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.