Chapter Three
No matter how hard I try, this budget board game production is going to look like a child’s school project stuffed inside a shoebox.
Because even as I painstakingly Mod Podge the designs I printed on glossy paper at the library onto this cardboard container, I know there’s no hope of this looking like one of the ultra-professional, polished submissions.
I’ll just have to hope my concept is solid enough.
The overall winning board games selected from the individual and team submission categories will get produced by a local publisher, with small cash prizes for the runners-up.
Money would obviously be great, but seeing my own creation produced, looking all bright and shiny like a real board game, would be something else.
I’ve spent all of this Sunday morning glueing the tile pieces onto reinforced cardstock and cutting each out into identical hexagons with a knife when Amelia calls. I nudge my phone screen with the back of my knuckle to answer.
“Did you check in for your flight?” my sister asks.
“Oh, shoot, not yet.” I glance down at the mess of cardboard and glue in front of me. “Can you do it for me? I’m trying to get this all put together so I can submit it early before I leave.”
There’s loud keyboard clacking streamed through my hearing aids as Amelia jumps into the task. “Sure, is your password still the—”
“Yeah, should be that same one. Maybe add an exclamation mark or two on the end.”
I cuss beneath my breath, having started to work too hastily and cut the corner of one piece too short. Setting down the knife, I take stock of all the pieces I still have left to cut out. Is it really worth rushing to finish this before flying out to Amelia?
Then again, I have the momentum now, and the vision for this project in mind.
I’ll only be more stressed if I put this off for later when I’ll end up with less time to finish everything.
It’s just these connecting board pieces—the town square, courthouse, cottages, woods, and lake tiles—that I need to get this crafty with.
The deck portion, with the accusation and enchantment cards I ordered through a photo printing website, should be delivered this afternoon, just in time for me to take all these components to the first playthrough scheduled at Roll Again tonight.
It will be good to make sure the whole game isn’t a mess before I leave it in the submission pile that Bryce has offered to bring over to the expo for us on early registration day.
Admittedly, I’m approaching this the way I did all my homework assignments throughout high school and middle school.
I never understood when my classmates would take time to revise a paper over and over again.
How much better could it really get? There’s such sweet relief in just submitting and being done with something.
The judges are either going to like the concept or they’re not.
Why waste extra time?
“I’m logged in,” Amelia confirms, followed a minute later by, “Okay, you’re all set with the boarding pass on the airline app and all that. Let me know if you need help figuring any of that out too.”
“Thank you.” She’s babying me a little, but since it’s my first time ever flying by myself, I’m happy to follow her lead. “How are finals?”
“Ugh, I need to get back to studying for my next exam, like, now.”
I laugh. “Of course you do. Thanks for squeezing me in.”
“Hey, don’t worry, you’ll be sick of me soon when we’re stuck in the car crossing the country.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
.....
It’s a dreary, rainy evening as I walk over to Roll Again. Peyton wanted to come playtest but had to cover a shift tonight for her cousin who flaked last minute. I’m carrying my game box wrapped in a garbage bag so I don’t jumble all the work by carrying it sideways in my tote.
The cards turned out really nice, but the back image with witchy symbols printed a smidge blurry, which the preview online didn’t indicate at all. The website customer service bot offered a partial refund but not a replacement.
Ah well. That’s the vibe this project has, honestly.
If it wins, then my game will be produced professionally and look as beautiful as I know it can.
I went back and forth on the name but ultimately landed on Craft a Witch, which seems to fit this accusation-style blend of a party game pretty well.
Besides Mafia/Werewolf, a game I could list as a reference title would probably be something like Clue, yet it really does feel too grand to try to compare my little creation to huge existing games that everyone knows and loves.
I guess that’s the only way for people to get a sense of what elements and gameplay to expect.
It does make me a little giddy, though, to imagine people playing this at Roll Again tonight and being like, Wow, this is such a brilliant game.
Even though it’s probably trash.
The reality has to be somewhere in between, right?
The parking lot is more deserted than usual.
Through the chiming door, I step inside and discover the small store is empty.
Except for Declan, who is sitting on a stool behind the counter, wearing green today, hunched over a pile of dice and an even bigger notebook than his usual recordkeeping journal.
I clear my throat, but he doesn’t look up. I walk all the way to the counter, and he still doesn’t seem to notice me. “Hello?” I say.
Declan glances up but doesn’t say anything.
“Isn’t it a test run night?”
“Yep.” He nods slowly, rearranging some of the dice in front of him into different piles, consulting an eight-by-eight-inch laminated chart of numbers, then adding a scoring token to a separate pile.
I’m guessing this is his game creation. After taking his time with these calculations, he looks at me again. “You brought garbage?”
It takes a second for me to realize what he’s referring to, and I quickly free Craft a Witch from its plastic-wrapped confines. “…It’s raining.”
“I could tell by your hair,” Declan says. I’m unsure if it’s supposed to be simply observational or mean.
I tuck a frizzy lock behind my ear, relieved my hearing aids have stayed relatively dry. “Whatever. Is anyone else coming to play?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think any of the other games are ready yet.”
“Oh.” I lower my box a few inches.
“I’ve got mine, though.” Declan gestures to the mess of dice in front of him.
I frown. “Yeah, but mine needs at least four players. Five would be more ideal.”
He taps his fingers on the counter, thinking for a second. “We could each play two turns so it’s like there’s four people.”
“But it’s sort of a mystery kind of game. If you know what another player’s cards are, that takes away the guessing.”
“I understand that; however, it is unfortunately our best option right now. We’re just playing it as a test, not for actual fun, so it doesn’t really matter if we don’t get the full experience, does it?”
“I guess not,” I grumble.
Declan slides his dice into a small nondescript box, folding the laminated chart inside, as well, and leads the way over to the wooden table in the corner, the one that stays up all the time, as opposed to all the extra folding tables that get brought out for things like Rivalry night.
“It’s weird with no one else around.” Sitting across from him, I’m unsure what else to say. We both have our boxes out on the table, but neither of us has a clear desire to be the one to open ourselves up to critique first.
“I’ve been alone in the store all afternoon. But now you’re here.” Declan doesn’t look at me as he says that, staring down at his box of dice.
“Sorry to disturb your peace?”
I seriously don’t know where I stand with this guy. I would guess we’re acquaintances bordering on friends, if only because we’ve frequented the same spot for several years now, but if I were to refer to him outright as a friend, it would feel somewhat misleading.
Now we have to sit here cordially and each learn a brand-new game.
That’s generally the biggest hurdle people have difficulty overcoming when first getting into board games. Learning a new rule book can feel frustrating and overwhelming, because you have to open your mind up to an unfamiliar experience.
But once you’ve figured out a game or two, you get the hang of the medium, and learning more board games becomes slightly easier when you’re more comfortable with dice and cards and tokens and meeples and mechanisms.
I’m guessing most things in life are probably like this, and that once you get over initial hurdles, the journey is relatively smooth on the other side.
Maybe that’s how my hearing loss was. I got sick super young, so it’s not something I remember well, but there must’ve been a bumpy adjustment period, learning to live life without an accustomed sense.
Yet if I have to experience losing a sense again, I doubt it will be an easier experience, so this probably isn’t the best comparison. Just the topic I keep trying to shove to the back of my mind but that always manages to float its way to the surface.
Anyway, nothing and everything makes sense in life, but board game rules can be logical to figure out…if they were designed to be logical in the first place.
Which is to say that Declan’s game, with its twenty-page rule book, makes no sense whatsoever.
“If you roll three matching pairs, you can swap to enter the third tier.” He’s in the midst of explaining, jamming a finger at a column on his laminated chart since consulting the list of figures is somehow integral to this gameplay.
“Which, you know, has its benefits, but is a riskier gamble. Like, for example, it would be a safer bet to keep these in tier two, but over the course of the game, you’re not going to be able to accumulate enough tokens if your opponent is playing a more offensive approach. ”
I reach forward and pick up a single die, my face contorted like I’ve tasted something sour. “What are you calling this game?”
“I’m submitting it with a working title.”
“And that is?”
“Numbers.”
My brows scrunch so far down that my eyes are almost closed. “I can’t possibly have heard that right. You’re calling this Numbers?”
“Yeah, it’s growing on me, actually. Like, what else would I call it?” He smiles to himself as if it’s some sort of silly personal joke.
“I honestly have no idea.”
“Ready to play?” Declan is wide-eyed enthusiastic despite my blatant inability to hide my confusion. “Do the rules make sense?”
“Not at all,” I say matter-of-factly.
“It’s really not that hard,” he insists, scooping up the rest of the thirty-something dice and nodding for me to open my hands to take all of them in addition to the one I’m already holding, which is pretty much the maximum number of dice I could possibly hold at once.
I sit, frozen, with all these dice held out in front of me. “Now what?”
He taps the table as if it’s obvious. “Roll them.”
“I assumed that much. But what’s the deal with the chart?” I see him ready to launch into that full explanation from the top again, so I shake my head and roll all the dice onto the table. “No, just walk me through it as we play.”
“Okay, so now that you’ve rolled, you pick an initial set,” he says, sliding the chart toward me.
I don’t mean to, but I laugh. “Declan, this is ridiculous.”
There’s a glint in his eyes as he smiles at me. When did Declan get taller? We used to sit eye to eye, but these days there’s an uneven feeling across the playing table, as if height gives him an advantage. “It’s really not that hard once you start to memorize the configurations,” he says.
I chuckle again. “You want me to memorize this already? You know, I’m sure this game would have a very loyal niche following, but that’s not likely to include me. The rules are a bit much, don’t you think?”
“I am trying to find a way to cut a few pages from the instructions.”
“A few would probably be helpful, yes. Or put a one-sheet up front that gives a general overview.”
“It would be impossible to convey all the most important steps in a single page,” he says, scratching his forehead.
I reach for the Craft a Witch box and retrieve my one-sheet instruction piece of cardstock. “It’s possible.”
“Hmm.” He reads and rereads over the eight-point instructions. “There are the community tiles. Accusation cards. And then you take turns guessing and swapping, and…then what, exactly?”
“Oh.” Even as I’m pulling the tiles out of the box to show him, I can feel the lack of tension in the player interactions within the rules for Craft a Witch.
“I mean, it’s like a party game, so the excitement is more what the players bring to it when they play.
” Declan nods along in uncertain agreement that makes me scrunch my brow. “But it feels too simple, doesn’t it?”
Declan tilts his head, still staring at the rules card. “I didn’t want to say it like that, but probably? There’s still time to add an element or something that could pull through some higher stakes.”
I sigh and cross my legs on the chair. “The problem is that I don’t want to change anything at this point. Like, I’m turning it in because it’s as good as it’s going to get for now and I have to fly out of town tomorrow, so yeah, I don’t know.”
“I think it’s probably good enough,” Declan tries to reassure me.
“Yeah, and I didn’t mean to be so hard on yours. You clearly put a lot of thought into developing that chart,” I say, unable to resist another giggle as I point to the paper.
Fortunately, Declan smiles. “I’m going to go ahead and turn in mine too. I think we’ve both got strong contenders here.” He reaches a hand across the table, and I cautiously extend mine to shake his. “Good luck.”
I smile. “May the best board game win.”
Although, since we both brought up fair critiques and yet are implementing absolutely none of the suggestions, I’ll be very surprised if either of our games makes it onto the podium.