Games

Are you looking for smart answers to dumb questions? Then you might enjoy 'Answers Against Humanity', based on that 'award' winning game, Cards Against Humanity.

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.

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.

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.

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...

I just had my first play testing session for Chip Shop and returned with lots of feedback. The three players helped me identify a lot of small problems with the game as well as a couple of larger issues that need some refining to make the game work better. None of them so big to break the game, but some important ideas to ponder. Depending on the decisions I make, they may change move the game in a slightly different direction.

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

A few more changes from my first play testing session.

I spent some time this week finishing off a lot of the changes from my last round of playtesting, most of these have resulted in changing Chip Shop from a somewhat random card game with a board (for no particular reason) into a more rounded actual board game.

After making many changes, some of which I will get around to blogging about soon, play testing for Chip Shop is open again!

Chip Shop has been a labour of love for me over the past two years. It has been through many changes and revisions and isn't yet 100%, but I have always needed to get something live before it becomes a never ending process of 'polishing'.

It's been a while since my last update pertaining to the Chip Shop board game. After realising that board games isn't that lucrative of a business, it slipped down my priority list somewhat. I also had a lot of feedback from the UK Games Expo (thanks to Carrie and Tyler for running the booth for me) to process and that took time...

Learning to code with a board game? Sounds too good to be true.