Recently, the “Arcádia Lusitana de Criadores de Boardgames” was created. The main goal is to share information, resources, provide playtesting and feedback for portuguese boardgame projects. Currently the main discussion platform is facebook, along with regular meetings. Seems there are quite a few more Lisbon-based designers than I thought!

In the first meeting Vital Lacerda tried out my game. He seemed to like it and suggested I switch the placement of the minimum bid silhouettes with the action effects to make it more intuitive. I don’t know how I didn’t think of that before. I laughed and wrote it down right away. This weekend I had the chance to test it and he was absolutely right – it does make it easier to teach and play.

The second meeting is coming up! It will be on the 20th of February and you can find all the details here.

Also, Last week I read Raph Koster’s “Theory of Fun”. If you’re interested in making games I advise you to check it out. The first half is about the human brain and how we define what’s fun for us. The second half points a possible path games should take for them to be seriously respected as an art form.

I just sent sent “Sinking” to the Ludopolis International Boardgame Creation contest. I have been working on it for a while now, and it’s been a long time since I changed anything in its design. It’s as solid as I can make it as of now, and I’m proud of it.

Godspeed!

“alone I art” got 4th place in Ludum Dare Jam 22, with gold medals for Humor and Coolness! This time there were even more games! 174 games in the Jam, opposed to the 90 in Ludum Dare 21. I’m really proud for the team and for being a part of it!

Here is the list of the top 25.  My favorite game in the competition – and I tested more than 90 - was number one. Midas has stylized graphics and almost no animation but the mechanics are sound. I can see this being a pretty popular game if they further iterate on it. /follow, the sweetest eye candy in the competition, came in third. It’s more of an interactive narrative than a game, but it looks and sounds gorgeous!

I recommend these game jams to anyone who wants to get involved with the industry. It’s trial by fire, and it is such a rush!

Carlos Leituga wrote a great Post Mortem about “alone I art”, our second venture into the Ludum Dare Jam. It covers every part of the process of making this particular game in 72 hours. It has pictures, scribbles and good insights about the whole thing.

You can read it here.

I can’t wait for the results, which will be released in about 25 hours.

Check out “alone I art”! Once again I was part of team Make a Game and we make this stealth game in which you’re an art lover that wants to spend valuable time with art. You have to steal all the masterpieces you can without getting caught by the guards.

Ludum Dare Jam is an online competition in which you are given a subject and have to make a game in 72 hours. The game is currently being judged along with all the other cool games and the results will be known in 11 days.

You can play it here.

Good job everyone!

Here’s a sneak peek of the new player boards! The action effect texts have been resumed into icons, the minimum action costs are clearer now and the colors are more colorblind-friendly. I can’t wait to test these out.

Ludum Dare Jam 22 starts in 6 hours! I’ll be part of Make A Game team once again, we’ll be making a computer game in the next 72 hours. There are more and more submissions every time, and we’ll do our best to stand out.

You can check out “Eggscape”, our game for the previous Ludum Dare Jam here.

Lisboacon 2011 was great! I don’t know the official visitor count, but everyone was saying there were more people than last year’s 1000.

It was inspiring to see other Portuguese designers and their creations. All of them were kind enough to answer all my questions about publishing and copyright. I had met some of them previously and it was really cool to see that they remembered me and they asked how my game was going.

Hat’s off to Criações a Solo and “Trench”! It’s an abstract strategy game that revolves around the concept of WWI trench warfare, and most of your strategies will be around using it for your advantage. It’s clean, polished and has a lot of potential. I get why they’re marketing the game as an art piece as well because it’s easy to imagine it being displayed on any modern house – it’s playable jewelry.

I also playtested “Sinking” with great feedback. I also found out that two of the colors I am using for the game (red and green) are very hard to tell apart by the colorblind. I brought all of my available tokens the following day and we chose new colors that don’t cause as much hassle. I’ll update the boards ASAP.

I had no idea this issue was so common. If you’re curious about this and want to see the world through the eyes of the colorblind, check this site. I’ll be paying more attention to this in the future.

Don’t know what to do with all that free time? Are you board?

Lisboacon is this weekend. It’s a boardgame event in which you can try games out, participate in tournaments and meet cool people. …and it’s free!

I’ll be there with “Sinking”, trying out the Hive tournament and being impressed that these things have happened for years without me ever knowing about them.

All the details are here.

The design for “Sinking” is complete! The changes to the way ties are solved worked just as I hoped. The rules are now easier to memorize and after a couple of turns new players seem to really get the hang of it. As a matter of fact, yesterday the new player ended up winning!

I’d like to keep testing it to better define how long the games should be. This doesn’t involve changing the player boards any further, just changing the limits on the center board. For the record, last night teaching the rules took 5 minutes, the game itself took 35. Obviously this number will change as players and strategies change. If it wasn’t for this devastating double attack it could have easily taken 10 more minutes. My goal was 45 so it’s pretty close.

What’s next? First I have to write the rules in a clear way so that players can learn how to play the game from there. That is mostly done. I know from experience a bad manual can wreck the whole experience so I’m paying special attention to that.

After that it’s time to work on the iconography and further develop the look of the boards.

The main part for me is done, though. My goal was to create a game from scratch with interesting dynamics and tweak it until it was fun. I wholeheartedly enjoyed the process, so I’ll keep going.

Ludopolis is a gaming event that will take place in Lisbon, June 2012. Other than the obvious usual reasons (meeting new people, playing new games) the big draw for me this time is the Boardgame Design contest because the winner gets his game published by Runadrake. Given all the big steps you have to climb to get such a game on the market, this seems like a pretty good opportunity.

Each designer can send three games for evaluation. “Sinking” is running out of design creases to iron out so I plan to apply along with another idea I’ve been sketching out.

Interested? You can check out the rules here.