The Shipwreck Arcana

Trapped in a drowned world, you and your allies are doomed -- or are you? Using a mystical deck and a healthy dose of logic, you can predict each others' fates and escape unscathed.

And that is how we are introduced to Mesomorph's newest game, "The Shipwreck Arcana," a cooperative game of deduction and logic. It was on Kickstarter and I found it on Thursday. It seemed interesting, and I considered backing it, but wanted more time to think before I did anything. Unfortunately, I didn't have more time, due to the fact that by the time I found it it had 3 hours left in its campaign. 

Here's the thing with me and Kickstarter: I've only backed three projects, each for $5 or less. The first, "Steampunk Rally," I backed with $5 to get the print and play files, which I then printed off, cut out and formulated, and then gave to my mom for mother's day. The next, "Book of Mormon Heros: The Servant of Helaman," was a computer game created by a member of the church. By pledging $1, I was emailed a link to where I could download the game. I never did download it, come to think of it. Hold on a sec.     . . .     Okay I'm back. So the link I was given: bookofmormongames.com leads me to another page which has a whole bunch of other links to it, and I'm too lazy to try to search for it. Plus, right now it looks like one of those sites that could give you viruses. Anyway, it only cost a dollar and supported him, so all's good. The third project I backed, "Anachrony," was also a $5 pledge to get the print and play version. The difference between this and Steampunk Rally, however, was the fact that Anachrony is huge. Like, really big. Like, it's over 100 pages for just the base game, not including all the expansion stuff I also got. So I never did have the time or money to print it all off. But I still have the files.

So I have never really gotten a game through Kickstarter, just files to print off at home to make my own version. And I'm thinking, it's about time I got one. With Steampunk Rally and Anachrony, to actually get the game would have cost $55 and $59, respectfully. I just don't have that kind of money to spend on games. (Unfortunately. Maybe some day...) But with Shipwreck Arcana, not only did it seem like a really interesting game, it was also only $15 for the entire game, plus all unlocked stretch goals. I got a $25 gift card that I could use for whatever I wanted (read: games) so I decided to go for it. 

The Shipwreck Arcana is a real game about a fictional deck of cards. The deck exists in a world which is described only as "sunken" or "drowned." The world's history is unknown -- but it is hinted at by the fictional illustrator of the tarot deck, providing a glimpse of the history that surrounds it. The Shipwreck Arcana is a compact, cooperative game of deduction, evaluation, and logic, combining simple, speedy play with incredibly deep strategy. Players take turns playing tokens according to rules found on an ever-changing tableau of cards, in order to convey information to the rest of the group before their doom arrives. 2-5 players, 20 minutes, recommended ages 10+.

Although I was kind of rushed with my decision, I still think that it was a good one. In reality, I wasn't that rushed with my decision. I decided to support it, and gave the credit card information for my $25 gift card. A day later I got a notice telling me it was declined because it couldn't accept that kind of card, so I had a week to fix it or just drop out. So I had a week to really decide whether or not to get it, and in the end I decided that it would be a great enjoyable game.

Some reasons I backed it: (1) It is a short game. My favorite type of games are the ones where there's tons of different ways to score points and it's strategy driven and there are multiple paths to victory. For example: T'Zolkin: The Mayan Calendar. Great game, for those very reasons. Also, I'm really looking into a new game called Merlin that fits this exact style. My game Somerset was structured after these ideas. However, sometimes you just need a quick, light game. Timeline, for example. The Shipwreck Arcana lasts only about 20 minutes, and is a filler, which will be a nice breath of air after all the heavy strategy games.

(2) The game is like a series of difficult logic puzzles. You can read the rules and learn more about the game here, but basically every turn a person is using logic to get to to figure out what he has, and you are using logic to figure out what he has. With 30 cards that give a variety of different situations, and 49 (seven times seven) different tile sets you could be given to work the puzzle with, the variety of logic puzzles to solve is near endless.

(3) It supports adding and dropping out players super easily. Have you ever had a game where when you were in the middle of it someone came in and wanted to join, or somebody playing had to leave? This game allows that flexibility without messing up the flow of the game at all.

(4) It has a super quick set up time. One of the reasons why I love Splendor.

So all in all I'm excited for March 2018 to come, when I'll be getting my copy. Yes, in six months. That's about the amount of time it takes to get a game when you back it on Kickstarter after it has been successfully funded.

My meeting with Alan Bahr, professional game designer

This last week I was supposed to meet with Alan Bahr. Alan Bahr is a professional game designer, meaning that his entire job is literally games. Unlike most every other game designer, who also has a full time job to support themselves, Alan doesn't; games are his full time job.

Anyway, I say was supposed to meet him Wednesday because what happened was during that time that we were supposed to meet he was on an important conference call contacting the manufacturing plant in Hong Kong with the miniature designer trying to work out what type of plastic the miniatures were supposed to be in because the company got it wrong the first time. Alan tried to email me about this, but it got stuck in his outbox so I never got the message. I emailed him after waiting around for about an hour and he got back to me apologizing and wrestling for the next day.

So, Thursday was the day I actually met with him. We met at Chipotle and he bought me lunch, and we talked about his job and I told him how I loved making games. He asked me about money, about if he liked the idea what I had in mind for payment. I had previously thought about this a lot and said that I'd like some sort of precipitance from each sale. I did research and for larger companies the designer gets about 3-4%. He nodded and said that they'd probably pay a little more percentage that that.

He talked about how to get the game on the market if he liked it, since I was a first time designer. There were a couple of different things they've done in the past, one was the game also went through the hands of a more well-known game designer and he makes a few tweaks to it (with the permission of the original designer, Alan was sure to add) and then both of the names would go on the box, so that the famous designer's name on the box would help it sell. After eating I got out my copy of Somerset and showed it to him.

He asked if you played as a certain character, I said no. He said he was a little bias toward Arthurian themed games (which Somerset is). He looked through the rule book and nodded a few times. He then looked through the pieces and asked me questions about them. Like I had little houses which he thought would be used as settlements but I said that those went on the government track but in reality just the little circles would do, like they did for white.

He said there might be a lot there, and for the first printing we could cut the magic book and spells, because he felt that that was the most complex thing in it, but then that could be used for the first expansion. That way it not only got an expansion right off the bat but also the main game could come with less parts, making it cheaper, making it so that more people could buy it.

Alos for a selling point, his company owns Pendragon and he said that if they did buy it they might relabel it under the Pendragon franchise to help it sell more copies. (Kind of like how Lords of Waterdeep is under the Dungeons and Dragons franchise.) I said I was fine with that (because let's be real, as long as it gets published it really doesn't matter to me).

He said that he liked the idea. He asked me what set it apart from any other game out there. I said that it was a worker placement game where you don't juts get your workers back a the end of every round, but you actually have to care about where they're at in relation to the other actions and care about how they move.

He siad he didn't want to take my copy of the game, but he wanted to play it. He said, "I'm definitely interested and I definitely love the idea." What he wants me to do so that he can get a copy of it to play is to upload my files and such and create a game on the game crafter so that he can buy a copy of it so that he can play it. So my next step is putting Somerset together on the Game Crafter and making it avertible to buy, then sending Alan the link so that he can buy it, play it, and (hopefully) want to publish it.

But even in parting he said that if if he liked it and their company decided not to publish it he would recommend it to other game companies (because, you know, he those kinds of connections). I thanked him and he said no problem.

Anyway, that was our meeting. So I'd say that it went super duper well. I can't think of a realistic way it could have gone better. So thanks for all your prayers and thoughts everyone!

Overdue blog post

Okay so I didn't post the last two weeks; my bad.

General Conference was great; I put up a whole bunch of notes here onto the blog but when I checked again they had all become deleted somehow, and I'm too lazy to write them all up again, so just know I took notes. Speaking of taking notes during General Conference, somebody else did as well! You all know him: it was Henry! (Pictures below)

Two Sundays ago was my 27th birthday! Yay getting older! (Verbal irony.) But my parents did get me Dominion: Hinterlands for my birthday, and $30. Then I went onto Amazon and what did I see? Dominion: Empires for about $29. So I got it with my birthday money (after tithing, of course, who do you think I am, some less active?). Then Hannah got my Dominion: Alchemy, and so now I have every single Dominion card ever made! (Including Dark Ages which my parents got me for Christmas and the update packs for the base set and Intrigue, which my parents also got me for Christmas.) I spent quite a bit of time updating my box(es) for Dominion, and here they are:

Henry's birthday was the 12th! He turned 2! Yay getting older! (No verbal irony, although we will miss his cuteness.) His grandparents Perazzo got him some books and colored pencils, because he loves books and more especially colored pencils. His parents got him some Fisher Price toys. Look at how big he is!

Heather, meanwhile, went down to Lytle Ranch in southern Arizona for a biology trip. She's working in a lab right now at BYU (although it's not for money. Yet.) and there were several different trips she could go on but she decided on last week's trip because I had Spring Break that week and thus was home all day to watch Henry so that we didn't have to freak out about finding a babysitter. Here are some pictures from her trip (including one where she played Dominion with her co-biologists).

Because Heather had the camera, I didn't, but if I did I would have taken pictures of Ryan's visit. Ryan and his girlfriend Emilyn came down to visit Provo after they went to a wedding in Colorado. They arrived right when I was dropping of Heather on campus to meet up with her biologist friends to go down to southern Utah.

Thursday and Friday Becky also came over for a bit and all four of us played games. We played Somerset twice, and Becky won both times. We played lots of Dominion (you know, due to having every card and having them superbly organized). We also played People Zoo, which was one of the games that my Game Design class designed. Also: Bang!, Guillotine, Cover Your A$$ets, Sushi Go!, Hey, that's my Fish!, Yinsh, Feast and Famine, 7 Wonders, and Mystic Vale. And Labyrinth and Dragonwood. And we probably played some more that I can't remember right now. We didn't play Alhambra, but Heather loves playing that game and we've played many times already just the two of us.

On Saturday was our ward Easter Egg hunt and breakfast. Henry got to run around and find eggs, but he wouldn't put the ones he found in his basket, insisting on holding them himself, so he only got about four eggs. Ha, once he went up to another kid and went over to their basket--only to put one of his eggs in their basket. What a sweetie. Once again, no pictures, but Heather did get back Saturday afternoon.

This upcoming Wednesday the 19th I am meeting with Alan Bahr, a professional game designer, and pitching him the game Somerset to hopefully become published. Pray for me! It's super exciting. I think I've worked all the bugs out. I got some good feedback from Eric, Ryan, and Emilyn. And Becky too, she played twice and won both times. So I think it's about ready to be shown off.

I think that's all the exciting news that has happened these last couple of weeks.

Heather sang in General Conference!

Yesterday was the Women's session of the LDS General Conference, and my wife Heather got to sing in it! She's in Women's Chorus this year at BYU and so they, as well as some other female choir BYU groups, got the change to be the Conference singers for that session. Here's some pictures Heather took (before and after the conference, I'd imagine, not during):

So cool, right? My mom got a screenshot of her, but I can't seem to be able to put it on here for some reason...

While she was out I cleaned the apartment, vacuumed, put clothes away, finished washing and putting away all the dishes and silverware in the sink, etc. I played with Henry and read him some stories and watched youtube videos with him (he loves "Try Everything," "Let it Go," "Get Back Up Again" from Trolls, and the "Waka Waka" song by Shikeria, although we don't let him watch that music video. So if you ever visit and he comes up to you and asks for Waka waka (It's Time for Africa) or Et it Oo (Let it Go) or Oh oh oh oh ohh (Try Everything) you'll know what he's talking about.

I had some spare time to play Somerset by myself, and so I played a 5-player game by myself acting as all 5 players, a 4-player game by myself acting as all 4 players, and a 3-player game by myself acting as all 3 players. I was expecting a 5 player game to be way shorter just because one of the end game conditions is running out of country tiles and with 5 players I thought that'd go a lot faster, but it took eight rounds, which is the average number of rounds it takes the game with any number of players. I try to play as many games as possible just to get a feel for it and see if I couldn't work out any bugs. And I did find some bugs which I need to work out. I'm drastically changing some of the cards and making minor tweaks on others, and slightly changing around the prices of a few country tiles. If you currently have a copy of Somerset, I'll let you know the exact changes later.

I heard the new live action Beauty and the Beast was really good. That was a weird target; it just came into my head.

Okay, I was going to add a whole ton of pictures of Henry right here, but for some reason it won't let me. Hold on, let me exit out and come back.

Okay, got it!

These next three pictures are Henry putting some train underwear on mommy. 

Worked out well, didn't it?

His St. Patrick's Day clothes

Henry just ate a sugar cookie.

Henry loves trying on socks; it's one of his favorite things to do now.

Henry also likes cuddling in bed. What a sweetie.

Trying on mommy's shoes.

Hat! (Metal pot actually...)

Family Game Night, Somerset upgrade

Yesterday Jacob held a Perazzo family family game night. He was the first one to notice that all five families were represented: Becky Jamison was there representing the Jamison family, Amanda was there representing the Loveland family, I was there representing the Glen Perazzo family, Megan was there representing the Alan Perazzo family, and Brandon and Jacob (the only family with more than one representative) were there representing the David Perazzo family. Everyone married had their spouse and kids along with them.

From left to right: Amanda, Juliet, Todd, Andrew, Jacob, Susan,
Heather, Henry, Megan, Brandon, Becky, and Calista.

Aren't all these kids just so cute?

Playing Camel Up with all the expansion modules
('cause that's what we do)

Henry and Juliet

When I got there Jacob was playing a game of 7 Wonders Duel with Brandon, and Calista and Susan were playing a Ravensburger game. Heather, Becky, Tessa, and I played a game of Hey! That's My Fish! and Heather won.

I played Splendor next with Jacob, Todd, and Amanda. It was the first time I'v ever played (even though during Christmas break I helped clarify some rules because I had read them a long time ago). It was super fun. It's quick, easy to learn, and fun. I ended up barely winning.

Pizza came and we ate that. Afterward, nearly everybody gathered around for a game of Camel Up. That game can support a lot of players. I was doing super well at the start of the first leg until another player threw a wrench in my plans, which ended up making me lose four coins the first round. I never caught back up. I really liked the new expansion modules. My favorite one would probably be where you can bet on 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place. The one where you add dice is cool, but that's the whole reason I lost that first leg so I'm bias against it now.

That was the last game we ended up playing. Because nearly everyone has kids now it's more difficult to have longer game nights. Although I brought Somerset and showed it to Jacob we never got a chance to play it.

Speaking of Somerset, last week I mailed off both copies, one to my family in Fallon and one to my family in Rexburg. I know Eric and Ryan got theirs, but I haven't heard from Alex yet if they got theirs. After I mailed it to them on Tuesday I went to Clubs Night and play tested it with the Quark club. We tried five players and after two hours it still wasn't done. I was pondering on what to do and talked to Heather about it. I explained that you play until someone builds 12 tiles and she suggested that that was too much and I needed to make it less. So I changed it to 8 tiles. I play tested it that way and it was alright, but then I realized that most of the tiles and such were designed for a longer game, and that by cutting out the last third of the rounds you never got to do the stuff you might have spent all game leading up to, like casting spells. 

So I went back to the drawing board so to speak and I modified that game slightly. I changed the prices on about half the tiles, changed how much it cost to advance your workers, modified some of the government advancement tiles, change the crystal cost on some spells, and changed some of the starting tiles. Also you can now use other people's roads, but you pay them a coin every time you do so, so it incentives roadbuilding. I play tested that and it was a lot of fun. And it plays about 15 minutes per person. When I did a two player game it took about a half hour. When I did a three player game it took about 45 minutes, and when I did a four player game it took about an hour. Also, for a 4-5 player game I did away with the duplicate copies of each tile and just had one of each, which made the game simpler and kept the 4 player game's time under check. So, um, if I sent you a copy of the game already I'll be e-mailing you the exact changes I made on those rules so that you can update your copy. Sorry about that. But please play the current version you have now to see how that runs. Your version can only support up to 4 players due to my lack of meeples, but if you wanted to do 5 I'm sure you can find a substitute.