Journey to PRO-Prototype and other adventures
Tomorrow we are going to our first board game convention, or ok, let’s call it more a board game camp, which is held for 4 days including the weekend and on Saturday they welcome some new names, to test, to spread the word and populate their game.
So as the website was launched and we started a more active communication on the social media, lot of people appeared everywhere to participate, they were interested, they asked questions, they wanted to see more details about the game, the wanted to playtest it. With these sparkly eyes, you know. Or at least we imagined like that. And one of them was the organizer guy of this event, who contacted us. We were more than happy, until we realized that we just do not have a proper prototype, game board, with box and so on.
But the board game creator community somehow helps each other and everyone can recommend someone, who knows someone. So somehow you can find your people.
This happened to Balázs as well. He got a name and contacted him before saying yes to our first invitation. Even if the time was tight and Balázs still needed to do lots of preparations and finalizations after the latest test games, he said yes.
This was the point where Balázs was lost in work for some weeks, every night he made the fine tuning. But the best part was that the prototype guy was extremely flexible. Even if our deadline was close, he accepted our changes and worked on the prototype. He sent us that badass picture about the box if you remember.
So the last week came. The camp was planned for Saturday. On the beautiful Monday of the week at one point Balázs started to pack wildly a set of miniatures. I was like , “whaat are you doing?”. “Oh I am sending one set of minis to him. Even if he is not making insert in the box, he will prepare for me some storage for them. And yes, as he doesn’t live in Budapest, I am sending to him by car share.”
And this was on Monday. The mini set was sent. Soon the car was booked for the way back for the 2 boxes and we just couldn’t wait the time to pass, to be already on Friday and have the boxes in our hands.
And it came. And we were just amazed. It is real! And hopefully he was better with prototype creation than we were. (Haha, this is his profession, it was sure that we will get something with high quality.)
After the first amazement, Balázs started to check everything in more details. And he found some little missing elements on the board. He was like oh,no, what happened. Then turned out that he forgot to mention to our pro-prototyper, that he made some changes in the materials. As he couldn’t know, he didn’t check for later updates.
But it is still beautiful. I can tell. Just we need to draw some conclusions. Some of them are about the cooperation with others and some of them about design.
Just to mention some:
– always notify the other if you’re changing something in the provided materials. Always.
– maybe do not let the implementation of changes for too late after the test play. It can cause some things missing. Maybe.
– you should check whether you upload the latest design of your box front. Even if there was just a slight change. You should.
– try to imagine how the box will look like in 3D. So like this you don’t put upside down the logo and the clan heroes on the side of the down part of the box. Try it.
– don’t let design your miniatures in a way that they have this long, outstanding parts. They will just break every time. So don’t.
– be careful when you are designing you’re miniatures and board and game parts. The box can be just too big. Be careful.
– and last but not least. Never have just motorbikes when you need to transport your enormous board game. It just causes headache, how not to break or damage it. NEVER.
So the tomorrow’s travel will be fun. Haha! When you read this we will already have made it or break it, but still cross your fingers for us!