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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 in game design and the lessons they've learned along the way. My name is Patrick Rauland, and today I'll be talking with Ryan Hoye, who designed Icy Dice.
Which is a two-player semi co-op worker allocation/route builder, which we are definitely going to talk about– Also, roll and write, which we're definitely going to talk about today. It's also part of a roll and write anthology, Dice & Ink by Inkwell Games, which is coming up on Kickstarter soon. We are going to try to get this episode posted during the campaign, but it might just have ended. I'm going to do everything I can to get it posted during the campaign. So it will either have just finished or be live right now. Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan Hoye: Thanks for having me on.
Introduction
Patrick: I like to start everyone with a lightning round, to introduce you to the audience. Cool?
Ryan: Yeah, let's go.
Patrick: All right. You are trapped in a remote Alaskan village, and you have to travel either by ice skate or snowboard. Which do you choose?
Ryan: I'm going to go snowboard. I don't know how to snowboard, but I feel like it's more efficient than ice skating. So, eventually, I'd figure it out and be on my way.
Patrick: Love it. Let's say you know you're going to be stuck in a blizzard for one to two days. What is the game you bring with you?
Ryan: I would probably bring either Firefly or Deep Space D6, just because there's quite a bit of an expansive nature to them. Deep Space D6 is a small package, Firefly is a much larger package, but those are two of my favorite games right now.
Patrick: Is that the– Is Firefly the pick-up and deliver one where you're doing jobs, and you have your own crew, and all of your own Firefly ships?
Ryan: That's the one.
Patrick: OK, very cool. And then what is a game you play with someone every single time at a con?
Ryan: The game I end up doing every time at a con is Firefly because I always end up running a game of it. But beyond that, it would probably be Camel Up. That is my favorite 10 PM– The game you play at the end of a busy day of brain burners.
How Did You Get Into Board Games and Board Game Design?
Patrick: Very cool. First real question, how did you get into board games and board game design?
Ryan: I got into board games, actually, through Will Wheaton's Tabletop. I worked with a guy at RadioShack who showed me the video of them playing Munchkin, and I thought, “That's neat.” Then from that, I met other people who were in the board games and they introduced me more to the hobby, and moved on to Catan and then slowly got deeper and deeper into the hobby.
Patrick: I like that you referred to it as “I slid,” not like “I was getting excited, I took another step.” It's no, and it's like “I slid. I'm going downhill.” But you are the second person to recently mention tabletop with Will Wheaton, so it's cool to hear that had such a big impact. What about game design? How did you get into that?
Ryan: Within officially designing board games, it was a friend of mine who approached me because he had an idea for a board game. This friend was my creative partner, we hosted a podcast together about English idioms, and we were looking for another project to do together. He wanted to design a merchant trading game.
I like pick up and deliver games, and he liked deck builders, so we tried to merge them. We ended up getting involved with the Kansas City Game Designers, which had just started up their local group. He fell out of the hobby, but I liked it and stuck with it.
Patrick: Very cool. Did you ever make that game?
Ryan: No. It's one I would like to pick up again some time, but it's not high on my priority list.
Patrick: Very cool. And what were you going for? Was it supposed to be set in the Mediterranean? I have to ask.
Ryan: It was. Of course, it was.
Patrick: Love it. Sometimes it's fun to play into those tropes.
Ryan: Yeah.
Tell Me About Icy Dice
Patrick: Cool. So I do want to talk about your game, Icy Dice because there's a couple of things that sound unique about it. One of which is that it is a roll and write semi co-op, and I don't think we've talked about semi co-ops a ton on the show. But to give the listeners a very quick overview, it's not a cooperative– Or, semi co-ops are sometimes cooperative games, but sometimes you can win on your own, and sometimes everyone can lose.
So there's a weird dynamic, and I don't think I've ever seen a semi co-op roll and write. Why did you decide to–? I think, and one more thing, usually roll, and writes are very– I want to say they're very solo games, you can't– Very rarely do you get to write on someone else's board or affect other players in a direct way. So why did you decide to combine these two things, and how?
Ryan: It definitely came about accidentally. Initially, this game was a straight-up trading game. You grow your crops, you cross this frozen ocean of acid to trade your goods, and then you come back and hoard your money. But after about a month of designing it, I was going through this phase where I think I probably read an article somewhere that just made me very upset, about a runaway capitalist enterprise.
I was like, “When you're designing a game you have to live in this world that you're designing.” In this world I had in my head, I'm going to spend the next several months working on this game. I don't want to be living in that world. I want to live in a much kinder world, one where it's not based on greed. That's when I went with design– With a survival approach. You're trading, and you're harvesting for the survival of your village, and so from there, it went into this idea that these two villages need to survive.
You can either play it where you're competing against each other if you want to, but initially, I set up the points system where it was a graded system. Where the main thing was if both people survived and met their goals, then both people could win the game and then you would score it. And then your score would get worse if the other player didn't do well. Now for the final version, what I ended up doing was I did something similar.
I made it staged where both people have to meet a certain quota, they have to harvest a certain number of crops, and they have to trade a certain– They have to get a certain amount of medicine through trade. That's called the “Survive” stage. If both players meet the “Survive” stage– Or, the “Survive” state, that means they're fine, and they're going to survive through the next year. Then they can move on to the “Thrive,” and that's where you play for points. You can be as cutthroat as you want after that.
Patrick: It sounds like there are two very distinct phases, and then you can do whatever you want?
Ryan: Yes.
What Is Semi Co-Op?
Patrick: OK, cool. So let me define this “Semi co-op,” can everyone win together, or no? Is it just the first part basically cooperative, and the second part is everyone for themselves? Or can you still win together, or is that not possible?
Ryan: You can totally win together. The “Thrive,” the second stage, it's not clear cut in the game of “OK. Now we're in the ‘Thrive' stage.” It's, “We both met our quotas. We can keep playing to see how well we do and see who wins, count up points at the end, or we've survived, and we can end now.”
Patrick: OK. Very cool. Then I think the thing that's been intriguing me about your design is normally in roll and writes I can almost stare at my own board and focus on “OK. On my next turn, I need to roll a six, and I need to roll a yellow die, I need to get this resource,” whatever. But if you're trading, then you have to look at everyone's sheets to know what they have and what they have too much of, because then you can get less of that. Is that public information? Is it hard to read someone's sheet across the table? Did you come into any problems with that?
Ryan: Initially, actually up until about a month ago, this was all played on a single sheet of paper. Because that was the original design criteria, was that it needs to be on one piece of paper. Recently the graphic designer on it said, “We're going to split this up into a player sheet, and then the map sheet,” essentially. So there's two player sheets, and that information is publicly available now. It's publicly available, so you can look at another player's sheet to see how they're doing. But then once a person has reached the “Survive” stage, everyone has to know that.
What Design Challenges Did You Run Into?
Patrick: Interesting. So did you run into any other design–? Did you run into any other design challenges with your game? Were there any things that you stumbled on that you eventually figured out?
Ryan: Yeah, so much. A lot of it comes from the fact that it was a roll and write game, just from the get-go. When I first saw the– The way I started doing this was Oden Pong, who was one of the two people that Inkwell Games put out a call for designers. Saying, “We want you to stretch the bounds of what a roll and write can be. Pitch us an idea.” AI love pick up and deliver games, so that was my initial thought, was “I want to do a pick-up and deliver game.” So with a pick-up and deliver game it's a route building, but because you're writing everything down I can't assume you're going to have an eraser as the game player, so I had to come up with some reason why you wouldn't be able to backtrack.
Just go back and forth along the same route, and that's why I came with the ice. I was like, “Why don't you just take a boat?” “OK. It's acid. You can't take a boat because it's acid.” It's like arguing with the three-year-old in my brain. The fact that everything, that you can't erase things has led to– That's where a lot of my design struggle has come from, issues of object permanence in the game. So, I don't– I wanted to try to– A sled, ideally, you can use it multiple times. If the sled is made up of little grids where you draw the crops in it to show that you're carrying a crop, you can only draw it in once. I wanted to get at least two rides out of it, but I'm constrained by space so let ‘s– How do I design the sled so that I can do multiple trips? That's a lot of it. How do I–?
I should also say the workers in the game when you drive a sled across the ice, and you have to have drivers for it. It's a work replacement game, and you can place drivers on the sled. If you're coming back, if you've traded or if you've received too much medicine and you don't have room on your sled for your drivers, one of those drivers has to stay behind. So figuring out, “OK. How do I show that there's a driver staying at the inn in this other island?”
A lot of the solution came from just constant iteration of the game. I would take it, I would take it to play it by myself or take it to game design nights and ask people, “Does that feel OK, crossing that off? Did you ever get confused by it? Even just taking direct feedback of “How do you think this can be improved?” That honestly has been the major design challenge that I've had on the game.
Tell Me About The Anthology Experience
Patrick: Yeah. So I know this is part of an anthology, it's basically if I remember correctly, ten to twelve games? Somewhere in there?
Ryan: There are 10 games.
Patrick: So there's 10 games in this anthology, I assume you have to have some shared components. They're like, “You have to only use D6s, you can't use D8s. And we're only going to include this many colors.” Did that also restrict you and refine your game in some way?
Ryan: We didn't necessarily have that.
Patrick: Cool.
Ryan: Sort of. They said, “Use polyhedral dies. Don't go insane, and this requires 36 D20s. Don't go off the rails.” But I did put a restriction upon myself that you could play the game with a single marker. So, just one color. It's not ideal, but it works.
Patrick: Very cool. I like that you did that. I was wondering if with an anthology if that would– You'd be very heavily restricted in terms of your components, but it sounds like it wasn't that big of a deal. Which is good.
Ryan: Yeah, no. I like the idea that– I think all the games in the series, in this anthology, are like that. Where if you have a single pen and maybe a dice app on your phone, you can play the games.
Did You Work With The Other Designers?
Patrick: That's pretty darn cool. Was there any– Did the designers work together at all? Did you guys chat? Did you guys playtest each other's games? Did you work together in any way?
Ryan: We did, a little bit. Early in the– We have a Discord server that we all log into, and we post updates on our games, and early on there was a lot of trading back and forth. But I think most of us are super busy, so there was a lot of early inputs. I know I've snuck a peek at some the other designers games to see how they're coming along, trying to pace myself because I'm with some really good designers.
I'm like, “I wonder. Let's see how mine compares to theirs.” So it's neat to get to see other people's designs, and there was a bit of playtesting, and there has been some back and forth between the other designers.
What Types of Games Do You Like to Design?
Patrick: Very cool. I don't think I've ever worked with other designers probably to that level, so it's pretty cool you got to do that. Have you worked on other games? Do you love roll and writes? What type of games do you like to design?
Ryan: I'm a solo gamer at heart. I love solo games, specifically games that are designed for solo play. A game I designed for The Game Crafter's solitaire game challenge, that was called Homebound, and that was– So far that's been one of my favorite games because it's very theme-heavy. It's designed specifically to be a solo game and the process of making it reveal a lot of my own personal fears. It's a very personal game.
You're essentially a Homebound older adult who has to manage your emotional and physical needs without leaving the house. You do that through interacting with people that come to your door. They may be missionaries, and they may be salespeople, they may be neighbors, stray animals, and how you choose to interact with those people.
How Do Design Groups Fit Into Solo Gaming?
Patrick: I'm going back to the solo game design thing because that's a little bit– For me, I think one of the main reasons I play games is to spend time with friends. I don't play a ton of solo games, and I'm wondering how that changes your testing process? Do you–? Because I need extra people to test, whereas you don't. I'm wondering if you have like 100 playtests in of your game, which is probably very easy– Or, it might be much easier for solo. Then how does a design group fit into solo gaming? Is it still as useful?
Ryan: It is actually, very much. With Homebound what I did was, I would take it to conventions or the KC Game Designers design nights, and I would have three copies of the game available for playtesting. So I'd be running multiple games at a time, and it was fun because you would watch people– Because people would watch each other play, and it was so much fun to get to play it like that.
That's one of the things someone suggested recently, was creating some type of an interactive expansion so that you can still play your own game with another person next to you playing their own game, and figure out some way to communicate between the two. Either a pen pal program or send– You have an annoying salesperson that keeps coming to your house, send them over to your neighbor.
Patrick: That sounds super cool. I don't think I've ever– This is going to sound silly, I never considered concurrent playtests. That's cool that you can go to a game design night and get in three playtests.
Ryan: It's hard to manage sometimes because at the beginning everyone has questions, but once they get the feel of the game, it goes along pretty smoothly.
Patrick: Very cool. So, then this is your first– Is this your first published design?
Ryan: It is.
Is There Anything You Would Change About Your Process?
Patrick: This is your first public– It's going to be on Kickstarter probably about a week after we record, something like that. Now that you've gone through this process, would you want to publish yourself? Would you want to work with publishers in the future? Would you–? And then also, would you change anything about your process?
Ryan: I don't know if I self-published it would probably just be something through The Game Crafter. I don't know, right now with two young kids and a full-time job I don't know if I have it in me to go through the whole rigmarole of a Kickstarter. But going through a publisher, I would definitely be interested in that. This experience is a little different than most publishers, so I'm told because Inkwell Games has been very designer-friendly.
Most of the time, if you go to a publisher, you can expect your theme to be stripped out and re-themed. For me, I'm a very thematic designer. I'm a theme-first designer, and I might have a hard time letting a publisher strip out a theme that I've worked so hard on, so depending on the game I would definitely be willing to work with a publisher. It may be difficult for me, but I'd be interested in it.
Patrick: It's cool to hear that, that you know for you that design is important. Some publishers are fine with that. Or, not– Did I say, “Design is important?” That theme is important. It's cool that you know that, and then with some publishers, you have to have that conversation before you sign the contract or anything like that.
Ryan: Yeah.
Are There Any Games That Inspire Your Creativity?
Patrick: Are there any games out there that inspire you, that make you want to make cooler things?
Ryan: The most inspiring event recently was a video game. It was a game called Doki Doki Literature Club! I'd heard–
Patrick: OK. What is that?
Ryan: All right, so I'd heard someone on a podcast talking about it otherwise I would not– This wouldn't even have been on my radar. It's a game that portrays itself as a dating SIM, but it ‘s– It's only four hours long, and it's free. I'm like, “I'm just going to go ahead and do it.” It's so weird. It delves into the subject of depression, and it does all these crazy meta things. It messes with your save files, and it tells you how to go in and remove files to remove characters from the game.
It was such an experience playing it because I'd never seen anything like it before. It was very– It started getting the wheels turning in my head of, “OK. What are some meta things I can do in a game that don't seem contrived?” I know there's the deck builder game where you build decks, which is a tongue in cheek way to be meta. I've been trying to figure out a way that I can incorporate something like that into the design of a board game.
Patrick: Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, there is something about not knowing that that's the thing, right? I assume the Doki Doki Literature Club! Someone says, “It's a dating simulation.” You're like, “Cool. Got it.” Then there's unexpected things, and then when unexpected things happen in the game, it's like extra special. Versus “Play this game. It's a meta game.” Right? Like there's some–?
Ryan: Exactly. There's something– It does list “Horror” as one of the genres, but you look at all the pictures and everything, and you're like, “This isn't horror. What's going on here?” It pulls you into it.
Patrick: Because I've wanted to talk about– I wanted to make a productivity game at some point based on some– I read a lot of productivity books, which is super nerdy. But I didn't know, I wanted to bring it up, but it's almost too on the nose. I don't have a game called “Productivity” Where you're just trying to get stuff done, that sounds super boring.
Or maybe if I did, I should call it “Cubes” and you try to make as many cubes as possible. But I almost want to have a different game, and then have people learn about productivity through the game. There's something about, and I don't know, something like if you wanted to tackle the issue of depression, I don't think I'd want to have a game called “Depression.” I think I'd want to have depression be a part of the game, and then people talk about it afterwards.
Ryan: Yes. That would be– That's a great way to do it, is you have the theme be about something different but have it engaging enough that there's conversation about the theme afterwards. That's how you seed that conversation through your game design.
Patrick: Very cool. That's a great inspiration, so I will check that out afterwards, and I hope a couple of the listeners do too because it looks cool. Also, what a great name. Listeners, I will have a link to that. I found it on Google, so I'll have a link to that.
Ryan: Cool.
What Is Your White Whale of Game Design?
Patrick: Then another question I would like to ask, is there a mechanic or a mechanism or whatever that you've been working on that you haven't been able to get? Is there a white whale of game design that you're like “I want to do this thing,” and you just haven't done it yet?
Ryan: I have a game that I don't know how to fix. I think I've reached the point where I have to re-theme it because the game is based around the mating habits of the Tobi Antelope.
Patrick: OK.
Ryan: I watched documentary about them, and the way they do their mate selection process is the men all– Or, the stags all get in this big kilometer wide circle, and they each call out their own little areas and then they fight to be closest to the center of the circle, which is called a “Lek,” or if they're by a water source they'll get higher priority when the does come around looking for a mate.
They do things like sometimes they'll make a little hill out of their own dung so that they're slightly higher than the others. So I saw this, I saw it on a documentary, and I'm like “That's an area control game. Let's see if I can make that.” But I ended up creating that as the main game, and then all these– I made like 20 microgames that are duels, to get the players to duel each other. The downside is that when you have a game that's about stags trying to mate with does, and you have humans playing it, the game becomes very problematic.
Patrick: As in, people make rude and crude comments all the time or something?
Ryan: It is, and in a close-knit circle of friends where you know each other's comfort level, and you know each other well enough, you can joke around like that with each other. But this game is going to be played in the board game community. It would get pulled out at conventions, and people would be uncomfortable. I don't want to make that. So I'm trying to figure out, “How do I fix it? Can I fix it while keeping the theme? If I can't, then what do I do with all these mini-games I made?” Try to figure out how to reuse those.
Thoughts on Gender Roles as a Game Mechanic
Patrick: OK, great. Then I have a genuine question for you because I have my own problem with this. Or, I have a similar problem. Let me first share, and my similar problem is there's a trope in the videogame world of the standard dude character, let's say Mario, has to save the pretty princess. Princess Peach. That's just overused and overdone, and as female gamers, you're like, “It'd be nice sometimes if we don't always have to be saved.” Is there something about just switching the genders?
So if you have a princess saving the plumber, would that get rid of some of those problems? I wonder if in your case if it was the does competing for the males, whatever they're called, would that solve some of those problems? Do you think people–? I'd be very curious if people would behave differently if you just switched the genders and kept the game exactly the same.
Ryan: I don't know. That would be interesting. In the end, it all comes down to trying to mate with someone. That alone makes people uncomfortable. So, I don't know. It'd be interesting. I did try a variant where one round you play as the stags, the other round you play as the does. Trying to make sure that the does had as much agency as possible, and so players had to play as a doe and a stag. You had to play as both genders regardless of what gender you identify with. It was clunky, and it didn't work.
What's a Resource You'd Recommend?
Patrick: Very cool. Good luck with that. That sounds like a really interesting problem, basically the culture of a certain type of game is problematic. Very cool. I will have to think on that, but moving towards the end here, now that you've basically gone through this process, your first game is going to be part of this anthology on Kickstarter in about a week or so. Listeners, that should be now. What is a resource you'd recommend to another indie game designer? What is a–? Usually something free, or pretty affordable.
Ryan: Find a local game design group. Because that has honestly been the best thing for me, I am very active in the Kansas City Game Designers, and I run their social media accounts. When you don't see posts, it's probably because I'm slacking off on the job. But it's fantastic because I know every two weeks I'm going to get to go and sit down with other designers, we playtest each other's games, we talk about design, and they're the ones that exposed me to game design theories.
No matter how good a designer you are, you're going to meet people who are better than you and who know things that you don't, and you're going to meet people who will inspire you also because you'll see them do things. Like, “Why didn't I think of that?” And that may inspire you to do something else, so find a local game design group. I think Cardboard Edison has a list of game design groups on their website.
What's the Best Money You've Spent?
Patrick: I know they do. A while ago I checked to make sure my game design group was on there, and it was. There's just a ton of them on there. Check it out, because they're very cool and super useful. Then how about, I'm a pretty frugal person, is there something that is worth every single cent that you spent? What's the best money you've spent in the game design world?
Ryan: I think it was probably when I was working on Homebound, I got a one-month subscription to a vector art site because I needed art for it just to be able to display. I knew it wasn't going to be the final art, but I needed something there just to set the mood, and that was fantastic. It was cheap, $10 bucks for one month and you get a certain number of images you can download. You don't have to attribute the website because you paid for them. I would say that's a fantastic tool.
Patrick: I know in the past, other people have recommended The Noun Project. Is that the one you're talking about, or was it a different one?
Ryan: No. This one was Vecteezy.
Patrick: Cool. Yeah, I've seen that.
Ryan: The Noun Project, I've tried it. They didn't have anything that fit with the older adults living at home alone. A lot of dungeon crawler stuff on The Noun Project, but nothing that suited my needs.
What Does Success Look Like?
Patrick: Cool. Listeners, that is– I'm looking at it right now, that is “Vecteezy,” and I will have a link to that in the show notes. Cool. That's very helpful. So your game is coming up on Kickstarter, what does success look like to you in the board game world?
Ryan: That's a tough question. I know that board game design for me is a creative outlet, so I think success in the board game world would be knowing that people are playing my game and getting the desired experience out of it. I have an idea of what I want players to experience when they play my games, and knowing they're getting that positive experience is really what I would consider a success.
Patrick: When people play your game, they should definitely Tweet you?
Ryan: Of course.
Overrated / Underrated
Patrick: Very cool. Awesome, I like to end with a game called Overrated/Underrated. Have you heard about it?
Ryan: Yes.
Patrick: Fantastic. Basically, I'm going to give you a word or phrase, and you have to say if it's overrated or underrated. If I said “Smartphones,” you'd say– Boy, you could go either way with that one. You'd give me a one-sentence reason why. I'm going to go with– So, this is still on my mind because I've been on BGG a lot in the last week or two for various reasons. I'm going to go with the BGG logo redesign. Overrated or underrated?
Ryan: I would say the redesign is somewhat underrated. The fussing about it is overrated.
Patrick: I like that. It's amazing how much people don't like change. I just saw an announcement on the BGG home page that was like, “We have more mobile visitors than desktop visitors, so we're changing things around. We know you don't like change, but deal with it.” You said it slightly nicer than that, but that's just interesting. Cool, so just because I like the frozen lake thing, I thought of the Iditarod. Which is, for listeners who can't look this up right now, that is that super long famous dog sledding race. Overrated or underrated?
Ryan: I'm going to go say overrated, just cause I think it's one of those things that has– Every year there's a lot of buzz about it, and I like the idea of a race like that not getting a lot of publicity.
Patrick: OK. I think we might be in different circles because I don't see that much publicity about the Iditarod. But cool, it's good to hear they get publicity in other circles. All right, so this one– I will mention this at the end, but work in progress threads of your game either on Facebook, BGG or anywhere.
Ryan: I would probably say underrated because it's not something I do. Within my board game design group, we don't talk about it much. But that does seem like a very underutilized resource and a good way to get feedback on a design.
Patrick: Very cool. Last thing and I don't know if you know about– Or, I don't know if you've seen the trailers for this but the upcoming movie Frozen 2, which so far is basically just your perception of it based on trailers, overrated or underrated?
Ryan: It's a trailer, so I'm going to go ahead and say overrated.
Patrick: Yeah. I think there's also a big hype to live up to.
Ryan: It is.
Patrick: They have a massive hype that they have to live up to. So, we'll see what happens. Cool.
Ryan: Do you want to hear my pet theory on that one?
Patrick: Yes.
Ryan: OK. I think they cross the Atlantic Ocean and go to Canada. That is my guess, just with all the maple leaves that are bandied about throughout that.
Wrap Up
Patrick: I didn't see– OK, see, I've seen the trailer one time. I didn't notice any maple leaves. Look at this, and you are educating me and the listeners. Great, love the fan theory. Cool. So Ryan, thank you so much for being on the show.
Ryan: Yeah, I had a great time. Thanks for having me.
Patrick: Where can people find you online, and where– And also, I definitely want to say, where can people Tweet you?
Ryan: My Twitter handle is @hoyeboyee. There are two “E's” at the end there because someone got the one with one “E.” That's social media-wise, that's the main place I'm at. I am also on BoardGameGeek. Just the username “hoyeboye.” Pretty much anywhere online that you see “hoyeboye,” that's me.
Patrick: That's very cool. And then, do you have your own game design website? Or is it pretty much just Twitter and stuff like that?
Ryan: Yeah, pretty much, just Twitter.
Patrick: Very cool. Listeners, if you liked this podcast, please leave us a review on iTunes. If you leave a review, Ryan said he would help you build a sled in the event of a snowpocalypse. So, that's pretty fantastic.
Ryan: I'm looking forward to it.
Patrick: Then I did want to mention, I just started a work in progress thread for my game [Mintsugi], which is for The Game Crafter mint tin contest. So I will link to that work in progress thread on BGG in these show notes. I personally don't know what to expect from this work in progress thread, so who knows? It might be great, might be terrible, but I've at least posted a couple times, and we'll see. So, it's an experiment. You can visit the site at IndieBoardGameDesigners.com, you can follow me on Twitter, I'm @BFTrick. Until next time everyone, happy designing. Bye-bye.