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Patrick Rauland: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Indie Board Game Designers podcast, where I sit down with a different independent game designer every single week, and we talk about their experience of game design and the lessons they've learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland, and today I'll be talking with Kyle Schubert, who designed Mintrospection, which was in the Mint Tin Challenge on The Game Crafter. One of the games I've seen on social is Sages of Somomac Mountain, and I hope I pronounced that right. Kyle, welcome to the show.

Kyle Schubert: Thanks so much, Patrick. You did pronounce it correctly, and I'm pumped to be on the show.

Introduction

Patrick: Awesome. I know you because we've chatted on Twitter several times, and we've probably seen each other in the social board game world, but for people who haven't been in our Twitter conversations, I've got a little lightning round. We're going to start with some simple questions. Let's see the first one. If you have to give up all board game social media or running your own site and podcast, which you do, which one would you choose? Which one would you choose to keep?

Kyle: I think I would keep all of the activity on social media. They both serve very different purposes, the blog and podcast are primarily a creative outlet for me, whereas social media allows me to build relationships with people. I always say that games are great, but people are better, so I can still get some of that creativity out through social media as well. I think I'd get rid of the blog.

Patrick: That's awesome. I like that quote, “Games are great, but people are better.” Then the next one, pretty easy. Diet soda or regular soda?

Kyle: It's not quite as easy as you would think. If I had to choose, I would say regular, but I try to stay away from soda if possible. I gave up caffeine about six years ago, and soda altogether about two years ago.

Patrick: Is that hard, giving up soda and caffeine?

Kyle: Dude, it was super hard at first because I had a physical addiction to caffeine. Once I gave that up, I had horrible headaches for about a week. But now it's fantastic.

Patrick: Good. At least it worked out well. Then what's a game you play with someone every single time at a con?

Kyle: It depends on the convention. If it's a GenCon type experience, I honestly could probably go the whole time without playing any games. But if it's a smaller convention that focuses more on the playing of games, I'd probably say something that is heavy that I might not be able to get to the table on a normal game night. I'm still waiting for someone to teach me an 18XX game, so hopefully, once cons are happening again, we can make that happen.

Patrick: Cool. I don't think I've played an 18XX game, but I've heard a lot about them. With the trains and they rust, and you have to get these researchers, and there are shares, and you build tracks. I'd love to do that, and I do want someone to teach me, that's the type of game where you want someone to teach you. You don't want to buy the box and figure it out yourself for a 30-page rule book.

Kyle: Yeah, exactly. I'm not the greatest at reading through rulebooks, even though I design, and I create rules. Rulebooks are not my fave. I would love someone to teach me.

How did you get into board games and board game design?

Patrick: Absolutely. All right, so first real question is, how did you get into board games and board game design?

Kyle: I've always loved analog gaming, as far back as I can remember. But it wasn't until about 2009 that I was introduced to collectible games. Hero Clicks, for example, was a game that I got into for a while, but I was also introduced to games like Munchkin and Catan and Killer Bunnies. A lot of more hobby card games, stuff like that. That appealed to me at that time, and I ended up getting really into playing Yu-Gi-Oh competitively, which was a complete and total monetary sinkhole.

But at the time, it was fantastic, and then a few years later, a friend of mine asked if I wanted to play Axis and Allies, which took eight or nine hours to play. I loved every minute of it. That game opened up my mind to what else was out there, and then very soon after that, I was introduced to more of the staple games in our hobby. Currently, like Dominion and Ticket to Ride and King of Tokyo, Seven Wonders, and stuff like that. I've just been engrossed in the hobby since then.

Game design started pretty early for me as well. In eighth grade, some friends and I designed our own trading card game, as well as this very primitive war game, and we used those little plastic green army figures that we all had when we were kids. We had dice combat, and we used strings for movement and line of sight and stuff like that. It was pretty extensive for an eighth-grader, I think.

Then about four years ago I was without work for a little while and decided that it would be a really good time to try my hand at designing again, and so I designed a deck builder that combined Dominion– The deck building that you find in Dominion that is right there during the game, and then a combat system that was similar to games like Magic: The Gathering. It was horrible, but very rewarding still. So since then, I have been pouring myself into the board game community and into designing games.

Where did Mintrospection come from?

Patrick: That's awesome. That's a great story. I like hearing that you started in eighth grade and then got seriously into it maybe four years ago, but the seeds were planted in eighth grade. That's great. I want to talk about your game Mintrospection, because number one I saw it in The Game Crafter contest and you got—

When I was reading some of your blog posts, which I will definitely link, by the way, listeners, in the show notes so you can find his blog. But you're talking about how Mintrospection did pretty well in the contest, and thing that I think is cool when I'm looking at the product page right now on The Game Crafter is you basically put six cards together to form this cool brain shape. There's different places for cubes in the brain, and it does all this– It looks cool, and it looks different.

Lots of games are like, “Take over all the land,” or “Prevent diseases from spreading,” or “Build up your house to protect against zombies.” I like that you have a thing that's literally about brains and things going on in the brain. It's not a board game that I'm used to. So, where did Mintrospection come from?

Kyle: After deciding that I wanted to participate in the Mint Tin contest, I also made the decision that I wanted to design as deep and challenging of an experience as I could that would still mostly fit into the contest restraints. I took some systems from some of my favorite games, games like Hansa Teutonica and El Grande, and I just tried to distill those systems down as much as I possibly could.

The end result was mechanically Mintrospection. One thing to note is that I am definitely a mechanism first designer, occasionally I will have a theme that I want to build off of, but generally, I have a list of mechanisms that I'm excited about and design the game around that. The game was originally actually called something else, and it started with a totally different theme, but after some play testing, some of the play testers were like, “This theme is overdone. You should do something different.”

So for the contest, it took on the name of my Mintrospection and took on the theme of philosophies competing for dominance within the human mind. Philosophy is something that I'm very interested in, and so it just was a natural fit, and it worked well with the mechanisms. So we went with that, and the game ended up making it into the semifinals, which was super awesome. But I knew that it most likely wouldn't go any further than that, because I think that the complexity of the game fell beyond what the judges were looking for.

But I knew that going into it and I was totally okay with that. Since then, the game, maybe unfortunately for you, the game has evolved again, and I have decided to push ahead with self-publishing it. I've set it in a totally different theme and setting, which is a little bit closer to the original theme and setting with a twist, and so I'm currently in the art development stage for the game. It's going to be beautiful. I'm super excited about it.

Patrick: Can you give us a preview of what it's called and what it looks like?

Kyle: With the decision to self-publish, I have this vision for a setting that can house multiple designs. Think red raving games with Ryan Laukat, and he does a really good job of having this world that all of his games can fit within even though they're all very different games for the most part. So the inspiration for this setting comes most directly from Dr. Seuss. I not only love his writing, but I love the art style that is in his content. It's very bright, very imaginative, very whimsical.

That's the direction that we are going with this design, as well as many of my designs to come. The name of Mintrospection is now The Formative Years of Galamaziers, which is a big change. But Galamaziers is an island that is lush with resources, and in the game, you are one of the lords of Galamaziers, and you are trying to gain control over various parts of this island. But there's a lot of humor and a lot of satire, and it's very whimsical and bright and fun.

Patrick: Awesome. This is great. Will you be able to have a link? This episode is probably going to come out two to three weeks from when we record it. Will you have a link for us that I can link? I just want to– Like, if people listen to this and they're interested, I'd like to point them to your website so they can sign up, or whatever.

Kyle: Yeah. The easiest way, I'm working on creating a landing page for just the newsletter and just getting people signed up for a mailing list. The easiest way for you to do that currently is just at the bottom of the blog home page, so if you link to the blog, people will be able to sign up. That's where I'm going to be funneling most of the progress for the development of this game specifically.

Patrick: Awesome. Listeners, I will have links to all of this. Mintrospection and the Formative Years of Galamaziers, which is great. I love the rhyme-iness and the Dr. Seuss-iness of that. That's fantastic. I'll have links to all that, and then I just got to go back a point, because there's one thing I noticed. There's a thing I noticed that I wish I did that I think you are doing, so after I published my first game, I'm very happy with it, and it's a very fun and casual game.

But now I'm thinking, “Now I want to make more games, and I want them to all be in the same universe,” and I feel like I've missed that opportunity. How did you–? Basically, I think you noticed the thing that I didn't notice. How did you think about, “I want to have a universe for all of my games to live in?” How did you come to that realization before even releasing your first game?

Kyle: With Mintrospection– Formerly Mintrospection, my original goal was to pitch to publishers. That was how I wanted to get my games into the world, and then I started talking to a lot of different publishers and a lot of different people in the industry, and I just realized that I get what all of those companies are doing and they all have their own vision and direction. I just realized that I just want to create the things that that I want to create, and I think that's valuable. Deciding to put everything into a somewhat cohesive setting just made sense to me.

Like I said, I'm a mechanism first kind of designer. So what I wanted to do was create a world, if you will, that could house a whole bunch of different mechanisms without having to focus on lore and creating a world in that sense. Like, there's not necessarily a history to this world. It's more of a fluid, ever-evolving and changing world so that with each game, I can craft into it so many different interesting mechanisms and not necessarily have to worry about offending a common theme or lore.

Even though there's a setting, and I would differentiate between setting and theme here, but there's a setting that can house all of these different mechanisms along with multiple themes, if you will. For my model, that just made sense.

What do you want to do now that you did the Mint Tin Contest?

Patrick: That's great. Yes, I should say I like that you pointed this out. In the board game world, when we talk about theme, we're talking about setting. Because the theme of the game might be totally different than the setting of a game. I like that you brought up the distinction, but for many board gamers, we don't realize those are two very different things. This is great, and this is super interesting. I love hearing about it.

Let me ask you one more question just on self-publishing, I've seen a couple of people, and I've had them on my show where they will make things through something like The Game Crafter, and they'll only make like 500 copies. They'll just do it once, whereas other people want to order stuff from China, and it's a whole separate process. It usually takes nine months or more, whereas The Game Crafter is more expensive but also gets done quickly.

You can't have custom components, so let me ask you this. What route do you think you're going to go to? Are you going to go the full, like you're going to do a whole manufacturing run over in China somewhere? Or are you thinking something more akin to The Game Crafter where it's a print on demand, one-time type of thing?

Kyle: Yes. What's awesome about The Game Crafter is some of the things you just mentioned, but also that there is a stigma with print on demand services that the quality is not as good or whatever. What's cool about The Game Crafter is that their quality has increased dramatically over time, and with the Formative Years, formally Mintrospection, my goal is to do a Kickstarter but manufacturer through The Game Crafter.

What that's going to do is allow my game to get into people's hands a lot faster and build that market for my designs because, honestly, I care about components and production quality and all of those things, but I want my legacy to be interesting mechanisms and difficult mechanisms. I want to get what I'm creating out into people's hands as quickly as possible without compromising the quality too much, so with my first project, I want to use The Game Crafter and manufacture through them and get that game out into the world and have a limited print run with that game.

But then with future games, there's a good chance that there may be enough demand to where I could go to a manufacturer overseas. There's a lot of risk with that, especially with a first-time designer. I think with my family, and where I'm at right now, I just can't take that risk. So hopefully, this will just build, and people will be interested in what I'm doing, and that will allow for that risk to be minimized a little bit with increased interest and demand.

If you could recommend one thing and recommend against one thing, what would you pick?

Patrick: Great. I love that answer. I love your thought process there. So, let me move on to something. I have two other big things I want to chat to you about. The first one is you do a lot of things online, you have a blog, and I should just start by saying you have a blog, but you don't just do one thing on the blog. You review games, and you talk about your work in progress on your games, then you talk about going to ProtoSpiels and other events.

Like, you do a lot. There's a wide variety of content on your blog, and you have this little podcast, and you do Craft Wednesday on Twitter, and you have a Facebook group that you post stuff in. You do a lot of things, so if you could recommend one thing and recommend against one thing for another indie game designer, what would you recommend that they do?

Kyle: Yes. I don't know if these are exactly what you're looking for, but this is how I took these questions. The first thing, and I know that this gets hammered on a lot, but I think that's because it's a truth of life. But people and relationships matter, so even if you are not the most social person, maybe you lean more introverted than extroverted.

My first bit of advice would just be to put yourself out there on one or more of the myriad of social outlets online like there's tons of ways for you to get connected with other people and just put yourself out there and make friends. It doesn't have to be forced, doesn't have to be manufactured. Do what you're comfortable with, but just try and push yourself a little and make friends. I think that's one of the most important things that any of us can do in board game design, but also in just any sphere of life.

Then something that I would advise against as a game designer or even as a person in general, but posting socially polarizing content or potentially confrontational content. This is not because I think that those things are unimportant or I don't want to deal with serious topics, but I think it's, in fact, for the opposite reason. I think that those topics are so meaningful and important that those conversations are best suited for face to face settings or for contexts where you've built a personal relationship with the person or people that you are communicating with.

Social media just doesn't do those topics justice. I see a lot of designers and people online posting things where it just seems like people are just so angry, and they post things, and they're just trying to agitate people and trying to pick a fight and whatever. I just don't see it as being very wise or fruitful to engage in that way. Some people will disagree, and that's totally fine, but that's just my experience. I just don't think it's worth it for you to engage in that kind of conversation online.

You recently shared you’re furloughed at home. What are you doing during this quarantine, board game-wise?

Patrick: I try so hard not to get into politics on social media. I think it was two or three days ago that someone said something and I had that urge, and this one– I usually do a very good job of like resisting it and just ignoring it, and I think you're right. It is worth talking about, but maybe in person as opposed to online. But the other day I posted– I responded to someone who I thought made a terrible point, and of course, someone is wrong online so I had to correct them.

I don't know why, but I commented on the post, and then I spent the rest of the evening going, “I can't open Facebook because I don't want to–” I have anxiety about how many people are going to respond to my comments and how now I have to defend myself. That is not productive. I spent the whole rest of the evening in anxiety because I was worried about everyone piling on or whatever, but I love that advice. Thank you.

The other thing I wanted to talk about, you were the first guest that has been on the show– I happened to record a whole bunch of guests before this pandemic, this Covid-19 pandemic, and this is the first time I'm recording with a guest in the middle of this pandemic. Now I've been at home for three or four weeks, and many people in the United States have been home for three or four weeks, or maybe even a little bit longer.

This is probably going to come out two to three weeks from now, but you were sharing right before we started recording that you were furloughed from your company, meaning you were temporarily laid off. They said, “As soon as this Covid-19 thing has gone away, everyone's rehired,” or something to that effect. I guess you know you have a job when you're coming back, so that's good. I guess I want to know what are you doing board game-wise and also just mentally, to keep yourself mentally sane-wise during this quarantine? Like, what are you doing creatively, and what are you doing in the board game space now that you don't have your normal job?

Kyle: Yeah, it's some very unique and crazy times that we are living in. This is just a caveat, I guess, but everybody is so different, and everybody is responding to what's happening right now differently. Everyone has a different context, a different situation that they're in. Maybe what I'm about to say will help some people, but it very well may not help some other people at all. But for one, I have a hard time not being productive.

Now that I have– Because I've seen, and it's a bummer and like I said everybody's in a different situation, and everybody's reacting differently, but I've seen a lot of people that are just really– They're taking this hard and understandably so, and it's just sapping all of their motivation and sapping all of their creativity out of them. They feel so unproductive, and they feel like they're not getting anything done, and I feel for you, and if I was in that situation, that would be tough for me.

But I have a really hard time not being productive, and I'm always looking for opportunities to carve out time to work on things. This has been like a huge blessing for me personally. I wake up– And even while I'm working my normal day job, I get up between 5 and 5:30 every day so that I have an hour and a half to work on game design stuff. I have continued doing that, with the addition of carving out usually around four hours on Monday, Wednesday, Friday to just focus on the blog.

To just focus on game design, because like I told you, Patrick, I have a wife, and I have three children under the age of four, so I am very busy with them and investing in their lives. It's awesome that now I have some extra time not only to focus on designing but also on my family. We are trying to put an emphasis on spending quality time with each other, where we are engaged with each other, we don't have our phones, we don't have electronics turned on, we're just playing board games with each other, and we're going outside, we're going on walks.

We're doing whatever we can to find that social interaction in each other, and that's been good for us, but for the listeners, it almost feels like survival mode. You just find whatever those things are that connect you to other people, and whenever those things are that keep you sane and keep you going and keep you motivated, I think that's—

My wife and I just had a conversation about how each person is motivated very differently. You have to do some self-exploration and figure out what it is that motivates you and hammer in on that and try and figure that out so that you do stay motivated, and you don't get sucked into that hole that you could get sucked into. I'm just trying to do what I love and enjoy my family.

Patrick: You said something interesting, and I think for me what I'm hearing and what makes sense to me is, first of all, obviously you need to have money. If you have money, you have food on your table and shelter. Obviously, you need to start with that. But once you have food on the table and shelter and the basics, I think it's about taking care of yourself so that you can be creative.

It's not like “I have to spend three hours every day learning a new graphic design program,” but it's about “How can I take care of myself, so I want to spend time learning a new skill or working on a game, or doing whatever?” I know for me, it's been phone calls right now are super– Just to chat with people for an hour or two, and if I chat with someone for an hour and I come back– I like to walk around outside when I do so.

Walk around on a trail outside, chat with someone for an hour, come back, and all of a sudden, I'm jazzed about life. That puts me in the right space to work on games as opposed to– I think I asked the question game first, “How do you do this?” And I think you answered correctly, which is “Take care of yourself first, so you want to work on games.” That's great.

Kyle: Yeah, and I think too, one thing that is important to note real quick is just especially in a time like this, part of taking care of ourselves is taking care of others. If you have a way– Because I think a lot of times if we have this idea that “If I just am inward-focused I can deal with all of the things that are going on inside of me, and that's where I will kind of receive the most joy or the most satisfaction.”

When in fact, if we can get outside of ourselves a little bit too, and invest and pour into somebody else and figure out some way to make somebody else's day or bring joy to somebody else, I think that that's going to give us more joy and more motivation and satisfaction than if we are only inwardly focused.

Do you have a white whale of game design?

Patrick: Absolutely, yes. There's definitely something to building community or giving to other people, absolutely love it. Thank you for all this. This Is very good, and I think we need more hopeful messages like this during this time. It's great. Let me move on to some regular board game questions, one of the things you chatted about in the pre-show or that we chatted about in the pre-show is, do you have a white whale of game design or something that you've been trying to get into a game for a while and you just haven't figured it out yet?

Kyle: Dude, so honestly, my white whale is not necessarily a mechanism or a system, but it is the process of co-designing. I would love to do more co-designing, I love collaboration, and I feel like there is so much potential in designing with other people, but all of my attempts so far have ended in utter failure. When I say “Failure,” I don't mean that the experience necessarily was a failure, but that the games didn't get finished.

They dissolved into the abyss of game ideas. I just think that there is a lot that has to click for you to be able to co-design successfully, like the people working together really have to have a similar philosophy and vision, and that's hard to find. It's hard to find somebody that you jive with really well, so I'm hoping that I can find a few people that we click and have similar philosophies and visions and are able to make some great games together.

What one resource would you recommend to another indie game designer or an aspiring game designer?

Patrick: I hear you, and I hear you on the struggles as well. I've definitely struggled a little bit with co-designs. It's tricky, but it's great. You've done a lot of research the last couple of years, what's a resource you'd recommend to another indie game designer? And by resource, I mean something that's easily accessible and free or cheap.

Kyle: I'm going to again take this a little bit in a different direction because I don't think that this is something that is voiced out loud very often, but it is definitely easily accessible at least to some degree and free. But I think that the greatest resource that any of us has in game design is our own mind, and I mean that like, what a wonderful thing the imagination is. Imagination is such an amazing thing.

The fact that we have the ability to take things from our imagination and then put them through this testing process and turn them into a tangible reality that others can enjoy is just fantastic. Each person is unique, and each person has a unique perspective and unique things to offer the world. Often I feel like we waste our time comparing our work and our ideas and ourselves to the work and ideas and people around us that we miss out on what makes our offering special and valuable.

Obviously, there are tons of podcasts and blogs and reading materials, and so on, that are fantastic and great, but I think that our individuality and our own minds are the greatest resources that we have as game designers. I think it would do us all good to just spend time exploring those things and doing self-exploration.

Patrick: I love that, and you just reminded me of one of my favorite conference talks that I ever went to. Which wasn't game design related, but it fits in perfectly here, where the speaker's main point was, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I think this goes for any creative work if you are a photographer or a painter or a game designer or a writer, or whatever. If you are always comparing yourself to other people, you are always lessening what you do.

Because there's always someone who does it better. “They have a better video than me, and they have better photography, they made a better box than me. Their artwork is better, the mechanisms are slightly cleaner,” or whatever. It's impossible, and it is hard for you to appreciate your own awesomeness, your own creativity, and all the work you put into it when you're constantly comparing yourself to others.

Kyle: Exactly.

What was the best money you ever spent as a game designer?

Patrick: That's great, thank you. How about this, what is the best money you've spent as a game designer?

Kyle: Definitely buying a bunch of components and bits from The Game Crafter. I think that it helps me design and iterate faster when I can just reach over and grab a bunch of components and play around with them. So if you're listening to this, go buy some gift certificates from The Game Crafter and support them because they are super rad. Then, later on, spend those gift certificates on a bunch of wooden cubes or whatever component you'd like to buy.

Patrick: That's great. I've got to ask you, did you buy specific components, or did you just buy components and go “I have no idea when I'll need this, but at some point, I'll need it or want it.”

Kyle: Over time, basically, I've just purchased components as I've needed them, and then my collection of components has just grown to a place where basically any game that I would want to design, I at least have some options for components for that game.

What does success in the board game world look like to you?

Patrick: Awesome. Love this. Finally, the last real question is always what is success in the board game world look like to you?

Kyle: I love this question. This is my favorite question on your show, Patrick. Honestly, I would love to be able to design or even just create things within the board game community full time and be able to still support my family in doing that. I know that it's hard to do that, and not many arrive at that place, but I think that would be the highest form of success for me. Otherwise, I just want to put out games that people with similar tastes to me will enjoy. I always say that I don't necessarily want a lot of people to like my games, I just want a relative handful of people to love them.

Patrick: That's fantastic. I love that. Can you say that one more time? That was dope.

Kyle: I don't necessarily want a lot of people to like my games, I just want a relative handful of people to love them.

Overrated/Underrated

Patrick: Great. I'm writing that down as a little quote. Great, so that's wonderful. Let's move on to the silly part of the show now that we've done the best questions, Overrated/Underrated. Now you've heard it because you listen to the show, but for someone who's listening for the very first time, I'm going to give you a word or phrase, and you're going to tell me if it's overrated or underrated. If I said “Boba Fett,” you'd obviously be like “Underrated. He's the coolest antihero of all time.” Something like that. Got it?

Kyle: Got it.

Patrick: All right. How about, let's just go with a mint tin contest. Overrated or underrated?

Kyle: I would say that it is underrated, not because of the number of people that participated because that number was quite large, but underrated in that it was a very tough contest. It's easy to make a game that fits in a mint tin, but it's really difficult to make a really good game that fits into a mint tin. So, I would say underrated.

Patrick: Fantastic. Now, I don't know if you've used this technology, but I want to go with Zoom video conferencing. If you haven't used Zoom, let's just go with video conferencing in general. Overrated or underrated?

Kyle: This one was tough. I'll just take Zoom specifically because I feel like the concept of Zoom is underrated. But the actual application itself is a bit overrated simply because– If you use it, you've probably heard the development of it, but it's not the most secure platform in the world. I think it's moving that direction, but there are still other platforms that do video conferencing better than they do. But I think that they have something cool there and it could be great eventually.

Patrick: Awesome. Let's go with– I'm going to go with, it's called the KALLAX shelving, which is the thing that we've all seen, the cube storage from IKEA. Overrated or underrated?

Kyle: It's tough to say it's overrated because they are just so symmetrical and beautiful. But you don't have to use them for shelving, so I might say overrated even though someday I might buy some for myself. But right now, I'm just using these crazy metal shelving things for all of my games. You're not cool if you use KALLAX shelving, and that's not the thing that makes you cool, so I would say overrated.

Patrick: Awesome. Lastly, I'm just going to go with having some sort of garden in these pandemic times. Overrated or underrated?

Kyle: I think gardens, in general, are fantastic. I think I would say underrated, and gardens are great anytime.

Wrap Up

Patrick: Fantastic. Kyle, thank you so much for being on the show. Where can people find you and your games online?

Kyle: Yes. HexAndCube.com is where I funnel a lot of information about me and what I'm doing. You can sign up for our mailing list there at the bottom of the home page. You can go ahead and sign up, and I'll get monthly updates to you. There's exclusive things that you will only see there, and you won't see on all of the other social media platforms, and so on. Then the Hex&Cube podcast can be listened to pretty much anywhere that you listen to podcasts, and then hit me up on the major social media platforms. I am Kyle Schubert on Facebook, and then @Kyle_HexAndCube on Twitter and Instagram. I'd love to chat with you.

Patrick: Fantastic. Listeners, if you liked this podcast, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this. If you leave a review, Kyle said he would give you a mint at the next board game con. So, free mint. Pretty dope. Then I'm sharing progress for all my games on Patreon, and actually, I'm about to– There is a contest going on, the Stay At Home contest, which will probably just about end by the time this episode airs.

So, I'm working on that, and I will be submitting files, and I'm talking about the process. I'll also be sharing my play tests as I go, so if you want to see what I'm doing and also as soon as the world goes a little bit about more back to normal, I'll try to pitch publishers my games. I'll be talking about that there, so Patreon has a lot more stuff if you want to follow that. You can visit the site at IndieBoardGameDesigners.com, you can follow me on Twitter and BoardGameGeek, I am @BFTrick on both platforms. Until next time everyone, happy designing. Bye-bye.

Kyle: Thanks so much.