You know it’s early when you wake up before Google sends you your daily calendar. Today I’m flying down to Las Vegas for the GAMA Trade Show to meet new folks and talk shop. Before I go, I wanted to give an update.

I ended up playing the game with my dad down in San Francisco last weekend. He picked it up fairly quickly, and we had two really close games that were a lot of fun. So many moments were crucial to each game’s outcome – there was great tension built up. And the game’s systems spit out these interesting configurations that feel different, yet consistently toned. Pretty cool.

Since I was satisfied with the game last week, this week was devoted to polishing up the game’s physical components for my upcoming play sessions. I made the game’s first prototype board (rather than printed cardboard squares) through a process of:

Taking art from Deviant Art
Laying it all out in Photoshop
Printing and cutting it at FedEx Office (formerly Kinko’s)
Using 3M 77 Super Adhesive to get the print outs onto a quad-cut board

I learned this process while working on a board game with my coworker back at PopCap. It works pretty well to make a more “finished” looking board. The game will continue to change (it’s not set in stone), but it’s nice to try on the feeling of, “What if this was the final board layout?” I expect to see more changes with aspects of the game other than the board at this point, which is why I was comfortable printing it up.

Anyway, time to fly!