April 7, 2016

True Messiah April 2016 update

Greetings! Another month has passed, and that means another update on True Messiah. In the last update, we got a look at the awesome 3D-printed 71 mm True Messiah miniatures, along with lots of other awesome stuff that I won’t bother recounting because you can just click the link. And you’re here for new stuff anyway, right? Right. Let’s get to that without further delay!

Box Art

Franklin Chan, one of the talented digital artists who’s worked on True Messiah, painted a really friggin’ awesome piece for use on the game box:

True Messiah Box Art

Of course, you can’t have a game box with just art: you also need a logo and a bunch of useful icons telling you the number of supported players, the typical play time, and the appropriate age for would-be players. I’ve had the logo for a good little while now, so icons were next on the agenda.

It turns out that there isn’t any standard set of icons for game boxes, so I just made some myself and then released them for free under an open source license. (These were a pretty big hit with other board game developers on Facebook!)

Anyway, with the logo and the icons, this is what the top of the box now looks like:

Box Art

The art wraps around the sides, where the logo and icons also appear. The back of the box has art, but its design is not final, so I’m going to hold off on showing that just now.

Teaser Trailer

Not content merely to work on the game itself, we also created a teaser trailer showing off a bit of gameplay and giving you a look at some printed prototype components using our final art! Check it out:

More Miniatures

So! Those 71 mm miniatures (shown in the teaser trailer above) sure look awesome, but due to their impressive size, they can be a wee little bit cumbersome to use alongside unit chits. To that end, we’ve created a 58 mm variation on each miniature that fits comfortably in the center of a space alongside up to 4 unit chits. They look just as cool as the bigger ones–they’re just more wieldy. I’ll be making both variations available to order with the game, so you can pick your favorite!

Rules

Continued testing confirms that the changes I made last month are doing the job as far as allowing players to close out games expeditiously. That 60-120 minutes icon on the box top isn’t just for show, after all–with those changes in place, all of the recent games I’ve played have taken between 1 and 2 hours, right where I want ’em!

In fact, I managed to get the pacing of 3- and 4-player games so tight that I’m actually finding 2-player (the original game mode) almost lethargic by comparison, so I’m experimenting with moving the players’ starting spaces closer together in 2-player mode. We’ll see if it works as well as I suspect!

Business Stuff

I’ve had some truly excellent luck over the past month with getting into events in order to promote True Messiah! We’ll go through these one by one:

  • Pax 2016 MEgabooth MapFirst, I’m pleased to say that True Messiah made it into the Tabletop section of the Indie Megabooth for PAX East 2016! So I’ll be in Boston from April 22 – 24th.
  • Second, I’m pleased to say that True Messiah made it into First Exposure Playtest Hall at GenCon 2016! So I’ll be in Indianapolis from August 4 – 7th.
  • Third, I’m pleased to announce that I got into Milwaukee Protospiel 2016…which starts tomorrow, actually, so I’ll be in Milwaukee this weekend!

Beyond that, I’ve also found a partner to help me distribute all of those copies of True Messiah I get manufactured to folks who want to buy ’em. I’m not sure I’m actually allowed to say who that partner is just yet, but I’ll be revealing that in good time. ๐Ÿ™‚

So what’s left to do?

A few things: I’m waiting for the unique tile art I commissioned for the game’s holy cities; I’m finalizing the design for the bottom of the game box; I’m testing out that change to the 2-player starting positions; and I need to finalize the art and copy for the game’s rulebook.

Once that’s finished, there’ll be nothing left to do but order a print prototype of the remaining components and market the hell out True Messiah in the run-up to its Kickstarter campaign!

Speaking of which: don’t forget to sign up for an email notification when I launch the Kickstarter campaign–that sure would suck to miss it!

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All right folks, that’s all I’ve got for this month. Until next time!