A new interactive story series I am calling paragraphs. It’s comprised of small interactive “games”. We are starting off a little artsy with Paragraphs #1.
Category: Blog
Big News! Voting has begun for the Solo Game Design Challenge of the Game Crafter and my game Tomb Roller is in the list!
As you might know I’ve entered a game design competition on the Game Crafter website to design a solo board game. The competition just closed and they need to narrow the entries down from 42 to just 20! Of Course I’m hoping Tomb Roller will be one of those 20! You can check out more about Tomb Roller here.
Voting is done by community voting. Which means you do need a Game Crafter account and spend 10 crafter points to vote. So if you have some crafter points lying around come help support me and cast a vote for Tomb Roller here;
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/contests/solo-game-design-challenge
If you like to share this with you friends or give feedback, by all means do! I will post an update once I know more.
Let’s hope for the best!
Times of relaxation have come here at Brokwerk! I will be going on a family holiday and will therefore be adjusting the release schedule of Behind the Tabletop.
Unlike many pro’s in the field we don’t have any fallback episodes, we just started and released our podcast. This is something I intend to fix when I get back from the holidays, be it solely for my own relaxation. I also would like to use this time to reconsider some choices made regarding the podcast and how I/we intend to keep it going and with what angle. Exciting stuff if you’d ask me!
These next couple of weeks I do intend to keep writing and designing, so make sure to follow us on instagram and twitter, to keep posted!
To gather some inspiration, let me know in the comments what you would like to see/hear from us!
I was searching for something to talk about on my Podcast when I stumbled upon an old interview I did when I was just starting out in the games industry. Inspired I figured it would be cool to make my own version of it about tabletop games and game design. Answer the questions in the comments or share it on social media, I’d love to read your answers!
I thought it would be nice to get to know the tabletop (design) community in a different way. On the next episode of Behind the Tabletop (which will air Friday) I will be answering these questions myself as well. For now I will post them here and on social media, and I want to encourage all you tabletop gamers out there to have a crack at it and share your answers! If all goes well it might even inspire more of these interviews on the podcast! So without further a do…
The Behind the Tabletop Interview
- What’s your favorite game right now/of all time?
- What’s a game you love that you wish you designed/worked on?
- What is your favorite type of game to play?
- Which game would you say you have spend the most time on?
- What type of games do you hate playing, and why?
- Do you rather play with or against other people?
- What is the #1 game on your wish-list right now?
- What does your “buying a new game”-process look like?
- If you could only save 3 games from your collection, which would you save?
- What is your most memorable gaming moment?
- What is your favorite game component?
- Do you have a designer role model? if so who is it and why him/her?
- What would be your favorite type of game to design?
- What is your all time favorite mechanic, and why?
- If you could re-theme a game, which game would it be and with what theme?
- What do you dislike most about designing or playing games?
- You get the chance to redesign any game. Which would it be and what would you change?
- If you could design a game for a specific (type of) person, who would it be and why?
- What was the last “thing” (this could be anything really) that inspired you to make a game of your own?
- What would be your advise for (other) designers?
I never really blog, but why not. It’s no secret anymore Fantasy Flight Games is rebooting their super successful and one of my personal favorite games X-wing the miniatures game. And I hate it.
– be aware this entire blog is based on speculation!-
They are calling it X-wing Second Edition and it has a lot of cool new features such as an special app, new designs, the force, and it’s even more geared towards flying! Wow, this sounds like a game for me! But then why do I hate it so much?
As a developer I applaud what Fantasy Flight is doing. It’s a bold move a reboot. But cleaning up a game and working out the kinks before it becomes a total frankenstein is a good thing. The app for instance and it’s integration is really, did I say really? I meant really good. I see it solving so many squad point and balancing problems as well as serving as a long awaited official tool to manage your squads. Action geared more towards flying can never be a bad thing, though I wonder how they would accomplish that in a game already doing it so well.
But X-Wing Second Edition is not X-wing. It’s a new game based on X-Wing. And I can’t help but feel like Fantasy Flight threw away our childhood blanky and replaced it with a shiny new one. Yes it stank, yes it was patched, yes it was dirty. But it was ours. We grew up with it, played with it and explored the universe with it. Ultimately it was what we all loved. I, and many with me, invested in X-Wing. Not only with monetarily but also emotionally. With time, lists, forum posts, tactics, research… our devotion as fans. X-Wing Second Edition might be a great game -and I know it will be- but it’s not my X-Wing.
And the money.. Oh.. the sweet money. We all know how it goes. We’ve all spend hundreds of dollars on ships for which we now again need to spend hundreds of dollars to make playable again. And again we will need to buy ships we don’t even want just for the upgrades. About that, this “monetization” scheme already was a kick in the balls for X-Wing. But I am not knowingly and willingly going to buy them AGAIN, in the form of conversion kits just to make my ships playable. I just won’t, and frankly can’t.
Could they have gone in a different direction? Off course. Maybe a new rule book or introduce the app and slowly phase out obsolete stuff. Make the conversion kits free or downloadable… But does it matter? No, they made the right choice, I just don’t like it. For me, I will keep playing MY X-Wing, and without new content it will slowly sink into the swamps of dagobah…. to be forgotten… until someone drags it out again.