Simple Elegance Moar Prototypes

#70 – Simple Elegance: Moar Prototypes

Patrick: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another bonus episode of the Indie Board Game Designer podcast. Normally I talk to and interview guest game designers, and we talk about their experience in game design, but this is the third installment of the Simple Elegance series which is all about myself and another person preparing for the Simple Elegance contest on the Game Crafter.

So, this is a bonus episode. In this episode, we're going to be talking about new prototypes and some of the iterations we made on our games. If you haven't already heard the first two episodes (1 & 2), you should probably go back and listen to those, just so you know what we're talking about. But yeah, that's what we're going to be talking about. Cody, how are you doing?

Cody: Hey, Patrick. I'm doing well. I haven't been kicked off the podcast yet, so that's a win.

Patrick: I don't know what you'd have to do to be kicked off. There's very few things that would warrant being kicked off, but maybe that can be a new game.

Cody: “How to get kicked off Patrick's podcast,” I'll start prototyping it.

Homework

Patrick: Work on it. All right, so I want to start with commitments, AKA homework. I promised that I would create a style guide which is– Or an art brief for my coin game, and I did that, and I think I mentioned this in the last episode, but I just need to set aside my thoughts in a document, and I need to have “Here's some example games, here's some swatches, here's some fonts. Here are some other things,” I have to have all that in front of me, and then I can make things. So I started, I made the art brief, and then– What was the other thing? I needed– Yes. I promised to make public and private pattern cards for the coin game, so normally in the first version you just had these private goals that only you see, and only you can complete. Now there are also public cards, where everyone can see them but only one person can complete them. So, I did both of those.

Cody: Yeah. I took a peek at your style guide, and that was pretty impressive. I haven't actually– I've always wanted to get organized and make a style guide, all of this kind of stuff, or a design brief or whatever. But I never have. I should hire you to do my style guides for me.

Patrick: I have a background in marketing, I used to work at this advertising agency, and it would take us weeks to make a style guide for a client, but then every other thing we did for them was so easy. It's a lot of upfront work, but then every single thing you do after that is easy.

Cody: The benefit is pretty obvious like it just made the back end of stuff go so much faster, which is what I tried to convince some of my friends in my design group to use that software that I do for the rapid prototyping. Because it's just a little bit of upfront work, but then prototypes are so fast to spit out.

Patrick: Yeah, I think for me, as soon as I'm ready to make cards, then I need the style guide. As soon as I'm ready to commit to a game, you know what I mean?

Cody: Yeah, totally. Then from my past commitment for Homeworld, I did not get much done with that. That game is turning out to be slightly bigger than what maybe I have time for in this contest, but it's definitely something that I'm going to try, and hopefully if not then I'll continue it on for maybe a later contest or something. But I did get some work done for my coin game, finally. I even got a playtest of it, and a couple playtests of it last night with my fiancee.

Patrick: Awesome.

Cody: Yeah. It was weird trying to imagine it being coins because it was just paper with numbers on it cut out. It was super low budget, but it worked, and I got to see how hard it is to play with the imaginary grid like you were talking about.

Patrick: Totally makes it tricky. Just one question on that, did you–? In my coin game I have, I stole some coins from– Boy, what's that game called? Treasure Mountain. I stole some coins from Treasure Mountain, and I just used regular human money. It's so weird to say “Regular human money,” but it's our regular US coins. As far as prototyping, have you thought about using just regular quarters, nickels, dimes, pennies?

Cody: Yeah, I have thought about that. I've been trying to think of how to do it since I think there's like five, four, or five different types of coins. There's like five different types of coins, and then for each side too. Final product would probably be like gold coins for one player, silver coins for the other. But there's five different types of coin. So, I mean I'm sure it's possible to come up with some better than a paper prototype. 

Patrick: Cool.

Cody: I also completed my Patrick-assigned homework for [inaudible], so I got that price down on the Game Crafter. I think I've got 99% of what I need priced down on there, and it came out to around $26 bucks. So, it's totally possible.

Pricing Changes

Patrick: That's with those indented dice and the stickers, right?

Cody: Yeah. I realized I haven't put the sticker sheet on there, but I'm assuming it's not going to be more than $4 bucks for the sticker sheet. 

Patrick: Cody, in between the time we recorded the last episode I do think they slightly– They changed the way they did all their laser cutting prices, and actually for the listeners, go listen– It's one of the most recent podcasts on the Game Crafter podcast— One of the most recent episodes on the Game Crafter podcast. But they just changed the way they do laser, and they said one of the few items that went up while most things went down in price, one of the few items that went up are the stickers. I think I ordered my stickers just in time, but I think my stickers are like $4 bucks, so maybe yours are going to be like $5 or $6, so it's not going to be–

Cody: Interesting. Yeah, I did hear, I did hear that podcast that you're talking about. But I never even thought about that for the stickers, so I will definitely have to add that last little bit on there.

Patrick: But it's definitely feasible, or like it'll be close, but it should be possible to be in that price range.

Cody: Yeah, for sure.

New Ideas

Patrick: Cool. I think you have a new idea.

Cody: Yes. It's one of my old new ideas that I– Sorry, my roommate just came in and has his phone out recording me. So, it's an idea that I've been stewing on for a long time. I even have some social media handles and everything for it, because it's one of those games– There's different ways to come about a game. You can think of a theme, or you can think of a mechanic or whatever, that whole debate. Whether you design theme or mechanic, but this came to me as a name. I was thinking The First Meeples, and then it was just like using meeples but a super common game piece, but then starting the beginning of their civilization.

Patrick: Yeah, that sounds cool. I'm always worried about stepping my– Putting my– Stuffing my toe–? I don't know the expression, but doing something stupid along those lines where I try to make something cool but then I offend a whole bunch of, I don't know Native Americans. I can totally see myself messing up and offending 100 million people.

Cody: Yeah, I definitely have those worries myself. Even with my Homeworld game, that technically has a [colonia cult colonizing] theme to it, but I'm hoping that both of these are abstract enough that you know it doesn't draw comparisons of– Like Terraforming Mars is technically a colonizing game, you just don't have indigenous people that you're treating as a resource.

Patrick: Yes.

Cody: Which is one of the main points.

Patrick: Yeah, I think you're pretty– I don't want to say you're 100% in the clear, but you're pretty darn good if you're colonizing a new planet.

Cody: Yeah. Then with The First Meeples, I don't know, it's in a fake world of– Like, this whole “I'm going to create this whole meeple world, and there's no people or anything. Our people are there, the meeples. So it's this alternate reality, and I think that should get far enough away from any stepping on anybody's toes.

Patrick: I think with a little bit of concern you will avoid 80% of the problem. Like, even this conversation now, I'm sure you're going to be fine.

Cody: Yeah, I completely agree. I think where people come into problems is where they don't give any thought about it.

Updates On Existing Games

Patrick: Yeah, I hear you. OK. I would love to talk about some of the updates, so why don't you give us– Start it off?

Cody's Metal Coin Game

Cody: On my metal coins game, which I guess I should probably start coming up with the name for, but as I alluded to earlier playing on an imaginary grid is a lot tougher than I imagined. It did make, I will say during one point of the game it did have an interesting dynamic because the way I play tested allowed for the grid to constantly shift. It didn't happen much, but towards the end of it happened to where like “We only have units four grid spaces wide. So my fiancee moved her piece over farther to set the boundaries of that five by five, and then I brought that boundary closer and then expanded it again. That was cool, but I don't think it's cool enough decision space to warrant the imaginary grid. But now I'm probably going to go back, “Welcome back,” I'm probably going to try to have a grid system to accept. I don't know if this will be too clunky, but I thought of doing– Instead of an expanding grid, having more like a chessboard, and instead of bringing units out periodically like I have it now, maybe sending them all at the beginning like chess. Then if any units ever move off of a row, so like a grid line, you remove that from the game, so the board starts getting smaller and smaller.

Patrick: So basically, if at any one point, all units are gone from a certain row or maybe a certain column, that row or column disappears?

Cody: Yes.

Patrick: That's– yeah.

Cody: I don't know any other game like that.

Patrick: I can't think of any. I know there are some games where– I've played either a prototype or a game where the edges of the board slowly disappear. But that's because the planet is blowing up or something like that, but I haven't– It's definitely uncommon. It is not a common thing, and I don't think I've ever seen it in more of an abstract type game.

Cody: Yeah. I'm definitely interested in that planet game that you were mentioning, but I think that's some interesting design space. I was trying to map, and I was trying to envision in my head last night how to make a board like that would be elegant to use, and not just clunky. Because if when I imagined it at first, I was like “Any time a column or row is gone, you remove that. But you can't make a column in the row removable without it just being single pieces.

Patrick: Oh, I can see how that's tricky. 

Cody: Yeah. So then I imagined an offset thing, so one level would be the row and then internally between those two rows you'd have a column. So it creates this staggering row/column effect.

Patrick: I don't quite get that. Do you know what you should do? You should draw it up and put it on Twitter.

Cody: I should. I drew it on the whiteboard last night, so I should– I will put a note here to do that.

Patrick: Cool. Anything else on your coin game?

Cody: No, I think that's it. We got a couple of playtests in, there was some stuff that didn't go as smoothly, and then there was other stuff that went well. So, typical playtest.

Streak

Patrick: Awesome. I will give an update on Streak, and this is going to be very short. Streak is that recent game, has some dice with it and then the stickers, so I ordered– as I mentioned earlier I ordered my stickers. They were super cheap, and I want to say they were like $5 bucks. They're so inexpensive. I literally probably got hundreds of individual stickers, I think I have enough– I don't know, I probably made like eight green dice, eight yellow dice, and eight red dice? That's 24 times 6, and I can't do math right now, but that's like 150 stickers. Anyways, super cheap and affordable, but that's all I did. This game is on the backburner for me. This is almost like a backup game, and I don't even think I'm going to submit it. I think I want to focus on my coin game. I got some stickers, the stickers look great. I'm very happy with them. But yeah, don't know about you, Cody, I have to focus. I have to– I don't know, if I try to do both these games, I don't think either one will come out well. I think they'll both come out OK, but I want to have like one amazing game if that makes sense.

Cody: Yeah, I think I'm totally in the same boat as you right now, which is why I'm tapering back on Homeworld a little bit. It's still a design I 100% want to pursue, but I don't think– We have like 42 days or something like that left before the contest, so there's no way for me to have my attention split into three different paths.

When Do You Commit?

Patrick: Cody, this was not on our– My well laid out plan, but when is the point to commit? If someone else is listening to this, I'm looking at it, and we have 41 days and 9 hours as we're recording this. When is the point where you commit? When is the point where you're like “I got to focus on this game,” because for me I want to get that, and I think I'm ready to hit that point. But for other people, they can go maybe up until two weeks before the contest? I don't know.

Cody: Yeah, it depends on how much you have on your plate. Like how much design time you have. I know currently I'm decently limited because I do the publishing and stuff as well, so this weekend was doing some work for Vamp on the Batwalk and then also I had a good hour and a half to two-hour discussion with the designers for Flytrap Frenzy, and all that stuff. So, that all cuts into the time aside from just my typical day job. If you have a decent amount of free time, or if you're a stay at home parent or something, and in between taking care of kids or whatever, you could probably still have another week or two before you have to go all in. Depending on how long the games are, anyways. I would definitely not be doing or trying new ideas at this point.

Patrick: It also depends though how perfect you want it, because I always like to order at least one copy pretty early, let's say maybe 30 days before the contest it needs to be submitted. I'd probably want to order a copy to make sure that all the pieces fit in the box, and there's nothing dumb that I messed up. Then I can make last-minute changes to it. They don't have to be perfect, but they need to be– I want to make sure they look good and that I didn't mess up a weird color thing, or something like that. But if you don't need to wait for a prototype, which takes– There's usually like a two-week backlog on the Game Crafter, and then a couple of days to make it, and then they ship it to you, and that takes a couple days. That's three weeks of time you can save, and you can spend that time just designing.

Cody: Yeah. That's really good advice right there, especially because there is that delay. Except my last couple Game Crafter orders, I will say have been coming pretty quick, but two of my last three were parts only orders, and they have a new system where they get those out a lot quicker.

Patrick: Yeah, I'm looking at– Just for those of you who don't know, there is  TheGameCrafter.com/status. I look at this all the time. If I bought it right now, it would take nine days to be made and to be shipped. So, almost– Yeah. That's not too bad. Nine days is not too bad, but it can get a little bit longer. I think it was crazy around December, and it was close to three weeks. So it just depends on what's going on.

Cody: It definitely took me, and one of my very first orders from the Game Crafter was around December, for the hook box challenge. That had a big delay on it. It was probably three weeks before it shipped out.

Patrick: Anyway. Sorry, I distracted both of us. I was just curious at what point we want to say “We got to focus,” but you have– Tell me about Homeworld a little bit more. 

Homeworld

Cody: So, Homeworld is still in the design concept phase. I have my whole “This faction vs. this faction,” and I have– Actually, that was one of my latest orders from the Game Crafter, was getting all the plastic bits and everything to use as resources.

Cody: Actually, I was expecting the cubes to be quite a bit smaller so I may have to go adjust my order for that. Because I don't need that big of cubes. They were almost like small dice.

Patrick: I know exactly what you're talking about.

Cody: I don't know if they were 10 or 15 millimeters or something.

Patrick: Yeah, the Game Crafter has 8, 10 and 12-millimeter cubes and the 12's are much bigger than you would think.

Cody: Yeah, I think I got the 12's, and they were definitely– I got them, and I was like “Wow, this is a lot. I don't know if I can fit three of them on a tile.” I plan on using those as units, or whatnot. The game is at a point right now where I think there's going to be resources and stuff on certain tiles, and then for the Homeworld player, I was thinking they'd probably be a spawn type thing. So, I don't know. I think maybe you would have that to where “You place this tile down, and continuously every turn you spawn X amount of units,” so that gives the other player “I need to go divert from what I'm doing to try to keep that down, or else they're going to start swarming us, and we're not going to continue being able to build out.”

Patrick: Got it. I'm sorry, I'm saying “Got it,” but I think I'm trying to say “I'm getting as much as I can add in an audio podcast, to get it.”

Cody: There's definitely a difference between audio and visual media.

Patrick: Cool. So, one dumb thing I was looking at the show notes last week, or two weeks ago, or whatever. I just noticed I think you want to call your game “Homeworld,” all one word. It's actually “Home World,” as in like it's two words. Home World isn't a thing– That doesn't bug you? That totally would bug me if Google auto-suggest is “You're typing in the name wrong.”

Cody: Yeah, maybe. I don't care how powerful Google is as a company. I think I'll still make Homeworld one word. It's still one word to me.

Patrick: All right. You're allowed to make different choices, but I think it's the wrong choice.

Cody: Yeah, I'm from a town of 300. The words we speak aren't even real words, so. 

Coin Purse (Patrick's Metal Coin Game)

Patrick: Very cool. I have a giant, long update for my coin game. Number one, go to Urban Dictionary. I've been calling my game tentatively on Twitter, and you'll see #coinpurse. Go to Urban Dictionary right now, look up “coin purse,” two words not one, and give yourself a chuckle.

So, I need to rename that. I will not share it on this podcast. You can look it up or try to imagine what it could be. But yeah, I need to come up with a new name. I am so bad at these names. Secret, pattern, covert, furtive, complex, like a group of buildings. Blueprints, enigma, conundrum. Here's one I'm excited about, what about “Bank of the Realms”? What does that mean to you, Cody, if anything?

Cody: Maybe it's because I just watched Game of Thrones last night, but it reminds me of one of those banks in Game of Thrones, I forget what the–

Patrick: Iron Bank? 

Like the Iron Bank, yeah.

Here's my hope. Bank of the Realms, “realms” feels very fantasy, “bank” obviously makes you think of coins, fits that. I cannot find a great name for my game, and that's the best thing I have so far. The other thing I've been thinking about is, a couple play testers have mentioned it's like– people have said “It's almost like advanced tic-tac-toe,” in a positive way. Then I'm like, “OK, tic-tac-coin?” And nothing. Cody, I am terrible. I'm very happy with the name Streak for my motorcycle racing game. Streak I feel is a great name. I can just come up with zero names. So if any of the listeners know what I should call this, please leave a comment, send me a tweet, something. So far the best thing I have is Bank of the Realms, but–

Cody: I would have to disagree with you there. I think enigma is the best you have there.

Patrick: Seriously? 

Cody: Yeah. I like it.

Patrick: What do you like? Because it's short and punchy, or what is it?

Cody: Yeah, probably short and punchy, and enigma and it– Enigma sounds abstract, and it's an abstract game.

Patrick: That'll transition nicely. I was watching a YouTube video, Jamey Stegmaier was talking about mini-games, and he talked about Gwent, which is in a game called The Witcher 3, which is a computer game. They did what I want to do with this game, where this is a– So, The Witcher 3 is the game, and then they made a game that you play inside the game so that you were playing in a fancy tavern. I like– Going back to names, I like that it's called Gwent. That's a short– Like, yes. It seems like abstract games are like “Chess, Go, Checkers,” they're all one word very simple, and maybe it's because they're really old games. But I'm just wondering if I should come up– I could come up with something totally made up like Gwent. I don't know, and I could come up with some crazy name. Is that–? Should I do that by next episode, come up with some crazy made up names?

Cody: Yeah, as long as you can come up with one better than enigma.

Patrick: All right. I will come up with some made up–

Cody: If you look at most abstracts, they all have a one word, easy to say, punch you in the face. Like Azul, or Reef, or any of– Or even like Santorini.

Patrick: Which is like a– Yeah. Anyways, this is– So, here's what's frustrating about this. The name doesn't matter, the name matters, it doesn't matter that much. I'm probably going to win or lose the contest by the name. But I want the name to be what I stick with because that is my URL for the Game Crafter. I know that's a very nerdy thing, but I am a web developer and the URL for my game matters to me. Even if it matters to no one else, it matters to me. So, OK. The Dice Tower– It's amazing to me, we probably had about a two-week break where we didn't record, and it is amazing to me how many useful things you can come across in a week. So I listen to The Dice Tower, and they just shared a poll about abstract games. I was a little bit surprised, but like 51% of people said “They're OK, I rarely play them.” A whole bunch of people said “Not for–” Not a whole bunch, a few people said “Not for me,” and then a couple of people said “I like them,” and a few tiny people said they love them.

Poll on Abstract games

So, Cody, I don't know if I want to describe my game as abstract, because you move around the board like an abstract but you have hidden information which feels very un-abstract. I don't know if I want to position it as an abstract game, because I don't think people like them. Or at least, this poll says that a majority of people don't like them.

Cody: Yeah, I'm not developing an abstract game, it's a fantasy coin game.

Patrick: There we go.

Cody: Yeah. Abstracts are interesting to me because I have seen that people like– In abstract games, there's the whole stereotype that they don't do well on Kickstarter, and some of that holds truth. It is tough, just because abstracts are a classic type game style. Like Azul is an outlier, but there is success with abstract games as well. But abstract games, they're typically– Either they hit, or they don't.

Patrick: Yeah, I knew this will come later in the process as we're getting close to wrapping up this contest, but I do need to figure out the positioning of just how I want to talk about my game. Is that an abstract, or is it advanced tic-tac-toe? There's a whole bunch of ways, but that is a future problem for future Patrick so he can deal with that later.

Patrick: Let me keep going a little bit. I want to talk about play time because I think a couple of weeks ago I didn't know where I was with the play time. In my very first initial version you only had to complete one pattern, and in one of my playtests someone beat the game in 3 minutes and 14 seconds, which is way too short when you put out all the stuff. I think the longest game was 17 minutes, but good news. I switched to a system where instead of first person to complete a pattern wins, it's you have to get five points. There's a couple of easy ones and a couple of hard ones. My games are consistently like 20 to 30 minutes. I'm very, very happy with that. But I also didn't know that, Cody, until I started timing my games.

Patrick: I don't know if you're at the point yet, but definitely start timing your games, and for me, I basically had to add a point system and give yourself 1 to 3 points per card. That helped. It makes it feel better, and one of the things I also realize is even if you lose, at least if you got like a 2 or 3 point pattern, you still feel good. You still did a thing.

Cody: Yeah, I see what you're saying. So it's not just like chess, where you either win or lose. It's not like, “I got close,” which now that I'm thinking about it maybe that's– I'm trying to think of other modern abstract games. Because Azul and Reef both have points, so maybe that's what differentiates them from just binary win or lose abstract games, and maybe that's what people think of when they think of abstract games.

Patrick: I think you're right.

Cody: That's definitely worth thinking about more.

Patrick: Cool. I want to give kudos, someone in a Facebook group mentioned the idea of using coasters instead of cards, and one of the things I love is I just asked for a follow-up question, I said “What game?” And they recommended a game called Martian Coasters. Which is literally, thinking of– This is a game you'd play in a fantasy tavern. I could design these to work on actual coasters that you'd get in a tavern. I'm probably not going to do that, but it's cool to know that I could do that. I'll come back to that in the future, but I love that the more you share, the more– Like, there's podcasts I'm listening to, there's YouTube videos, there's Facebook groups, I've just got a lot of information in the last two weeks. OK, so I don’t know if you've ever heard this advice, but I want to say I heard it by Reiner Knizia, I don't remember where I heard it, but I think that the advice was

“If your game gets stuck, try to solve two problems with one mechanism.”

Reiner Knizia

Patrick: I accidentally did this. So first of all, have you ever heard that, Cody?

Cody: No, I don't think I've heard it that eloquently.

Patrick: All his words. I've never intentionally done this, but one of the things that I accidentally did is, once or twice people have complained about how there's these five actions and once someone takes the action you can't take it again until they're reset when all the actions are taken. Another problem the game has is the board within a three player game can become full, so I accidentally said “What happens if you remove a coin from the board and that resets the actions?” I accidentally did this, where I solved two problems with one mechanism, and I'm really happy with it. Even if players don't take the action very much, that ability very much, it's so nice to know that it does something. So, check that out. If you get stuck on something, Cody, try to link your two problems with one mechanism.

Cody: Yeah. I think that's pretty smart because that obviously de-crowds the board and then allows people to take their actions. That's in the same vein as games with markets, where if the market gets stagnant, you can take an action to wipe the market.

Patrick: It's something like that. Exactly. OK, so last thing I want to say. Sorry, I have a giant list of updates, and I'm only even giving you listeners a few of them. The last thing, I started working on the coins for my game and normally currency in games are super boring, and one of things I realized also while playtesting this, Cody, is I had a nickel, and I  had that next to a silver coin. Those look pretty similar, so I realized that because everyone has gold, silver, bronze, I need to make the coins themselves look very different, so just at a glance, you can see whose coins are where on the board because they're both the same color. I started with coins for Moon Elves. I'll include some photos in the show notes, but basically, for the moon, I was like, “What happens if they all look like moons?” There's a crescent moon, there's a three-quarters full moon, and there's a full moon. I think they look great. I am so happy with them. Did you get a chance to look at them, Cody?

Cody: Yeah, I saw those, and they are cool.

Patrick: I wish I could say I planned this from the beginning, I didn't. It just happened by accident, but I think– I am, OK so my next race is probably going to be, I'm going to call them Iron Born Dwarves. I want them– I specifically chose Iron Born because I want all the coins to look like shields.

Patrick: One race is going to look like moons, one is going to look like shields, and then my friend Heather Newton who– This was on Facebook, she's here in Colorado. She suggested golems or constructs, and they could have little– Their coins can all be gear-like. Some animated race. I'm like, “Oh my God, now I'm so excited.” I'm actually– This is the thing I'm probably most excited about in my game, are the different coins. I know that is stupid, but I'm so excited by the cool coins that I get to design.

Cody: That is the coolest part of a metal coin game if we're being honest. There are so many cool custom coins out there that– When I saw yours, and I was like, “I wish I had a single artistic bone in my body, but I just–” That's actually one of my worries for the contest, is trying to get something that doesn't look that bad for the contest. Because I've only participated in one contest, The Hookbox Challenge like a year ago or so for the Game Crafter. My game came in second in the community voting, but I feel that was purely just based off of the art. Art really gets votes, so I'm worried if I can't even make a good game, but if I have to scribble in the art to have some place holder for the contest. I don't know if it's going to do the greatest.

Patrick: I think you need– No, I think you need arts. If you have good art, I think you will get past the community vote, and then you need to have a good game. But you won't– I don't think you can get past that first level without really good art, or just getting lucky.

Cody: Yes. For sure. When I was doing that contest, I was actively in the groups, talking about my game, and then it was just a couple– “That's that game with the good art.” It skyrocketed up in the voting, out of 126 entries it was number two. So, I don't think it'll be the same for this one. Especially because I'm assuming there's going to be a pretty crowded field because this is a pretty open contest. 

Predictions

Patrick: Let's do some predictions. I'm going to go with, and there's probably going to be 60 entries.

Cody: I'm going with over 100.

Patrick: Wow. All right. So, we can figure this out. I can't do math right now, is that 80 or less, I win? 79 or less, I win. 81 or more, you win. And 80s, we tie.

Cody: That works for me.

Patrick: OK, so one last thing. Does anyone have any ideas for the last race? I have two ideas I'm thinking of. Centaurs, who could have horseshoe-shaped coins, or, I don't know how to pronounce this word, so I apologize. It's either “kit-suni” or kitsune, which are like Japanese fox spirit things. They sometimes have multiple tails. So, something foxy with multiple tails. I don't know, if anyone has thoughts, please share them with me. Cody, any thoughts on centaur coins or kitsune coins?

Cody: I think centaurs would be cool, I didn't even think about horseshoes. That'd be interesting. Then kitsune, I actually– That's funny, I just found out about kitsune in an anime that I watched on Netflix. There were these cat-like ladies. Yeah. Love, Death & Robots.

Patrick: Thank you for the actual name. Love, Death & Robots.

Cody: Yes. I think it's kitsune, and I don't know for sure, though.

Patrick: No. That's– First of all, if you are done with this episode, go watch Love, Death & Robots. It is fantastic, and it's on Netflix. But that specific episode is also really good.

Cody: Yeah, for sure.

Homework

Patrick: OK. So I've blabbed for like 100 minutes there, for the next show I will come up with some more names. Now I'm specifically coming up with made up names so I will come up with some crazy names that aren't names. So, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be working on my dwarf coins, and I might get started on the construct coins. I promise I will work on the dwarf coins, and maybe if lucky, the construct coins.

Cody: Yeah, the construct coins I'm really excited for. You can do some cool stuff with some gear coins. Then moving on to my homework, top priority for me is probably getting more playtests of the coin game. Experimenting with that removable row column whatever board, and see how that goes. Then a secondary would probably be making a new prototype for Dino Dice so that I can get in some more play tests with that. I have some ideas since my playtests a couple weeks ago, but I haven't made time to work on it since then.

Patrick: All right. I'm adding “Experimenting with removable rows, columns” to your list.

Cody: Yeah, that's for sure, getting done.

Wrap Up

Patrick: Cody, awesome. I'm excited that we got to chat. I think both of us made some interesting progress. I'm super excited to see where we go from here. So, where can people find you online?

Cody: Just on all the social medias, @goldnuggetgames, or @goldnuggetgame on Twitter.

Patrick: Awesome. The hashtag for this is #simpleelegance. Please feel free to leave comments on the blog post, and we will have a transcript, I'll have pictures and all that stuff. You can follow– You can go to the website, which is IndieBoardGameDesigners.com, you can follow me on Twitter @BFTrick. Until next time, everyone. Bye.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.