Shifting gears and folding wings.

+Erik McGrath

Battle Tank: Escape From Giant Robot Island

It's really fun to say that title and even better to write it down and talk about it again. On August 19th I made a post and mentioned doing a Battle tank PNP since the realities of making a board game with the number of pieces we want are too cruel. 

There has been little time to work on this due to competing gaming thoughts and real world issues so I have done the best I can to gather the raw materials and put them in one place. 

Battle Tank PNP PDF (full size)

Battle Tank PNP PDF (reduced)

For best utility and proper size make sure you Fit the images otherwise they will print uselessly small instead of the 8" or so they need to be. Auto-orientation helps too. The full sized file is 300dpi and too large for Google to preview it. The reduced version is much, much smaller but it shows in the image quality.

You will notice that the tokens are the original, square prototype. That will be the first thing I tackle but for now I wanted it to be out there where people can actually use it. Once those are done it will be time to look at expansions.

Expansions

One advantage of PNP is that the only thing between expansions and players is getting the image files finished. I'm really looking forward to Assault on Laser Shark Lagoon and the new rules and goals it adds. Since it is a Battle Tank game there will of course be tanks, and amphibious ones at that, but there will also be boats and depth charges and sharks with laser cannons and an undersea base. Also there's a kraken.

Inspired Updates 8/19/2013

+Erik McGrath

I've been focused on 16-Bit Adventures a lot lately, and I'm still working on it but this week I want to take some time to give some updates on the current state of everything else as well.

Battle Tank

As I have mentioned before a board game that needs as many pieces as Battle Tank is an expensive undertaking and Inspired can't afford it right now. We are considering our options on physical production but they look a ways off. 

So instead we are working on making a PNP version so that those who have expressed interest can at the very least try it out. Once we get some feedback on that front we want to work on how to improve that experience. 

Sudden Death

The game is ready, the artist is lined up, what we are missing is the time to really promote it. This is probably my favorite thing that Inspired has designed for its simplicity. We will get this made, its just a matter of getting CJ and I in the same room to do the details. 

The most important of those details I think would be videos to showcase the game and talk about why we made the decisions we have with the art and gameplay.

Drachenheim

Magnus by
+Laura Fallon Andersen 

I'll admit this one has been pushed to the back burner pretty hard. I return to it every now and again to poke it and see if any new ideas fall out. It feels almost done to me but the gameplay is just a little too clunky and there is too much reliance on dice rolls for my tastes. 

Its a boardgame where the board is defined by the cards in play rather than a pure cardgame so I'm ok with some dice rolling but I prefer the decisions of the players to be the most important piece and leave the dice to decide limited things. If I can get to a point where the dice are only thrown to decide the outcomes of battles I will be very happy.

Celestial Warriors

Our first RPG is in the midst of a fourth version and it is a long time coming. With this iteration I think its time to add some art and sharpen the formatting skills I've been working on with 16-Bit Adventures to make it look more interesting and so that it reads more easily. 

16-Bit Adventures

We didn't get a chance to play with the whole gang this week but we did come up with a solution I like to the fact that DEF could still go over 10. That answer is that separate devices give separate DEF ratings so if you have a Shield and Armor you don;t add the values together, instead you check all incoming attacks vs both values. 

We call this effect Double DEF. If an attack is under both then you only take quarter damage from that hit. If its under one but not both you take half. If its over both you take normal damage. 

Wrap up and Downloads

So that's were we stand right now. We'd love to hear your comments and feedback about any or all of our games. 

PDFs

16- Bit Adventures V2

Sudden Death

Celestial Warriors v3

16-Bit Adventure Playtest and Updates for Sudden Death and Battle Tank

+Erik McGrath

16-Bit Adventures

This past Sunday we playtested 16-Bit Adventures. I GMed and the 5 PCs were:
+Jillian McGrath as Monk
+Laura Fallon Andersen  as Thief
+Alysia Haneef as Black Mage
+Christopher Andersen as Red Mage
+Rashid Haneef  as Fighter.

Starting equipment was sparse and starting GP was not even close to enough to outfit everyone so just like in the source material they were forced to go out into the wilderness under-equipped.

I wanted to create a strong feel of old school gaming in this so the townspeople acted much like 16-bit NPCs and talking to everyone was vitally important to learn about the surrounding wilderness as well as to gain some quests and eventually learn where the nearest dungeon was.

I've added a pic of the character sheets for Red Mage and Monk so you can get an idea of what is tracked in play. The main thing to notice is that mages have fewer lines in their inventory, 5 instead of 10. This matters since each line can only hold 1 item, though some items can stack. A Wolf Pelt takes up an entire line on its own, but Potions can stack to 10. A single Potion still fills the line though.

So let's have a look at what I've learned from this experience.

The Good

The system itself ran smoothly with the offense vs defense of the classes and monsters working as expected.

Combats were very, very fast. The longest one took about 5 minutes which was good since we played through about 3 dozen total.

XP from monsters defeated and quests completed worked out well. The PCs earned a total of 161XP, 45 from quest completion and the rest from straight out grinding. The quest rewards could stand to be about 10-25% higher in my estimation. PCs need 100XP for level 2 and 400 more for level 3 (500 total). Monsters are worth Level^2 as a base, Goblins are 1XP, Skeletons are also level 1 but they are worth 2. Wolves are 4xp while Ghouls and Slimes are 6.

The Needs Improvement

The rate of GP gain was much too low at first though so we had to wing an increase in play that seems about right. Monsters each have a basic amount of GP they drop and the PCs get to roll for loot after the fight using the highest Agility Die of the party for each type of monster with a bonus for the number of each type. In this case it was the Thief's D12. On 4, 10 and 16 the loot of the monsters improves based on monster type and level. A party with a level 2 Thief also enjoys the Finder 1 ability which automatically improves all loot rolls to the next tier which is in many cases the only way to get the 16+ loot drop.

I made up all the loot as we went and will be using that to make some solid tables now that I know what feels right in play.

Monster AI took too much time to emulate. Instead of choosing how the monsters would act and which of their abilities they would use I randomized it all and it simply took too long. For instance a Goblin attackign the party had to roll to determine target (which was 2 rolls in the inefficient way I was doing it) and then roll again to pick its attack (Standard or Goblin Punch) and then it rolled the actual attack vs the target's Evasion.

A faster way to do this is needed, assigning numbers to the party based on marching order and combat row before hand seems the best way.

Sudden Death

Sudden Death has hit a plateau, I think its time we go for it though so look for a How to Play video in our next blog post.

Battle Tank

Time constraints due to the sudden inspiration for 16-Bit Adventures coming together have slowed down adapting the art for our PNP but its still coming along otherwise. One advantage of this idea is that we will be able to do Assault on Laser Shark Lagoon in this format pretty easily and if that works the other planned expansions will follow quickly.

New creations and updates for Sudden Death and Battle Tank

+Erik McGrath

Its been a month since I've posted which is a terribly bad habit that I intend to break immediately. At the very least I will be posting on Sundays from now on since its the day I have the least to do.

So first some news.

Due to a mad fascination with 8-Bit Dungeon by +Levi Kornelsen  I have decided to make my own adventure game aimed unabashedly at emulating Final Fantasy at the tabletop. And because this is a sequel I have update the graphics to 16-bit.

It's called 16-Bit Adventures. You can see a the Job write-up for Fighter and Thief to the right. That page contains every thing you need to know to play those Jobs from levels 1-10.

Sudden Death

Playtesting is going well if slowly due to my and +Christopher Andersen's time constraints and technical difficulties (frex, at our last gaming night the only toilet in the house broke and it became plumbing night). After this round of feedback is in we will be making a dedicated effort to get a kickstarter going so that we can publish the game with finalized art by +Laura Hamilton.

On the right is Laura's sketch which the current Sudden Death playtest version uses for its artwork. On the left is the final version she did which will be used for the production version.

The PnP doc will also be updated with the finalized art if the campaign is successful, albeit at a reduced resolution.

Battle Tank

The realities of being a tiny, part-time  gaming outfit have harshly taught us here at Inspired Press that we just can;t afford to produce Battle Tank for the price point we want and we aren't yet prepared to handle going for a higher price. Making the game cost more will require a massive upgrade to the board art and token sculpts that we are not in a position of pursue.

But that doesn't mean we intend to abandon the project, we're just going to tone it down. Since my main goal is to make it so other people can play it we've decided to create a PnP version using our existing art and some modified drawings for foldable stand-ups for the tokens. The board is already done so its just the tokens that need to be put into usable form. Once complete it will be free to download on our webstie at Inspiredpress.net.

Recap from TotalCon XXVII

Dr. Mechanstein wins with a Volcanic Eruption!

-Erik McGrath

We may have only made it down for Sunday, but TotalCon in Mansfield, MA is a great event. I learned it's actually the largest pure gaming con in New England which is neat. We will definitely be there next year.

Once there, we set up in the board game room near the door and played Battle Tank: Escape From Giant Robot Island and Chem 101. The gaming highlight was a victory by Dr. Mechanstein due to the volcano erupting and melting a tank that had rushed back to protect a crew that had lost their own vehicle. Alas, poor Stammel, I knew him, Horatio.

The best part was the people we got to talk with and the feedback about our games. The black robots in Battle Tank now have slightly better stats than the grey ones due to the most common question simply being "do the black ones have better stats?" The color coding was originally just so we could separate the units for 4 players but now the black robots are Mechanstein's elites and have thicker front armor than their more numerous, grey counterparts.

Chem 101 is a surprise hit so far with much more interest than I had figured for an educational project. So much so that we have decided to develop the first planned expansion, Basic Ions, concurrently with the Octet Rule basic set. Octet Rule uses only H,C,N,O & F while Basic Ions currently will be adding Na, Ca, Cl & S.

This week Inspired will be at Battleground Games and Hobbies in Abington, MA on Wednesday, February 27th. Being as it's the closest LGS to us, this is looking to become a regular thing. I'm also looking forward to going to their monthly boardgame meet-up on Wednesday, March 13th.

TotalCon Playtest, Goblin Sketches and More

-Erik McGrath

The Good

Chem 101 is coming along admirably. Laura's post earlier this week is now our most viewed and the interest has galvanized our design team into making a prototype fit for outside testing. The purpose of the game is for it to be a fun way to help students learn how to make Lewis Dot Structures of molecules and ions. The basic game will include the elements H, C, N, O & F and focus on the importance of the Octet Rule.

We will be at TotalCon this Sunday, February 24th with both Battle Tank and Chem 101 in playable form.  Look for us in the Open Gaming area. We will be happy to answer any Inspired related questions as well as talk about gaming in general.

The 100 Goblins Challenge CJ started is proceeding well.  CJ, Laura and I will each post 100 sketches of goblins in an effort to solidify an art style for future games that will use line art. Only a few of the games we have in process will fit with a cartoon style but we want them to be unified in their style across the lines where possible.

The Bad

Our best quotes for production of Battle Tank are still well out of our price range. It's looking like the price concerns are going to push Battle Tank off the front burner. Without significantly more interest bubbling up around it, it won't ever see full production but there is still some hope as we continue our play testing and marketing efforts.

A very small run of Battle Tank, made basically by hand, is still a possibility.

The Ugly

Board games are my favorite thing to design. I like all the possibilities that the moving parts present, but for a tiny company with no market share the simple cost is a difficult hurdle. Card games are liable to be the immediate future of Inspired Press simply due to the ease of bringing them to market with the abundant Print-On-Demand resources available for card-only games.

Mark 3 Hex Prototype: Demo Days

-CJ Andersen

With crisp new tiles, 3D tokens, and a need to show these off and get opinions from real players, Erik and I will be taking our new prototype out for a spin.  We need some good feedback from people who don't know us personally, as well as start to show our faces around the local board gaming scene.  So during this weekend and the next we will be demonstrating Battle Tank: Escape From Giant Robot Island in two locations.

This Saturday, February 16th at 2:00pm, Inspired Press will be at Battleground Games & Hobbies in Abington, MA.  If you haven't been there in a while, be aware that they've moved to a new location just down the street.

On Sunday, February 24th at noon, we will be at TotalCon in Mansfield, MA for the day.  We plan to set up in the Open Gaming area to demo the game and answer any questions people may have.  So if you are attending, come by and check us out; online preregistration ends Feb 17th (only $10 for a convention day pass).

Spreading the Word

-Erik McGrath

By now you may have seen the pictures and read the rules for Battle Tank. The game has been playable for months now so the work we've been doing is all about improving the experience by making it look better and read more easily. I feel we've been quite successful at that. Here's a side-by-side of the board tiles so you can see clearly what I mean.

                                 Before                                                                After

                                                     

And after doing all that, I have come to appreciate that it was the easy part. It has taken a long time, sure, but at every stage from conception to now, the tasks have been within our skillsets or close enough that we could expand our abilities and get things done.

No, the hard part isn't making the game, it's getting the word out. None of us at Inspired are marketing professionals though a few of us have some experience. Some experience, as it turns out, isn't really that helpful so it has taken some serious effort to figure out what to do and start doing it right.

We've been fortunate in that CJ has a cousin who is a marketing professional and we've gotten some great feedback and assistance from the people we talk to through social media and in person at our game demos.

Eventually everyone comes up with the same advice: get engaged, post on forums and pound the pavement. So that's what we are doing. We are ramping up our presence on social media, posting in communities and trade groups and of course getting our names out at Boardgamegeek and looking for other forums as well.

The most visible thing that will be happening in the near-term is more blog posts here at inspiredpress.net  and those will be showcasing the views and contributions of all the members of the team so you can read what someone besides me (and occasionally CJ) think about what we do.

Battle Tank Upgrade: Demo Prototype!

For a look at the older prototype for comparison, click here

-CJ Andersen

Hello all.  We've been hard at work improving our prototype to be easier on the eyes and much closer to what a finished version would look like.  And now we have results we can actually show you!  I hereby dub this iteration our Demo Prototype.  Click this link to see Erik's gallery of pictures of the new prototype

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111668000868504045251/posts/F1Mbuo2Fpg7

Aside from minor tweaks, the tile artwork is done and updated with suggestions from you all.  The tiles are now printed in full color and not in draft mode, as our first prototype was.  You will notice the center hex on each tile is now colored red to help visually when you're playing robots (since new robots enter play from the center hex).  Rather than being pasted onto corrugated cardboard we had lying around, our Demo Prototype is glued to hardboard (as of now our plans are for the salable products to be glued to chipboard).  We are getting quotes for the price of a custom hexagonal die to make cutting these in bulk much easier and streamlined.

You may also notice some colorful additions.  Through trial and error, we have been experimenting with molding our own tokens and casting them in resin.  They're not perfect yet, but with steady improvements as each batch is made we're getting a firm grasp on the process and will be able to produce as many of the little tanks and robots as we need.

Next on the itinerary will be to make a MegaMech token, and then this thing will be fully playable.  For those of you in the south shore of MA, we will be arranging a time to Demo this game at Battlegrounds in Abington, MA, so stay tuned for future announcements.

A Learning Experience

-Erik McGrath
Yesterday we decided to cancel funding for the Battle Tank Kickstarter. We didn't want to do it but it was apparent we weren't going to make our goal in the time we had left and that we were better off stopping now and regrouping.

We have learned some valuable things about what to do (and not to do) in the future though, so all in all I consider this a win. In the next few weeks we will be physically improving our prototype, making new videos, expanding the storyline and spending much, much more time getting the name out there.

All of yesterday was spent strategizing. We need to make our operation as small as possible and do as much in-house as we are able. That means sourcing materials and putting our own skills to use assembling the game rather than sending it out for production. In the future, or as a stretch goal, we want to be able to produce a larger number of sets but that would require a larger goal and we would much rather succeed small and have to work overtime rather than fail again.

For right now my focus is on building molds and casting tanks and robots to replace the cardboard chit stand-ins we have been using. CJ will be putting the finishing touches on the artwork for the tiles.

So please continue to give us feedback.  This campaign has been extremely educational, and will allow us to focus our zeal for making games into better marketing.  You can give us feedback here by leaving comments, or by emailing us at inspiredpressgames@gmail.com.

One Week On

-Erik McGrath

It's been a week since we launched our Kickstarter project for Battle Tank: Escape From Giant Robot Island and we have gotten mostly positive feedback, but we are still far short of our goal and we can see a few things we should have done better.

Luckily it isn't too late yet.

In the beginning, we were really worried about the budget. It would be pretty terrible to fund and find out we couldn't deliver after all. But even still there are some things that need to get done and are worth the added expense so as of now we are working overtime to get those things added.

And the main targets among those things are:

All Plastic, All the Time
Forget cardboard tokens; we're working on making custom, plastic miniatures. In the next few days we will discover if my sculpting and molding skills are still sharp. The sculpting will be relatively easy, a tank is mainly a block though the robot I've got right now looks sort of like a nefarious gingerbread man.

More Rewards
Not just more levels, but more goals built right in. We have already planned several expansions for Battle Tank so we're going to add more information about them starting with Battle Tank: Assault on Laser Shark Lagoon.

Assault on Laser Shark Lagoon
Whereas Escape From Giant Robot Island is all about running away, this expansion is all about taking the fight to the mad scientist's doorstep. This expansion introduces Dr. Aquaria Bublé, an expert in melding flesh and machine. Due to her lack of an imposing fortress she is easy to underestimate, but who needs a mountain when you can live beneath the waves, hidden by the majestic (and largely artillery proof) sea?

Future Expansions
Each new set will introduce a new mad scientist and the necessary tiles to construct their lair as well as introduce any new rules necessary to handle them. Laser Shark Lagoon, for example, introduces water as a major terrain feature as well as melee attacks from the fearsome metal jaws of the cybernetically augmented great whites favored by Dr. Bublé.

Beyond these early sets there will come flying vehicles and monsters, submersibles, new terrain types and many other things that we hope will be as fun for you as they are for us.

Dun Dun Duuuun! Kickstarter!

-CJ Andersen

Inspired's first Kickstarter is now live.  Click here to visit our Kickstarter campaign!

Rewards

The rewards people will be most interested in are the ones that come with actual stuff I'm sure so I will talk about those. We are of course happy to accept any amount; no job is too small, no fee is too big. ;)

Inspired T-Shirt:
For those that might not want a copy of the game, but would like to support Inspired Press, we're offering our Inspired logo on a black T-shirt.  For $20 (+$3 for XXL or larger) we will mail drop you one.

First Off The Boat:
There's only 100 of these and they are an extra thank you to those early adopters who have been following the process and jump on it immediately. For $25 you get the full, finished game plus (fingers crossed) whatever our stretch goals add.

Rescue Mission:
Like FOTB you get the game for less but rather than being early, you have to be local because the savings is due to you coming by our office and picking it up in person. $25

Get in that Tank:
It's okay if you aren't here first and aren't local, because it will still only cost you $30 to get access to this fun, campy game about giant robots being run over by tanks.

Ammo & Camo:
Yup, you guessed it;  A copy of the game and a T-shirt.  $50

So please visit our Kickstarter campaign page and take a look around.  Feel free to comment or send us a message to let us know if there is any modified versions or combinations of our rewards that you'd like to see.

Kickstarter Imminent

-Erik McGrath

We've been pretty quiet here at Inspired recently and with good reason: we've been busy.  After all this time we are finally ready to launch our bid to make Battle Tank: Escape From Giant Robot Island into a real thing to can hold in your hands.

I've talked before about all the things that go into making a game that I really had no idea about when I first started on this project, and it often seems like new things emerge all the time to stymie the process. For instance, do you know what freight forwarding is? Because I had never heard of it before I found out it was vital.

But with that, and numerous other challenges currently solved, we move on to the final phase: Kickstarter. The plan is to go live this week, if possible. All that is left to do is spend the next few days obsessing over our videos, to the extent of our abilities, and waiting for all of the account confirmations/verifications to go through so we can actually post on Kickstarter.

Battle Tank: Footage and Footnotes

(Do not adjust your Volume, there is no sound in this video)

-Erik McGrath

Its been awhile since I've said anything about Battle Tank. So let me correct that oversight.

As of now we are hard at work watching public domain, black and white newsreel footage. When we find something that looks good I download it and start editing the clips together and then we watch my drafts. I've made a few of them now and hopefully I am almost done because once I get one we like it becomes CJ's problem since he is responsible for the sound.

When it's done we will have a 40s-style newsreel about the invasion, and subsequent disaster of a retreat from, of Giant Robot Island with voice-overs by our very own CJ Andersen.

Sourcing clips has proven somewhat difficult. There is plenty of great footage that is still privately held and therefore of no use to us. There's plenty more that is for non-commercial use only which also doesn't help us. There's been almost nothing that is free to use with attribution that I have liked which did surprise me a little. I didn't think the quality of the footage would vary as much as it does. Then there is public domain footage that is covered in watermarks which makes it a no go as well.

So after sifting through all that, I get about one usable piece for every twenty that I look into, and out of those I have so far discarded or cut more than 90% of it. In the end, I expect it to have been worth it as it really sets the mood we are trying to convey.

In the end I hope you all will enjoy it.

Things Are More Fun With Tokens

-Erik McGrath

The Battle Tank prototypes we've been using and showing still use cardboard cut-outs for the game pieces. This has no effect at all on the game play, but it isn't all that visually exciting to have a little drawings on a piece of card stock.

So we're going to be making some actual plastic tokens to include with the game. Pictured above is CJ's first draft of one of our tanks (note: the final versions will be solid colors). If you look closely, you can see that the numbers on the hex sides are different between the two versions due to one of the tanks facing a flat side and the other facing a point on the base. Wargames that use a hex grid typically have facing rules that require the pieces to face down the hex spine rather than the flat. This makes the distribution of front, side, and rear armor the same. You can see in the pic that facing the flat edge means that most of the armor is side armor and while that might be more accurate from a realism perspective, it's not ideal for gameplay because it is trivial for a robot to avoid ever having to shoot at the thickest armor on the front if it only protects one side.

The downside to using tokens is the sheer number of  them that we will need to include, unless one of our clever ideas works. The game needs at least 12 robots to work with a full game and they can be both flying and walking, so some need their wings deployed and others folded. Megamech is only one token and for the tanks we can pretty easily just make separate ones for infantry, so it's really just the minions that are the sticking point.

And that sticking point is really one of weight and not cost for the actual game. If the total weight of the game + shipping box/packaging exceeds 16oz, the cost to ship each unit goes up pretty substantially and that will impact our ability to actually deliver without having to raise our price points or our Kickstarter goal.

How Playtesting Makes or Breaks the Rules

-Erik McGrath

Last week CJ talked about the the switch from squares to hexes and the financial aspects of trying to bring a game to market. This week I'd like to talk about the personal and psychological aspects.

The first thing I think of now when I reflect on how Battle Tank has progressed is playtesting. There has been a lot of it over the course of two vastly different prototypes, and it has revealed things that math alone never did. For one, we have changed almost every one of the original rules due to how it felt at the table. Gameplay trumps theory for me, so if it seems like it would be fun but turns out to slow things down without noticeably increasing enjoyment, then it has to go.

As an example, in the original versions we had cliffs and ravines and needed to devote nearly as much space to how line-of-sight, movement and range worked in those instances as we did to the rest of the movement and shooting rules combined. Elevation is a complicated thing in play when you really think about it. So in the interest of speedier play and fewer arguments we now only have two elevation levels: ground level and higher level. And the rules are simple: if your line of fire crosses a cliff hexside then the attack must either originate or terminate in that hex.

That is you have to be looking over the cliff or your target has to be doing so. Unless the shooter or the target are flying, in which case you always ignore all intervening terrain.

Cliffs used to be impassable as well as difficult to shoot near, but now they are only impassable going up and you are free to drive (if you are a tank) or walk (if you are a robot) over them at the cost of suffering an automatic malfunction roll. Naturally, flying robots aren't concerned with cliffs and Megamech is capable of climbing up and down cliffs with terrifying swiftness so it also ignores them when moving on its turn, but the big 'bot is still susceptible to being rammed by a tank and pushed over the edge just like any other walking robot.

Perhaps the only thing that hasn't changed is how you shoot at your opponents. Since the beginning, you simply roll a single die and compare it to the range, terrain and armor of the target. Equal or exceed that derived number results in a "hit" and the target rolls on its malfunction table. Tanks have high armor and a forgiving table since they are a player's only unit. Robots on the other hand have low armor and typically explode when hit but the come in large, ever-increasing numbers.

At this point we aren't testing the rules themselves anymore*, but instead changing the board and the tokens to make the rules easier in play. For instance the central hex of each tile is marked because it is referenced in several rules and we've found it can slow down play if you have to stop and be sure which hex it is every time it is needed.

*Naturally there is an exception to this, and it's Mad Scientist Event cards. The MSEs are large, potentially game changing things that occur randomly. How randomly has been a significant issue.

Mark 2 Hex Prototypes and Kickstarter Number Crunching

Dr. Victor von Mechanstein Has Plans for Hexes

-CJ Andersen

Since updating the art and converting squares to hexes we now have our new Battle Tank prototype!  The rules are almost completely identical with hexes, so mostly the only update there involved a find/replace.  Our gaming group got to playtest with the new hex tiles and we found gameplay to be significantly enhanced. Hexes gave us much better movement options and more diverse configurations for the island to take.

One significant rule change, however, involved the tank players' win condition.  In the square prototype, our tanks would "win" if they could exit the board via a road on the square tile farthest from the volcano.  With the new hex configuration, we found we had to revise that.  So now the "beach" which the tank players are trying to get to is defined now by the board edge opposite the volcano edge, indicated above by the blue line I drew.  If 50% or more of the tank players exit the board via road hexes along that blue line before 10 turns is up, the tank players win.  Otherwise, if the Mad Scientist player can delay them 10 turns, or he blows them all up with his mechanical minions, he wins.

This photograph still uses our square tank and robot tokens, but that will be updated to be plastic hex tokens for the finished product. You can see a pair of tanks (in yellow) surrounded by deadly robot soldiers.

Accounting for the Inspired Press Battle Tank Kickstarter

It turns out there is a lot to consider when trying to accurately figure out all your costs for a Kickstarter, so that you can set your goals without going way over or under your actual ability to come through.  Add to that the new verbiage about Kickstarter stressing their ideals of "this is for making projects happen, not placing orders for products", we need to be very specific to outline the expectations for backers of our Kickstarter.  While we certainly do plan on giving out copies of the game as a reward tier for supporting us, we need to be clear that the purpose of the Kickstarter is to help Inspired Press expand by funding a printing run of Battle Tank, and expanding our team's abilities to design, prototype, market and sell our games to the people that love them.

As the accounting brains of the operation, I found the breakdown and comparison of costs between our printing options fascinating.  The original plan was to print 500 units of Battle Tank: Escape from Giant Robot Island using a very local printer.  The upside to this was that he was close by, and could support very small runs.  The downside is that we would need to fabricate our own tokens using a 3D printer we would get with Kickstarter funds.  But as it turns out, if my estimates are accurate, we can take the same amount of money and print a good deal more units from a manufacturer who can also produce the plastic tokens (we would still be getting the 3D printer though, as that will help with prototyping future expansions and other games).  That puts us a little close to the line to do that, so we'd pretty much only break even if we only reached our goal and didn't go farther.  But in the end, breaking even is a win for us since it meets the original goal of getting us a 3D printer for prototyping, and produces a printing run of our first game.

We would welcome comments from anyone with Kickstarter experience.  Stay tuned!

The Horrors of Making Videos

-Erik McGrath

This week's main activity has been preparing to launch a Kickstarter project to seek funding for Battle Tank, and let me tell you, it's not easy.

I've never been in front of a camera on purpose before, and I certainly never had to plan what to say to one. The entire process is terrifying and alien. The more we do it the more I marvel at the exquisite madness of those who choose to do it regularly. At this point it's a necessary evil that I am fully out of my depth in but I think it's important to put a face to the company and its much easier to talk about Battle Tank by, well, talking.

So yesterday CJ and I got about 70 minutes of footage of which maybe 3 minutes* will be usable. On the other hand, we did discover some decent locations to reuse in the future and gained an important lesson in what we actually need in order to be prepared before we press record. I also find that it is much, much easier to do my part when everyone involved is either on camera together, or those not currently active leave the room. For me that was an interesting thing to learn because I have no shyness at all for public speaking. I can get up and give a speech on no notice for people I've never met without breaking a sweat, but staring into the cyclops's eye at close range felt totally different.

We've also spend a great deal of time watching other people's Kickstarter videos and let me tell you that is a dangerous thing to do. Its amazing how many awesome things there are that I just have to have...

Ahem. Anyway, CJ and I will continue our odyssey in video making and get Battle Tank into the hands of people who are as excited about shooting down flying robot warriors with battle cannons as we are.

*Wildly optimistic figure

The Evolution of Battle Tank

-Erik McGrath

Battle Tank has been the main focus here at Inspired for the past few months. It is the first board game idea I had and it has proven difficult to bring from the stage where I woke up in the middle of the night and scribbled down all the rules to where it is now. The most difficult parts has been the art and the choice between squares or hexes.

I'm going to share the stages of that process today.

First we have the original digital drafts:

Simple, gets the idea across but not much else. This was what the prototype looked like and it was merely functional. This was a square image and the roads got a little wonky in places.

From there we moved on to a slightly better look:

As you can see our GIMP skills have improved since the original but the game is still using squares. The roads line up along the grid better than in the previous image, but they still have to make some odd angles to not look weird.

And here is where we are now:

This image is still being worked on and we are very happy with it. The trees look much better, the roads flow better and as a bonus the map now has significantly more permutations since you can rotate each hex to any side and the roads will always match up. Using hexes has also made it so we can have seven large tiles instead of four while still keeping it so that most of the time there is a way for the tank players to escape in seven turns. Since the game ends with a mad scientist win on turn ten its important that there be enough turns to have maneuvering options and to retain a slim possibility of escape even when your tank is destroyed and your crew has to hoof it the final few hexes.

So there you have it, the journey from bad to better for Battle Tank: Escape From Giant Robot Island.

New webhost, new look, new games!

Time for what's new at Inspired. 

First we are going to be using blogspot to talk about our process and what's next for us. We are also going to use it as our webhost due to how much easier it is that what we currently have so all our files are migrating over the next few days.

In Battle Tank news we have established a budget after getting quotes from several printers and we will be giving Kickstarter a try to raise the initial funds. 

And our newest goal, given our team's interest in STEM, we have decided  to create educational games for all ages. Our first project is called 'Chem 101' and will teach players how to build Lewis Structures using hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. 

Stay tuned for more and if you want more info don't be shy, Erik will gladly talk about his creations.

-Erik