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Having resigned myself to not taking part, I made my introductions on Discord and settled in to see what other folks had made. Michael Kent was taking part that day, and he jokingly messaged that I still had 80 minutes to make something. It was enough of a provocation to get me wondering whether I could make something playable in such a short amount of time.
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Could I design a game in 80 minutes?
I'd had a vague thought some months before about the correlation between a six-sided dice and the six sides of a hexagon. I opened up Adobe Illustrator, threw down some hexes, and grabbed some dice. I didn't quite make the submission deadline, but within a few hours I had a playable game. Michael Fox very kindly let me submit my entry late, and by the following day we were playing it on stream.
The game, titled "Set Sail", was a roll-and-write that involved rolling three dice and picking two to determine the direction and speed of a ship at sea. There were some islands you could land on to score points, and the whole journey was marked by drawing lines across a game sheet. Folks seemed to have a good time playing it, and whilst it wasn't a brilliant game, it was certainly the best thing I'd designed in three hours. The immediacy of IDLEcon also meant I got some feedback from participants straight away.
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A very early version of "Set Sail"
One of the people watching the stream was Matthew Dunstan. Matthew and I had previously chatted about print-at-home games, and we had some loose plans to work on something together. After the stream, he messaged me with some thoughts on the game, including some suggestions that greatly improved the experience. We decided "Set Sail" had enough legs to be something we could release as our first print-at-home collaboration. We changed the name to Voyages and began working on development.
Matthew's involvement took the game from okay to something much greater. He suggested a use for the third die, which introduced a "duties" mechanism and added a further puzzle to the dice selection. Other additions included a new endgame trigger and an overhauling of the items on the map.
Something else we were both excited about was the scope to create new maps that players could download and print at their convenience. Matthew had some experience with print-at-home games, having previously run Good Little Games with Brett Gilbert, and I'm a graphic designer by trade. We shared a vision for leaning into the flexibility of print-at-home rather than just creating a facsimile of a mass-produced board game.
While Matthew was designing map number two, I set about working on the art and graphic design for both the game and the Kickstarter page. I like to create art for my games alongside designing them, so much of the aesthetic was already in place. We playtested together and separately, over video chat and at our respective local playtest groups. It's probably a good time to mention that Matthew and I have never met in person, and all of the development was over Skype and Discord.
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Matthew and I playtesting on stream
With the game in good shape, we launched on Kickstarter. This is a designer diary, not a publisher diary, so I'll save my thoughts on the Kickstarter process for another day. Needless to say, the campaign did far better than either of us expected, and the success has given us a greater scope for continuing to develop new content for the game.
Voyages represents a lot of firsts for me. It was my first time participating in a game jam, my first collaborative design, and my first foray into self-publishing. Whilst the latter is perhaps not for everyone, I would wholeheartedly recommend designing and iterating with other people. Both IDLEcon and collaborating with Matthew were experiences that shaped Voyages for the better. They also took me from a place of struggling with design to creating and publishing a game I'm really proud of in the space of just twelve months.
Rory Muldoon
P.S.: Voyages is available to buy though the Postmark Games web store.
Voyages Maps 1 and 2
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