by Andrew Bond
I have been playtesting a lot of my prototypes recently, with mixed success.:d10-1:Brent Crude got an outing at London Playtest last Sunday, then again at my Tuesday games night, and finally at Epsom Games Club on Thursday
:d10-2:I received the Artscow cards for Send in the Clowns and have played the game several times since, solo (new!) and three player. Also managed to playtest this last Sunday at London Plytest with five
:d10-3:I spent all of yesterday afternoon trying to boot my fruit farming game (provisionally called "Criswell's Fruit Farm") with some success, eventually
:d10-4:Hold the Front Page is being looked at by others at the moment (I can say no more on this for now) and the feedback has been very positive. Already some suggestions for improvement that I like very much
:d10-5:Art Dealer (which needs its own BGG entry) has been pining away in its box, because I left the darned thing at The UK Expo in Birmingham. Thanks to [user=Whistleblower][/user] for recovering the prototype for me!
:angry:
Brent Crude is in a state of flux. Recent plays have confirmed my instinct that the card drafting mechanism I haVe 'borrowed' from Firenze (a game I have yet to play, however) works a treat. Unfortunately, the rest of the game engine now does not fit with that card drafting mechanism. So I am going to have to retune everything to get this beast back to where it was a few version ago. As I said in the title of this post, two steps forward, one step back.
:angry:
I'm considering kick starting Send in the Clowns and have got a budget price for professional artwork. I am just waiting to hear what the printing costs would be and then, who knows, I may ate the plunge. The problem is what to offer as stretch goals for a card game with minimal components?
Jenny (my wife and co-designer of Clowns) suggested we play the game with her mother, whom we are staying with for the weekend. But we didn't tell her we had designed the game.
And she genuinely loved it, theme, gameplay, and the fact that she won! When she asked how much we had paid for the game, she just couldn't believe it when I said 'nothing, we designed it'. Best sort of playtest you can have.
:angry:
"Criswell's Fruit Farm" (named after my mother in law, who used to run a fruit farm with her husband in Somersham, Cambridgeshire) is a game in which you grow six different fruits on your farm (strawberries, blackberries, apples, plums, peaches, and blueberries), pick them and store them in your shed, take them to your market stall, and sell them for as much money as you can get.
After several failed attempts to get the game going, I have settled on a dice-rolling mechanism which is a cross between The Castles of Burgundy and Alien Frontiers. Still a lot more to do with the prototype, but I think it has legs, so we will see what develops.
:angry:
That's all for now
Mr feeling strangely inspired (from near Purley)