I am sad to say that I have become almost entirely
a sofa sailor as of late. Luckily for me, my library is overflowing
with good reads and how-to books that I feel I’m not just wasting away,
away from the sea. I still feel the draw, dwell on my memories of sailing and
the dream of being out on the water again, but we can’t always be messing about
on boats.
I have many other hobbies though too,
and more recently I have been spending a bunch of time on the other big one,
board gaming. I take gaming seriously (to my wife’s distaste) and I probably
enjoy playing board games too much. I have dabbled in game design for years,
but have never had any designs I liked enough to try and progress it much past
a first prototype. Don’t worry; this is where sailing comes in. Over the last
few months I have been reading Hornblower, learning and practicing celestial
navigation, and trying to design a new game. I have always thought a celestial
navigation game would be awesome, so I had been playing around with random
ideas of that sort for some time. Anyway, I’d been dreaming about Stars, taking
sights, and gaming when it hit me one morning. I woke up, sketched out a design
and eureka! Within a few hours I had made a constellation recognition game. It
really stunk… well, sort of stunk, but I kept with it, combining game mechanics
I liked with the British Navy theme I was so inspired by. And after many months
of playing and handfuls of revisions, I finally have a game I am proud of. So
proud in fact, that I am releasing my idea into the world for the rest of you
to see.
The name of the game is As Seen in
the Sky, which was my original codename (I give all my games temporary codenames when I start them), and I have a fantastic team of artists helping me
out. I don’t talk about this to too many people, but the internet feels like a
safe place, so here you are readers! If you are into gaming and sailing, I’d
love to hear your thoughts. There is a little bit of information on Board GameGeek (a great site for Game Addicts) that will continue to trickle in as we
talk to manufacturers and finish all the art. And since you are here, I’ll give
you a little taste of the art development over-time. It has been a project of
love and I’m hoping you enjoy it as much as I have.
 |
| My initial design for the tiles |
 |
| Initial Examples for tiles from the artists |
 |
| Artists' first example of player board cards, box cover design, and constellation cards based on my description to them. |
 |
| Second round player board card from the artists |
I'll add more posts with game development content as time goes on, but I don't want to spoil anything. The art here is not final and many of the pieces have changed since we started, but it's a nice taste of what is to come!
