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I remember the card game first appeared late one night several years later. I was up into the evening, drawing little Gubs and Mushrooms and Tanks. (Yes, before Toad Riders the primitive Gubs rode around in little cartoon tanks.) The first set of cards were made from cut-up index cards, cut into uneven squares covered in pencil drawings and an abundance of spelling errors.
We played the game more and more, and cards were added. Eventually I wrote up the rules. A few times I'd sit down and redraw all the cards, attempting to make them better as my artistic skills slowly grew.
Eventually Gubs evolved, and a story was built around them. They lived in the forest, rode moths and lived in mushrooms, fighting to survive in a dangerous world. This back story appealed to me and others. Rules were tweaked and cards added. The game grew. My friends and I played it all the time, and everyone knew all the rules even though they were not yet written on the cards.
In 2002, I began working with Darin Quan to create some professional artwork for GUBS. It was the first step in a long road to creating a good-looking prototype. The first drawing he sent me was the Omen Beetle (then called the Grey Beetle) and I remember being so excited to see it. It was the first time my creation took on a professional look. I was thrilled.
Over the next year or so, Darin would draw up the remaining 30 or so drawings. The sketches he did were in black and white, so I set about using Photoshop to add color.
At this time I was doing a lot of research to find a company where I could print the game, but didn't find much within my price range. I tried printing the cards onto business card sheets, but the printing never lined up correctly (much to my continued frustration) and I gave up on that idea.
Aaron Peterson, a good friend of mine, and I scoured the Internet for some kind of temporary solution, believing a paper die cutter (like a cookie cutter but for paper) might be the answer. I eventually found pre-perforated card stock which I could print the cards onto myself, then punch them out, so I ordered that.
The process to make a prototype was very time consuming; because the card stock wouldn't go through my personal printer, I took it to Kinko's and put it into the color copier. I then color copied (using master sheets printed on regular paper) all the artwork onto the card stock, sending it through the machine twice to print front and back. Half the time the machine ate my pre-perforated pages and spat them out destroyed. Half the time the printing did not line up right on the card stock. It took hours.
Once I had a few printed correctly, I would hang them all up, spray seal them, hope they'd dry without streaks or random bits of dust sticking to them, punch them out carefully so as not to tear the corners (a painstaking process), and finally sand down the edges of the cards to be smooth. All that work took about 10 hours per deck to produce the very first prototypes.
I started shopping the game out to different companies. I contacted Steve Jackson Games, Days of Wonder, Looney Labs, and Mayfair Games to mention just a few. Days of Wonder told me they were busy on Shadows Over Camelot at the time and Looney Labs was not accepting submissions. Mayfair, however, looked at the game quite closely, eventually even requesting a prototype to playtest. I sent them a deck and, after some deliberation, they decided it did not fit with their current line of projects.
That was when I decided to self-publish.
I contacted Custom Playing Cards R Us and started getting templates from them. This was in 2005. I then spent a year working on the box art and the card layouts and final rule changes. After that I spent another year working on the rule sheet. It went through eight drafts and many, many playtests – not the game, mind you, just testing which rule layout made sense to people. It is very difficult to explain a game, even one as simple as GUBS, in only two pages of easy-to-read text.
Finally, with everything finished on my end, I had to work with the printer and also a lawyer to get things set up. GUBS was already copyrighted, but the name needed to be trademarked, which was finished in 2007. Custom Playing Cards R Us was incredibly helpful and patient, but the process took a long time to get everything set up correctly. Proofs were sent back and forth many times.
Once everything looked good, I gave the final okay and waited for about four weeks before the decks came back: 14 huge boxes – a total of 1000 Gub decks – nearly filled my living room! And that's how the game was created.
Since then we've taken the game to several trade shows including DundraCon, KublaCon and ConQuest Sacramento. It's been taken by other people to conventions around the United States, even making it to Gen Con via some assistance from others. Byron Roberts of Kanga Games has been toting it around Taiwan and the Philippines. Even despite nearly no advertising, GUBS had made it all over the U.S. and the world. We nearly sold out of the original batch of decks and were looking into ordering another.
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Gamewright contacted me and expressed interest in carrying GUBS. Since then we've been working together to revamp the decks and re-release a new and improved version of the game. Now Gamewright's beautiful version of GUBS has been released in a metal tin with all-new artwork, adorning the shelves from FLGS to Barnes & Nobles.
Once again, the Gubs have evolved. This is nothing new. Gubs have been morphing throughout their long history, and for those of us who fell in love with the fleshy, mouth-less variety rest assured that that species is alive and well. They are hiding, and Gamewright's much more colorful variety has flourished. I have grown to love their friendly smiles and yellow bellies. The new decks are beautiful, and reside in a sturdy metal tin for better traveling.
The game has come a long way, and I am thrilled to read about friends and families enjoying it together. It's a heart-warming feeling, so I guess the moral is, even though game design can be a long road, don't give up. If it's what you love, it's worth it.
Cole Medeiros
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