Game Design

Along side getting the Chip Shop website online (needing a lot more work of course!) I have started defining the core game concepts, i.e. what you are aiming to do in the the game and what components will help you achieve this. I have also spent some time trawling through 80s US computer history pulling out products, personalities and events that will form the game cards.

Just a small update, with a much larger one coming next week.

Chip Shop has had quite a busy week and I have a few updates to tell you about.

This update is more behind the scenes updates I'm afraid, I have been working on the product release and event cards, making very good progress. However I am currently using real names in the cards and I have no clearance for any of them, that will be a big task in the new year, but for now it's easier to just keep them private. Sorry, but the research has been a lot of fun, follow the twitter feed to see a few highlights.

I spent Christmas undertaking some more general board game theory and computer history research, this has been helped by a slew of book bundles over the last month covering the topic.

A few small updates in this blog post, however, they have a large impact on the game.

Bill Kunkell helped create "Electronic Games Magazine" in 1981, the first magazine dedicated to video games. It seemed a great research resource for Chip Shop to get some anecdotes and atmosphere for the era.

I spent today drawing together the disparate parts of the game manual and concepts into something more cohesive and readable, it can be found here. I used the Drupal module <a href="https://drupal.org/project/menu_block" target="_blank">Menu Block</a> so that the manual can be organised as pages and sub pages (with associated menu links) and the structure then shows correctly. This will enable me to add and edit more in the future and everything will fit together nicely.

This week I have added rules to the 'Playing the Game' section of the manual to cover the following:

Last week I presented Chip Shop at an event here in Berlin. I was woefully unprepared and just had my laptop, showing a few screens and telling people about the idea.

Over the weekend thanks to Berlin Games Week I attended the <a href="https://www.computerspielemuseum.de/" target="_blank">Berlin Computer Spiele Museum</a> for free. It was a small exhibition but great research for Chip Shop and the visit combined with several other events during the week inspired me to work on some of the product cards on Sunday.

Sorry for the lack of updates, I have been traveling with work the past few weeks.

Chip Shop is ready for play testing! Find out how to get involved.

Pushing forward to play testing (which has now begun, more on that later) I have been busy cleaning, tidying and streamlining game components after Essen. Here are some updates...

After my first constructive play test session, here is the first wave of changes to the game.