It’s safe to say that Hellboy took a bit longer than expected, once you factor in all the bells and whistles that got added in during the campaign! And our schedule wasn’t exactly sparse to begin with, so Sophie and I have basically transformed into stunted work-goblins over the past few months, only leaving our dank cave to eat food, go to meetings and gather raw materials to feed the ever-hungry prototyping table.
Design Diary: Finishing Touches
Hellboy: The Board Game has been in solid development for around seven months now, and it feels like even longer than that. It's lasted over half of Needy Cat Games' lifespan! (Oh, we had our first birthday last week - I meant to do a blog post about it, but we've been too busy...) There's still loads more Hellboy in the pipeline, but I'm proud to say that the rulebook for the main game is about to go into layout…
Design Diary: Feedback Fun Times!
I saw a post on the Hellboy Fanatics Facebook group earlier today, asking about development of the game, and I realised that I've been completely schtum for way too long. People are rather understandably starting to wonder if I've dropped off the face of the earth, or burrowed under my desk to hide from the deadlines or something.
ART FOR TABLETOP GAMES PART 5: The Process - Commission and Brief
Today we’re going to talk about the ideal process of creating art for a client. This isn’t the only process and each client will differ slightly in their preferences. Many of you may end up working for very small businesses or individuals, who are new to commissioning freelancers and how to manage art through the development process.
Some Crazy Numbers
So the funding campaign for Hellboy: The Board Game finishes in less than 36 hours. It's currently on £1,294,820 ($1,729,025). There are 11,661 backers. To give you some context, so your jaw can properly hit the floor, here's a little rundown of Mantic's previous Kickstarters…
Podcasts and Self-Confidence
When I’m in the car by myself, I listen to podcasts. I’ve got a few favourites (I’ll chuck some links below for anyone who’s interested!) with the Adam Buxton podcast hanging around somewhere near the top of the list. I love a bit of Buckles; he always seems to have genuinely interesting conversations with his guests, and he tends to get a lot of people on the show who you don’t hear anywhere else.
Design Diary: More Than Punching
One of the things that's been most hotly discussed is narrative - some people are concerned that the game just doesn't have enough story poking through the mechanics. I absolutely understand why they're concerned - after all, it's Hellboy! If the narrative isn't front and centre, we're wasting our opportunity. The stories are about as far from generic dungeon-crawling as you can get…
ART FOR TABLETOP GAMES PART 4: The importance of clarity
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: