Blog

As with previous Kickstarter campaigns, we'll be posting a bunch of little articles about the design and development of the new content. This is always one of my favorite parts of the process, because it forces us to take an account of what we're up to. What exactly was going through our heads when we made that decision? Why on earth did we think that we should put that thing in a box and call it an expansion?

We’ve made it to the finish line! Or one finish line, that is. A few days ago we received the pre-production proof, and yesterday we finished packaging up the final print files for Oath. In case you don’t know me, I’m Josh, a developer and editor on Oath.

In mid July, Oath crossed a major development milestone: design lock. This means that all of the core systems are no longer subject to any change. I still have some work on the solo game ahead of me and want to take the cards through another round of editing, but the game is getting very close to being fully done.

At Leder Games we spend a lot of time thinking about form factor and presentation, this diary is focused on finally sharing all that effort with you! Fort may technically be a "smaller" game for us but you'll notice we still pulled out all the stops.

We’ve spent the last few weeks discussing Forts development process. focusing mainly on the mechanics, rules and usability. This week it’s time to discuss theme and art! So without further ado...

When developing Fort, I think the icon system and layout were easily the most important parts of my job. Having played SPQF, I knew the mechanical structure of the game was already rock solid, but as I shared the game with others it became clear that the icons and layout often tripped new players up. Because they were spending so much time trying to parse their cards, they had less time to think about the actual gameplay.

Last week, Grant talked about the creation of SPQF as well as his goals for the design as a whole. Today, I'll mainly talk about my relationship with card games, why I have such a passion for them, and how that translated into the development of SPQF into Fort.

To find the origins of Fort, we must excavate the tattered marble of antiquity. Though in this case it wasn’t marble, but wood. Still, a squirrel in a toga is close enough, and better than no toga at all. At least it is for this historical comparison to make any sense. Before Fort, there was SPQF.

Today we're releasing the second public print-and-play kit for Oath, and it seemed like a good time to bring everyone up to speed on the game's development since I wrote to you last in January. I also wanted to take this opportunity talk a little about game development generally and my own personal practices.