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Last Friday, we received most of Fort’s first printing to our North American fulfillment partner, Atlas Games, and the rest was sent from the factory to other region-based fulfillment partners: Fulfillment EU, VFI, and VR Distribution. All regions combined, we have over 3000 pre-orders to fulfill. Due to COVID-19 and how fulfillment works, we can’t ship every order simultaneously. We have timed shipments in each region as closely as possible while respecting that region’s bandwidth, ability to ship with limited options in ocean and air freight, and changes in practices due to the virus.

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.