Commencing operation . . .

Overview

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending Geek Retreat Addlestone’s official store opening!

Saturday

I dressed up in my Overlord Cosplay again for this event. The store was packed full of action when I arrived, which was great to see. 

Commencing operation . . .

Overview

It has been a little longer than usual since my last post, as I am making a shift toward youtube videos for the foreseeable future. I still plan to use the blog to update every now and again but will likely be far less frequent than before.

Anyway, I had the pleasant opportunity of attending the Guildford Games Festival earlier this month and it was a blast!

Guildford Games Festival

I attended a couple of interesting talks during my day and had the opportunity to check out some really cool games. I played one called Bullion which serves as a lighter party game whereby pirates are scrambling to get treasure. The player with the most treasure wins however if all pirates are KO’d then all the players lose! Enemies will attack players and there’s a delicate balance between being greedy and helping the team out.

I was impressed with the multiple game modes on offer. A boss battle mode introduces a boss that players need to work together to defeat less a party wipe grants an instant game over! There was also a campaign type mode for players who want to carry on their contests over several rounds.

If you like games like Mario Party and Super Smash, give this one a look.

I also played a physical card game called Traders of the Silk Road which seemed decent and robust in mechanics. I was glad to see at least one physical game at a convention aimed toward video games. Gives me opportunities in the future to maybe demo Black Metro there someday.

I wore my Overlord persona cosplay outfit so spent some time with ACM Games Academy at their cosplay draw booth, whereby their artists drew me while I did a couple of strenuous poses (at my discretion). I was paired up with a shark cosplayer and while my helmet is meant to be a dragon helmet, it can be a shark helmet this time round, so we’re a pair of sharks.

The journey so far . . .

I started this project 30 months ago, in the summer of 2020. It began with a board game that after the first playtest required an overhaul of over half the mechanics! Around 6 months into the game development, I had a tonne of lore behind the universe and setting of the game. I had originally planned to weave the lore into the rulebook, but soon realised I would end up with several hundred pages worth of storytelling in the rulebook!

I decided that the best course of action would be to create a separate novella that details the Black Metro universe, the main cast of characters, and the storyline that leads to the Black Metro tournament; the setting of the board game.

For those of you who want to learn more behind the universe of the game, that option is available, but it is not necessary to enjoy the board game. For those who want to use their imagination and create their own story behind the conflicts surrounding the dark city, that option also exists and is one of the benefits of separating the story from the board game, albeit there is a fair amount of lore still scattered throughout the rulebook, just not hundreds of pages worth!

Anyway for the next year or so, I bounced between developing the game and writing the novella, to keep my mind fresh and prevent boredom and monotony from creeping in. In spring 2022, I made my debut at the UK Games Expo which was one heck of an experience to take the lead in promoting Black Metro.

I also entered a couple of online board game competitions but did not do well at all in either of them; I’m talking near literal bottom of the barrel levels of bad. I think the main issue comes down to my lack of ability in conveying my pitch to a digital audience, as I have had little problems with selling the game to people face to face. Judging from overall feedback, the game isn’t ‘bad’, so it’s not as though I’ve designed a poor game, just need to convey things better; a task which I can work on in the future.

The remaining half year or so was spent on finalising the mechanics and presentation of the game, and then completing the rulebook and digital mods, which was incredibly intensive. The past few months have especially been exhaustive: that last 20 percent takes just as long as the first 80, but I made it to the end; crossed the finish line!

What’s next?

The plan is to start promoting the hell out of the digital release. I am hoping to release tonnes of content (likely videos) on strategies surrounding Black Metro, as there is a lot going on in the game. Just to give you a potential idea of the type of content to expect:

• Intro videos to learn the game
• Overall gameplay strategies
• Candidate + technology strategy guides

I will probably open this up to the users in my discord server to voice their opinions on what they would like to see as well.   

On top of this informational and promotional content, there is still a lot of cool stuff I want to implement into the TTPG mod, so hopefully with the connections I have; I will aim to continue to upgrade the features of the mod to improve the overall experience for you guys. And I am sure there will be bug fixes that crop up which will need to be addressed as and when they arise.

Conclusion

My resolution for this year was to become more socially active; a goal I believe I have achieved with my various ventures. I’ve attended numerous expos this year, visited various game clubs, and befriended a fair amount of people through these experiences.

My goal for 2023 is to improve my digital communication skills; specifically with promoting the Black Metro digital release. Give the game a go and if you have any feedback, you can comment on my discord server or shoot me a message. Happy new year and bring on 2023!

Mission complete – Overlord Drakow signing out.

Commencing operation . . .

Overview

The end of year is fast approaching and I am frantically at work trying to finalise the development of Black Metro. During the past couple of months I have had some questions thrown my way regarding the inspiration process behind Black Metro and why I decided to undertake this project. I figured as the penultimate article for this year, I would try to address some of these questions, and I might carry some over to the end of year also. Anyway, let’s get cracking.

Why ‘Black Metro’?

I have some fond memories of roaming the cities of Melbourne and London at night. The dazzling glow of a city in the evening makes for an alluring scene of beauty. I used to play a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! back in the day and the most powerful card in my deck was Future Fusion.

I had an ultimate rare version of the card so it was basically a dark city in the future which is effectively what Black Metro is. I wish I had kept my copy, it’s worth £40-£50 now. More recently, Final Fantasy VII remake sparked a lot of inspiration behind the overall design of Black Metro. Specifically district 01 the Shadowforge Factory, but also district 11 the Astral Tower.

Black Metro can also be considered an alternate version of neo Gotham City from Batman Beyond. The Dark Knight is one of my favourite heroes and loved watching the show as a kid.

Finally for those familiar with Pokemon Black and White, you can enter a place called Black City which is a dark themed city set in the future.

Why worker placement / area control hybrid?

Black Metro takes its inspiration from a variety of board games I enjoy playing, the most influential of those likely being Lords of Waterdeep. Worker placement is probably my favourite board game mechanic and area control is my favourite game concept. In other words, Black Metro is a game where you utilise worker placement mechanics as a means toward establishing area control. Conceptually, this is very similar to Blood Rage; another game I enjoy playing.

Basically, I decided to combine my favourite aspects of board games and created Black Metro as a result.

What I personally found lacking in other worker placement games is the inability to directly attack other player’s workers on the game board, barring a few exceptions like playing specific cards or whatnot. Also the one-dimensional aspect of utilising workers to get ‘stuff’ can lose its potency toward the final round or so when acquisition and conversion of ‘stuff’ can potentially yield lesser returns (due to the imminent end of the game).

Black Metro solves these problems by assigning a strength value to all personnel (workers) and including an overwhelm mechanic. Dominating a specific district (location) with a certain amount of strength can overwhelm other player’s personnel and force them to ‘run away’ from that district; losing them the ability to use that district’s abilities for the round.

What typically ends up happening in a game of Black Metro is that the early rounds sees players spreading their personnel far and wide to utilise as many district’s abilities as possible. In later rounds, players need to start considering assigning more personnel (and therefore strength) to districts and bunching up their forces to increase resiliency against other player’s personnel; thereby utilising less districts overall but increasing the chances of being able to use the districts where they have bunched up their personnel.

In this manner, as the game progresses, strength becomes increasingly important and the utilisation of districts diminishes, in a fairly organic manner. Which means that in the end game once players have built up their strength and resources etc, players don’t feel like they are ‘wasting’ actions assigning personnel to districts to get ‘stuff’ they don’t need. Instead, they can focus on battling other players to acquire more power (victory points) while simultaneously denying their competition those potential points. Or at the very least, players have the option available to them to prioritise attacking other players with their personnel rather than utilising districts.

There are many board games which utilise an area control and resource acquisition dynamic, but the majority of these do not use worker placement as the means to get units onto the game board. They will use a dice system or some other kind of movement system to determine how many units can move from A to B and so on. Throughout my gaming experiences, I noticed that there was an underdeveloped area for worker placement games utilising combat mechanics and area control dynamics.

It is my hope that Black Metro breaks some new ground in this underutilised area of gaming and brings something fresh to the table for all to enjoy.

Conclusion

I think that will do for now. I’ll have a couple more questions answered in next month’s article so stay tuned until then!

Mission complete – Overlord Drakow signing out.

Commencing operation . . .

Overview

This year, I decided to do something a little extra for Halloween by hosting a special Halloween party at The Dojo Woking.

Halloween Party

It took a fair bit of setting up but thanks to the help of a few dojo mates, we managed to transform the dojo into something truly nightmarish! Skeletons, pumpkins, tissue ghosts, and skull mugs decorated the dojo. Chess, gargoyles tic-tac-toe, and playing cards lined up the games with Final Fantasy VII soundtrack backing for the music.

Black Metro – The Successor UK Release

I am now accepting orders from UK residents for my novella, Black Metro – The Successor!

To celebrate this milestone and in the spirit of Halloween, I have prepared a short piano piece.

Conclusion

I hope your Halloween was as spooky inspired as mine was!

Mission complete – Overlord Drakow signing out.

Commencing operation . . .

Overview

It’s been a while since I’ve posted something on here. Apologies for that, but I have been busy at work on the Black Metro project. Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend EGX London, which I believe is the biggest video gaming expo in the UK.

EGX London

I meet up with my friends at London Waterloo and we then travel together from there to the Excel centre where EGX is being hosted. One of my friends is in the very early stages of developing a board game of his own so it was nice to share my insights with him, regarding the development process and some of the things I have picked up throughout this two year project.

Unlike the previous expos I went to, this one was all about relaxation and checking out new games. I wasn’t tied down to a stand, but rather free as a bird to do as I wished. We played through a variety of video games on several consoles and also attended a couple of video game talks throughout the day which were of interest.

Commencing operation . . .

Overview

The past month has been incredibly busy for me. I attended not one but two UK Expo events. The first was the UK Martial Arts Show (UKMAS) and the second was the UK Games Expo (UKGE). This post will be a report detailing my experience throughout both of those shows.

UK Martial Arts Show

My Sensei has created a revolutionary new combat helmet for all styles of martial arts to use for training and/or competition fighting.

It was debuted at UKMAS and a team of five of us travelled to the Dome in Doncaster from Surrey.

It was an early start on Saturday morning, where I met two of the team for 6am at The Dojo Woking to set off on our 3.5 hour drive. The journey was smooth however, and we united with the rest of the crew at roughly 9:30.

Throughout the day, there were martial arts performances by various styles from Tae Kwon Do, to Karate, even weapon demos with swords and nunchuku, among others.

Opro were one of our neighbours and they kindly gifted each of us with one of their prestigious mouth guards.

We went to the pub for a meal on Saturday evening, and then hit the town to check out the night scene. Not the sort of thing I would ordinarily get too involved with, but once in a blue moon is okay for me. The area we roamed looked pretty dodgy in all honesty but that’s where having a martial arts background serves as a saving grace and confidence booster.

We hit up a few bars, the third of which was very good, barring the occasional strobe lighting and refusal to serve tap water. It was quite a small shack type place but it was nice and warm and the tunes were decent. Unfortunately, our night out ends rather abruptly when one of our crew gets alcohol poisoning, serving a grim reminder as to why I stay away from it.

We were allowed a lie in on Sunday so after taking a picture of the outside view from my room, we meet up at 10:15 for breakfast, then made our way back to the stand for the final day.

 Our stand did a demonstration on both days, but whereas Saturday was more kickboxing based, Sunday was my time to shine. I performed Koshiki Kusanku kata and then demonstrated some karate / kickboxing strikes against the head guard. After the demo, still feeling fired up having not done any exercise on Saturday, I decided to drop into one of the karate seminars that were taking place throughout the day. It was a great session, starting off with pretty exhaustive stretching, followed by various martial arts bunkai (kata applications).

By the time the seminar finished, the day had pretty much concluded. We packed away, went our separate ways and ended up getting back home for around 8pm.