Sooo…its been a
log time since I have made a post in my blog. I have been focusing on the
designing of game rather than blogging about it. Last week Luis of GlobalQuestGameDOTcom
commented on my post regarding my solitaire boardgame “The CDC.” He thought it
sounded pretty good and he’d like to play it person. He also wanted to know
about my progress on it.
I replied that I
had not gotten a response from VPG after 6 months and that I was very
disappointed. But his comment spurned me on to give VPG on last try. I sent
them an email indicating that I had not gotten a response from them in 6 months
and if this was normal. Here is the
first response I got:
John,We're really sorry about that. The beginning of this year has been very busy for us since we moved, and during that time we have gotten a laser cutting machine and some other new machines here at VPG which Nathan has been busy learning as well as teaching everyone in between sorting out our game release schedule and game development.I will be sure he gets a chance to look at this as soon as possible. We really appreciate your patience.- Noelle
This was soon
followed by a second response:
Hello John,I'm really sorry about the delay. I do remember your game, and I know its something we would want to look into doing. I just got swept away with all my other tasks and your game kind of blipped off my radar for a while. You have my attention now. I'll create a test kit from your rules/files and get it on the table this Saturday. After that I should be able to give you some good feedback and move the process forward.-Nathan
So then I got the
following email on Monday:
Hey John,I had the chance to sit down and play CDC this weekend. I did have some issues with the rules, and I think that Dr. Eppel was a little overpowered, but overall this was a very well put together game. I ended up playing it 3 times.I'll probably take this on myself for development.As for Dr. Eppel, I think double funding may be a bit much. How would you feel about a static increase, like say +2 funding when destroying an antigen?
So I replied back
to Nathan:
Hi Nathan,I’m glad that you were willing to play it 3 times this weekend. Did you lose any of the 3 games you played?It’s been months since I’ve played the solitaire version of this game so I will have to reacquaint myself with it this week. I think a static increase such as the +2 of Dr Eppel sounds like a good change to keep the game challenging. Too much funding can certainly make it easier to win.I am very flexible and willing to work with you on any rules/mechanics/cards changes. I also have some changes I made to the multiplayer version that could be synced back to the solo version to make it better.Soooo…where do we go from here?Regards,John Gibson
And here is
Nathan’s reply:
It was fun. The first was played wrong, as I missed the part of the rules that said you could only have one Dr. so... that game isn't a good judge of difficulty. It was very easy I think I won by turn 6. The second game I lost. I think it was around turn 7 or 8. I ran out of money. The third game Dr. Eppel came into play again. This time the game was won by turn 8.From here, I'll make a pass at your rules. See if I can make it so we use less subcases, and generally clean up the readability of them. We'll also need to get an artist to look at this game at some point, but I tend to delay that as long as possible so we don't "marry ourselves" to anything and fear changing it. Eventually it will go to out of house testing. At that point we will likely make a few tweaks, and clarifications, and fix anything that the testers destroy on contact. Then proofing and release. But, first things first, I'll take a crack at those rules and get them sent back to you for consideration.
Sounds kinda
promising, eh?
I am
trying--TRYING--not to get my hopes up in case this falls through, but this is
the closest I have gotten to a publisher taking an interest in one of my game
designs.
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