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Guntower Mike

PANDORA'S LOG: Stardate 23020402

So Peeps… we almost have an online Tabletop Mod!

In fact, we’re so close that I seriously considered delaying this post until I had it done, but eventually decided that I didn’t want to delay the Newsletter nor rush the Mod.

So watch this space - there will be another update soon with a link to the Mod.

In the first instance, the Mod will be on Tabletopia. This is for 2 reasons:


1) Tabletopia is free to all, so the Mod will be open to everyone with no need to do anything but click on the link provided.

And 2) if I’m honest, I’m having issues with the TTS Deckbuilder. No matter what I do, it keeps rendering out the final cardfiles at lo-res, which blurs the text so much that it’s virtually illegible. My usual workaround of making the cards HUGE isn’t working for some reason: so until I find an online solution that actually works, I’m running with the system that’s free to play and doesn’t blur the cards – and that’s Tabletopia.

There will be a short delay while I await delivery of some final artwork and run a few internal tests, but with luck the mod will be up & running by mid-April.


This month has been really busy as we took in all the feedback from Airecon and started prepping for our PnP launch at UK Games Expo.

That’s right: we’re planning to launch a Print & Play version of the Demo Game in time with UK Games Expo, to increase our exposure and help build our Community. I’ll have more on that for you next time – but for now, back to Airecon.

Airecon was fab - just ask Li'l Nasti! Most people really loved the game and we got tons of positive feedback, along with some very good suggestions that will help improve it even further. My personal highlight was one player who sought us out afterwards and stopped to say: “I thought you’d like to know that if it had been on sale, we’d have bought the game then and there, we liked it so much.” Yes, thanks mate you made my day!

Thanks also to Andy Y and my lovely Lynn for helping demo the game – I think both of their highlights was the mother & son team, where the son spent most of the game trying to get his mother killed and was surprised when she took off without him at the end! 😂😂


Our biggest takeaway was the 3D Aircon system. Half of you loved it, half of you hated it, but on balance we decided that the system as it is currently put together was too unstable for a game where people often get so excited they reach across the table and knock into it. This was always likely to be an issue, but we wanted to test it under 'in-game' conditions before we passed a verdict.


However, we didn’t want to lose the three-dimensionality of the design, since everyone was very impressed with its table presence. So, after a LOT of back & forth, this is what we finally came up with…


Yep, your eyes aren’t deceiving you – the box really IS now the gameboard! And the clear plastic insert that stores the cards and tokens will be a single piece of moulded plastic fixed in place as a 3D transparent overlay that forms the Aircon grid when the cards are taken out.

These pics are just my ‘proof of concept’ prototype, but it has proven such a hit with playtesters so far that we’re already talking with a manufacturer about the inserts and we’re pretty confident this is the way we are going to go. It gives the game a fantastically unique table presence, and also doubles as such a good storage solution that we think we’ll be able to pack any stretch goals we’re lucky enough to achieve into this one single box. No Kallax-hogging fiddly little extra boxes with this baby!

In other design news, thanks to Andrew H for the beautifully intuitive suggestion that means we can junk Noise Markers in favour of a much easier to remember way of keeping track of Noise – it was one of those: “Oh yea… Why didn’t we think of that?” moments you always get in game design.

And the changes to the turn sequence we tested on Sunday in order to reduce downtime felt like they worked really well. So we’re definitely running with those.


And thanks to the tireless work Kris, the art keeps comin’ in….

As ever, if you want to help shape the way the game is going, you’re welcome to join our Facebook Crew.

Please, please, PLEASE Rate us and Comment on BBG – you have no idea how important this is!

And watch out for a couple of How to Play videos on our YouTube Channel once the TT Mod is up and running


Until then, stay frosty – and don’t back into any dark corners…

M€

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