Forth. New Horizons

Let me begin with an old news: our current project has been play tested at UK Games Expo in Birmingham. It may seem like a small or insignificant event, but the experience of showing your project to unknown audience was essential. Consider, this: every day gamers are bombarded by the huge amount of various new and old gaming news. You get anything from new releases, regular editions to re-masters of cult classics. To add you own humble voice to the this choir is another step in making your dream come true. 

But to get there, you start with your immediate circle of friends and gaming buddies, show them your works and hope they like it. Then comes the time when you are brave enough to bring it to the public. This is where you immediately know if your game is ready or need more work. 

The latter is the case, for our current Project STARZ. This game was born from idea of making a mod to existing card-driven board game about escaping from crashing space ship, by expanding its mechanics, adding dice rolling, characters and ... Yeah. Its a lot. 

After six months of working out the concept, characters and main mechanics game was presented for a public play test. It was the most nerve racking experience until people actually started playing the the game. When you see people having fun when playing something you've been working so hard to create, it changes your world. all the doubt, the sleepless nights, ideas that you were not sure will be understood suddenly fit into the experience. 

Yes, there is definitely a string of questions and feedback. No game is ever perfect in its first or even second iteration. But it just a fuel for the development. 

So, when is your game coming out? Where can i see it or play it? Short answer is when its done. 

Regardless of game development achievements, life has its own challenges. Due to several factors my general health and mental well being took a serious hit in July. Forcing me to take a break from social gaming, then change the day job i held. As I'm writing this, it is the end of August. I do feel better, but not enough to dive head over heels into a development marathon i did in the beginning of this year.

 So, I have to take it one step at a time... 

Third. that difficult third.

Its been far too long since Second post was published here. It seems like it was made in another dimension, so much has changed in gaming, business and personal life. 

3D printing revolution has won. With printers and resin getting more and more accessible to average players, less people tend to by plastic models. 

Games Workshop has unveiled new edition with free rules, along multiple "specialist" games. Killteam became a legal copycat of Infinity. Gasslands have created a following in both GW games and other Indie games.

AI revolution is happening. More and more publisher use  AI generated art, texts and other content in both video and table-top games. 

Dungeons and Dragons has celebrated 50 years, and moved into new age with new editon of rules where everyone is rainbow puking pony. 

Despite that, Baldurs Gate 3, designed for mature audiences became the game of year and most popular game on Steam. 

Boardgame market has over 200 new titles every year. Thats the most worrying sign, of market being overpopulated. However, nobody know if its going to implode as it happened with late 90- s Atari chipset games. 

We are still in development limbo. Studio has shrunk to a one man band (namely Pavel). Then we had to stop working on games at some point due to stress of day job. A small success was to show a prototype of our strategy game during UK Games Expo 23. 

Then, more and more playtests, redesigns and improvements. Step by step.

That third step was really difficult.