Can you 'compute' the game?

During and after the amazing Spiel '11 Essen experience, many people came to us with one obsessive question: since there's no randomness in the game, can you 'compute' your way to victory?

The answer we always gave was no. For some that was enough, for others, well, they needed to hear the reason.

The simplest and funniest was "can you compute chess?" and if you're no Kasparov, the answer is most likely no. Even though Warriors & Traders is not and never aimed to be as complex as chess, it is still complex enough so that there's no guaranteed winning technique that one can apply in all games and have a 90% probability to win.

Through play testing, and I am taking about more than 200 tests, we balanced the game in such a way that no matter what path you're choosing, you have a chance to win. More than that, we've seen that no one was getting even close of determining the result of the game even two turn before someone actually won.

To conclude, for the skeptics the complete lack of random is a reason to believe that they can actually compute their way into victory no matter what... and this would be true if they played alone. But the truth is that any opponent can and will come up with surprises. So, just like in life, the acts of other create enough randomness so that the game remains non-deterministic and... fun!

Essen - what an experience!

It's hard to find my words after what happened in Essen. 

We're newcomers to the world of board games publishers and the attention we got was overwhelming... in a good way! 

So I will start by thanking all those who came by, asked questions, played, bought one copy, brought some friends or gave us vote on BGG. Thanks to all of you, we made the most out of this event and now we're ready to get the games to all of those who did not get a chance to come by and visit us.

We were planning to have 2, maximum 3 gaming sessions per day and yet, even on Sunday, we managed 5 and still had to refuse a lot of people who wanted to play Warriors & Traders with us. We promise that next year we'll come with a bigger stand and more play-tables for gaming enthusiasts. 

We ended up the fair with no games in our stand and this another reason to be proud and thankful to all of the people who saw the potential of Warriors & Traders and gave or will give it a try.

There are so many things that happened that I wish there were an infinite amount of time and space on the blog to talk about all of them. I'll just say that now we're doing our best to get the game anywhere where there are board game fans so more people will play and enjoy!

Once again, thank you all...

Essen Day 2: It's Alive!

Hi everybody!

The second day of Spiel'11 is over. It was a busy day. A lot of people from all over the world came to our stand. We managed to hold 3 demo games and for tomorrow we alreday planned 2 more.

So far, we are getting a lot of attention and positive feedback and it feels great. So thanks everybody who supported the development of this game during the last 1.5 years. We appreciate it. Also thanks everybody who is showing an interest during this days. We also appreciate it and you are always welcome at our stand in Spiel'11. Special thanks to those who are buying our games - hope you have a great time playing and be sure to let us know what you think!

Lots of things happened today:

• we got in the Boardgamegeek GeekBuzz - it's a top of new games at Spiel'11. We are curently ranked #7 in the medium traffic category and for some time during the day we were ranked #1 overall. For tomorrow, we hope to get into the high traffic, so keep our fingers crossed.
• we got a short review on facebook, by brettspiele-report
• we have the first tweets about W&T
• during the demo games, I saw a strategy that we never thought about during development (and it was effective). I am happy for this, because one of our goals as developers was to create not a game that is played in a predefined way but rather one that is rich and consistent enough that players are allowed creativity in using the rules

A small change in the blog today - I posted most of the pictures on facebook and will only link them here: day 2 pictures. One reason: it is faster to upload on facebook. Second reason: I am experimenting with different ways to provide updates in order to find the most convenient one for the people receiving the information. Feedback is always appreciated.

Finally, just one picture from the demo games today:

Cheers!

Essen Day 1

The stand is prepared. The games are ordered neatly in their boxes on our shelves. We are ready ...

... set ...

9:45 - a large crowd is waiting outside the gate to the exhibition centre. 10:00 - the gates open and the Spiel '11 begins

we even got a demo game going in our booth ..

an last but not least, we sold some games

that's it for today.


Cheers!

Essen Day 0: The Booth

Yesterday we got up early and packed the car ...

... we started towards Essen. It was the last stand preparation day, before the opening on Thursday. We had some rain in the morning, but soon it stopped and we got to the hotel we are staying at, close to Essen ...

Then we went to the exhibition hall and started building IKEA shelves and tables. The electrical screwdriver helped a lot.

Here's our stand near the end of the day:

We did a bit more work after the picture was taken but I dont't have the final picture because we had to live in a hurry as the exhibition grounds were closing. I'll show you tomorrow how it got to look in the end.

Cheers,