sizzlemoth

I am running this auction to raise funds for my son’s ongoing medical care. In January of this year he was diagnosed with Atypical HUS. A rare disease for which there is no cure. This disease breaks down his red blood cells and creates clots which then block and shut down his kidneys and other organs. He spent 30 days in Primary Children's Hospital and is home fighting strong. He is currently on a very heavy medication regime including Eculizumab at $12k per dose which he receives thru IV infusion every other week at the children’s hospital.  Fortunately our insurance has been able to cover most of the expenses; however there are additional medication, travel and monthly payments to be paid this year and every year forward since there is currently no cure or alternate treatments.  Thank you for taking the time to check out my auction. Please feel free to Geekmail me with any questions that you may have regarding more information on this disease or the auction itself.

The above is the statement from Ethan's Father. The auction is on board game geek if you're looking to chip in.

I received a message from Doug over at Meltdown Games this morning asking if I wanted to co-design a PnP game with him to put up on the auction. It didn't take much contemplation and I said yes. 

Someone has bid already, which is AWESOME.

Basically, if you win the melting moth (I coined that, but it's not official by any means) PnP custom game auction - Doug and I will build a custom PnP game just for you. Yeah, straightforward. Tell us as much or as little about the game as you want - theme, mechanics, nothing - and we'll take it from there. 

I encourage anyone looking to pick up some new games to check the auction first and see if there is anything you're interested in. Or if you want your own custom-designed game, bid on me and Doug... Well, not actually on us but our design skills.

One thing though - the art is going to be stuff we find on the web. We suck at drawing... But we're good at making fun games! We promise! Really!

Check out the auction here

Also, we're heading to Protospiel this weekend! Looking forward to checking out games, meeting people, and hanging out. We'll be bringing the newest version of Luck of the Draw and Double Up. 

I was pretty much stuck on what to do for this month's 24 Hour Contest over on Board Game Geek. 

The theme was dice. Sure, we've worked on dice games before (ahem, Double Up), I couldn't for the life of me come up with anything interesting. I thought maybe I was just spent on dice due to spending the last year or so working on a dice game and than Luck of the Draw last month.

So I ignored the contest for awhile, didn't think about it. Then the other night I was watching some documentaries and I came across "The Other F Word." It's about aging punk rockers who are starting families and still doing the whole punk rock thing. It was pretty cool.

That's when the idea hit me. 

I'll make a game about touring. I thought the mechanics made sense - you don't always know what you're gonna get while on tour. Sure, you can predict a certain level of it, but things go wrong. So the randomness of dice could work in that respect. 

The first iteration of AMERITRASH had you taking the role of "the band" and scoring "fan points." This happen in almost the same way that the game currently works in - but after a few quick mockups and playtests with Courtney, my fiance, it just wasn't working. So I tweaked it to be that you were the manager of the band paying for all the things that make a tour work. The idea is that the more money you spend the better the tour will be. 

The core of AMERITRASH is that you roll dice to meet a requirement for either Advertising, Practicing, or your Crew which is on the tour location cards. You set aside all the dice that meet the requirement then the remaining dice are used for scoring purposes. There is 3 unique ways to score and you can score twice per round. The objective is to score the most points in 2 out of the 3 categories. 

I gave each tour card its own city, but it's just for flavor more than anything - it has no weight on the actual game. Given more time it could probably be developed further with some additional actions, an economic system, or having different things happen in different cities but I doubt it'll get anywhere beyond where it currently is. 

The Print and Play files are available here.

Thanks for reading,

As you may or may not know, I'm a graduate student at Ball State University majoring in Digital Storytelling. 

If you don't feel like following the provided link - basically, it's exactly as it sounds. A major that focuses on storytelling in the digital form, whether it is video games, film, TV, etc. There is a production path and a theoretical (academic path). I'm kinda in the middle. I'll probably write a thesis but I'm doing some production stuff as well, mainly, working on a Alternate Reality Game for a local museum. 

One of my classes this semester is called "Creativity." It's pretty freeform. We do projects, we brainstorm, we talk about some theories on creativity. 

On Tuesday we played kid's party games: Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Duck Duck Goose, Hot Potato, and a few others. It was pretty hysterical to see a couple of professors and a bunch of grad students playing these games - and really, it was a bunch of fun. 

After we had our fill of the games, we began discussing them and breaking them down. What made them fun? Were they fun? What do they teach kids?

In short, we concluded that they teach kids how to follow rules, winning is everything, and games are only fun if you win. This is an abridged version of a long discussion, but you get the gist. 

Our homework for today, which I need to present in about 15 minutes, was to create a kid's party game that allowed the kids to be creative and not have to follow rigid rules. We got into groups and had about 10 minutes to talk it over and figure out what we were gonna do.

My group consisted of a mostly peers interested in documentaries and film. They had some interesting game ideas. The first idea we worked on was a movement/race game - it didn't work out. It followed pretty much the "do as we tell you" set of rules that most kids games do.

Long story short (and because I have to head to class) - we ended up coming with Five Minute Fable - a storytelling game for children. 

The PDF can be found here or here

For something done in a couple minutes, I think it's pretty okay. Especially for a collaboration with one game designer and a bunch of future movie makers :)

First and foremost, we hope everyone is having a safe and happy Labor Day. Extra days off are nice, especially ones that you can spend playing games - like this one. 

Just a few quick updates for the weekend:

The contest that Luck of the Draw was designed for is up for voting - if you head on over to Board Game Geek and give Luck of the Draw some thumbs, we'd be very grateful. There is some real solid games in this Month's contest - one of which is by a friend of ours, Doug, from Meltdown Games. So yeah, there is some stiff competition this month.

We have also sent the newest version of Luck of the Draw to Andrew at Print Play Productions to get the newest cards printed up. We took a lot of the feedback we got at GenCon and really thought about it and added in 3 new cards and tweaked how the Take Cover card works.

The new cards are:  The Shotgun - Works as 2 direct hits, you won't need to burn another card - basically a free dice roll Dynamite - Blows up the Take Cover card Rifle - Bypass the Take Cover card, works as a direct hit

We'll be bringing this around to the events we're attending over the next couple months to get some feedback on the cards. The new Print and Play files should be up within the next couple days. 

Matt and I sat down and figured out the rest of our 2013 con/event schedule the other night. We’ve put together a pretty solid list of places where we can meet some people, hang out, and play some awesome games.

If you’re going to any of these, let us know – we’ll play games! Because we like games and so do you.

Buckeye Gamefest – 9/13 Buckeye is a weeklong gaming session that happens in Columbus, OH – not too far from where Matt lives. Given our schedule (work and school), we’ll be hanging out on Saturday only. We’ll have Double Up and Luck of the Draw with us.

Protospiel – 9/27-29 We’ll be heading up to Milwaukee Friday night and leaving on Sunday. We’re hoping to mingle and meet some other designers and playtesters here. Everything we have heard has been nothing but good things about this event, so we’re stoked. We’ll have Double Up and Luck of the Draw with us for sure. We’re going to be working diligently to have Robot Builder and perhaps a version of Joyride as well.

New York City Comic Con – 10/10-13 Matt won’t be attending this one and I’ll be there more as a spectator/enthusiast than anything else. My fiancé, myself, and a friend are turning this into an annual trip – we love the atmosphere, the fans, the art, the exhibitor hall, ALL OF IT! It’s a great time. The board game section was pretty decent last year too. It’s not the main reason I’m heading there, but I will be spending some time if anyone wants to play some games.

Con on the Cob – 10/17-20 While checking out the artist booths at GenCon, I had the opportunity to meet Andy Hopp – game designer/artist/con organizer. His art is what brought me to his booth then I noticed he was selling a game as well. He demo’d it. We started talking. Now we’re going to his con. We’ll be there all weekend hanging out and hoping to get some solid playtest sessions in. It’s in Hudson, OH – near Akron. Stop by, play some games, hang out, and make some friends!

PENTACON – 11/08-10 This bad boy is in Fort Wayne, IN. It looks like the organizers have a great couple days of gaming lined up. There also seems to be a pretty decent dealer hall and some cool special guests. This should be a pretty cool event, and it isn’t too far from my new home in Muncie!

Now that everything is settled down – GenCon is over, I’m moved into my new place in Indiana, etc – a proper update is long overdue.

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who recently joined our Facebook community today. Most of you are personal friends of mine and I really appreciate the support. If we can continue to spread the word, get likes to the page, follow us on twitter (@sizzlemoth) it would be a big help in turning a dream into a reality.

So, now you’re wondering – “I’ve followed/liked sizzlemoth, but what is it?” Well, we make games. One of our games, Luck of the Draw, is currently available as a print and play (you print it off, cut out the cards, and you can play!) The others are still in development and/or having art completed for the final prototypes.

With that being said – Project Updates!

Double Up We’re getting close here. Real close. A few months back we hired a talented young woman, Emily Taylor Jones, to take Double Up and make it look pretty. She has done exactly that and we are very happy with how things are turning out. She has been great to work with and has put together a fantastic looking game. We’re at the point right now where we are finishing up the last of the cards, the box art and rule book then it’s a wrap! We’ll be ordering some prototypes and getting them sent to reviewers and publishers. It’s been a long process and we’ve learned a lot. Really, Double Up opened our eyes to the process and how to handle things. Going through everything we have with this game is what has brought us to where we are with everything else we have in development.

We'll be showing off some of the Emily's work on Double Up over the next couple days. 

Double Up will be at Protospiel.

Luck of the Draw Development is continuing! I had no idea that this game would go over so well, especially since I busted it out for a Board Game Geek contest. We ordered a proper prototype from Andrew at Print Play Productions which we had at GenCon with us. We spent most of Saturday walking around and asking people who looked bored to play – given the game takes less than 2 minutes to play one round, we didn't get very many people saying no. The feedback we received was very good and we also got some great suggestions on how to make the game more robust. We’re going to be adding in some more cards and working on some tweaks for the cards that we currently have. We’re also looking into getting a proper version of the game done, with real art and stuff!

You can probably expect to see an updated Print and Play file with the new cards in a week or so.

Luck of the Draw will be at Protospiel.

Robot Builder We’re working on art and I suspect it’ll be available for print and play within the next few weeks. We’re still working on a better name for this one, but it’ll come.

Robot Builder is a pattern matching battle game where you are attempting to build a more powerful robot than your opponent. We have the very talented Marisa Viana working on the art for the game, and from what she’s told me/I’ve seen – it’s going to look great.

More on this soon.

Robot Builder may be at Protospiel.

Joyride (working title) This little guy has been under wraps for a while, only being played a hand full of times within our group of internal playtesters (and a session with designer friends at the Cardboard Edison residence). So since everyone is pretty fresh to it, here’s the 411.

Joyride plays on the nostalgia of turning 16 and getting your driver’s license. Remember those days? You got your license and then your friends tried convincing you to take them everywhere under the sun? I have some pretty fond road trip memories with my friends. In Joyride, you take turns being the driver and your friends are trying to convince you to go on road trips to different places. Originally, players did this by negotiating with money, gas, and victory points – this system worked out ok but it wasn’t playing out how we originally intended to it. The core mechanic of negotiating is still intact and is a fun aspect of the game, but we’re revamping what you are actually negotiating. Money, gas, and victory points lead to a level of complexity that is unnecessary and, perhaps, difficult to keep track of. We’re working on simplifying the system while maintaining the integrity of the core mechanic.

There is going to have to be some rapid prototyping and some tweaking before we have a playable prototype – there is a slim chance this will be ready by Protospiel at the end of September.

Future Projects Like everyone else, we’re always thinking about our future projects and we have conceptualized a few. However, they will probably stay in the concept stage until we a) finish Double Up b) finish Luck of the Draw c) get further along on Joyride.

If you want a small taste of what’s in the pipeline though: one game is purely a card game with a manipulation/race mechanic. Another is a tile based board game with an enemy movement mechanic which is the core of the game play. And lastly is an economic/resource management game themed around the airline business.

Any questions, comments, suggestions, or concerns feel free to drop a note, Facebook message or a tweet.

Friends, followers, people of the internet.

Just so no one thinks we disappeared ... WE HAVEN'T! 

With GenCon coming to a close and relocating (I (Charlie!) moved to Muncie, IN Sunday), things have been quite hectic. 

Fret not, things should be back to normal soon. 

It didn't long. 

I've made some preliminary changes to Luck of the Draw which, I think, should make it play a bit smoother. My entry into the BGG contest is not changing, so this is not what they will be judging. 

I've updated the Luck of the Draw page in the navigation and you can find the new file here. 

The big changes were a rule explanation and the amount of cards in the Shootout deck. I also added one more Back Up Posse member into the shootout deck - so you'll be drawing two Posse members from the deck that will go into play instead of one. 

Basically, I felt that players were drawing through the Shootout deck too fast so more cards needed to be added. If you didn't play the alpha version, any rolls you did after you ran out of Shootout cards were considered Direct Hits and I felt it took away from the game. An added Posse member also extends the game length, but I felt it would be ok/help balance the additional cards. 

So the easy fix? Add cards. 

So last week I entered the 24 hour design contest on BoardGameGeek, and, as you probably suspect, I designed a game. The theme of this months contest was Wild West, which I thought was fun to work with. 

The game is called Luck of the Draw and it is free to Print n' Play right HERE! The game is a real time dice roller where you're attempting to eliminate a rival posse. 

I was pretty lost on what to do at first, but it all came together over an episode of Doctor Who with my fiance. I can't really explain how it happen, but everything just clicked. I wish every game I worked on was like that.

I printed and took the game on vacation with me to have some of my friends try it out and it went over very well. It's always good to have people request to play your game, which happened a few times over the course of my trip. I took some video (with my iPhone, sorry!) of a couple friends playing the game, which can be found HERE on YouTube or under the Luck of the Draw tab in the navigation, for those of you interested in how it looks before spending your hard earned ink and paper. 

I intend to continue development with Luck of the Draw, I feel that there is something there but there is some clean up to be done. 

Hey-o.

We've been busy working on our games for GenCon, playing games, and just doing what we do best.

I recently took the time to write a review for Rather Dashing's game Dwarven Miner. It's posted over at The Game Designer Chronicles and YOU can find it right.....

Here.

Thanks for reading and leave any comments or feedback on your own experiences in the provided section!

To say that the last couple weeks have been productive would be quite the understatement.

Matt and I convened in Orlando to spectate a fighting game tournament (aside from designing and playing board games, we also dabble in fighting games - Street Fighter and Injustice - as well as League of Legends). During the downtime we were able to get some working models of two of our games in playable condition.

Robot Builder can officially be played (but needs to be renamed like, now) and we have someone working on the art. We're tweaking some of the mechanics, but the general principle is a fast paced, card-battle system, where you're trying to outscore your opponents.

You play a robot card on yourself, you play a robot card on your opponent, then you draw 1 card. We call it - Yours. Theirs. Draw.

Since we're going print and play with it, it'll be available as soon as the art is done. We'll release versions of the rules as well as the variants that the cards can be used for. We mulled over this game for awhile over Skype and just couldn't really get anywhere, but as soon as we were able to get together and play around with cards - it was smooth sailing.

Joyride, as it is currently called, is the other game we banged out while in Florida. My flight down there was awfully timed and I had a ton of downtime in the airport, which is where I ended up making the alpha cards. As you can imagine, I got some strange looks as I dumped out my game making supplies on a table in the food court and sat there for hours putting cards together.

I took some notes on the flight, thought about the game a bit and I knew, sorta, what I wanted to do with it. Again, I mulled over things, bounced ideas off Matt over Skype and just wasn't getting anywhere. Once we sat down and worked on the game in person, it seemed fluid and we had some great ideas for the first round of playtesting.

I think it's crazy how the dynamic of collaboration changes with distance. Below is what Joyride looked like after the first night of working on it.

Remember when you first turned 16 and all your friends wanted to take rides with you, no matter where you were going? Yeah, that's the theme. Each player takes turns being the driver and the other players (passengers) negotiate their way onto the trip with you - offering to pay the cost of the trip, pay for gas, just straight up give you money, promising other trips, letting you borrow their car - pretty much anything is at your disposal to try and get onto the trip. Each trip has a point value that is split up between the passengers and drivers and the person with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.

I was supposed to go to DexCon this weekend but due to family obligations and unexpected visitors, that ended up not happening. However, I did manage to set up a playtesting pool party on Friday with a bunch of friends. Joyride was well received even though it is wildly unbalanced at the moment, but I did get lots of good feedback on how to change things, make them better, and so forth. You should have seen me scrambling to get decent looking cards together so we weren't using airport version 1 with my playtesters. I, literally, finished printing and cutting about 15 minutes before people showed up. Last minute is how I roll.. After Joyride, of course, we played some Double Up before moving on to Horse Shoes (with pits and shoes, not the board game... Is it a board game?) and taking a dip in the pool.

Above is what our gazebo table looked like this morning when I went to go clean up last night's mess. Yeah, someone left their iPhone out on the table all night. Oops.

We're having a meeting with the artist working on Double Up tonight and are gonna go over some art direction stuff. We'll probably be releasing some of the concept art for everyone to check out as time goes by. Stay tuned!

At 4:30 tomorrow morning (yes, that's AM) I will be en route to Orlando, Florida. This is where Matt and I will convene to watch a fighting game tournament (CEO) and work on our prototypes for GenCon.

I stopped by AC Moore and Michael's today to grab some last minute prototyping materials. The negotiating game we've been working on came together for the alpha stage pretty quick, so I wanted to grab the things needed to make a hard prototype to mess around with over the weekend. It's not gonna be pretty, but I need to actually see this thing in action to get over the humps. Text on a screen can only go so far. 

Other then working on our prototypes, there has been some pretty sweet stuff on the Kickstarter front. 

Our friends over at Fringe Games got the Kickstarter for War Command up and running. We raved about this game while we were at GenCon and we are equally excited to back this project. Ray and Malice are real cool dudes, the game is great, and frankly, I want a copy of this game. Check it out and if it's your bag - support it. Usually, Matt and I support things jointly to add to our joint library of games at sizzlemoth studios (huehue), but this time we went in separately because we both want our own board and decks. Seriously, check out their campaign.. Seriously serious. 

Also on the Kickstarter front, I randomly came across this game called Give it to the King! It's from a new company based in Canada and it looks like it could be some good, quick fun. The campaign looks solid, the game itself looks like it'll be nice to have for those long game days where you need something simple and quick. 

We return from our trip on Monday - expect plenty of updates on our prototypes then! Also - VIDYA GAMES!

Aside from the extensive play testing of Double Up, we're also working on our next prototypes for GenCon. We have a few in the pipeline, but yesterday I finished the prototype cards for our robot building print and play game.

The cards are just for the purpose of us testing the core mechanic to make sure it works/tweak it so it works how we want it to . We'll have some down time while we're in Orlando to test things out, tweak the game, and, hopefully, by the time the weekend is over we'll be able to move forward on making a fully playable game for GenCon. I assure you, it won't be pretty! But it will be playable.

We have been more concerned about the mechanics working, so we haven't put much thought into the theme. However, what I can tell you is that you are a robot engineer and you are building the next, most lethal, robot to walk the earth! You'll be pitted against one other opponent in a race to build your robot and than battle them. The game is meant to be fast paced, quick to play (sub 10 minutes), and easy to understand. We think it'll be perfect for print and play. 

The MC Lars song "This Gigantic Robot Kills" instantly comes to mind whenever I'm working on the game. Perhaps a theme inspired by the light hearted song is a good idea. 

What's exciting is that we basically just have to finish up the game. A friend of mine put us in contact with an artist friend of her's who will be doing the artwork. So everything is lined up, we just need to get this bad boy out there! 

I won't bore anyone with the ugly prototype cards (unless you want to make fun of my prototyping design skills), it's just a mesh of text on a piece of paper. But I will be sure to keep everyone updated with what's going on with this game. The simplicity leads me to believe that it won't be in development too long. Considering how fast it is and only requires two players - we're thinking GenCon is going to be a play test extravaganza for Robot Builder (working title.....)

WARNING: Slight exaggeration to follow.

When Charlie and I decided to start our company, there was an excitement about creating a brand for ourselves. The part we were most excited about was the creation of our name.

"One that sticks in people's minds..." "And is epic sounding!" "One that is easy to understand when spoken and written..." "And lends itself to an epic logo!" "One that sets us apart from everyone else..." "And looks epic on a T-shirt!" "One that really defines us..." "I've got it and I'm sure no one has ever thought of it before!"

Perfect name #1: Taken on every social media outlet that has ever existed and ever will. Perfect name #2 + alternate spellings: Taken taken by thirteen different scream-core-indy-folk-funk-electo bands. Perfect name #13: Taken by a dog groomer and a beet farmer.

Frustrated, but still optimistic, we decided that we would just need to get a little more abstract and be willing to accept something less than perfect.

Less than perfect name #16: Taken by A NYC bakery and a septic pumping company in Kansas. Less than perfect name #21: Taken by a person on Etsy that weaves grass clippings into banners depicting scenes from Tom Hank's movies. Less than perfect name #37: Taken by a popular World of Warcraft guild.

Now disheartened and hating every second of the process, we turned to found objects for inspiration. Mine came from flipping through a paint color fan deck that I found under the seat of my work truck. As I thumbed through the samples I felt a heavy sadness for whomever was commissioned to name all of those colors.

Nonsense name #42: Taken by an entertainment conglomerate. Garbage name #78: Taken by a Swedish architectural firm. I just don't care anymore name #212: Taken by the bank that I worked with to help out that poor Nigerian prince.

And then... sizzlemoth.

"...but what is it even.." "Just Google search it" "It seems kinda stupid..." "Search!" "Only THREE search results?" "And they are all gibberish!" "You mean we found the only name left in the universe that hasn't been taken by anyone, anywhere?" "Yes!" "I've changed my mind, best name ever!"