a little hard to keep track of who was who. If there is a way to change the default assigned name, I haven't found it yet.
  
• One player hit the wrong key and rerolled all his dice without meaning to. It would be nice if Tabletopia had an 'undo' function, though I can see how that would be fiendishly difficult to implement.
  
• Passing the Character cards around for the draft at the beginning is a little awkward. Players had trouble with the way Tabletopia implements each player's hidden 'hand' of cards.
  

Stuff that went right:

• Setup was a breeze. All the objects were already in the correct locations, and the cards were already shuffled and dealt, thanks to Tabletopia's 'randomize' feature.
  
• There doesn't appear to be a cap on the number of players in a room. My game only has four 'seats', because it only supports four players, but Tabletopia did not complain at all about there being five people logged in. It doesn't appear that there is a limit on the number of spectators in the room.
  
• Thanks to TeamSpeak, everyone could hear me talking. It made explaining the game rules a lot faster.
  
• The turn reference and dice reference sheets were readily available, floating right off to the side of the gameboard. I only got one question about what one of the dice effects was.
  
• The magnetic effects of the boards worked perfectly. Dealing out item cards from the draw pile went quickly. The cards snapped to the spaces easily and were automatically flipped face up at the same time.
  
• Even though I couldn't hear most of the players talking, I could still tell what they wanted to do. You can always see where the player's cursors are, so it enabled 'gesturing' as a form of communication. Also the players were moving the dice around to show that they were using them, which was a big help with performing resource math.
  
• A 6-point spread for four players is very good for my game. (1st place scored 33, 4th place scored 27.) There were no runaway leaders, and nobody was left behind.
  
• One keypress will let you view a close-up version of a card without having to disturb it. Much better than having to physically pick up the card, which prevents other players from looking at it at the same time.

Stuff I can improve:

• I need to move the unused dice more off to the side. It was sometimes hard to tell what was in play and what wasn't.
  
• The 'bags' that contain the mana gem tokens are color-coded, but they could probably use some labels too.
  
• There is only one default camera position, overlooking the entire playfield. It's kind of hard to see details from that high up. Supposedly there is a way to set up more camera presets; having camera positions for each player would probably help.
  

Overall, I'm very pleased with how this turned out. Only a couple more tweaks to the virtual setup are needed. Hopefully sometime soon I'll also be able to open the room up to 'blind' testing, have me there just as a silent spectator and see what everyone does with the game.

Over the course of playesting Manaforge with new players, I've been getting one complaint fairly consistently. It's difficult to mentally keep track of how much mana you currently have available. Now, I don't get this complaint every time I play; it really depends on the players. Heavy gamers, especially those that have played Magic before, are generally okay. It's the players that are less used to having to perform that sort of mental manipulation that tend to suffer in my game. So, I've had it mentioned several times that there needs to be a more tangible way to track how much mana you have. Tokens or sliders or something.

Enter the Mana Abacus. :) (Okay, maybe not the best name. But that's what I think of when I'm imagining this.)  A tiny cheat sheet with four tracks numbered 0 through 8, one for each element, and four glass stones that slide over the numbers to show your current mana levels. It's simple but it works.

And it occurred to me, this isn't really a vital component for the game. Sure, it's helpful, but not required. You can play without it. It's just a 'nice to have'.

So, from a Kickstarter perspective, wouldn't this qualify as a Stretch Goal? Something I can tack on to the production if there is an abundance of interest in Manaforge, but that isn't vital and can be left off if there is a shortage of funds. And it should be an easy thing to add; a little bit of extra money paid to my graphic designer and a couple of extra components in the box.

We'll see if this idea ever becomes reality. :)

Next order of business: making my game look good.

So far, while working on Manaforge, I've mostly been focusing on the appearance of the cards. Making sure the art is good, the frames are good, the icons are understandable, the text is readable.

But there's more to my game than just the cards. Dice, tokens, a center board, player mats, player aid sheets, a rulebook, and of course the all-important outer box. I've been struggling to come up with a visual appearance for all of these items that both ties them all together, and that ties the game to its theme.

The best visual idea I've been able to come up with is to have the game components look like Da Vinci-styled 'schematics'; diagrams, cross-sections, and writing, scrawled on yellowed paper or parchment. Though in the case of Manaforge, instead of mechanical inventions or anatomical drawings, the objects depicted within would be magical items such as wands or amulets. Since the players are constructing such items as part of the game, making the game's components look like instructions for building those items seems like an excellent fit.

However, while this sounds like a good idea for the game boards, which will be covered up with cards most of the time, I'm not sure if this will work for the box cover. I need something that will pop, something that catches the eye amidst an ocean of other brightly-colored game boxes. It needs to stand out, and I don't know if this will do it.

My alternative is to commission a full-sized illustration for the box cover. While I'm pretty sure this would grab the attention I need, I don't know what sort of art I would need that would blend with the schematics idea; even if the box cover was specialized artwork, many of the other components would still be decorated with the schematics.

Decisions, decisions. Times like this I wish I had an art director, but I don't have the budget for that. Oh well. Back to the drawing board. :)

So, I'm currently making the push to port Manaforge over to virtual tabletop software. Right now, I'm focusing on two platforms, Steam's Tabletop Simulator, and they newly-Kickstarted Tabletopia.

Whew. Writing rulebooks is a lot of work.

Manaforge had a rulebook. Back when it was still in its "Conjurers" phase, I had put together a passable rulebook to go along with the game. But that kind of fell to the wayside when I started making a whole bunch of rules and balance tweaks to the game. Since the rulebook became obsolete and didn't match the game rules anymore, I started leaving it behind.

But today, that changes. I've spent the past few days getting the rulebook back up-to-date. It's not complete by any standards; I know it could benefit from some professional editing, it needs more example images, it will have to be updated again when I get more game artwork in, and it needs an overall graphic design pass to make it look good. But the rulebook, combined with the game components, should make for a playable game.

I need this now because I'm probably going to put my game up online for players to mess with sometime soon. This won't be an official standalone version of the game, but instead I think I'm going to use a virtual game table service like Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia to show my game off while it's inching closer to completion. I need as much exposure and as much feedback as I can get, so putting my game up where anyone can jump in and play seems like the best idea.

For anyone that wants to view the rulebook, there's a download link on my Games page. Enjoy!

It's been a quiet week here.

The work on my game has entered sort of a lull phase. The graphic design is ongoing; currently the main game board is undergoing renovation. The artwork is ongoing; both of my illustrators are pumping out wonderful art.

But those are tasks that other people are doing. It doesn't seem like there's a lot for me to do right at this moment.

I've been doing business-related paperwork. I've been keeping up with game news and such. I've been holding playtests at my local game stores. I've been making plans to attend Necronomicon this year, including trying to find a place to stay and crafting promotional materials. I've been processing feedback and making balance tweaks to my game.

But the urgency, the rush of activity I had before FlaMinGoCon, that is gone.

So I've been contemplating what to attack next. I know there's so much left to be done, but I'm not sure what I can work on right now.

My current long-term goal is to hold a Kickstarter campaign early next year. There's so much to be done on my game before then, though. I need to get it complete enough that I can order a professionally-done prototype from a printing company. (Or two. Or ten.)  I need to send said prototypes to reviewers. I need to make a walkthrough video. I need to complete the rulebook. I need to port my game to a digital play space (Tabloro, Tabletop Simulator, or the new one on Kickstarter, Tabletopia.) I need to research game manufacturers. I need to research distribution. There is lots to be done. But none of that needs to be done right now. 

So I'm looking ahead, trying to figure out what's the next priority.

Hopefully, that means there will be more to announce soon. :)

Ugh, here we go again.

So, I was at FlaMinGoCon a week and a half ago. Fun times. I got in a few excellent playtests of my game, got a mountain of mostly-positive feedback, and exposed a couple of lurking balance issues in my game. Overall, it was a very good day.

My mom lives in the same area as the convention, so I got to see her as well. Since she knew I was coming, she had boxed up a bunch of my old games that were still laying around at her place so that I could bring them back home. I figured there might be something fun to play left over in there, and at worst I could dismantle them for components to build new games out of.

I didn't know it was going to be that large a box. :)  Lots and lots of old toys. Poker chips and cards and obscure games and dice and lots of other assorted bits. I recall using a lot of that stuff to make my own 'games' decades ago. Treasure trove!

And there was a note in there. An imaginary folded-up piece of paper hidden near the bottom of the box that basically read something like this:

"Dear B,

Here is an idea for a game. I made it just for you out of the various bits in this box. I hope you like it.

Signed,
Your Muse"

Yup. Yet another idea for a game. This one is way more abstract than the last one. I suppose that makes sense, since a lot of the original games I played were abstract games. Still. <sigh> More stuff to try to not think about. :P

And here are the "Character" cards for my game. Unlike the regular "Item" cards, which are acquired during the course of the game, these cards are given out at the beginning of the game. Each player starts play with two of them, and they give the players unique abilities as well as influencing what dice they get. (The 'die' symbols in the bottom corner show what dice are given out.)

This is the one part of the game that is still in flux. Overall, I'm happy with the powers on the cards here, but they still need to be well tested and will probably undergo more tweaks.

Cut and sleeved with other game cards behind them to add strength, the same way the main cards are done.