Meowy Cat Mess

Today I have something a little different to share with you. Today I am going to start sharing my personal design journey. I realize we are in the middle of February and I am about to talk about a Christmas themed game but that's cool right? So as the pandemic raged on last summer I started designing a board game. The first game I started designing was based off of my work as a Network Engineer. I know it sounds exciting but I am hoping when its all said and done that one turns out to be a very fun euro game. But I promised you Christmas, so here we go..

This is my first attempt at adding content to Tabletop Simulator.

Lets look back at December. We are still quarantining and not seeing anyone outside our tiny family bubble. My wife and I put up the tree and decorated along with our daughter who just turned 1. Last year was easy we just sat her down she didnt move at all. This year was different she was walking around the house on her own and was very interested in this tree with lights and toys hanging from it.

"It turns out to be a very stress situation at times around the tree."

Duncan breaching our defenses

Unfortunately the two cats were also very interested in what we were doing. Then the our dog Louie was interested in all of that. It turns out to be a very stress situation at times around the tree. After we realized the tree was not going to be safe from any of the inhabitants of our home we built a DMZ around the tree with some baby gate fences our friend Margo had given us. That wasn't enough to keep them out. The cats simply leapt over and the baby pushed through and the dog just stood there barking at all of it. One thing that would keep happening is that the cats would climb the tree and nap in the tree and along the way they would knock the ornaments off the tree. Every morning we got up and redecorated the tree.

So one night my wife Mary started cooking up dinner after our daughter was in bed. and I was shooing the cat out of the tree, and I thought that this all seemed like a game. The ideas started pouring into my brain on what this game could be. The next day Mary was cooking a lasagna (which is awesome) after our daughter was in bed so I had a few moments to scratch down my ideas in pencil on a bunch of note cards I cut in half. By the time Mary put the lasagna into the oven I had a prototype ready enough that we played tested it for the first time while the lasagna was cooking.

"I was planning on bringing the note cards with pencil scrawling but I thought it would be a fun make it look a little bit nicer."

About a week later we were going to spend Christmas with our extended family (very small group (8 of us including the children). I thought it might be nice to play through the game with by brother-in-law Ryan and his wonderful wife Emily. I was planning on bringing the note cards with pencil scrawling but I thought it would be a fun make it look a little bit nicer. I downloaded Inscape a free version of editing software. and designed the cards for the player decks. This is the point in time I thought the game could handle 4 players so I made four decks. I kept the colors Christmasy with gold, silver, red and green. being that I am partially colorblind and so is my best friend Rick I decided to mitigate the colors by having each player have a different ornament. The art is just some stuff I found off a google image search as a place holder.

I have had a lot of fun so far designing the game. I plan on having more updates on this game and other games that I am working on designing. The process of designing a board game is quite interesting and I am sure there are as many different methods as there are designers. I welcome you to join me as I start in on game design. Sign up for the weekly updates.