The State of the Game – January, 2022

Now that the new year is well underway, I want to take stock of the situation we – I, that is – am in with respect to the game(s) I’ve been developing. Kind of a look back at what’s been achieved, and setting some goals for the year ahead.

Achievements

Probably the biggest achievement from last year was finalising the design of Close Encounters and making pre-production copies available. It felt really good to be able to declare that complete! Along the way I had to get to grips with making art for the tiles, design and print the 3d models, and acquire the rest of the components for the game. All of those challenges were successfully overcome, and although I’ll likely make some changes as time goes by – changing sources of components, that sort of thing – there’s nothing that’ll affect the experience for players. So, big achievement there!

Another big step for me was pushing the playtesting and development of expansion sets along. There’s one just about ready for its final work to begin, and a few more at various stages of completion. Generally they feel like they’re in a good state, and I’m pleased with the results of all the work that’s been put in.

Goals

The biggest goal I have in mind for this year is to scale up production and distribution. This will almost certainly mean partnering with another business, possibly several. There are several possible candidates for this, but no final decision has yet been made – I may end up trying Kickstarter at some point!

Getting ready to scale up brings us to goal number 2, which is to get at least one expansion to pre-production status. The heavy weapons expansion is the prime candidate for this, and I would be happy if that was the only one that got to pre-production this year… but it might just be possible to do more, and I’d like to try for that!

Continuing with the development trend, goal number 3 is to get at least one more expansion to the point where I can confidently assert it’s ready for finalisation. If I manage more then that would be good, but that’s not necessary.

Other Things

The more eagle-eyed among you might have noticed there’s been little mention of the fantasy game I was tinkering with. Nothing has changed there – I still want to do it, I still think it would be cool, and it’s still on hold while I focus on Close Encounters. Once the development pressure there eases up I may be able to return to it – for now, though, it’s going to remain in the crypt.

One thing that may need to be de-crypted (heh), though, is art. Close Encounters benefits from a pretty mimnimalist art-style. The tiles excepted, the packaging and rulebooks are meant to look like military operations manuals, which aren’t known for their artistic flair! However, if I’m going to scale up, I’ll need to consider other alternatives for presentation. Although a lot of it can stay the same, I’m looking at getting some custom art done for the box and covers of the booklets. Currently I’m looking at the local community of starving artists, in the hopes that one or some of them will be willing to take on the job.

So, there’s the outline of what I want to achieve this year. In my next post, I’ll go into more detail about what work is in progress and its status. For now, though, I’m going to get to work planning how to achieve these goals!