This Blog Series has two entries prior to this one

001 - The influence of board game mechanics

002 - A Prototype Board Game born from inspiration

Why use a PC and make a video game variant?

In the past blog I mentioned iteration.   When it comes to making board game pieces, and changing the artwork, etc that can be costly and slow.    I realized that if I prototyped the same game on a PC as a videogame that followed the rules I could iterate through the rules faster.

This does make sense and I recommend it as a possibility for other people making board games.

As I started doing this I was quickly hit by a different type of inspiration that would dramatically change my plans.    I would also scrap (for now) the idea of making it a board game.

Enter the M.U.L.E. - Nostalgia leads to inspiration

If any of you that were fortunate enough to go through a phase of playing the old (1980s) EA game M.U.L.E. by Dan/Danielle Bunton and grasping its implications it likely holds a very nostalgic place for you.   I know it did with me as I'd considered making variations on what it showed me in terms of ideas several times. 

If you are not fortunate you can play FREE recreations of the game at planetmule.com

It is not exciting to look at, but it sure is fun to play (especially with friends).

What does this have to do with a hex space game?

My inspiration came when I thought about the ships that drop the colonists off, the pirate ships that occasionally raids the planet, and the ship that returns after a year.    A simple question idea.

What do those ships do when they are not on the planet, where do they come from?

I realized this was the perfect setting for the game that I was still calling Starways at the time.

I quickly worked up some initial ideas using resources like those in the game M.U.L.E. and adding a few of my own.

I chose the UNITY game engine to prototype and later on just decided to keep using.

I have never considered myself a skilled artists in the visual sense of the word.

I told my family and friends over the years that "If people liked stick figure games, I'd be rich" but that ended up not being true because people DO like stick figure games and I didn't bother to make one.    Games like Dwarf Fortress shattered this self-imposed delusion I had trapped myself behind for decades.

I dove into the game using Unity primitive 3D prefabs and slapping cones, cylinders, and torus (donut) shaped pieces together.    I even made spherical planets and such.    IT WAS NOT PRETTY.

That was my art back then.    I got much better, and I had a friend and a family member join my cause.

That is a very old video I made that I obviously did not capture in a format that looks very good.    That is the oldest example I can find in my records of this game.

It was still called Starways...

That would change when a friend told me that it was VERY close to Starwars.    I said "yeah, I didn't think of that" and started trying to come up with a new name.

The project name was changed to Wormhole Ventures

Kickstarter was starting to do well, so we decided to do a kickstarter.   We knew we needed to make it look considerably better than my prototype, and we were adamant about having a playable demo.    So many kickstarters at the time were making fancy pre-rendered videos showing off games that didn't actually exist or have a single line of code written.   They were doing fantastic on backers, but we were not going to do that!!

I will discuss the Kickstarter phase in the next Blog Entry.