tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90117296276319979612024-03-13T06:36:58.498-07:00Space FrontierThe journey from concept to creation of a space exploration board gameAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-25427689425267528652018-01-31T11:32:00.002-08:002018-01-31T11:32:54.969-08:0028: Vector MayhemHaving recently finished the prototype version of all of Space Frontier's Components, I have been able to broaden my prototype creation. No longer do I plan to to go to the printers and then manually cut each game out by hand with a hobby knife. Using the services of The Game Crafter (www.thegamecrafter.com) I am able to print-to-order as many Space Frontier prototypes as I want. I've already Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-18492624866311566282018-01-25T12:55:00.002-08:002018-01-25T12:56:02.048-08:0027: What took so long?So 1,300+ days has come and gone and I think a pretty reasonable question is, why did it take such a long time? Well there's a few answers to that and I'll try to break it down in a few paragraphs.
Rulebook Overhaul: The Space Frontier rulebook started off as I assume most rulebooks do. As a loose collection of somewhat ordered game rules that are written as soon as they were conceived. Before Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-34833017092432233412018-01-03T16:45:00.002-08:002018-01-25T12:56:14.825-08:0026: 1300 days later, Space Frontier, The Resurrection So. Here we are 3 and a half years later. Our Kickstarter didn't fund. It went pretty well actually, netting $12,279 in pledges, but falling quite short of our $35,000 goal. If you don't fund in Kickstarter, you don't get anything, and so it ended up costing John and I about $1,000 in now lost forever add costs.
And so momentum petered to a halt. But it never did stop.
I have been working on Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-48508901224291379982014-06-12T15:17:00.000-07:002014-06-12T15:17:19.717-07:0025: NVS Gameplays Review and InterviewAbout week ago, NVS of NVS Gameplays released 2 videos about Space Frontier. This was particularly appreciated because it was totally unsolicited. He contacted us and offered to do a review of our game because he thought it looked neat. Very flattering.
Speaking of flattering, both his Impressions Video (above) and Overview & Rules Video are overflowing with praise. Makes a game Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-62027492421477857092014-06-04T01:36:00.000-07:002014-06-04T01:36:15.229-07:0024: Space Frontier Review by UndeadVikingLance Myxter, the very awesome UndeadViking, has posted a very in detailed Space Frontier review over on his Youtube Channel. UndeadViking has hundreds of board game reviews on his account and also a lot of related content over at 2d6.org. Please do check out his other fine content but in the meantime, watch this glorious review that picks up on all the subtle nuances of Space Frontier's Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-51392870278064731342014-05-21T00:28:00.006-07:002014-05-22T11:02:49.364-07:0023: - Kickstarter Launch Day!Today is the day. After numerous trials and tribulations, it is finally here. Kickstarter Launch Day.
HERE IS A LINK TO OUR KICKSTARTER PAGE!!!
Our Kickstarter campaign is going to run from May 20th to June 28th and our funding goal will be $35,000. That sounds like a lot, but in order to make the game affordable for everyone, a larger print run of 1,500 units is required. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-11186786428364098812014-05-15T14:23:00.005-07:002014-05-15T14:25:38.587-07:0022: May - State of the Prototype
The latest Space Frontier Prototype is done. So far I've sliced out 2 copies and the only reason I don't have more is my aching hands. Seriously. You can only wield a pare of scissors and an Exact-o-knife for so long.
Overall, the game feels good. Play testing is finding less and less faults in the rules and overall games are completing faster and players are Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-65548065473636004422014-04-30T22:44:00.000-07:002014-05-03T00:01:02.715-07:0021: April - State of the PrototypeExciting times in Space Frontier production as our 4th and final Prototype (before the Kickstarter is completed anyway) is currently being printed. I've been working like mad on the cutting mat trying to slice out our game as fast as possible. Looking at the prototype pieces side by side really is staggering. Our new one just blows every other old prototype out of the water. The map tiles Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-10910966241275623662014-03-16T17:49:00.000-07:002014-03-17T09:02:22.126-07:0020: 1000th HourRemember back in February when I promised updates? I sure do. I meant it too. The reason for this posting is because I wanted to showcase progress, but nothing has been finished. I have been hard at work though and I wanted to express that. I keep track of my hours worked on Space Frontier, and yesterday I reached a pretty impressive milestone. Hour 1,000. &Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-71400898613770324192014-02-07T00:53:00.000-08:002014-02-07T14:13:24.206-08:0019: Aaron's Rules WritingI feel that this song accurately describes Aaron's grammatical abilities while writing the rulebook.
-JohnAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13525474333012900415noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-71687115534308147412014-02-06T14:22:00.001-08:002014-02-06T14:22:34.750-08:0018: Blowing The Dust Off This BlogDecember. It's gone. And it's been February... It's been February for like a whole week. What happened to all my promises of productivity and board game completion? Life. Life happened. Nothing more interesting than that.
So does that mean more of nothing? No! John's made a special trip up here to work with me. He's here for 10 days. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-55711256763725136402013-12-15T01:00:00.000-08:002013-12-15T01:01:21.483-08:0017: Where The Heck Did November Go?So I'd like to apologize for the lack of updates to the blog, specifically because I said that there were going to be a lot of updates... I feel really bad about that. Sorry.
I have had to pick up a second job because money has been tight and that has eaten into project time. Throw a few illnesses (first John, then me) into the mix and the holidays and time had been passing by at an Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-70957288900526286642013-11-03T16:10:00.002-08:002013-11-11T15:52:08.538-08:0016: November - State of the Prototype
Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time or perhaps those who have been looking through the archives will notice that the date of this post is November 3rd. Originally, that was going to be the launch date for our Kickstarter Campaign but for many reasons it is not to be so. The largest of which was, Space Frontier was just not quite ready. Other reasons Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-9905442751069440802013-10-21T23:04:00.001-07:002013-10-21T23:04:31.613-07:0015: Making The Game More FunSo there hasn't been an update for 3 weeks and that is not at all because there has been nothing to talk about. Rather the opposite. The last several playtests of Space Frontier have revealed that our theme isn't as strong as it could be, and the game needs more player interaction. The game is just not as fun as it could be right now and John and I have been very hard at work toAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-91525109081019623522013-10-01T18:24:00.000-07:002013-10-03T00:41:18.854-07:0014: October - State Of The PrototypeSo it's been about a month since I started this little blog and this is a halfway point. The plan is to have our Kickstarter up and running on November 3rd, about a month away. I haven't shown a tremendous amount of what the game is or actually looks like on this blog yet, always hoping to have a better version soon. In the last month the prototype has seen a lot of play-testingAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-61115721266961958972013-09-29T16:54:00.001-07:002013-09-29T17:05:25.813-07:0013: Awesome
*Zhap pew pew*
*Shoooooom*
*explode*
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13525474333012900415noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-69995419176887054892013-09-29T00:19:00.002-07:002013-09-29T00:19:11.918-07:0012: A Day Late And A Dollar ShortSo if you read the last post you'll notice that our goal was to have a post over at BoardGameGeek by Friday September 27. And then we didn't. While we were a day behind on that, John and I did get a chance to meet with Chris Prichard today and talk about several things, including but not limited to card templates for command missions as well as box cover specifics. Afterwards Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-31550606219172974062013-09-24T15:58:00.000-07:002013-09-25T14:12:37.222-07:0011: Kickstarter Timetable: Fighting Against DoubtSo I've talked a lot in previous posts about Space Frontier's Kickstarter Campaign and how it's going to happen "soon." I don't think I've stressed though, just how soon. I touched on it briefly in post post #7, but I wanted to emphasize just how tight the upcoming schedule is for John and I. A few days ago, we sat down and hammered out a timetable of what we had to get done andAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-36026975596228146902013-09-22T01:55:00.001-07:002013-09-25T14:13:13.788-07:0010: Opportunities On The HorizenSo in the last few days several very interesting things have happened and I thought "why not blog about it?" Alright; here we go!
I played a game of Warhammer Fantasy with a nice gentleman named Aiden who I met online over at warseer.com. We met at a game store I'd never been to before called Green Lake Games. We had a fun game, but that's not the part that is news. The Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-82475856721849945022013-09-19T12:16:00.001-07:002013-09-25T14:13:21.664-07:0009: Taking The New Combat System For A SpinSo on last Tuesday night, John, myself, and a mutual friend of ours got a chance to sit down and play Space Frontier together. This would be the first time that the new combat system was tested with all the custom dice that I'd painstakingly created. Overall the game was fun and our friend, who had never played it before, enjoyed it. The play-through tested a lot of rules Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-13300484203183839572013-09-18T18:26:00.002-07:002013-09-25T14:14:44.614-07:0008: Inventing a Space ThemeSo... Space. It's been done before. Lots of times. Probably the biggest names in terms of Sci-Fi space are Star Wars and Star Trek, but there are Thousands of different fictional realities that have a space setting in modern media. Just like most any other setting, all the most basic story plots have just been done before, so making yourself stand out among the multitudes Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-81644925156480999242013-09-17T14:23:00.001-07:002013-09-25T14:14:35.999-07:0007: Managing A Schedule With No TimeSo last blog post I put forth my worries about finances, but perhaps even more pressing is the scheduling of time. Because there's not enough of it. But of course there wasn't enough money either, so they share that similarity. Let me cover just a few ways my time is being split in all directions right now.
Educating myself on all things Kickstarter so I can do the best Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-67723993722536687662013-09-16T15:52:00.002-07:002013-09-25T14:14:29.086-07:00 06: Managing a Budget With No MoneyJohn and I knew from the beginning that the biggest hurdle to developing our own board game was going to be money. John is a poor college student and I have been struggling to find work in this economy until only just recently. Scrounging up what little money I could, I put forth about $250 and John generously matched that. This represented my entertainment budget for about 3 Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-86463889165514892242013-09-15T00:55:00.001-07:002013-09-25T14:14:22.150-07:0005: Always Improving, But Seemingly Never FinishedOne thing that I didn't quite grasp before I tried designing an entire game from scratch was just how much things change during development. I had the notion in my head that a game starts as a good idea. The designers would then work with that idea and continue to tweak it until it was perfect and the game was fun. After all, it was so easy for me to see the "right" answers to the Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9011729627631997961.post-71991297536049447902013-09-12T15:41:00.001-07:002013-09-25T14:14:14.004-07:0004: Designing a Combat System: Fun Dice-RollingSo when Space Frontier first started out, John and I decided that we wanted ship variety, but not so much that it would be overwhelming. I came up with 3 basic ship archetypes, the fighter, the frigate, and the cruiser (which was known as the "capital ship" for a while until we changed it for thematic reasons). So we had our 3 ships and we wanted each to have their own style. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04697424878140007813noreply@blogger.com0