News

Hey, folks!

July has been a month busy with pitches and playtesting, and I’ve received an offer on a game! 

Submit-a-thon 2024

Midway through June, I gave myself a challenge: submit 1 game every workday for a month. I didn’t miss a day, sending 22 submissions to 18 publishers. I had 7 video pitch meetings, which feels like a solid rate for how many submissions I sent. The Cardboard Edison Compendium was instrumental in this challenge, and it was encouraging to learn just how many publishers take online pitches rather than exclusively in-person pitches. 

The Resource Game  

After pitching The Resource Game (working title) to a handful of companies, I have an offer and it’s close to finding a home. I can’t share any details yet, but I am so excited to bring my 4th game into the world with a talented publisher.

Coin-pusher Guessing Game

I pitched this one a few times this past month and had promising responses. Hopefully I’ll have more news to share in the near future. 

Hotel Greene

Hotel Greene, which I started in 2020, has an interested publisher. I’d love this little card game to find a home soon!

In-progress designs

Though I mostly focused on pitching this month, I did make progress on two major projects. 

Memento Mori

After feedback from an interested publisher, I’m in the fine-tuning stage and have a streamlined system that gets to the core of the game quickly—digging graves! This one is near finished, though I still need to test it at higher player counts.

Tiny Towns civilization game

Josh Wood and I worked on this one a good deal this month and have the core system working. Now we need to step back and think about what else we want to include in this sandbox-style cozy civ game. This is purely a pet project for now, but it’s going well and I could see finishing this design by the end of the year.

Hike (also codesigned with Josh Wood) and Untitled roll-and-move are on the backburner for now but I hope to return to them in August.

Thanks for reading as always, and happy gaming!

~ Pete

Published July 30th, 2024

Hi, folks,

Happy Summer Solstice! 2024 won’t see many game releases from me, but I have some exciting projects in the works. 

Tiny Towns: Villagers wrapped up its Kickstarter Campaign (as a part of AEG’s Expansion Extravaganza) last year and most copies have reached backers by now. I don’t know whether it will have a retail release, but you can buy it on AEG’s web store now. I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive responses from Tiny Towns fans and am feeling fortunate to have a chance to return to this world. This is the biggest expansion yet—I hope you get a chance to try it!

Fit to Print hit stores last fall. If you missed the Kickstarter or can’t find it locally, you can snag it along with Flatout’s amazing lineup of new games on their 2024 Releases page on Gamefound or at your local game store. Just last week, I learned that Fit to Print won a Major Fun award! I grew up playing games with this award on the box, so I was blown away by this news. 

The Guild of Merchant Explorers, a game I wrote the rulebook for, was recently nominated for the 2024 Kennerspiel des Jahres, a major board game award for the best “expert” board game of the year. This is the first time any project I’ve worked on has been nominated, which is very exciting. Hoping the designers, Matthew Dunstan and Brett J. Gilbert, take the win!

In non-boardgame news, some of you might remember a word game I designed back in 2020 called Winding Words. I’ve been talking with a company about creating a print version for newspaper syndication, and while things are moving along I can’t say much just yet. I’ll update you all here when I have more news.

Now, let’s dig in to designs I have on the horizon. 

In-progress designs

Right now, I’m actively pitching six games: Cozy Cafes, Antiques, Tumbling Topics, The Resource Game, Artistes, and Hotel Greene. I’ve had a few pitch meetings recently and have more in the near future, so I might have a deal to talk about soon. 

Here are my major designs-in progress, which doesn’t include some smaller ideas I’m tinkering with: 

Memento Mori - A macabre puzzle game about filling your 14th-century English graveyard with tombstones. The only problem is that your customers are alive, so you must wait for them to perish of various medieval causes. This one is just about wrapped up, which probably means I have 6 months to go.

Hike - A solo narrative game I’m co-designing with Josh Wood, who came up with the initial idea. This one has a lot of moving parts and plotlines, resulting in a Rogue-like experience that makes you feel like you’re exploring and learning about some most unusual places.

Unnamed roll-and-move - This one was a bit of a surprise. I didn’t expect it to survive the first playtest, but it was a hit, and now I’m working on this simple roll-and-move game where players place spaces that give different effects. It has a lot of friendly player interaction, as well as some unfriendly interaction as you set traps that hopefully ensnare your opponents but not yourself.

After these games wrap up, I’ll probably revisit Worldbuilders, and I have the start of a Tiny Towns civilization game brewing… 

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming! 

~ Pete

Published June 24th, 2024