Things happen all the time with Weird Giraffe Games! But sometimes it doesn’t feel like it as each game takes 3 or so years to go from idea to finished products in a store. To give more insight into this process, I wanted to do monthly reports on what I got done the previous month, what I hope to get done, and anything fun to report!
Conventions
I went to both Dice Tower West and GAMA in March! It also meant that I spent a few days before Dice Tower West in Vegas and about a week in Sacramento, so I wasn’t home for most of March. A lot of the month was spent either preparing for the conventions, attending them, or recovering from them. And the heavy convention season isn’t even really here yet!
The conventions on schedule for April are ProtoATL and Pax East. ProtoATL is one of my favorites and I’m really looking forward to it! It’s a smaller convention focused on playtesting and I haven’t seen a number of designers that tend to go for years at this point. Hopefully it’ll be a mostly fun and chill convention. As for Pax East, I’ve never been before so I decided to try it. I submitted a number of panels and somehow all of them were accepted, so I’m definitely going to be a bit more stressed about this than ProtoATL.
Kickstarter
Way Too Many Cats finished on Kickstarter! I once said I would never run a Kickstarter while at a convention but apparently the pandemic caused me to forget that and I somehow planned two conventions during this one. Well! It wasn’t so bad, though, as I had both Marti and Beth helping out with a variety of things for the Kickstarter and David helping out at the conventions, so I actually got to sleep and eat, almost as much as normal! So, that’s definitely something.
No kickstarters are planned for April, which I am so happy about! Kickstarters are fun, but so exhausting and time consuming. The next one will be put on the schedule once Gift of Tulips has been fulfilled.
Game Progress
There’s a bunch of different games in progress, so let’s start somewhere!
Post Kickstarter
- Wicked & Wise: I finally got all the documents reviewed, fixed, and repeated that enough that I was finally able to submit the final documents! Or what I hope are the very final documents.
- Gift of Tulips: This is on a boat and it’s going to be here within weeks, maybe days? It’s real exciting! I’ve started shutting down the pledge manager and organizing all the add-ons so that fulfillment can go smoothly! I have a plan for both the rest of the world and EU shipping and hopefully everything goes to plan.
- Way Too Many Cats: The Kickstarter funded, met a bunch of stretch goals, and ended! There were a number of ideas brought up during the Kickstarter that I’d like to test, in addition to some last development changes. Plus, I have to get the Gray Cat expansion all fancy! Things are moving and I hope to get a lot of testing done during April.
- Studies in Sorcery: The extra copies are on a boat with Gift of Tulips for reasons (nothing goes as planned!) and this should hit retail as soon as I can get it sent to distribution.
Pre Kickstarter
- Explosion in the Laboratory: This is the next game going to KS and it’s nearly ready! I got a lot of good playtesting done at GAMA and Dice Tower West, made some decisions on the game, and have plans to test the game out to 5 and 6 players! The graphic design is definitely coming together as are the rules. This is a small game, so the plan is for everything to be print ready before the KS even starts!
- Fire in the Library Card Game: The latest illustration is done, it just all needs to be put together and playtested to verify it’s better than the last version! The wording on all the tools needs a few more updates as well, but this is getting very close to done.
In Progress
- Fire in the Library Expansion: At one time, I had planned a large expansion of 3 modules and I’m still trying to see if this is the best option or if the expansion should be more focused or not. This will be a higher priority soon, as I’m working on the Fire in the Library reprint and will be doing ALL the updates that are needed, so it’ll be easy to then focus on the expansion.
- Project Pacific: The illustration has been done for months, but the graphic design needs some updates after the latest playtesting. It’s so interesting the fact that someone can hear the words that are written on some of the cards and fully understand, but reading them causes confusion! So, back to the drawing board for some of the graphic design.
- All the Dinosaurs: As it appears is the story of all the games getting ready for KS, I’m trying to figure out the best graphic design to convey information and make things intuitive, so we’re iterating on the appearance of this! This game is a bit lower priority, so the rules probably won’t get fancy in April, but maybe!
- Tumble Town Expansion: This is about the same as the Fire in the Library expansion, where I’m going to be focusing on getting the Tumble Town files updated, so it should be easy enough to then update all the files for the expansion and know exactly where I want to go with it!
- Dreams of Yesterday: Again, the iteration of the graphic design is the current status of this. I think we’re nearing the end, though!
General WGG
There’s a lot going on with Weird Giraffe Games outside of games! How weird is that?
- Beth has been amazing and has completely taken over customer service AND gotten on top of things! Which is really exciting, as this has definitely been one of the areas that I have had trouble keeping up with in the past.
- First April Fool’s Day Participation! I hesitate to call this a joke, mostly because all the games are real and planned to be published at some point and Quirky Bird Games will be a thing! But my staff vetoed the idea of an actual imprint, so Quirky Bird Games will be an RPG collaboration company, instead. It was great to see how many people might actually be interested in my weird bird games!
- I’m nearly on top of all things email, which hasn’t happened since 2019! I hope to get to inbox zero sometime in April, then I can have more time for all the things! Who knows how many bird games or RPGs I’ll design once that happens?
- Chelsea and Jess are starting on the Weird Giraffe Games team! We talked at GAMA about how I want to focus a bit on my mental health as it’s been a bit ruined these past two years and hopefully this is the start to way more progress at WGG!
General WGG
There’s a lot up in the air with the pandemic, traveling, and everything else! But things are moving along and I’m hoping to get on top of everything and be much better off by the end of April! We can hope, at least. In the meantime, I’ll be relaxing by playing some Horizon Forbidden West while Klaus is angry that I spent so much time not at home.
