Design Lock and Kickstarter Prep
Front and Back Covers… Done!
The box cover has been in process for quite some time. I am pleased to say that it is finally fully realized. One of the last elements to join the front cover was the empress! As I got serious about designing Wu Wei I started to really take notice that women are underrepresented in the board game world. Growing up playing Dungeons and Dragons and various board games, the idea of a girl joining us in this clandestine world of nerds felt like a foreign concept. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess my lack of exposure to women during these formative years gave me a skewed perspective. It turns out that there are a bunch of women that are giant dorks just like me. Well, maybe not like me but you get the idea! I read a great article by Erin Ryan discussing gender representation in board game art on The Cardboard Republic website and I highly recommend that you check it out here.
Board Tweaks
I’ve been making a few minor design tweaks at the eleventh hour. One necessary tweak was a quick color change to the double-layered board. Previously the octagons had all been gold (except for the four around the center tile). This didn’t really add anything to the game other than it indicated where the octagons are meant to be placed during setup. I have since given the underlying octagon indicators colors matching the quadrants where players can build walls or flip terrains. This visual cue is handled with the four directional tiles during game play and making these colors visible during game play proved to be too distracting and actually broke the natural flow of the board. To that end, I relegated the indicators to a place visible during setup but hidden during play. I think it really works.
Logo Tweaks
Poking around in the various iterations of the Wu Wei logo, I really liked the two color version the best. This one included an outline around “JOURNEY OF THE CHANGING PATH”. As a result I decided to make all of the incarnations consistent with the two color version. This required some updates to a few components and I’d say it was well worth it. Now there’s a logo for the box cover, a logo on the board and the octagons, and a logo on the cover of the rule book that have different textures but a similar overall appearance.
Reaching Out… Hard!!!
March 20th is rapidly approaching and Kickstarter waits for no man (or woman)! I have scheduled a series of interviews with martial artists, historians, and Taoist abbots with the intention of juxtaposing the discussions with examples from the game. Everyone I have reached out to has been really generous with their time and knowledge. When you spend over six years talking about something I guess people start to take you seriously!
I’ve also been lining up reviews for the game with reputable board gaming industry voices. I’m really looking forward to hearing what they have to say. Some of these are revisits from the initial Kickstarter from three years ago.
In addition to all of this I’m planning to start daily updates via video about the whole process starting on March 1st. It should be rather messy and ridiculous. I’m also going to be shooting some game play instructional videos. All of this is leading up to the big Kickstarter video coming out on March 20th. I’m looking into Adobe After Effects and I’m trying to put together a viable animation in time for the campaign. I’m really good at learning new software but I may need to reach out for help on this one. Fortunately I already have some exceptional help in the cinematography department. Plus, I do my own makeup so there’s that. If nothing else, the next couple of months should be entertaining! Thanks for being a part of the journey!
