Designing the game
Cannonball Colony was one of the first ideas that came to me when I decided to jump into hobby game design in 2006. It began simply with an idea for a modular board. The idea was an island made up of square tiles, on which was a grid of different terrain types. The first theme that came to mind was pirates hunting down treasure on the island, but this didn't last long. Pirates seem much more home at sea - wandering around an island and building stuff just didn't seem right! As the game developed towards the road and fort building mechanics of the final game, the colonisation theme jumped right out at me. Most of the game was developed with this theme firmly in mind.
If you'd like to read more about my design process, check out my Designer's Notes for the game at:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/318888
Prototyping
Once I had a basic ruleset, I set to work on the first prototype. The very first version was pretty flimsy. The board tiles foamboard, and everything else was just thick paper. This allowed me to play the game through, but was too annoying to use for proper playtests, so it didn't survive long.
The nest prototype was more successful. I printed some basic tile graphics out on inkjet labels and stuck these onto thick cardboard. I then cut out each island tile, and there was my board. The road and fort tiles were much more of a pain to cut out, but I made them in the same way. My first ships and cannons were not very ambitious, and were simply cardboard too.
From very early on I knew I wanted the mountain pieces to be 3D. I thought this would look cool when the game was set up, but my main concern was that spatially, it is so much easier to see where your cannons can fire if the mountains are actually raised from the rest of the board. So I made some small mountain pieces out of FIMO clay. Here's how the this prototype ended up looking:
Early playtesting
I set to work playtesting, and played a few times with different groups of gamer friends. The game worked, and I thought the flow of play turn to turn went nicely. However, I knew there was something a bit off structurally with the game as a whole. This was especially highlighted when one early game clocked in at well over two hours!
Putting it on the shelf
While all this was going on, I had been pricing the production of the game. At that stage the game required 16 different board tiles, 100 road tiles, as well as all the other pieces which just added up to a ridiculous amount. I was resigned to the fact that if the game was ever to be produced, it would have to be by an established publisher. My plan was always to try my hand at self-publication to begin with, and this game just didn't fit the bill for a first effort. Plus, I knew more work was required to finish off the game design anyway, so Cannonball Colony ended up on the shelf.
I decided to turn my attention to games that would be simpler to produce, and so I spent 2007 making Archaeology and then Archaeology: The Card Game.
Finishing off the game
In early 2008 I began thinking about my next game. My intention was to do another card game, to keep production simple. Archaeology: The Card Game had worked out pretty well, and I really enjoyed the design challenge of keeping everything to a deck of cards.
Still, one day I got out the old Cannonball Colony prototype and played around with it. Perhaps it was taking a year off the project that did it, but suddenly I found my self with plenty of ideas for fixing up the game’s structural issues. It became clear to me that the problem was the scoring mechanism. From quite early on, the players scored 1 victory point for every complete round of the game in which they had the most forts built on the island. This created great tension because each player was always trying to keep up with the leader turn to turn. However, this was also what was dragging the game down. It tied players too much to the actions of others, and didn't give them any freedom on the board. It meant games could become bogged down, low scoring affairs. But I also knew the game needed this feeling of a constant race to be fun! I wrote down a list of other scoring mechanisms that might be able to provide this same level of tension. I tested a few out in solo play, and found the solution: players only gain access to their cannons and blockades when they build a certain number of forts. So there is a race element, but it is not directly tied to acquiring victory points.
And so for a few months I did more playtesting, and got the game to a point where I felt it was a tight system. But there was still the problem of production costs.
Finding cheaper production methods
Three breakthroughs in my thinking about production made me realise I could actually get this game made. The first was finding out that http://www.plasticsforgames.co.uk stocked square plastic tiles. They were much cheaper than wooden tiles, or getting cardboard die-cut. Conveniently this same site sold ships, and pyramid pieces (mountains!) which would work perfectly with the road tiles. The size of these pieces meant the game would be a bit smaller than I'd imagined, but this was a small price to pay (and in the end solved my box problem too, as you'll see below!).
It also dawned on me that there was no reason for the board to be made up of 16 pieces. 4 would do the job just as well. If I removed the coastline from the board design (which had been pretty redundant in the prototypes anyway), then each of these 4 tiles could be placed in any orientation on the table. This effectively allowed for as many random set-ups as using the 16 tiles anyway. Getting 4 tiles cut up per game is far less daunting than 16, so I felt far better about this side of production too.
The final breakthrough had to do with the game box. After making my own rigid boxes for Archaeology, I had vowed never again! Tuckboxes for card games are of course much easier. I discovered a small packaging company here in Australia that happened to make really nice white rigid boxes up to a size of 15cm x 15cm x 3.3cm. I had discovered these when hunting for boxes before, but always thought they were way to small to work for a boardgame. However, I realised that because of the smaller pieces I was using, my board tiles would be around 12cm square, and everything could fit snuggly into these boxes.
I considered gluing artwork on to each box, but in the end opted for simple tuck-box style slipcases for each game.
I decided to make 100 copies of Cannonball Colony. This made sense when I looked at the pricing of all my components, but was also basically my limit in terms of how much cash I had. I figured that 100 copies was enough to get the game "out there" for people to play, and that was my main concern.
Artwork
Realising the game was actually going ahead, I got to work on the art. I didn't have enough money left to hire a pro artist, plus I needed to act quickly as I wanted to launch the game at the Australian Games Expo in June. So I decided to again do the art myself. I wish I had ended up with more time to re-work a few aspects of the visual design, and I would have loved to have commissioned painted art for the board. But, I feel the art, while simple, is functional for the game.
Rules
I took the rules through a few drafts and posted them here on BGG for proof-reading. I got some amazingly generous responses from people, who really took the time to carefully go through everything and offer suggestions. I only had time for one totally blind rules test, using some college friends, but this also picked up a few wording issues.
A mountain of plastic
When the plastic pieces arrived from the UK, my floorspace was cut in half, there were bags of pieces everywhere! I had great service from Plastics For Games, but had no idea that Australian customs charges all sorts of crazy taxes for any incoming goods valued over $1000. I think my order was thirty dollars over, and this ended up costing me an extra $250. Learn from my mistake and find out about import taxes!
I spent a couple of days sorting the pieces into baggies and compiling each game. This is a very repetitive and mechanical task, but if you put music on, it is amazing how quickly the time can pass. It is like you go into a trance or something...
Debuting the game
I took the game to my booth at the Australian Games Expo where I demoed and sold it. Cannonball Colony is a much harder game to demo than my previous games I soon realised. This is basically because it is longer to play, and also harder to teach. Archaeology: The Card Game ended up being the bigger focus of my booth. But still, I was happy with the response the game got.
Unlike Archaeology: The Card Game, I felt this print run was small enough to just sell through my website: http://www.adventurelandgames.com
It has been selling well so far, and it really exciting to post copies off to countries all around the world!
The launch party
After the dust had settled from getting the game made and taking it to the expo, I wanted to run a more casual launch of the game for friends. It was a great night! My friend Kirsty baked another awesome cake, and I put on a tournament of the game.
Check out Scott's Geeklist about the night:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/32678/item/688003
And also Simon's session report:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/323083
What next
I am happy that copies of Cannonball Colony are out there around the world, and that the game has found a small audience. I would love to see it published fully one day. It is currently being looked at by a couple of publishers, so we will see.
I am also planning an online version of the game, as I think it would work really well in this format. This would also allow Cannonball Colony to "live on" to a degree if the boardgame itself does sink into obscurity! Another great BGGer, Gregory, made an excellent VASSAL module of the game, whivh is a great starting point in this direction.
Thanks for reading!
I'd be happy to answer any questions that anyone may have too.
Posted Thu Sep 4,2008 02:02 pm
