In which I talk about the board game, Island of Eternity, that I’m making.

A Small Step for Carlos

673 words about creative — 21:02 · 18th Nov 2010

Personal Beije message: tl;dr, just look at the shiny pictures.

Yeah, that probably sounds a bit more cryptic than intended.. or was it? Past tense, present tense, I really mix those too much.

Irregardless.. because I wanted to update those who are interested, I am happy to announce that “No I haven’t forgotten my board game”, it’s just been on the back burner for a while. I been focusing a lot on My Fabled Outfit (which I’ve linked to more than enough), and since I still have a somewhat limited amount of time on my hands, I can’t do everything all the time. It’s too bad, but alas that’s life for you… I suppose.

So my board game, yeah. I’m still working on it, kind of. I haven’t done anything for months but it’s still a project very dear to my heart. It should be since I’ve already invested over three years into it, on and off again three years but three years nonetheless. Some friends of mine, me included did get together and played a game not so long ago, two of which had never played it before and that was quite productive. So with that in mind I decided today that I would go through some of the feedback I’ve gotten and see… really see.. where do I need to improve this? Why does it take so long to play? And the question which spikes my curiosity the most, “How come people think it takes too long to play it, yet they never stop playing it, they just continue for hours and hours at end. What detail am I missing?

An early prootype of Island of Eternity being played.

I have decided to makes the rules stricter for a lot of, because as of right now I honestly feel that part of the problem is that the rules are too flexible, they’re too forgiving, where they shouldn’t be. I want the game to be fun, obviously, but the fun stops when a single game lasts over three hours, especially since it’s been designed for 90 minutes, and obviously seems to work very well for about 90 minutes too. So, stricter rules in certain places.

More cards.. Not a lot, but a couple of new cards. Modifying some of the cards that already are. And also, I’ve decided to scrap three cards altogether, I liked them, but most people seemed confused by their existence and had severe difficulties even grasping the concept of having a difference between “a turn” and “a dice roll”. So it’s been scrapped now, you can stop worrying, I know you have been lots of sleepless nights because of this. *Sarcasm*

I also started to update the board itself, made a sketch, started painting (digitally) the different “places of interest”, than I lost interest in doing that, ironic? In other words all I managed to do to the board itself is that I made sure it’s perfectly symmetrical, as far as game mechanics are concerned at least. It’s probably for the best since a friend I have offered to do some concepts for a game board. I’m actually more eager to see what he comes up with than anything I can think of at the moment.

An early prootype of Island of Eternity being played.

I am quite excited to see some of the new cards in action, right now I’m calling them “Triple Threat” and “No Thank You”. As soon as I have some rough concepts for them, I will try to remember to post about it.

Now I feel like I’ve written enough, I can only imagine the agony of having to read all of this. If you’ve made it this far I must congratulate you on having a surprisingly large amount of time to kill per day. Congratulations!.. and also, you should go now, bye.

You’ve just read A Small Step for Carlos.

In which, 14 years ago, I wrote 673 words about creative and I covered topics, such as: board games , board game development , and island of eternity .