Tag Archives: game design

Thoughts on Publishing – Phalanx Release Day!

Today, Phalanx has been published! Okay, technically we published it late last night, but we debuted the game today at the Old Drum Days Festival. There, we revealed the board edition, along with the cloth bag edition and wooden board edition. We also had paperback copies of Magic’s Stealing available for sale, had a copy of Battle Decks on hand to show, and Syerra, one of our beta-testers, had a few pieces of her artwork available. We got to demo Phalanx for several of the fair-goers who visited our booth, and we had a lot of fun.

Old Drum Days Festival 2016 - Isaac and Stephanie

Old Drum Days Festival 2016 -The Booth

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And now, Phalanx!

Phalanx - Wooden Edition

Throughout ancient history, the phalanx was one of the most formidable troop formations, famously used in war by the ancient Greeks. In this formation, soldiers interlocked their shields, forming an impenetrable barrier while thrusting long spears at their enemies.


In the game Phalanx, use movement cards to advance your troops, land on your opponent’s pieces to remove them from the game, and get four or more of your own pieces in a row to form your own formidable phalanx, which is immune to frontal assaults.


But be cautious—your opponent can still attack your flanks, or even attack from behind and break your phalanx.

Phalanx is the game that captures the strategic play of chess, the piece-turning excitement of Tetris , and the luck of the draw. With these elements, move your pieces and form your own formidable phalanx to capture your opponent’s city-state!

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Click here to learn more about the game.

Buy the board edition!

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The board game edition is available online ($27.99), the cloth bag edition is available locally in red, cream, and green colors ($25.00), and the wooden edition is also available locally ($75.00).

Isaac and I are debating whether or not to offer the bags and wooden editions online, though we would have to ship them ourselves. We may consider options for doing that (such as through Etsy) in the future.

Anyway, have a look, and I hope you enjoyed this post. 😀

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Thoughts on Publishing – Infinitas Publishing Status Report

Normally I’d have posted this last week, but since I was doing a cover reveal on the designated post day, I decided to do the report today, instead. 🙂

The Shadow War: Not much progress in regards to actually writing this one, however, Isaac and I have discussed the idea of splitting The Shadow War into two books. Seeing as how it’s already at 45,000 words, (with the series meant to be a set of novellas) and it’s only going to get longer, I’m inclined to agree.

So I’ve been doing a lot of plotting for what’s going to be the new book three, and I like where it’s going. As such, there’s a good chance that there will be four books in The Wishing Blade series instead of three. The Shadow War looks to be around 35,000 to 40,000 words, and by splitting it where I think it would have a decent beginning/middle/end, I can effectively say that I’m actually working on the second draft, rather than the first draft (since I had to go back reread what I wrote to continue writing the story).

While I still have a little ways to go before I release this one (as I’m not finished polishing it for beta-readers yet), it’s a whole lot closer than I thought it was.

The Multiverse Chronicles: Trials of Blood and Steel: There are currently six episodes out so far (Read them here), and more on the way. Missed last week’s episode due to lack of time to properly edit said episode (and due to a character’s dialect being difficult that may or may not sound Scottish), but if all goes well, the seventh episode will be released this Friday.

The season as a whole is a work in progress, and it’s entirely possible that we’ll make small edits to the season once it’s complete and before we release the ebook and print editions. So let us know what you think as you read the episodes. 🙂

Phalanx: If you’ve been following our Facebook page, or if you watched my latest video blog post, you may have seen us talking about our upcoming Phalanx game. This is a project Isaac’s been working on (I’ve mostly just helped with touch-ups). We still need to proofread the rules and have someone do a blind test from the rules (rather than us showing them how to play), but we’ve got the beta version of the game on order. This should be available by early April, since we’re hoping to have it available for sale at a local event during that time. More info coming soon!

Battle Decks: Trials of Blood and Steel: The starter game is available now, and Isaac has been working on creating rules and card ideas for a deck-building expansion. We’ve been meeting with our group of beta-testers to see how the new cards play and which ones we’re going to want to release in the first expansion. We’re still in the early stages of the deck-building part of the game, however.

SBibb’s Photographic Illustration: Majority of the book covers I’ve been working on are now complete. In the meantime, I’m working through several formatting projects. Or, I will be as soon as I finish writing this post…

Beta-Reading: Put on hold temporarily so author could make changes. We should be getting the new chapters to beta-read shortly.

Distant Horizon:  Finally finished working on changes to a scene later in the story. I need to proofread and polish that scene, check it with Isaac to make sure he likes the finished version, and then I’m ready to hand this off to a proofreader. I’ve also got to do a few more things for the basic ebook formatting, but the majority of this is already complete.

Video Blogging: I just released the audio reading of Magic’s Stealing: Chapter Fourteen on Monday, and I plan to continue reading Magic’s Stealing, one chapter a week, until the story is complete.

In other news, we just finished our partnership tax forms! All we have to do is give them one more look-over and then mail them in. Woot! 😀

That’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂

 

 

 

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Thoughts on Publishing – Infinitas Publishing Status Report

First day of the new year, and time for a status report. 🙂

Magic’s Stealing: I’m currently working on promoting Magic’s Stealing. Primarily, I’ve been looking to get this book into local bookstores (Three nearby stores currently carry copies of the book. Woot!) The next step is holding book signings to raise awareness of the book’s existence. I’m also planning to hold a Goodreads give-away, so look for that to come soon. Isaac and I intend to get a P.O. Box so we don’t have to use our personal address when sending out copies. We may also start a newsletter once we get the P.O. Box address (since newsletters require a mailing address be included).

The Shadow War: While I haven’t made much progress writing the second book of The Wishing Blade series, I have gotten quite a bit plotted for both the second and third books. My hope is to finish editing what I already have written, then write both the end of book two, and the parts I already know of book three (or at least create a detailed outline).

The Multiverse Chronicles: Trials of Blood and Steel: Our beta-reader has given us comments on the first six episodes, so I’m ready to make the polishing edits to those episodes. I’m almost finished editing episode seven. Once we release Battle Decks, we’ll also start releasing this series. In the meantime, I’m trying to get ahead with writing these episodes. Isaac and I have discussed releasing each episodes on Friday (on their own separate blog page), thus taking place of these Friday blog posts. The goal is to give me more time to get an episode edited each week.

Battle Decks: Trials of Blood and Steel: Isaac and I recently reviewed our proof copies of the basic and deluxe editions. We’ve sent a few questions to The Game Crafter regarding printing, and in the meantime, we’ve got a few ideas about improving the rules document for clarity. We also decided to go ahead and make the rules document a booklet after shuffling through six separate pages, which was proving to be a real pain. It may still be a while before we release the game for sale, but we want this game to be polished as possible. Also, if all goes well, we’re hoping to demo this game at a new, local convention in February. More on that later, once we’ve solidified the details. 😉

SBibb’s Photographic Illustration: I’m plugging away on covers as usual, and I’m going to start writing the due dates in a planner to keep track of when I need to start each proof to get them completed by the preferred time.

Beta-reading: I have a book I’m beta-reading for a friend in the writing group I attend, and this is going much slower than I expected (partially due to all the recent holiday activity). On the bright side, I’m taking a few vacation days in January, so that should give me more time to read and make notes, and I plan to include reading time in my planner as well.

Distant Horizon: At this point, Isaac and I feel that the basic story is complete. It’s been through many different beta-readers, and we’ve let it sit while working on other projects. I’ve recently started working on basic formatting for this particular story, with the intent of looking for typos and minor grammatical issues. We don’t expect to release Distant Horizon just yet, and we don’t currently have a projected release date. However I want to start working on proofing, since I know that takes awhile. Depending on how well that goes, the release date may be sooner or later. The front cover is complete, however, with only a few minor changes expected.

Video Blogging: Back in October, Isaac and I started doing video blogs with readings from my stories. If you haven’t already, check out the Infinitas Publishing Youtube channel to listen to chapters of Magic’s Stealing and various short stories.

That’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂

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Sneak Peek – Battle Decks

If you’ve been reading my blog lately, you may know that my husband, Isaac, and I are starting a publishing company for our stories and games. Well, I’ve talked a lot about the stories, but today I’m going to give you a peek into one of our games-in-progress: Battle Decks.

I’m not going to give a whole lot of detail on the game just yet, but I will say this: it’s a fantasy pseudo-steampunk table-top card game, where there are two battling factions and your goal is to take out the opponent’s hero cards. We’re considering the catch-phrase of “Dragons, dinosaurs, and dirigibles, oh my!”SBibb - Battle Decks Sneek Peek

Anyway, at this point in time, we have the basic mechanics of the game, stand-in cards, and we’ve played it on and off between ourselves over the past couple years. Currently, we’re in the process of creating the art for the actual cards. For the typical card, Isaac creates the base image with pencil on sketchbook paper. Then I go in and add the details, smoothing out the line art in the process. We then scan the page onto the computer. I retouch the pencil art in Photoshop CS6. Isaac does the basic coloring. Then I do the final touch-ups to the coloring and shade the image. That completes the basic art, up to the point we add them to their actual cards.

We’ve already ordered one proof of the first few cards, and there are tweaks to be made for readability. But it’s coming along, slowly but surely. There might be a set of stories planned around this game, too…

Your sneak peek is one character from each faction. 🙂

SBibb - Battle Decks Sneek Peek

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