Our Tabletop Game Takes a New Direction

Our tabletop game development and design journey leads us on a different path

Sorry for the absence. We've been busy redesigning the game a bit and taking it in a different direction. Kurt is hands on making a new prototype for testing.

Kurt creating new cards for Medieval Challengers

©2017 ITD Games

After we had a few play tests and critique session with some other gamers and game designers we came to a conclusion to turn the unit discs into cards and have one main flipping disc with a cool illustration for heads and tails for each army. Players flip that disc to see if the card they've played is activated, i.e the unit charges into battle weapon ready or faceplants in the mud of the battlefield. This seems to be a less fussy and more understandable playing set up and is more cost effective.

Also, another factor contributing to this change is the knowledge that the cost of paper and cardboard is going up with new regulations being put into place. So, we're looking to reduce the amount of paper and cardboard in our game. Instead of cardboard chits, we're moving to cards, which could be plastic, i.e. Rooster Race cards we designed and illustrated for Roosterfin Games. We could also have the flipping disc be plastic instead, thus reducing the cost of this game greatly.

Thanks for your continued interest. More updates are coming soon, and we encourage you to follow us here and on Facebook so you don't miss a thing.

If you're interested in play testing our light strategy and fun party game, please email us. Or we have  handy dandy form on the right. Give us a shout.

Happy gaming!

Prepping for Playtesting

Medieval Challengers is ready for playtesting 

© 2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

We have a full prototype with all four armies and the expansion of two additional armies ready to play with others. So we're being bold and brave and getting ourselves out there into our fair city of New York to show the game around and get some other people besides us who have completely fresh eyes to play it.

We have a game Meetup tonight, Friday night with a group of prototypers and developers, and another game group on Sunday -- getting next week off on the right foot. We hope other people enjoy playing it as much as we do. We shall see!

If you are or will be in the NY area anytime soon and would like to playtest our game, please give us a shout.

Happy gaming everyone!

 

New Game Prototype -- Seeking Play Testers

Medieval Challengers First Full Prototype

Our game prototype has arrived from The Game Crafter. Yay!

After the elation of receiving and playing with the first two army prototypes we received, Kurt went to work prepping the other four armies. We worked out all the back stories, the numbers for the Battle Points, and we made sure there was plenty of humor based on our giggle factor (when we're working on a project, if one or the other of us is giggling, we know we're on to something). We proofed, proofed, and proofed some more. Finally, the next four armies were ready to go to print.

Once we uploaded the files, we had a huge shock -- the price for the full game nearly doubled. We felt like a giant sledgehammer had smacked us down. We had a few weeks of worry and anger and sadness and concern that this project was dead in its tracks. Would this prove to be too big a challenge to overcome?

The problem was all the specialty cuts needed with all the army units and the launcher. The (around) 2 cent charge for specialty cuts was a real killer. So...

We researched, dove into gaming community boards, and explored optimizing the laser cut lines and other ways of laying the units and cut out parts out to minimize the cost. We have managed to bring it to a more reasonable price, and we are still researching the possibilities. In the meantime of learning and discovering more about this world of hobby gaming, we decided to go ahead and create a full prototype with instructions and a basic box.

We are thrilled with the outcome.

We had the initial two armies already (see unpacking) King Norman's Army and Wizard Warriors. The rest of challengers have arrived: Swarmy Army, Samurai Slashers, Ghoulish Horde, and Band of No Gooders. We now have six Medieval Challenger armies from the land of Histeria ready for battle.

All armies have arrived at the caldera for their annual challenge to see who will rule Histeria for the next year. Are you up for the challenge? If so, we'd love to hear from you.

We are now ready for some serious play testing to see if others out in the real world enjoy the game as much as we do. We're starting local and are currently setting up events.
Who out there in the New York City area is up for the Challenge?
Please email us and we'll  provide further details.

Jack McDowall and Kurt Keller

We are hoping to be able to get more prototypes to send for non-local play testing in the future, so if you're interested and you're not local, please email us, follow us, let us know you care, and we'll we'll put you in our files and keep you updated.


Thanks for stopping by. We hope to see you at the gaming table! Don't forget to follow us here and on our FB page.





All images and game design  ©2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved. So play nice!

The First Printed Pieces Unpacked

Our knees are shaking with excitement with the special delivery of our first printed armies and launchers. Our prototype launchers and Camp cards are eager to see too. We got these printed through The Game Crafter and overall we are very happy.

The Box

This is our first experience with laser cut parts. We were looking into the results, such as soot and the accuracy of the cuts. We also wanted to see how the two sides of the coins line up and  how accurate the production is.

So, without further ado we present the initial unpacking:

The Packets

 

Everything punched out beautifully without falling out on their own. Our fingers did get a bit dirty and there was a camp fire smell, but, hey, that adds to the battle damage feel and gives the game a more realistic atmosphere. The challenge between the armies of Histeria does take place in a caldera.

King Norman's Army Punch Out

And here are the army units and the launchers in all their glory:

Wizard Warrior Coins and Launchers

The soot wiped away quickly and did not affect the game parts. We did get the UV coating, so that probably helped. The coins feel real solid and are lovely to flip. We're really impressed how our texture reads on all the items.

We had a blast playing with our new game parts and can't wait to get the rest of the armies to have a full challenge.


Let the fun and games begin!

Kurt and Jack play the first print of Medieval Challengers by ITD Games

All images, mechanics, and game design are copyrighted by Imagine That! Design. All rights reserved. So play nice!

The First Step: The Launcher Challenge

Last week we told you about about the beginnings of our game, Medieval Challengers. Now, we begin the journey. . . .

© 2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

With a decision to move forward, we pulled out all our old prototypes and computer files. The first thing we realized is we should’ve saved as tiffs. Some of our old files no longer worked. Most of the PSD files worked, but the AI files didn’t. Lesson learned.

©2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

The two of us play tested the old game with catapults created from parts and pieces. We also brought in our nephews who had fun playing. We established that we still like the game. We made some decisions and tweaks for going forward. At this point our main problem was the plastic catapult. It was fun to launch the disks into the battle arena with the contraption. So, that lead to us having to decide if the game was feasible for us to make.

Being a small company, we can’t afford to make plastic (or cardboard for that matter) pieces overseas. We needed a way to make a quality product in small numbers or for our own promotion purposes. We costed out materials and parts and researched ways we could possible make a plastic launcher. We came to a conclusion we couldn’t make the catapult out of plastic with springs. A major setback since this is the heart of the game, flipping the units onto the battlefield and hoping they land face up. the coin toss. Without a proper coin flip, there is no game. We spent a couple weeks bummed about this and wracking our brains for ways around our problem.

The seed of an idea was planted when we found and sourced The Game Crafter, a place where we can get cardboard parts made. This is when Traci issued a challenge -- build a launcher out of cardboard parts. I went to work.

I came up with a design that should work. I made a sample, and we tested it. 

©2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

©2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

It worked pretty well but still needed some tweaks. So I designed a new launcher with an ideal mechanism, working heights and angles to get the best launch of the disk as possible.

©2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

Thrilled with the results, I made one for each army and more play testing ensued.

©2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

©2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

©2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

The launchers were a hit. We have a game! Now we felt confident to move forward in earnest. We finished tweaking and updating two of the armies, finalized print files and sent them to The Game Crafters. We were giddy with excitement when the printed pieces arrived. Stay tuned to see the unveiling in our next post.

©2017 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

Are you up for the challenge? If you are interested in play testing our game, please feel free to contact us.

In the Beginning...

©2107 Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

You may ask yourself, what is this challenge all about? To answer this question we have to go back a ways to 1994 at the Fashion Institute of Technology where Traci Van Wagoner and Kurt Keller first met in toy design school.

The idea for this game was inspired by a class assignment, but the concept was too big for a school assignment, so we kept it for ourselves. On the sidelines of school and then in our own design studio, we took this idea of a coin toss and ran with it. 

© Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

After graduating in 1996, we banded together and started Imagine That! Design where we started inventing toys and games to show and hopefully sell to the BIG Boys. At the time Pogs was hot, so we developed a version of Medieval Challengers where the winner of each challenge gets to keep the chips they win, thereby collecting the best armies and becoming the best Challenger. We even used Pog makers to make our initial prototypes.



A couple years later in 1998 we redesigned it as a 3D action game, similar to Weapons and Warriors for the BIG Boys.  This is sketch and an early version of the prototype. We had lots of interested, but no purchase.

© Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

© Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

In 2000 we once again redesigned the game as a 4 player tabletop version to show to the top 5, 4, 3, 2 BIG Boys — Hasbro and Mattel.

© Imagine That! Design, all rights reserved

This brings us a long stretch of 2000 to 20017 which Imagine That! Design switched directions (needed money), so we worked on other people’s stuff. Over this time we helped develop and design dozens of games and toys for a variety of clients. During this time period the game industry shifted as well. The indie market took off and Kickstarter blasted onto the scene changing everything. We also started this wonderful tradition of game night with our nephews.

After playing numerous different games with our nephews and needing some new games to play, we pulled out our old prototype of Medieval Challengers. Reaction: WOW! This is a good game. You know what, we can really make this happen.

This brings us to June 2017. We opened the Medieval Challengers box and started designing for ourselves again. We found some old AI and PSD files that still work and the challenge began. 

The journey is underway to making this a reality, so stay tuned and follow us on the interwebs to stay on top of the adventure as it unfolds.  Happy gaming!