❖ Version History ❖

17th of February, 2021:
This is probably one of the longest weeks of the entire design process for me. All of the artwork that has been done is currently being printed by our manufacturers over at The Game Crafter, and I have to wait 7 entire business days before it ships to my house.

There are only a few parts of the game left at this point that do not have completely finished artwork: The Box Design, and the Rule Book (much of the rule book has been designed, but there are elements that we would like to continue touching up which weren’t necessary before getting our print test ordered). As a result of this, I do not have much available for me to work on artistically toward getting The Great Chase finished at this moment, because I would like to see how the box and rule book come out before attempting to do any finishing work on them.

Instead of worrying about art time for the moment, I turn my attention toward learning web design. In the same day that we had ordered the prototype, I purchased my way into owning a web domain for the first time in the hopes of creating this lovely little home for my work. It had been my goal to get this process done earlier, but unfortunately all of the fixes and changes that happened during January threw off the timeline of this process. The other challenge I had to face was a bit more complicated. I have several games that I want to publish and produce, but I have never set myself up with a branding to have as an umbrella for all of this content… So. In the weeks leading up to us ordering the prototype, I had secretly been polling people with some concept artwork and brand ideas hoping for inspiration:

As you may have deduced from where you are right now reading this, Librarium Games is the name & brand that I decided to stick with after taking in the opinions of all my closest friends and family. The name just seemed to fit best for our goals here: trying to make games that tell stories, occasionally games that derive from stories, and sharing the experience of this whole creation process for anyone who decides to read the content.

In the Ten or so days that I have to work on this while waiting for The Great Chase to arrive, I try to get as much done as I possibly can. I build the home page, I get an introductory “about” page organized, I set up a contact form for any visitor who wants to drop their email off, and I start uploading cool images and artwork. I also begin the process of filming our prototype materials during this week, and organized the beginning of what has now become this extensive Design Journal for showcasing the work as it happens. To this point in time, this is the most “living” entry to the journal that has existed, because I am writing this exact post as I await for my content to arrive in the mail.

~After an agonizing full week of waiting… it is finally Mail Day~

At long last, it finally arrives. Our Beautiful creation, in my hands, for the very first time. As has become a trend, I still to this moment never believe it to be true… that I created this game from a pile of scrap paper all the way up to what now looks like it came directly out of a toy store. Matt and I are very happy with the look and feel of all the materials. We each ordered a couple of copies for ourselves so that we could retain one for playing, and a few to pass around for feedback in various different directions. Things are going extremely well: the artwork suits the cards, the colors and textures all work really well, the text is all legible, and so we are off to our next major step in the process:

Getting this beautiful baby out to some play testers.