No Stretching for Hocus

Grant Rodiek | May 13, 2015
and Joshua Buergel A large part of our efforts the past year, beyond designing and developing Hocus, have been spent figuring out how we want to conduct business. For our first game, we’ve decided to use Kickstarter.
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An Interview on Salvation Road

Grant Rodiek | May 12, 2015
Editor's Note: I recently watched both Mad Max and the sequel, The Road Warrior, for a few reasons. For one, my favorite comedian, Patton Oswalt, references it all the time. Secondly, I saw the trailer for Fury Road.
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Interview with Tiffany Turrill

Grant Rodiek | May 11, 2015
The 1st Leshy Sketch Tiffany Turrill is the illustrator for Hocus. We've only worked with her for a few months, but she is so essential to the quality of the game, the experience, and our happiness that we wanted to sit down to talk to her about her process, her work, and Texan fast food chains.
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The Joy of Disappointment

Grant Rodiek | May 08, 2015
The images in this post were taken by me using my copy of Merchants and Marauders and the Sails of Glory expansion. Last night we played Merchants and Marauders for the fourth time. We tossed in the new Sails of Glory expansion, or at least about half of the modules from this.
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Balancing the Balance

Grant Rodiek | April 30, 2015
Balancing a game is arguably the most difficult and time consuming phase of design. When refining the mechanisms and trying to reach an Alpha and Beta state, you can grab new testers, test once, and gather the data you need to progress.
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A Low Chance of Success

Grant Rodiek | April 24, 2015
Earlier this week, I played Columbia Games' Napoleon: The Waterloo Campaign, 1815. This is an old, classic war game design, with blocks to allow for fog of war, rather elegant mechanisms with a few key exceptions, and lots of dice rolling.
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Sayest Thou Poker?

Grant Rodiek | April 14, 2015
I have some thoughts on branding, naming, and pitching your game to others that have been culminating for some time. Though this is a specific case study, I think what I've learned here will apply to your project as well, so give this a read and tell me what you think.
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State of Hyperbole Games 2014

Grant Rodiek | April 09, 2015
Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games writes an annual report discussing his company, their year's successes and failures, and the next year's plans. I love reading it and I am going to copy him. I think it might be useful to new folks interested in starting a business.
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Design Muscle Memory

Grant Rodiek | March 24, 2015
This post sponsored by the Hocus Poker PNP! Download it from BGG (and give us a thumb!) or read the rules. Design should become easier the more you do it. No, conceiving a unique mechanism is never easy.
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Some Start Up Thoughts

Grant Rodiek | March 20, 2015
At the suggestion of most excellent design peer Brett Myers, and in light of the publisher of Farmageddon declaring bankruptcy, I wanted to write about business today. In the past, I've written some basic Kickstarter Advice, as well as some basic advice on game development and production.
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