❖ Version History ❖

28th of October, 2020
In the last few months, some crazy things have been happening. For anyone who is a real sleuth of The Librarium Games Design Journal, you may have connected the dots that the timelines of many of our games and their design history overlap a bit… and this is definitely a major one of those moments… like… a real ‘Fixed Point in Time’ kind of moment for anyone who is a Dr. Who fan hah.

To set the scene here a bit, I had ordered a new copy of Calendra to be made early on in August. It takes about two weeks more before it arrives, and so in early September we finally get ahold of the new copy of the game and the hype has been building to play test it as much as possible with as many people as possible through our leisure hours. At this same moment, the miraculous and crazy story behind another game of ours (The Great Chase) has only just begun, as, September 13th 2020 was the very first time that I had been connected to M. L. Buchman. By some amazing incident, our first prototype of Calendra had impressed someone enough that they were willing to take on (the not even technically named yet company of) Librarium Games on as a design team, and so through the rest of September and most of October my collaborator Ben and I had drawn our attention toward tackling this epic challenge.

Toward the end of October this year, the Covid restrictions were starting to ease up a bit from total countrywide lockdown, but there had been big speculation about things getting very bad again through the winter months… So some of our friend group from college was trying to meet up for a day of catching up and seeing each other for the first time in many many months, knowing that it might be many months more before there is any certainty of seeing each other again.

Our little get together is going to be particularly special this time around because it has truly been so long since some of us have seen each other in person. One good example is my friend Sean (whose house is the one we are visiting today). He had only ever seen Calendra once previous to this occasion, back on my birthday in March, right before the world closed down. So for people like him, we have:

❖ A beautifully updated version of: Gratuity
(To be talked about again in the deep future of The Librarium Games Design Journal)

❖ A beautifully updated version of: Calendra
(As we have been discussing throughout the recent posts of The Design Journal)

and

❖ An entirely new game in the prototyping: The Great Chase
(As discussed in a parallel universe of The Design Journal, The Great Chase: Posts 1-6)

❖ And another (albeit barely even functional at this point) version of: Phoenix Farm
(As we’ll also talk about again in the deep future of the Librarium Games Design Journal)

At this point, the second printed prototype of Calendra has come into our possession as well, so there are a few major touches that have been improved. Firstly, we can truly enjoy the transformation from six months prior as a game of woodchips became a fleshed out deck of cards! It is really cool to review how these elements have translated from one prototype to the next:

Additionally, there have been many subtle cosmetic changes going on in the background, like touching up the colors of certain cards. The most relevant of these changes for the time being were the rule cards, and how they needed to be more specifically similar in color to the suits form which they belong:

Throughout this afternoon we enjoy an absolutely wonderful day of games. We easily spend a dozen hours together testing everything, talking about what has and has not been working through all of the designs, and getting generally very excited for the way that all of this has been progressing over the last year, when our journey to tabletop game design really came to life.

In a bit of sadness, it also comes up in conversation between Ben and I that in order to truly give our best attempt at making The Great Chase one of the best games that we can, we might need to leave progress on Calendra behind for the time being. It is a hard decision at the time, because it feels so complete… but we concretely recognize that there are some tricky problems:

❖ We cannot be trying to publish two games at the same time, and we are now in the production schedule with someone else who has a less than 1-year timeline of availability for us to step up to the challenge of creating a game as wonderful as the others that we have spent years on.

❖ We also know that there are some problems with the design of Calendra, but we cannot take the time away from working on The Great Chase to solve them at the moment… there are unfortunately only so many hours in a day for me to get design work accomplished.

❖ And last but not least, we know that something crazy is about to take place in the making of The Great Chase. The plan for production on that game is to get it Kickstarted in the Summer of the coming year… so despite the fact that we want to work Calendra more, it would also be a great opportunity at this intersection to observe how another creation of ours will go through this process and what it might teach us about how we can improve Calendra as a product.

Though it goes without much doubt, all of this ends up being true.
I am in fact writing this very post nearly two years in the future of it having taken place (April 2022) because of the wealth we learned about in how to properly do game design from The Great Chase project, and just how much it caused us to come back and change about Calendra for its final production.

Alas.. with all this said… this is the point where a very large gap in the timeline takes place for Calendra. We will be signing off from here for a while, and check back in about eight months, once we have solidified completion on the graphical needs of The Great Chase. Till then my sweet readers of The Librarium Games Design Journal.