Among the numerous things we have been working on this month, we have finished several designs for the character and ship models.  We are seriously considering offering miniatures in the Deluxe version of the game exclusively for Kickstarter.  The models look amazing, and I am anxious to see them come to life.

With a nearly finished prototype, we have been reaching out to reviewers, play testers and gaming groups to begin the next stage of making sure Perpetuity: Grave Descent is an epic game.  We have also been working on the Solo and 5th player versions of the game.  Just 2 more months until launch!

We have officially launched our Kickstarter Promotion page, and also setup a landing page to showcase the game and keep all the exciting changes in one place.  In the coming days we will link this page to that one and add some new and exciting news.

As the game has progressed, we fell in love with the idea so much, that we began building lore and history around the game.  It wasn't long before we knew there would be more than one game in the series.  So we began looking for a name that could unite the series of adventures.  Perpetuity, meaning "the state or quality of lasting forever" was a perfect match for both the game and the lore behind it.

One of the big changes this month has been the finalization of the new board layout.  The design adds a whole new level of immersion and is so much more fun to play.  The worker placement tiles now allow for a very flexible setup and flow to the game that we were missing before, and we are also preparing for a special version of the game that we hope will be "game" changer for the project.  More details coming soon.

It is amazing to see how a game develops.  Even as a designer and creator, I am always amazed at how different the game becomes by the time it is ready to go out into the world.  The last couple of months have been very busy as we have honed the mechanics, re-designed the game board and started creating the final art for the game.  Now the exciting part begins, seeing the near final version taking shape.

In addition to testing and fine tuning mechanics, I have spent a great deal of time trying various Photoshop tutorials related to space, planets and all the cool things that float in the universe.  I will be handing most of these initial designs to our artist for some fine tuning, but it is shaping up quite nicely.

Our first big chore was a number of design sessions where we simply did a brain dump and filled a notebook with ideas.  There was so much to work with, we might have had better luck writing a novel than trying to condense it into a game.  Still, the concept was solid, and we knew it was going to be a fun game to design.

This month we started the process of working on some of the game artwork, in particular the box artwork for promoting the game.  It is still in a rough concept form, but it is nice to finally have the beginnings of an idea.

It is difficult to play a space board game without some space, so our first prototype included a large printed page of nothing but stars and cosmic gases.  It wasn't much, but it was enough.  We did not save much from the black hole with the first prototypes, but we were able to start choosing our favorite elements and mechanics.

Sometimes the name for a game comes first and the mechanics later.  For others it is the reverse.  For this game it was all at once.  The idea came in a light bulb moment one day when I was cleaning the garage.  I not only had a name (or nearly so), but I had a big part of the theme and mechanics.  It was so exciting we got right to work.