Mutant Pizza

Hello, Otherworldly Beings—

As some of you might know, I self-published my debut board game, Nine Muses, on The Game Crafter and itch.io back in May. (May 29th, to be specific.) I had a blast designing it. I learned a lot through the process.

Nine Muses has seen a lot more success than I thought it would. I’m grateful to see it gain support and I’m hopeful for the future of other games I have in store—which, as you might notice, is a lot.

For those who have been following these updates on my game design journey over the years, it’s taken a while for me to get here. I’ve worked on many games, most of which are either still being worked on or have been shelved for an indeterminate amount of time.

One thing I’ve learned through all of this is that I need to accept the notion that some games need to be put away for other games to shine. That’s not to say that I may never complete development on a certain project but rather, I need to focus my limited energy on the projects that fit together in the moment. Otherwise, I’ll be stuck trying to dig a tunnel through bedrock when I could be carving out a beautiful cavern out of limestone.

I’m pausing development on Color Space

With the spirit of putting to bed what needs rest in mind, I’ve decided to halt development of Color Space indefinitely. Color Space was the first game I designed. I started developing it in 2019 and it became what it was somewhere around 2020. It was a two-player abstract strategy game where players moved hex tiles of primary colors to form patterned roads of secondary colors. The length of the road you formed determined how many diamonds you could collect from it, with the goal of being the first to collect five of each of the three types of secondary color diamonds.

Now that the bandaid has been ripped, let me tell you why I’ve stopped development.

The feedback people have had with having to remember what tiles generated which colored diamonds, what the tiles’ abilities do, and the lack of interactivity between players gives me a lot I need to rethink. It’s not the abstract strategy game I want and I have a hunch, although haven’t proved, that the game can be ‘solved,’ meaning as long as a certain player makes a certain move, they’re guaranteed a win. That’s not good.

To be frank, Color Space may never release. I’m sorry for getting folks’ hopes up and I’ll be more discerning about officially announcing games in the future. But that’s how game design works. Sometimes…games simply don’t work and need to be dropped, temporarily or permanently, so others can see the light of day.

Speaking of which…

I’m working on a new game, currently titled “Escape the Entity”

In the ashes of Color Space, a phoenix has arisen. After I decided I reached a wall with Color Space, my gears promptly spun on what a new two-player game would look like. I decided that instead of an abstract strategy game, I’d lean more into more thematic asynchronous strategy.

Escape the Entity is a two-player game of cat-and-mouse where one person controls an agile ship delivering much-needed tech to planets in order to stop a ship-devouring, powerful, space-dwelling creature known only as the Entity, controlled by another player.

The vibe and tension of this game hit me fast and like a ton of bricks. If this reminds you of the awesome (in the biblical sense of the word) suspenseful moments in sci-fi works like Star Trek and Predator, your instincts are correct.

I’ve started a design journal for Escape the Entity. You can read the first entry using the link below.

One Last Job and Lingua Franca are still in development

I playtested One Last Job with a group of designers a couple of months ago. They enjoyed aspects of the game but found certain elements too difficult to parse, leading to decision paralysis. I’m working on fixing that with streamlined mechanics and drafting, but still haven’t settled on a system yet.

My last few playtests for Lingua Franca produced contradictory results. Players found it either too difficult or too easy to win. The game is also not quite where I want it to be in terms of being a limited communication deckbuilder with a pseudo RPG player development vibe. It’s going to take a lot of work to get it there and I’m approaching a new build of the game that’s quite different from the one I entered into that Board Game Geek contest many moons ago. Stay tuned on that.

That’s all for now, until next time, Otherworldly Beings…