Progress

April

Lovely Jubbly! In April we decided to take the tools we’ve been using to make our cards and package it up into a neat little piece of software I call “Jubbly”. It allows you to create whole decks of cards in a matter of minutes.

• Magic Beasts and Alchemy expansions created.
• Attended Baycon gaming convention in Exeter.
• Adapting all of the artworks to better suit the final printing methods we’ll be using.
• Lots of social media and marketing content creation!

March

March saw the first professional test prints come through – these took a quite a long time to prep for, getting all the packaging and artwork ready. Aside from this a lot of time has been dedicated to making content and research!

• First test deck printed at Ivory Graphics in the UK.
• Artwork for all packaging and cards drafted.
• A lot of scripting, prepping and filming of videos!
• Experimenting on TikTok with different video formats.

February

In February we attended the Paradice gaming convention in Worthing. We had a great time and got lots of great feedback, and met some interesting people to boot!

• First blind playtests with Necromancy expansion.
• Paradice gaming convention.
• Work on a game tracking API, so that important and revealing game stats are tracked from the Tabletop Simulator version (and potentially other versions).
• Processing of feedback from Paradice, including rules changes and card tweaks.
• Participated in a rules exchange.
• Lots of work on getting the cards and packaging print ready, including further talks with suppliers.
• Work on the cards to remove the possibility of any loops (with great help from some VIP supporters, thanks @Chakan!)
• Filming of our “60s Short Intro to Qualeon” video – great fun, thank you Matt and Sammie for helping!

January

After recovering from the holiday break illness, which lasted into the second week of January🤒 we got back on track, and created the first expansion: Necromancy.

• Creation of first expansion: Necromancy
• Testing of the Necromancy deck
• Updated the Tabletop Simulator game to include Necromancy cards
• Updated Tabletop Simulator to be able to easily update all the cards when necessary

December

December was a time of respite for us. We had been working hard and took a break over Christmas. During the holidays Harry fell ill for 2 weeks so progress stalled a bit 🤒

• A lot of work on getting the free Tabletop Simulator version ready
• Many friday evening livestreams
• Preparation for content over the holidays
• Christmas photoshoot
• Slight tweaks to card layout and card wordings

November

• Marketing research
• Improvements to the Health Tracker app
• Manufacturing quotes
• Playtesting, playtesting, playtesting
• Attending events

October

In October we have mostly focussed on doing a lot of playtesting, preparing for HandyCon 10 and creating some “marketing” material.

• Created a textured and rigged version of the cards and box in Blender to facilitate creating 3D scenes and animations.
• Got some stickers printed.
• Prepared a load of material for HandyCon 10, including posters, surveys, rules, a giant card, etc
• Created a “Quick Start” guide / poster
• Prepared and printed multiple copies of the latest version of the game
• Attended HandyCon from 27th to 29th October (read more here)
• Focussed on networking and following up with contacts
• Cogitating and planning based on feedback from the playtests at HandyCon

September

September saw some interesting new playtests with new people. These playtests led to us rewording and otherwise changing a lot of cards to improve clarity and ease of parsing the cards. We also did a lot of work on the lore side to try and establish the cards as part of a consistent world.

• Consistent wording for card effects, especially across similar effect types.
• Simplified wording for many effects.
• Established a place in the greater lore of the world for all the cards, and changed some cards which didn’t fit.
• Removed automatic highlighting of words on cards in favour of manual highlighting.
• Focussed on improving gameplay by directly targeting player psychometrics.
• First version of health tracker cards printed and tested.
• New AI tools are starting to allow consistent characters across many artworks – there was a lot of experimentation with this.
• Initial box design mocked up.

August

August was a month of refinement and tertiary progress. Things aside from the core game were worked on a lot, and further advances in AI image generation meant lots of fantastic new imagery.

• Statistical analysis of cards to improve game flow.
• Health tracker app created.
• “Underworld” faction introduced.
• Game uploaded to Tabletopia.
• Card layout changed for readability.
• Website created.

July

July saw lots of playtesting, with lots of slight card revisions.

• Lots of slight card revisions – Punji Pit was renamed Spike Trap for cultural sensitivity reasons.
• Card back design created.
• Logo finalised.
• Extended lore creation underway.
• Yellow settled as the colour of the Kingsmen.
• Health tracker cards created

June

Where it all started. Progress was very rapid at the beginning, with the first version of the cards created within a few weeks. In reality, work started during May, but really June birthed version 0.1.0.

• Initial concept created.
• First version created, first deck printed, first faction introduced (Dragons).
• Concept of ‘The Field‘ created.
• Recruiting mechanic introduced.
• Recruiting playtested and accepted as part of the deck going forward, birthing version 0.2.0.
• Second faction introduced (Kingsmen).
• Too much healing was slowing the game down, so some healing cards were removed.