08.13.07
Ropecon went great
.. for Cuzco. We had two great playtests that confirmed our thoughts that the game is really getting close to being ready. There was only one slight change to the rules. All the other changes were very minor graphical corrections and so on. Both games were quite tight until the very last actions. All the players enjoyed the game. The feedback was that it is a unique game that plays intuitively.
I guess now is the time to concentrate on the rule book. Right now it is just a word document and I doubt anyone would be able to play the game right by just reading them! It is a lot of work and usually the last thing designers are excited to do. At least it has been like that for us. But now that everything else is looking so good, we might as well take the time and figure the rule book out as well! Wish us good luck..
08.10.07
Everything is ready!
Yep, we got everything ready for Ropecon. I managed to stumble across my main printer guy and he was nice enough to print everything at the spot. The weekend will be exciting time for Cuzco: It has never been so well balanced and I’m hoping that this event will show it. I will report back next week.
08.08.07
Some good news.. and some bad!
Which one would you like to have first?
The bad? Okay, you got it. Our normal printing place was not open, so we were not able to get our new and tweaked game material printed! We still managed to playtest, but we had to use paper buildings and so on.
Let’s move on to the good. The game rocked! It was awesome. Pretty much all the changes were working amazingly well and we had a fun and tight game (which I managed to win ;)). The only thing that was unbalanced badly was the number of secret maps in the exploring deck. We decided to take half of them away and I think that should fix it.
Now the question still remains.. will we get the new stuff printed for Ropecon? I certainly hope so. I have a backup printer that I’m currently negotiating, so we haven’t lost all hope. Wish us luck and if you happen to be at Ropecon, might as well come and try Cuzco!
08.07.07
Back in business
.. sort of. There is the annual roleplaying event Ropecon and we will be playtesting Cuzco there for the third year in the row! It has changed tremendously in between and I’m beginning to think this is the last playtesting Ropecon for Cuzco. Maybe next year it will be played by many :)
We have been busy to think over the last changes and hopefully we have the changes ready for Ropecon. We hope to be able to test it twice before the event, but we’ll see. Time is suddenly become a really scant resource.
07.07.07
The sound of silence
If someone has been wondering, why lately there hasn’t been any postings by me, it was because I became a father this week! The week has been hectic and not a whole lot of gaming (although we did play a game of Jenseit von Theben and Backgammon in the hospital!). After a few days, the sound of silence is becoming more and more desirable sound.. Hopefully things will settle down a little bit, although I’m very proud of my son and I’m hoping for a lot of gaming with him in the future :)
06.26.07
Week 25: Mid-summer fest, lots of gaming!
Last week was a great week for gaming for me. One reason was that the mid-summer fest here in Finland gave us a four day weekend and I spent it in Porvoo with family. There were so many good games that I will have to break this down to many blog posts, where I talk about specific games. Here is the rundown of what was being played:
- 4 x Ubongo
- 3 x Looping Louie
- 2 x Power Grid
- 2 x Jenseits Von Theben
- 2 x Backgammon
- 2 x For Sale
- 1 x Age of Empires III
- 1 x Relationship Tightrope
- 1 x Zooloretto
A tip for those that try to game with their non-gamer family members: Have games available of different length and that play with different number of players. This was my secret of being able to play a lot during the weekend. I always had something to offer, from Looping Louie to Power Grid. Nice thing to notice was that everything got played quite equally. I have been training my family well ;)
What has been the game you have played the most lately?
06.25.07
Zooloretto wins SdJ!
You might have already spotted the news that Zooloretto wins the grand prize. Spiel des Jahres is easily the most coveted boardgame title.
I’ve had a chance to play Zooloretto for two times now. They both have been okay experiences, but I found myself wanting something more. It just wasn’t that exciting gameplay for me. One thing that particularly bugged me is the fact that you are trying to hoard a lot of similar animals to your zoo, instead of trying to have a lot of different kind of animals there. At least that’s what I like better when I went to Zoo’s as a child.
But I can understand why it won. The theme is very cute, it will certainly be appealing to families, game time is not too long and so on. This just shows me that I am not the target group for SdJ – I care more about IGA (International Gaming Award).
Congrats to Michael Schacht for designing the game and for the rest of the crew as well. Congrats to Lautapelit.fi for publishing the game in Scandinavia way before it was even nominated. They sure have
06.20.07
Age of Empires III – My early thoughts
The boardgame version has been getting very good reviews and ratings and it’s theme is close to our game in design, Cuzco, so I have been wanting to play this for a while now. Yesterday I finally got the chance to do so. Thank you Nokia guys! I won’t go over the details of the rules, because there are plenty of other reviews that do that already. I will try to concentrate on how I felt playing the game, what I liked and disliked.
Our gameplay
06.18.07
Week 24: Wallenstein returns
After a long sleep, Wallenstein sees a return to our gaming table. When I first got it I was afraid my family would not be willing to play it due to it’s long length. How wrong I was! It was a smash hit, even my older brother’s wife loved it so much that they bought it as well. We played it almost every Sunday. This year we haven’t been gathering together for so long and thus not being able to play Wallenstein. Yesterday was an exception and I took my copy of Wallenstein with me just in case.. and it worked! We had a very nice and tight game.
06.11.07
Weekly stats (week 23)
I thought it would be nice to keep a gaming calendar and reflect back on what I played last week. So this is an attempt to do this. Maybe these are mostly for myself, but maybe someone will be interested to see them as well. The Internet is full of people that like even weirder things :) Read the rest of this entry »
All posts
