So Long, 2016

Happy new year! OK, so it's a week into 2017 and I still haven't got around to writing a blog post, so perhaps it's time to get off my backside and do something.  It's traditional around this time (though usually a bit sooner!) to look back at the last year and forward to the new one, so let's do a bit of that.  I'll do what I did last year and start with a retrospective post.

Given the general perception of 2016 being a horrible year, it was actually a pretty decent year for me from a game design point of view.  This time last year I said that I wanted to concentrate largely on playtesting, developing my existing projects more, and improve my rulebook writing, and all of these have made some progress.

Conveniently, most of my games so far fit into these handy deck boxes.  Here are a few of the ones I've been working on over the last year.

From the playtesting point of view, my biggest step forward has been to get involved in the Playtest UK community, mostly by attending as many of their Sunday afternoon meetups in London as I could, as well as one meetup in Oxford, but also going to a couple of their public playtest sessions, at UK Games Expo and Dragonmeet.  All of this helped gain very useful feedback on the games I brought to these events.  But the side benefit to this is that when I described Playtest UK as a community, I really meant it.  Through these meetings I have met many game designers from newbies like myself to award-winning veterans with many published titles, and they all contribute their time, expertise and support to help each other make better games.  Over the last year I have learnt a great deal from these people, who have all made me feel welcome and helped me battle the demons of self-doubt.  I'm looking forward to continuing with these activities as much as I can.

Developing existing projects rather than starting new ones...  Well, that has been of more mixed success, but has gone OK.  Boogie Knights has remained in the mix and I've kept plodding away with it (not yet sure if it's going in the right direction, but...), but that's about it for my older games.  I have, however, pushed several of the new games I created in 2016 further than most of my earlier projects, and some of those are looking like I will keep working on them in the future.

Partly as a side-effect of trying to work more on individual projects, I haven't been as active in the 24 hour design contest world as I was in 2015 -- I only actually submitted one entry -- which is a shame, as I enjoy those challenges and they have been very helpful in building my skills, but I guess I have to pick and choose how I spend my time.

As for the rulebook writing, I have been offering help with proofreading and editing documents for other people from time to time, though probably not as much as I really should.  Still, this has ended up with me getting my name as a credit into at least a couple of published games and built up a few brownie points, as well as getting me some valuable experience, so it has been a useful exercise.

Finally, what is probably my biggest news of the last year: I am in negotiations with a publisher regarding one of my games (and some other possible opportunities).  Nothing is signed as yet, but I have my fingers crossed.  In the meantime, I'm not going to broadcast details, but with a little luck I'll be able to make some sort of an announcement in the near future.