Wiscon | Game Blog

Good day reader,

this post will be about WisCon, a board game convention southwest in the Baltic sea that became our first experience with users not motivated by prizes and food.

After our second tournament, the group felt pretty strong about the concept, working on translating the manual to Swedish and presenting the game to our mentor, we confirmed our suspicions to be true; our game can survive the tornado that is the board game market on its own.

Just hours before WisCon the group actually applied a feature freeze, thinking the game was good enough to showcase on the convention and the public, we were wrong because of two factors.

#1 Distress

The first factor, the group had worked overtime way to long so when the group arrived, we couldn’t even think. We played our game, after almost six months of being absent from it, letting just others test it and with that factor implied, we grew depressed. How could something that so many praise our game ? why would they even like this ? what are we doing with our lives? oh god we are so going to fail…

It truly felt like a domino maze crashing before you were done, that feeling of regret after working with so much precision and enthusiasm.

But you, the reader know that this story has an happy ending, we didn’t fail, but before we arrive there, lets talk about factor numero dos.

#2 Forgetting about the missing link

When we first started the game, the features we were developing were too far apart, they never truly interacted with what we perceive as the core mechanics that there was room for a total reinvention of the plan. When Lui finally started developing again he noticed these flaws and produced three systems we both agreed upon to have in the game before its publicly ready, Toughness, Assault Bonus and the Ultimate Action System. Before WisCon, we totally forgot about the latter and with the help of:

We simply weren’t prepared of the shock, we did not like our game, and worse of all, we didn’t like it enough to show it to our potential audience.

I’d like to think that both of us was still motivated enough to see how the convention goers perceive it so we placed it neatly near the dining area and tried our best to let them try it.

Enjoyment

The people that join in on these occasions are mostly for deck building games and figurine games we noticed so the concept of having one character with a few option was hard to sell at first. When most has had their fill, people did try out game and personally, I cannot formulate a sentence in the English language that describe the feeling of having gamers play your game all by themselves, enjoying it, playing it over and over again. To bring this into a sentence, I have to bring in some poetry I am afraid:

I finally got that feeling of having to build something and watching people actually seeing people come and it was amazing, brought both of us to tears watching people enjoying the game. Instead of holding unto the board game, we let WisCon goers to play it and to let go was hard but a reward well received one.

There was of course feedback but as we got so little, I shouldn’t bother showing you, the reader any statistics; the rules needs to point out a few important set of rules, the control needs to become better, would be awesome to build scenarios, whats the lore, more classes, more actions. Nothing too fancy for us to solve which made us even happier, we could actually the solutions needed for them to be happy.

To point something out though, not everybody liked it, which we understand, but we did find our audience and boy, it was like finding your long lost child, wanting to help it grow and enjoy life.

Enlightenment

We now understand where we are in terms of the market. Omni is a medium difficult tactical board game, sitting between Four in a Row and Power Grid, an alternative to the game would be Risk or Battleship. But, there is a possibility can transcend its tactical aspect and move unto strategic play, making players plan their routes and attacks more carefully. By adding some systems, we are able to create a more advanced game for people that has grown tired of the current gameplay but that’s for another blog post.

As we see Omni, Omni is a game that is easy to learn with enough depth to have players coming back whether it is a family tradition or a friendly tournament.

To Sum This Cardamom =)

I want to thank WisCon for the pleasant experience we had, we hope to see you people next year and for our readers, here are some pictures:

Lui and and an onlooker looking at testers trying to figure the game.