#sizzlemoth

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.

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!

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!"