Category Archives: Matt Worden Games

FreeStarter Game Design Community Group Hug Giveway

  May 20, 2013 - 10:00 am | Dicey Curves, Fellow Designers, FreeStarter, Jump Gate, Others' Works, Special Events
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FreeStarter Game Design Community Group Hug Giveway

I’ve been chatting over past couple weeks with a couple of game design friends — namely Grant Rodiek from Hyperbole Games, AJ Porfirio from Van Ryder Games and Chevee Dodd – about how we all met through the online game design community, and that most of  us already have almost 1000 Twitter followers (Chevee is … special ;) ).

FreeStarter GroupWe wanted to have some sort of event to celebrate this and share some of our games with those who are following us on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

So, we came up with the overly silly “FreeStarter Game Design Community Group Hug Giveway,” where each of us are giving away 2 games for two different drawings:

The Serious Gamer Drawing … The entrant who wins this will receive free copies of:

The Casual Gamer Drawing … The entrant who wins this will receive free copies of:

Entering the contest is easy. Follow these 2 Steps!

1. Follow each of us on Twitter:

2. Email Grant at grant@hyperbolegames.com. Tell him which drawing you wish to enter: Serious or Casual.

The drawing for both sets of games will take place on the morning of Friday, May 22nd.  So , make sure you are registered before then!

If you are anti-Twitter for some reason, we can make that work out as well … we each have a website/mailing list and/or Facebook page as well as our Twitter accounts — we just want to spread the online connectedness love in one way or another.  So, if the Twitter thing seriously doesn’t work for you, send me a note and we’ll find a way to go you in.

FINALLY … for those of you that DO follow us on Twitter, you’ll be seeing links to discussions and other silliness as the week unfolds … please join in and help make things even merrier. :)

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Watch for “FreeStarter” this Coming Monday …

  May 17, 2013 - 2:47 pm | Fellow Designers, FreeStarter, Matt Worden Games, Others' Works, Special Events
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Matt Worden Games Logo - 2013Do you like to get free things? Do you like to participate (at least vicariously) in silliness on the way to the free things? Do you have a soft spot for folks who try really hard to be creative and witty (but the jury is still out on each of those points, of course)?

Then follow me on Twitter and see what happens on Monday! #freestarter

http://twitter.com/MattWordenGames

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TGC’s Shrinkwrapping Crowd Funding Project

  March 12, 2013 - 10:32 pm | Fellow Designers, Special Events, TheGameCrafter.com
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TGC's IndieGoGo ProjectTheGameCrafter.com, which is the site I use for publish-on-demand for most of my games, has their own crowd-funding project on IndieGoGo to help them add shrinkwrapping to their offerings.

I was all set to write-up a pitch for you all to take a look at the project and offer your support if you could … but then Noble Valerian already did an excellent job of just that.

So … please read Noble’s description of the project, and why it should be funded: http://www.noblevalerian.com/1/post/2013/03/the-game-crafter-indiegogo-campaign.html

Thanks for considering it! :)

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For Goods and Honor: First (very) Rough Draft of Rules

  March 6, 2013 - 9:54 am | Conventions, For Goods and Honor
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Bits from "For Goods and Honor"

In order to be ready for Protospiel-Milwaukee, I wanted to have written rules for each of the designs I will be bringing along to test.

"For Goods and Honor" ... Folks in a Bag

Folks in a Bag

This morning, I was able to get a first, rough (rough!), text-only draft of the rules for For Goods and Honor ready.  Not sure I’ll do much more with these until after this weekend testing … they could really use some pretty pictures and some game play examples in them.  But they should be good enough to let us play the game and see how things work.

If you’re curious, you can download and read the PDF: For Goods and Honor (18)

Thanks for checking it out, and feel free to send me any feedback or questions you might have.

And, just for candy, here are a couple more pictures:

"For Goods and Honor" ... Setup for a Game  "For Goods and Honor" ... Player Mats in Play

 

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The Plates, They are a-Spinning: What I am Working on – Jan 2013

  January 16, 2013 - 10:36 pm | Castle Danger, Castle Danger 2013 Computer Game, King of Danger, Magistrate, Matt Worden Games, SharkBait, Talking Shop
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SharkBait Token Board Setup ExampleWhen it comes to creative projects, I always seem to have a ton of plates spinning at the same time … and just when I have a good grove going on something, a new idea pops into my head.

And that always leads to the struggle of how much attention to pay to the new thing. A lot of times I want to just jot down some of the ideas, maybe sketch out a few things physically, and then put toward the back of the line so that I can keep working on the things in the front.  And, sometimes, those new things cut to the front of the line and take up more of my time than is probably healthy.

With that said, I’ve always found my creative process to be rather feast and famine … so, when the surf’s up, it’s time to ride it and see how much stuff I can get done.  So, here’s my current list of things at the front of the line … (more…)

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Website Update #2: Over the Hump

  January 7, 2013 - 6:38 am | Matt Worden Games
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Matt Worden Games Logo - 2013Almost there. :)

I was able to get the image map (mentioned in my previous post) working … it was a little tedious, but not terribly tricky once I figured out how the header information is handled in WordPress.

Now, I need to clean-up the existing game pages, add in a couple new ones, and then add information on my current projects.

Had great help over the weekend from Chevee Dodd, who turns out to be something of a CSS guy (he coded his own website). He helped me to tweak borders and colors and such to make the site all come together.

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Website Update: Starting to Come Together

  January 5, 2013 - 1:17 pm | Matt Worden Games
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Matt Worden Games Logo - 2013

Well, things are progressing with the website update.  I’ve done most of the big things — installing a new theme, changing major colors, background images, etc.  I’ve also done most of the medium and smaller things … although I’m not locked-in on the font shape/size/colors yet. So, I’ll continue to tweak those.

One thing that seems to be trickier to do with WordPress is to setup an image map for your header image.  (For those that aren’t website techies, an “image map” is setting up different areas of a picture as clickable links … such as separate links for each of the “nice folks saying nice things” area in the upper-right.)  For now, I’m putting up a header full of place-holders and then I’ll work out the tweaks to make it happen.

I also plan to go through the site page-by-page and redo each of them to make them better looking and easier to read. And I’ll reorganize them a bit to have the menus make a bit more sense.

As you might get from the way the header is starting to shape up, I will have areas across the top for both accolades and published games.  My current in-process projects will be shown in the right column.  This should make everything cleaner and tidier.

If you happen to see anything that is missing, is hard to read, or is otherwise broken, please send me an e-mail.

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Happy New Year … Expect a New Look

  January 3, 2013 - 9:25 am | Matt Worden Games, TheGameCrafter.com
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Matt Worden Games Logo

I will be updating this website to a new look-and-feel over the next few days … I haven’t done a full site revamp before with WordPress, so I’m not sure how long this will take.

There will likely be things out-of-place, or looking oddly, or downright broken while things are in-process … please be patient with me.

My focus in 2013 will be to ramp-up the sales for the items I am self-publishing (mainly through TheGameCrafter.com) and to land a number of my current designs with traditional publishers.  I also expect to improve on my 2012 focus of getting to cons and designer get-togethers.

In the meantime, you can still find me on Facebook and Twitter if you need more real-time updates.

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Current Happenings

  November 4, 2012 - 9:22 pm | Board Games, Jump Gate, Magistrate, Special Events
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Matt Worden Games LogoWhile this is normally a pretty slow time of year for me (things really crank from Con of the North time in February through GenCon in August, andthen sort of change into a slow-mo through Fall and early Winter) I have been up to a few things.

I’ve been making a few updates on Facebook and Twitter — so, that’s a good place to get daily info on what’s up.

First, I’d like to direct your attention to a copy of Jump Gate that I have entered into the 2012 Jack Vasel Memorial Fund Auction at BoardGameGeek.  I will sign it and write an inside-the-cover message (if the winning bidder wants that sort of thing) … and I’ll ship it to anywhere in the world.  So, if you’re still looking to get a copy of the game and/or want to back a great gamer-focused charity, then put a bid on the thing.

Second, I’m happy to see that FatherGeek has had a chance to play Dicey Curves with the DANGER! Expansion, and really seems to like it, as do his little geeks.  I’d love to play a game with that crew — it has to be a blast!

As for games I am working on right now … lately, my time has been spent working out a simple dice game that recently popped into my brain.  I’ve put up a generic set of rules here: Simple Dice Game (Code Name: SB) (150)

MagistrateI do have a theme planned for the game, along with a specific target market … so, my next steps will be to get a nice prototype put together and get it tested by some folks.

Finally, I am continue to edge Magistrate forward. All of the post-GenCon changes have been worked in, I’ve figured out what would all go into the updated prototype, and I’m slogging my way through an updated rulebook … and, if you know how I work, you know that the rules-writing thing is a bit of a hang-up for me.  So, wish me luck and send me encouragement. ;)

 

 

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Game Stores & Distributors: Half Off Wholesale on Final Sets of Jump Gate (2nd ed.)

  September 26, 2012 - 11:12 am | Jump Gate, Special Events
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Box top artwork for 2nd Edition of "Jump Gate"

It’s time to reclaim my basement!

I have the last sets of Jump Gate (Second Edition) taking up space in my basement … and it’s time for me to get rid of them and convert that space over to something more family-friendly and useful.

To do that, I would like to sell as many of them as quickly as possible.  So, that means I’m quite flexible and willing to negotiate if someone has a great (and reasonable) offer to take a bunch of them off my hands.

To kick it all off, I will be offering them all for half-off the original wholesale pricing for stores (both online & FLGS) and distributors.  If you’ve bought from me in the past, you’ll know what that means.  If you haven’t purchased from me before, send me an e-mail and I’ll give you the full details.

Preliminary Artwork for "Jump Gate" 2nd Edition Box BottomAlso, there will be no shipping costs within the U.S. for orders of 5 or more copies.  Outside the U.S., I will split the actual shipping costs with you 50/50.

I will be e-mailing all of my previous store/distributor customers to let them know of this … but I am always happy and excited to work with new customers as well.

For those of you who aren’t game store buyers or distributors, but would like to get a copy of Jump Gate: START HERE, and then e-mail me if you aren’t finding what you’re looking for. :)

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