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.

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. 

Game Design games, Unfortunate Events, and random stuff

So here is the final design for the board for Game Design's Basketball the Board Game. I'm quite proud of it, which is why I'm putting it in my blog.

This year we put all three games up for salt anyone who wanted a copy, not just those in my game design class. I did it not because I thought I'd have any takers, but just in case anyone was interested then they've have the opportunity. Well, I did get one taker, who wanted the People Zoo game (which is also the only one I'm getting a copy of). The money was due on Friday, but about half of the students that wanted copies of their own games didn't even pay for it, so I emailed all of them and extended the deadline to this Tuesday. I guess if anyone reading this blog wants a copy they can let me know too, but that's just an afterthought. Anyway, so with the deadline extended for getting the money in it means that the games won't be in before break. The school needs the money before it can place an order. The order will take maybe a week to get here. And the last full week of February (the 20th through the 24th) we have off from school. So I can't put in the order until a day when if I did the package would arrive during the break, not before. So no one is getting their game until after the week vacation, which is a real pity in my opinion.

Last Tuesday I went to Clubs Night and played Somerset with the Quill and the Sword Club. It went alright; we were only able to make it past four rounds because everyone playing was socializing, but I did get some good feedback for some things I could try. Plus on my way there I ran into a guy with Agricola and another board game and it turned out he was going to Quark to play games, and the week I went was just a bad week or something. So this Tuesday if I'm not busy finishing up the art files for the Game Design games I'm planning on going there to see if they'd like to play Somerset.

In other news, not today but last Sunday was Stake Conference. It was really good. We had a General Authority (member of the 70) come.  Today was regular church. And I got all my home teaching done this month. Woot-woot!

Jacob is planning a cousin-get-together game night, but due to people's schedules (including my own) it keeps getting pushed back weekends. Right now it's planned for March 11th, which is a Saturday. We/I wanted it to be on a Saturday so that we can start earlier in the day so that we didn't have to play until 1 at night and be super tired by the time we were done. Plus, now everybody has kids. Yay kids.

Our normal Monday babysitter can't watch Henry tomorrow, so earlier this last week I requested a sub for Monday. This is the first time I've ever gotten a sub. But because it's a charter school we have maybe two or three subs for that school, the main one being Jori, whom everybody loves. And it turns out that Jori is going to be my sub for Monday, so I know that all of my students will love her and that she'll do a great job.

We're teaching "To Kill a Mockingbird" in my literature class right now. I love that book. Like last year, after we read a certain number of chapters we watch part of the movie going over that part of the book. The movie is on Netflix. I don't have Netflix. I've heard everybody say that it was expensive and that the price had gone up. So finally I Friday I asked how much it was. $11 a month, they said. I raised an eyebrow (metaphorically; I can only raise both at the same time, and anyway I don't even think I did that literally in the course of this story). And here I was thinking it was $50 a month or something. Anyway, so I'm using Mr. Bumstead's Netflix. He logged onto Netflix on my computer. Mr. Bumstead's first name is Andrew and he teaches English right next to me and it is also his second year teaching.

"A Series of Unfortunate Events" is on Netflix. I just finished watching episode 5 "The Wide Window Part 1" Friday night. I like the show. Comparison to the movie version starring Jim Carry and to the books? That's hard to say, namely because it's been such a long time since I've seen the movie or read the books. Some events in the show I know happened in the book and the movie, but forgot about until I was watching. For example, Aunt Josephine being afraid of everything. I had forgotten about that, but once I was watching the episode and it came up, I remembered. Another thing I liked was how they portrayed Montgomery Montgomery. He's very kind and smart. I'm actually not sure if he was like that in the book or the movie, but either way he was portrayed there I like the way he's shown in the show. I do remember things from the books that I was happy to see in the movie, such as the phrase "meanwhile, back at the ranch" and the whole signing-the-wedding-document-with-the-wrong-hand thing.

One really awesome thing about the show that you don't get in the movie or the books is the undercurrents of VFD that happen behind the scenes that the Baudelaires are completely unaware of. I'm not sure why it didn't happen in the movie, maybe because they had to cram three books into one film and didn't have time for excess fluff, but I think I know why you didn't see it in the books until later. My theory is that the author didn't have any idea for VFD or any of that background undercurrent until later on writing the series, and then he just added it in and then tried to make it tie back to the earlier books. 

My theory springs from the illustrations, namely the fact that in the first books the tattoo of Count Olaf's eye is completely different from the way it said it was supposed to look like in later books, and the way it's portrayed in the show. So I'm thinking that the author was running out of ideas or how to make it interesting or something, and so added the entire secret society thing in later, maybe stating with the fifth book. Later he would try and add that idea into his earlier books, for example in the book, oh I forget what it's called but it's like the reading companion to A Series of Unfortunate Events, I think it's called The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony Snicket, or something like that, anyway in it it talks about how the movie the Baudelaires and Uncle Monty go and see in The Reptile Room, Zombie in the Snow, actually had a secret message in it for Uncle Monty, but he forgot exactly how it worked and so wasn't able to retrieve it. 

But I really like how the creators of the show had that: there is a long scene in episode 3, "The Retile Room part 1" that takes place at the movie, in which a secret message is portrayed in the movie and Uncle Monty is able to receive and decode it using his VFD spyglass. Really awesome scene. Speaking of which, the movie version also had the VFD spyglass thing, didn't it? But it was shown for like 30 seconds and nothing else happened with it at all. Anyway, so one of the best parts about the show is you see these VFD agents behind the scenes working to help the children out, or help Count Olaf, and there are all these subtle little lines that are awesome. (For example, in episode 2 the large bad henchman offers Count Olaf three different flavors for the wedding cake: plain vanilla, vanilla with a mix of a different flavor, and a Lemony flavor, to which Count Olaf responds: "I told you never to mention that name around me.") Oh, and one of the best parts so far is when Neil Patrick Harris breaks the third wall and talks about how watching a show "in the comfort of your own home" is far superior to "going out to the theatre to watch a movie." I'm not sure if the movie or the show is better mainly because I haven't seen the movie in forever, but the movie is not going to get a sequel, but according to imdb, "Lemony Snicket himself has confirmed a second season is in the works." Which I am super stoked about. 

Out whole family went out and saw Moana the other week. It's a greta movie and the second time we've seen it (the first was in Fallon, thanks Hannah!), but I do have a question still, which I think Eric (or the Super Carlin Brothers) might be able to answer: Why did the sea choose Moana in the first place? What sort of ability or talent or something did she have? It's never fully explained in the movie, but I have a theory (which has spoilers in it, so if you haven't seen it just skip this next part). So the ocean chose Moana right after she helped that little sea turtle, but I don't think it was "kindness" that caused her to be chosen. I think it was her ability to look past the skin-deep stuff and see the potential in everyone. She mentions this at the beginning of the movie when she's talking about Heihei (the chicken side kick, for those who didn't know its name). This ability to see potential is what causes her at the end to see that Te Ka was actually Te Fiti the whole time, and thus is able to restore the heart, saving everyone. That's just my theory.

I'm sure there was something else I was going to say in this blog post. Oh yeah! It's Henry's 22 month birthday today. Happy 22-month birthday Henry!

Post-Christmas games binge review

This Christmas break was amazing. I didn't get in my weekly post because I was so busy with everything else that was going on during break. And by everything else I mean playing games. But I'm back at school and blogging again.

During break I played a lot of new games, most of which I had never played before, including a lot of new ones that we got for Christmas.  Following are some of my thoughts.

Seafall: Seafall was an incredible game and an incredible experience. I loved it. It was my first time ever playing legacy game, (and Ryan's as well), and it was a blast to be able to change everything about the game. From the cards themselves to upgrading your own province board to making your ships better, it was awesome being able to change things for future games. The best part though for me was being able to discover islands. Sailing out into the wild unknown waters and using an explore action to see if you could discover an island was so amazing. I was the first one to do it in my game. And while I was not the first one to set up a colony on one of the islands, I was the first one to get three, getting me that milestone. Like in Eric's blog, it's really hard to not talk about the best, most exciting moments of the game because of spoilers, but let me just say the stuff in those little boxes is awesome. The entire game felt like an epic story to me, unfolding a secret past history of the sea that we slowly uncovered and discovered. All in all it was a great game and I had a great experience. It's too bad I can't go back and do it again, not in the same awe-inspiring way, because uncovering the secrets was one of the best parts. There was one time when we knew what we had to do, but weren't sure how the game would know when to trigger itself when it happened, but as it turned out everything happened smoothly and the game knew just what to do with itself. I can't wait to play another legacy game, such as Pandemic: Season 2, coming out later this year.

Viticulture: I love this game. I can't even explain really why, but this game is so fun and amazing. I just love the fact that you can use your workers in summer OR winter, but not both, and how your grapes in the crush vats and your wine in your cellar age at the end of every turn--I love those mechanics. And the visitor cards give a whole new spin on everything. This game is just great, and definitely one of my favorites of all time.

My Village: I like this game a lot better than regular Village. There's the amount of growth you literally see in front of you as your village gets bigger and progresses. It's the cool fact that you have five guys and once one of them dies you need to replace them to keep doing that part of your village. But mostly it's the dice. That glorious mechanic of that dice pool. I love how you can pick any two dice to add up to the number you want. I love the fact that there are the black dice which you can pick, but cost you two time to do so. I love how you can activate your buildings with them depending on what number is on the banner. It just all comes together for me so neatly and clearly. But yeah, picking two dice from that dice pool is just a great mechanic.

Mystic Vale: It was so fun to be able to construct your own cards. Which pieces fit together the best? Will that card part even come up when this is out there? Building up supercards was one of the best parts of the game. And I like how when you spoil you get that one-shot free mana, but man, spoiling! I hate spoiling! But when you can pull it off--wow, you're feeling good about yourself. I haven't played it enough to get all little tricks and dig into all the corners and niches that this game has to offer, but I hope to soon.

Codenames: This was quite a fun party game. And it was a lot shorter than I was expecting it to be. I was expecting a game to last around a half hour, but most games only lasted from about 10 to 15 minutes. And it was fun being both the person giving clues and the person pointing at words based on those clues. They are about equally fun in my mind, because with one you can make awesome clues, but have to wince inside when your team just doesn't get it, and with the other you can try to extrapolate what the code master meant and try to delve into their thought processes.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig: This game was really fun. I loved being able to construct my very own castle, and loved how the extra points on the room tiles made sense. The meat locker wants to be attached to an outside room to let out the smell. The theatre loses points if it's next to a sleeping room because the noise coming from it would wake up the guests. It was little things like that that made playing so much fun. Plus, you even got to set the prices of the rooms every go around. My trick was not placing the rooms my opponents wanted too far out of reach, but I'd put them just low enough so that they would justify buying it and I would reap the profit.

Imhotep: This game was really simple, and thus fun. You grab stone, place stone, or sail. And that's it. Yet the game remains competitive and tense as you try to balance those three very simple things. Timing is so critical to this game. I only barely barely won my first game I played by one point.

Istanbul: Letters and Seals: This is a really good expansion. I don't see myself playing with it all the time though, because Istanbul by itself is so polished and tight and close to perfection in a game. The expansion adds a whole lot of neat nifty stuff, but as a result also adds a little bit of complexity and AP. With the added piece you can move it increases options on your turn and also the likelihood you'll have to pay two lira when you go to a spot. But it was definitely a lot of fun; all of the new added stuff is solid.

Caverna: Like Agricola, but you feel more free in this game to choose your own path. In Agricola you were always worried about feeding your workers and getting tons of every animal so that you didn't go negative, but in Caverna both of those problems are fixed.

Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn: I played with Alex twice. I lost the first one terribly, but almost one the second one. I was so close! I like how it's a card and dice game, with the dice activating card powers, and some card powers allowing you to change dice. The card drafting thing would have been so neat to do, but there was just no time this vacation.

Shakespeare: This game only lasts six rounds, which is incredible, because you think you won't be able to get anything done, and then by the end you look back and think, wow, I got a lot done. I really liked this game.

Alhambra and Fresco: I loved the city building of Alhambra with the wall thing, and I loved how if you paid for a city tile exactly you got to go again, and I loved how you could only pay for a tile using only one type of currency. It's a good game, and Heather really liked it too and was excited when she learned that we also got a copy. I loved the hiding-the-workers part of Fresco, where you reveal where your guys are going at the same time. But I don't know if this is just me but the only place where that really mattered was the market. It seemed like any other place it didn't really matter as much. Oh, and painting the ceiling too I guess because they might paint the section that you were going to paint, or move the abbot away from the place you would have gotten bonus points from. And I liked the getting-up-time mechanic, similar to the one in Viticulture. Plus, the mixing colors together to get other colors is just genius.

Treasure Hunter: A fun game. It has this really cool card drafting mechanic where you want to lowest in a suit or the highest in a suit, but not the middle of a suit, and so you're trying to build up a team based on their rank number to get highest or lowest. Plus there are dogs and coins and weapons and all sorts of crazy things. Also, a short game. That won a lot of points with me; I love shorter games.

Hey, that's my fish!: A simple game that can get deep if you want it to. My wife got me this for Christmas. I first played it with Brandon earlier last year.

Kingdom Builder: This was a fun little game. It's not super deep, like other games I like, and it is kind of annoying having a one-card hand (a hand of card?), but other than that it's pretty solid. I love how with the expansions it adds a ton of new goal cards, because those three goal cards are the focus of the game, and I'm a sucker for variety.

Dominion expansion cards: Speaking of variety, I got a whole bunch of new Dominion cards! Some of which no one has ever played with before because they're from the new second edition games that just came out. We actually didn't play this over the break though....

We made a list of who won what game with how many points and how many players were playing. I think Alex is doing some math to crunch some numbers to determine who is the overall Christmas break games champion. Or something like that.

In other non-game related news: The Fitbit challenge! My family is doing a Fitbit challenge where we see how many steps we get in one month. It averages out to about 7,000 steps a day I think. Because I walk to the bus stop to and from school every day, I easily rack up over 20,000 steps in one day. Plus as a teacher I'm up in the front of the class teaching too, so things are going well for me. But it's so funny, because now I love waking around and even go out of my way to do it now so that I get more steps to beat everybody else. So the challenge is working--it's getting me to exercise more. Right now I'm in first place. :)

Heather and I saw Moana over the break (thanks Hannah!) and it was great.

And everyone made it safely home! I'm so grateful that we were blessed with safe travels. Heather, Henry and I made it home safely, despite horrid Salt Lake City roads, and Eric and Ryan managed to make it to BYU-I safely, and my mom and dad made it back home to Fallon safely, all of which I am incredibly grateful for.

Interstellar Pig version 2.0

So my brothers came the other weekend to play games with us here in Provo.  One of the games we were planning on playing was Interstellar Pig, which I had made years and years ago, back when I was still in Jr. High or High School.  We had a 4-player game and it was pretty fun, but there were definite flaws.  Flaws which I had an itch to fix.

For example, each character has an IRSC, which is the game's fancy way of saying IQ. The problem was, some characters had really high ones and some had really low ones, and they didn't really balance out, and they in the end really didn't matter too much.  So I worked on fixing it so that all of the characters were balanced. Part of that has to do with the number of planets they're naturally comfortable with, part of it has to do with their agility during battle, and part of it has to do with certain special abilities they have.

The game board from my version 1.0

Also, there were four different atmospheres and 15 planets, which was too many. I chanced the game to have only 12 planets, and now there are only three different types of atmosphere: Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Flundonium. With the temperature, instead of having all these random numbers of temperature that you had to keep track of and try to mathematically figure out if you could survive, I just changed it so that there were four main temperatures: cold, cool, warm, and hot. Each planet has one or more of these four temperature listings, and each character does as well of where they'll be comfortable at.

Another thing was that the number of spaces in-between planets was much too high. It would take you three turns just to get from one planet to another. During our game night the other night I recognized this even before we started playing so I quickly just through in a third die to roll so that we rolled three instead of the normal two.  In the new version I fixed it so that we can play normally with two dice, and the distances between planets is much more manageable.

In the old version, if you wanted to know if you can land on a planet, then forget about looking at the board, because that thing had no information. You had to find the planet's corresponding card somewhere on the outside of the board to look at that. That seemed a little silly to me, so I added right on the board the planet's atmosphere and temperature.

Here is the new version of the board (which is super awesome):

In regards to rules, is that when we were playing the other night, when you wanted to land on a planet, you had to check to see if the atmosphere was right, if the temperature was right, and if you could see on that planet.  Well, I got rid of the "Light" category, so now you can see on any planet, because that part was just obnoxious, and wasn't even really part of the book (there's one instance where Zulma has to wear glasses to see in a dark cave). As for the atmosphere and the temperature, I noticed something that happened in the book: "Zulma landed on a blinking star, and took an instruction card which ordered her to land directly on the surface of Ja-Ja-Bee, where she would have to spend her next three turns. . . . I understood Monya's glee at getting the dangerous intelligent spider-lady so quickly out of the game. Would the atmosphere poison her before she had time to freeze to death? I was curious to see. But Zulma wasn't perturbed. She had brought portable breathing equipment with her. And, since Ja-Ja-Bee had been one of the planets she had chosen at the beginning, she had stashed a powerful heat pump there, as well a cache of . . . food" (Sleator 92).

What does this tell me? First off, a card can tell you to land directly on a planet. And if you are instantly out of the game if you can't live on that planet, then that would be super crappy. Losing just because of one bad card is a dumb way to lose. Secondly, it appears that Zulma was actually able to land on the planet and go through its envelope even though she couldn't survive on the planet, because she was able to grab her heat pump there to keep her temperature comfortable.

This, added to the fact that the other night during our game night we agreed that it was super tough not being able to land on any planets at all if you couldn't breathe or be comfortable, led me to an idea. This idea also crept up the other night when we kept running into each other and battling. In the book, a player is out of the game if they lose just one battle. But I'm not a big fan of player elimination in games. We didn't play it that way last night and had a lot more fun. So I decided to have a health system: Everyone has four health, and if you reach zero than you're out of the game.  Every time you lose a battle, you lose one health. Plus, you can choose to land on a planet that doesn't have the right atmosphere or temperature; all it does is decrease your health by one as well. (Decreases it by two if the atmosphere AND temperature are both wrong for you.) The nasty Lanthrococcus molluscans, which killed off Ryan last game, now only does 2 damage to you.

In regards to battles, in the book Zena says, "You may be in direct combat and have to sacrifice a card" (50). Therefore I made the rule that if you lose a battle, the winner gets to look at the loser's hand and steal a card from it. The loser then has a one-card-less hand limit size for the rest of the game.

Anyway, those are the basic rule changes that I'm writing about in this post. As for getting it published, I don't really have high hopes. After all, Chaosmos is already out, plus I don't even know how to get started on working with the intellectual property rights. No, working on this game is mainly just for fun, for the challenge of it. Publishing is just a by-product, developing games for the thrill and challenge of it is my hobby and passion.

Games night with a visit from my brothers!

This weekend my brothers Eric and Ryan came to visit my family here in Provo!  And what else would we do except play games of course!  The plan was for them to arrive Friday afternoon, but that ride never got back to them, so they were stuck with a ride that came in on Saturday instead: at 2:30 in the afternoon.  In Draper.  Heather and I went to pick them up from the Loveland Aquarium, and went back to our place.

The first game we played was Interstellar Pig, which I neglected to get pictures of.  Heather almost won, she had the Piggy until one of the last turns of the game, and then Eric stole it from her and ran away from everyone until time ran out.  Ryan, meanwhile, died on Earth. Sad day.

We played a game of Elysium next.  We started with just the beginner's suggested set: Zeus, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Hades, and Athena. I ended up winning.

Saturday night playing Elysium. Eric is reading White Sand between turns.

After that, we played a game of Istanbul, and then another game of Elysium, with different god cards.  Heather won both.  That last game ended up taking us way past midnight, but everyone had a good time.  Too bad we had 8 am church.

The next day after church we played a quick game of Temple Escape.  This is one of the games that my Game Design class did last Winterim, which ended up being one of the three best, so we sent in the files to a print and play website to get the pieces professionally made.  Check them out at printplaygames.com. The tiles and pieces are totally legit.

Not sure what Ryan is doing with his face.

The whole crew!

After playing Temple Escape, which Ryan won, we played another game of Istanbul with a different board layout.

Notice how the game is on the other side of the table from Henry?

Ryan's face is like: Whhaaa--!? 

Then there was only a half hour before my brothers had to go, so we played a quick game of Blokus. When Eric and Ryan took off, I gave them Elysium and Istanbul to borrow, so that they could take them down to Fallon so that they could play at Thanksgiving.  So if you're in Fallon for Thanksgiving, be sure to give them both a try; they're both super awesome games.  Istanbul won the German Game of the Year award, and Elysium was nominated but didn't quite win.

I totally won this game, fyi.

It's too bad their visit was so short, but we had a blast.

P.S. We also discussed how to play Seafall without bingeing it, and we decided that we should play over Christmas break, one game a day.  I wasn't sure if one game a day was bingeing it too much, but Eric said that the number of other games we would be playing would dilute it, so that that was fine.  We might have to play two games a day for a couple of days just to be sure that we finish it during the vacation.  I also hope to play Elysium, Istanbul, Castles of Burgundy, Five Tribes with expansion, Ashes, 7 Wonders: Duel, Terra Mystica, and a ton of other games as well.