Island Officials (co-publisher of Pixel Lincoln: The Deckbuilding Game and developers of the upcoming video game, Pixel Lincoln) are hosting a beta playtest session for the video game on Saturday March 2nd in Woodbury, NJ.
If you are in the area, come on out and help shape the game from the most difficult game ever to a slightly less most difficult game ever! I'm kidding. But it's a tough one in the style of Megaman 2 and other controller-throwing classics.
You'll be one of the first to play the beta build and one of the first to take down Booth. I hope to pop in at some point and try it myself. It's been a few weeks since I dared to try and beat the Concert level.
Calling for TESTERS!!!!!! We are testing Pixel Lincoln the video game this Saturday from 12-8pm at our office in Woodbury, NJ (234 S Broad Street). It's not a very big place but we like it so we are taking 6 people per hour. I am looking for volunteers to email us at iogametester@gmail.com with the best 3 one hour segments for you. 12-1pm, 1-2pm, 2-3pm, 3-4pm, 4-5pm, 5-6pm, 6-7pm or 7-8. We will email you back, first come first serve. There may be pizza involved.
I plan to hover around the open gaming room as I didn't register for anything. I'm also bringing Pixel Lincoln along with the new Environment cards (due to special request) and Maximum Throwdown (incase anyone wants to throwdown). Do I need to bring anything else?
Game Salute is there too with some cool Pixel Lincoln promo material, right along side of the Princess Bride! Very cool. Thanks to Not_Jeff for this image:
Will you be there on Saturday? Let's play some games!
Time for a short production update for Pixel Lincoln.
As you may be aware, China is currently closed for business. Well, not the entire country, but the parts that are important to you and me are shut down for the Lunar New Year, commonly called the Chinese New Year, or just CNY. For about 10 days on either side of this floating holiday, the factories close down and all the workers go home to their families. It's like the American Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays all rolled into one extended family reunion.
Just before the holiday started, Panda finished their review of all the files and components for Pixel Lincoln and gave their official blessing. All the die lines are right. All the files are CMYK. All the meeples are marching in lockstep. All the coins are flipping with acceptable randomosity. In short, Panda is ready to start the presses rolling! As soon as the holiday ends, printing will begin in earnest.
What does that mean for you? Printing and assembly will take 45 to 60 days, so around the end of April, Pixel Lincoln should be ready to leave China. The journey to Boston takes about 35 days and Customs and local freight takes about 14 days. So, about 109 days after CNY ends, Pixel Lincoln "should" be in the Game Salute warehouse. Feb 20th + 109 Days = June 9, 2013 (give or take a few days).
Things could always go askew, so that date is subject to change, but it looks like we'll be aiming for a grand release at Origins2013.
Proof Copy Unboxing Video
Here's a quick video Jason shot of the proof copy of Pixel Lincoln...look at all the glorious cardboard!
House Rules Are The Rule
Use this special card to make your own House Rule. No matter how crazy it is...if this card comes out, you and your friends have to live by the rule!
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That's the update. Kind of bummer news in that we're still little ways off from receiving the game, but at the same time it's nice to have a timeline in place. What I wanted to add to this was that I wish we weren't this far behind, and I'm guessing out original date of December was a little too optimistic.
One of the biggest contributing factors in not hitting that original December date was that the game became so much bigger than we planned. When launching a Kickstarter, you setup the pledge levels and once a pledge is received, they are stuck. The original game was 216 cards in a small box. Those cards were all done by the time the Kickstarter ended, but over the course of the Kickstarter we added a lot. Thanks to 800+ backers we were able to hit stretch goal after stretch goal, taking a little card game and making it a full on board game with double sided-boards, awesome components, player tableaus, a freakin' coin, celebrity cards, and so much more. The game is so much better now (mostly thanks to the meeples and board, but everything else makes it even cooler). Just take a look at the video above. There are no cards in the video. Everything that you see in that video was part of a stretch goal. But in adding all of that, the setup time grew quite a bit. Getting meeples molded, revised, painted and mailed to us for review, takes a bit of time. Same thing with other components like the coin.
There was a lot of back and forth on things, but all of it is so worth it. The game has turned out really nice so far, and exceeded all of my expectations every step of the way, except in how long things seem to take. :)
Hope you enjoy the video, and can't wait for you to enjoy the game. If everything makes it out for Origins 2013, I will be there with my whole family (crazy!) to see it's big release. And it's a little bit of a bookend, because Origins 2012 was 1) the place I first met Dan and Game Salute and decided to work on the game together. 2) the place where we first really started promoting Pixel Lincoln: The Deckbuilding Game, and 3) the place where some wonderful playtesters helped make the game what it is today.
And finally the blank card.... House Rule. I don't know if we've shown this off before? I love it and it was the last card added to the game. I'm hoping people enjoy it, and share their own with us. I'm not sure the best way to gather images of everyone's House Rules but I'm assuming we'll keep a collection at PixelLincoln.com based off of images we get on Twitter, FaceBook, BGG, etc. Definitely want to see what everyone comes up with.
