I have a hard time doing a good "Watch it Played" style video - I just don't have the voice for it yet! So my wife and I have been coming up with interesting ways to portray the theme and setting of my Steampunk Alchemy and engine building game.
I still need a bunch of new prototype components before I can try demonstrating a full game here, but that is the eventual end goal. So little by little, the story of the game unfolds...
Once united in purpose, the Alchemy Lords built a great device - the Harness” - to subdue the Essence of Chaos, and from it create order and perfection in the world.
But then, with their insatiable desires for the deepest of mysteries, they each began to cast aside too many laws of the Cosmos. The unforeseen and unintended workings of Alchemy opened a void in the Aether itself. The great Harness became instead a Well of Chaos, threatening all of reality.
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By the way, many of you already know I have a thread about this game, but it's more or less half focused on the Tabletopia play-testing setup and half on the overall game progress.
I wanted to start this (maybe should've been a blog...) for the thematic enhancements of the table top version of Lords of Alchemy (Chrysopoeia), to share some of the fun setting ideas that my wife and I like to think up.
Feel free to comment - don't worry about breaking up my little "story" postings! It's all about exploring ways to make a board game experience memorable, so also feel free to post any cool ideas that we can do for subsequent photo shoots.
Note: I did buy a block of dry ice to use for the coming alchemy photos, but it didn't last the 24 hrs in the freezer that it took to get the settings ready. Next time!
The Well of Chaos can only be forever sealed with Chrysopoeia and the formulation of Prima Materia...
Adding the essential saltes
It begins with Quintessence and Aqua Vitae...
That's all for now! When I have the rest of my next prototype printed up, I'll have some photos of the whole game setup with some similar atmospheric staging and mood.
Lots of effort went into these photographs, Rick! They truly communicate the exotic feel of the game. Wishing you success. :)
These really are beautifully staged! There's a feel of quality when looking at the presentation in this way! Nice work!
Thanks guys, I'm glad you enjoyed them! I'd be interested to see what anyone else here has done along this direction, to try to enhance their game experience - whether it's your own design, or just a favorite game, feel free to post some pics if you have them!
Holy cow, Rick, that is so cool. Talk about setting a high bar! I might have had a light bulb burn out during a game once. That's about all the atmosphere I've had! :)
Glad you enjoyed the pics joebergmann!
As I mentioned before, I'm eventually going to do some sort of slideshow video once I have another completed prototype, but I decided to try a practice run of the concept with my copy of Elder Sign, and a clip of music to go with it from the band Opeth, and a little bit of silliness at the end...
Doing a "dress rehearsal for the next photo shoot:
Looks cool, and great props. I think your steampunk video could use some bubbling sounds, electric arcing and maybe an off-letting of steam. Search hard for the music, a good or bad fit can make or break it. I think there are some sites like www.jamendo.com that have a lot of free music to sift through, some of it at lease it Creative Commons licensed which simplifies things.
Seriously! Looks amazing! Definitely need to up my game! (also good choice on song!)
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! The Elder Sign video was a good practice to re-learn some long lost video editing skills.
Now we're just trying to borrow a better camera to take the new photos so they look like the first few I posted!
Also Yort good idea with the sound effects - I'll see what I can do!
Also tried making this gif and I put it on Twitter:
Check out @Rick_Lorenzon’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/Rick_Lorenzon/status/934810106398674944?s=09
I don't know if there's a way to get that to preview on this thread, but check it out!
A couple more:
just to echo whats already been said - love the photos! Super atmospheric :)
Thanks krone9!
Ok, now for my video! I know this has a few rough spots, but overall it was pretty fun to make this intro video. Any feedback would be great, and I can put it to use in the next project. I'll probably try to do far less text and work on a voiceover - I just wasn't too comfortable with that yet.
A few pictures that didn't make it into the video above:
Actually, that last pic was in the video, but the photo post didn't feel complete without it!
I know it's best to leave the custom artwork for the publisher and all, but after 2 years of work on this, I wanted to have a little something done to help polish it up for my first convention coming up at the first of March (SaltCon). So, I invested a little and used the artwork to do these card layouts:
It all looks awesome!!
This is something to be proud of.
Thanks X3M! It's been a little while since I've posted any updates - or anything much at all - sorry I've been out of touch lately. I'm just about to move my family across the US, so we've been busy getting that ready, and trying to finalize as much as possible with this game design along the way.
Here are a few updated pics, with the new vertical laboratory building components, and new art for my strategy cards/combat golems!
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Trying to get another prototype ready!
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I'm not sure what happened on the blank links above - they're returning error codes now, and I can't get in to edit the posts.
Oh well! I've been making some more thematic components for this game, but realized I never posted anything about them!
This is the new Well of Chaos - it functions as both a countdown timer to "doom" and a random movement generator for an AI piece - the Formless Nothing, which spreads Chaos tokens around to different player work areas.
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And these are the Seals I made, 4 for each player in their color. Players create these if they do well in their alchemy experiments, and once they have placed all 4 to Seal the Well and banish the Chaos, they win!
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Again, I think your game is absolutely gorgeous! Very well-done and impressive work here, Rick L! :)
Thanks so much - I really appreciate that!
A few weeks ago, Jamey and Alan at Stonemaier played it, and while they decided it wasn't quite a fit for them to publish, they gave me some great feedback. There were a lot of things they liked, but their main concern was the longer turn lengths, which would be a bigger issue in a 5-6 player game. Ultimately, I think this is better up to 4 players, and while the nature of the turns prevents them from being shortened, I'm working on repurposing my "combat" golems to replace PVP battles. The new idea will have more and simplified interaction during each turn, to keep everyone engaged. There was interaction before, and it worked, but I had been feeling for the past months that it just wasn't quite right for the feel of the rest of the game.
It always feels like the game is just one fix away from being done LOL!
Well, I'm waiting for the kids to wake up and run to the Christmas tree - Merry Christmas everyone!
I also messed around with some different shapes for the Apparatus tiles
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Bitter rivalries have arisen between the Alchemy Lords, as each blames the others for the unleashing of the unpredictable Chaos. Fearing that the inept works of their rivals will only hasten the utter destruction of the Cosmos, each of these Lords isolated themselves, creating their own small legion of loyal soldiers, apprentices, and worker golems to sustain their foundries and laboratories, thus buying themselves time to restore Order to the world.