I have seen an artist take the tiniest speck of any idea and grow it into something that is frankly, amazing. But that's only a good thing if the client is happy for you to expand on upon their original vision.
Hellboy Week: Fun with Budgets (Honest)
One of the benefits of the B.P.R.D. being a well-funded shadowy government organisation is that the gang are rarely short on resources – the flipside, of course, is that you have to stay within parameters. This is represented by the Mission Budget, which the players can spend before the Case. This budget scales depending on the number of agents, and is one of the ways in which the game scales for different player counts.
Design Diary: Echoes of the Past
With Hellboy: The Board Game hitting Kickstarter on Wednesday, I've really been enjoying the response to the snippets of information we've been releasing. People seem to be getting pretty excited about the game, and I couldn't be happier - after all, this is the first project I've done for Needy Cat to see the light of day! I've had a few questions, and I felt that this one in particular deserved a more in-depth answer:
Hellboy Week: Agent Actions
Hellboy Week: The Deck of Doom
Yesterday, the lovely Rob did a great job of explaining how the HQ board works, and what its various bits are for. One of these was the Impending Doom track, which acts as a kind of timer, ticking down turn by turn until it launches the Confrontation, regardless of whether you're ready for it. A shrewd group of players will investigate their hearts out and uncover the big boss before this happens, but through playtesting I've seen countless cases where the agents took their sweet time, thinking they had ages before things took a turn for the worse.
Hellboy Week: Case Files
With the Hellboy Kickstarter tantalisingly close, Mantic are running Hellboy Week on their blog, with a different article about the game’s mechanics every day. I’ve offered to tag in every other day to give the designer’s perspective on some of the key parts of the game.
ART FOR TABLETOP GAMES PART 3: Get an online portfolio
ART FOR TABLETOP GAMES PART 2: Good, on time, nice to work with
ART FOR TABLETOP GAMES PART 1: Always seek feedback
Needy Cat Games recently attended the industry week for Confetti - a local, Nottingham based college who specialises in all thing digital, games design, game art etc. We had a fantastic time, got some great feedback on our latest game Ancient Grudges: Bonefields (you can download and give feedback on the Beta rules here) and I gave a series of talks on freelancing as an artist in the tabletop games industry.
Development Blog 4: It's heeeeere!
Today is the day that the Ancient Grudges: Bonefields rules get released as a beta test into the wide world. It’s a weird sensation to release something that I know is a) unfinished, b) flawed and c) my first game.