Hello all!
My name's Mike, I'm the head of Funstronaut Games. I've been designing video games as a hobby for a while now, but I've always been addicted to board games and I wanted to try to combine my two hobbies. We're really excited about the design of our first game. We had an idea, a while ago, to utilize the widespread use of smartphones, tablets and laptops to enhance a cooperative board game with some intelligent AI and a bunch of other exciting features. In the future, we'll probably expand to creating some really clever ways to enhance hidden movement/information games because that's something a tablet could do really well. (Imagine, on your turn, getting the tablet passed to you and using an ability to find out your opponent's plan... but they don't KNOW you know their plan...) We were really excited about creating the first game of its type - then Harebrained Schemes announced Golem Arcana, with its tablet integration and fancy styluses, and raised half a million dollars. Pretty much the story of my life :)
Luckily, our game is nothing like Golem Arcana and we're still forging ahead despite this minor setback. We're still in the "playtesting, playtesting, playtesting" stage but we've been getting incredibly good feedback even from the blind playtests. We've got a bunch of unique, fun, fast-paced mechanics combined with really innovative use of technology. We've hired an incredibly talented artist, we've got a great programmer on board for the computer part, and with every new prototype we get closer to a product that I'm 100% happy with.
I've found the information on these forums to be invaluable, and I wanted to give back by sharing my experiences with self publishing as they happen (not much to report yet, I'm afraid). I'll probably have some questions of my own as they come up as well.
