The Prototype game Rev. 0

I've mentioned in previous posts that family members have been helping me with playtesting the game to work out any bugs.  Here is a picture of the game while we were playing it one of the times.

I have been getting more detailed prototype game pieces created and hope to have everything in place to really get serious about this.  I have scheduled some playtesting on Nov. 7th and have some players lined up but hope to have enough pieces completed by then for 2 game boards.  I'll be cutting it really close.
Here are some pictures of some of the units for the Black team.

The air piece need to be shrunk a bit, but as far as prototype pieces go I am very happy with how things are turning out and I think Todd did a fantastic job designing the pieces.

Next I need to get the cards and board pieces completed, but I'm about 90% sure that the company name will be Prodigy Game Works and I plan to start putting togehter a website so I can start to maybe get pre-orders started.

Prototype Pieces

I've gotten a lot of pieces to a point that I have started to prototype them for game play and hope to have enough armies for 2 game boards for playtesting. Hopefully soon the cards are designed and I can get those sent out for printing as well. I will keep you up to date as more comes and I will add pictures of the pieces for the "Black" Army by end of week.

If you know anyone interested in playtesting my game for me please leave a comment with names.

I plan to have a large playtest later this month on a Friday night and possibly the next day as well. Shoot, the games may last that long anyway.

Game Pieces

This is the first piece that Todd designed for me when I first started the game design process and it is one my favorite. This one is an infantry unit for what would would be the black team. The colors may or of may not be used depending on cost. All of that said all of my favorite pieces for the game thus far have been designed by Todd. He's really good at designing and taking my feable ideas for designs to workable concepts.

My 2nd favorite piece is the armor (or tank) piece. and is equally impressive. It just looks like a mean war machine and it was a great design that Todd came up with in a very short time. It was everythign I would have hoped for and then some.

The 3rd piece on my favorites list is the Air (or airplane) piece and again it was designed by Todd. We actaully used a 3D (FDM) printer to print some of these pieces and this one turned out a little different than it appears here and may, at least to some, look better the way it ended up printing out.

It was also Todd's idea to emprint the name of the game on the sides of all the pieces. I think it's great and am really looking forward to someday having pieces manufactured somewhere. There is no doubt from game pieces I have seen for other games that the detail in these small pieces will be moldable.

I have not come across pieces in any other game that use the training mechanism in any such fashion as these and really think it is a novel idea. Todd and I have discussed this in some detail lately and determined that it should be patented. I need to start looking into that and am positioned well for it since Todd already has several patents in his name while working at Intel. Now it's just a matter of finding the time to make things happen. I still need to work with Christina to start a company.

Playtesting

The most effective playtesting to date occurred over the last 2 days and it was actually kind of fun to play the game, but it needs quite a bit of work yet. Hollie, Jay, and Todd helped me out. This says quite a bit because Hollie seemed genuinely interested in playing, Jay is always there for me (just asks that I put his face into the cover of the game when I publish) and Todd, who is always there for me, but generally has no interest in this type of game whatsoever actually seemed to get into it and all had some initial feedback that could prove helpful. I appreciate all that have helped so far as well as patient spouses and hope that they can continue :) because there is a lot to do yet and I hope to someday submit the game to the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design (AAGAD) in the future. We left the game set up at the end of the night to hopefully complete at a later date. Rosie I ask your increased patience and more importatly your kitchen table :) in your birthday month (I'm not sure I fully buy into this month thing yet. It seems your month always last longer then mine). Again, I need to get some pictures up on the blog to show a little more detail as to how it is coming along. Maybe I can get Jay to send me the picture he took at the end of the night.

It's Alive!

REVOLUTION is now very much playable and ready for final tweaking. I just need a lot of playtesting and then blind playtesting. I'm looking for volunteers and will work something into the schedule for anyone that is willing to give me some time. I plan to use most Saturdays and would like to get something scheduled for Labor Day as well.

It's now time to figure out a company name and what type of business I will employ so I can write off the losses at the end of the year.

So far what I have come up with is:

• Game DNA Labs
• QC Game Labs
• Socrati Games
• Gamistry Labs

If anyone has any other ideas, please feel free to post them.

REVOLUTION

I've had an idea for a game since shortly after the time my brother and I got all of the GameMaster Series games from our Dad for Christmas many years ago. Only since I went on sabbatical late last year have I really started to pursue it. I plan to use this blog to update people who have questions and hopefully post a calendar where people can see where and when Playtest sessions will be held and then contact me if they are interested in helping me debug the game and make it something worthwhile to play and ultimately publish.
I will try to post occasional updates of where I am in the journey and I plan to post pictures and drawings of game components for feedback as well.
Please feel free to leave feedback in the comments sections as often as necessary and I will try to reply to any questions.