Archive for Cannes Games Festival
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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Divinare
In precisely one month’s time Divinare will be published by Asmodee in France. I’m not privy to exactly when the game will likely reach these shores — or American ones; or the German, Italian or Dutch borders either! — but I don’t think the waiting World will have to wait too long. Tick tock!
The story of Divinare’s development was featured in Episode 1 of Asmodee’s rather swanky new webcast La Tête dans le Pion — a ‘making of’ feature begins at 10:34, and is a lot of fun to watch, even if you don’t understand the très rapide French voiceover. The gameplay will be covered in the forthcoming Episode 2.
If you can’t wait, TricTrac TV recorded a gameplay video at the Cannes Games Festival, which shows off the artwork and components.
LEGup
Next week I’m going to be speaking at the London Education Games Meetup, which is only a mildly terrifying (I’m hardly a practised public speaker!). The meet up is open to all interested parties, so do come along if you fancy it.
I wrote about last November’s excellent meetup in these pages, and following my blog post organizer Kirsten Campbell-Howes graciously asked me to take part in a future session, which, at the time, seemed a suitably distant prospect. However, the weeks have rolled by and this month’s meetup is the ‘board game special’ to which I hope to be able to bring some practical insight into the process of board game design. Fingers crossed!
Playtest
Can I also point your collective browsers to the Rob Harris’s Playtest Games Meetup, which is a monthly get-together for, well, playtesting games, oddly enough.
The group has been meeting for a while (and thoroughly productive and fun it has been, too!) but now that Rob has made the jump to Meetup, it looks like there’ll be plenty of new blood in future get-togethers. One thing you can never have enough of is playtesting, so hopefully the group can continue to be an excellent incubator of new ideas and new talent. And the more the merrier!
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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In which I collate for the interested reader a few recent snippets of information about Divinare. Or rather, in the absence of an interested reader, purely for my own predilection and delight!
For example, over at Asmodee HQ, the company has added the game to their online catalogue, and posted a French publication date of 27th April. I have no definite information on when the game will reach other markets, but I shall keep a weather-eye out for news of its arrival overseas.
Asmodee have also now finished publishing a series of four ‘Making a Game’ articles about the development of my original prototype Oracle Pathway into Divinare. They are, of course, in French, but some translations have also appeared on the company’s Spanish and American websites.
* Chapter 1: From Prototype to Project — French, Spanish, English * Chapter 2: Finding a Theme — French, Spanish, English * Chapter 3: From Vision to Reality — French, Spanish * Chapter 4: The Finishing Touches — French, Spanish
The game was on display at the Nürnberg Toy Fair at the beginning of February, where it was photographed by Daniel Danzer for BoardGameGeek News. His article boasts ‘94 pictures of 36 games’ and Daniel’s photos of Divinare really show off some of the amazing artwork by Benjamin Carré and Asmodee’s visual production work. (Great pics, Daniel!) The game was also snapped for the Milan Spiele website.
Elsewhere in Europe, Asmodee took the game to the recent Cannes Games Festival, where the game was shown off by a demonstrator in full costume, fully equipped with divination props! The teapot, in particular, was a lovely touch. Asmodee reported direct from Cannes, as did Guido for the German Tric Trac site.
And I cannot end without passing on the generous words of Bruno Cathala who, commenting on the French Tric Trac TV site, had this to say about Divinare:
It made me think of a Knizia at his best! - Bruno Cathala
And you can’t really say fairer than that, now can you?
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
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