Passion fuelling progress

Greetings!

The end of last summer I got a call from a mate saying he had an idea for a game. I instantly loved it, and started scribbling down notes as we spoke.
Approaching a year later, we have come a long way.
We took it to conventions, we played it with friends, we took it to some clubs, and you know what? We had to change it every step of the way, each time we thought we nailed it, something cropped up that broke the mechanics in a way we didn't see earlier.
But it was okay, as each incarnation was (generally) better than the last.
We are currently on version 3.6, and I dread to think about how many prototypes I've made or the money I've spent, but that doesn't really matter as I've loved the journey.

One of the bigger changes happened back in May, whilst at a convention we showed it to a publisher, he liked it, he then invited his distributor to play, he liked it too. But neither were keen on the theme. We'd worked hard on the theme, our background story was quite deep, yet they dangled the carrot of "If you could make these changes, we'd be interested" it was hard to hear, but probably needed saying.

2 months later and lots of hard graft, we had new theme, new mechanic and new... well game! So what happened with publisher? I've had a few meetings with them, they're a great bunch and still really keen, yet so far no contract. Does it bother me?
Yes and no.
I get it, they're a small company, makng a game like ours properly (with minis) would cost a lot, they'll need to build up an income from easier to manufacture games first. We do talk a lot and they're taking it to Essen to show off (next month?) plus mention us on social media etc I'm sure they want us, the game has the potential to do well, plus have expansions etc
On the other hand, we now have a game that plays really well and the feedback we get from play testers is fab. I still really enjoy developing it, there's still a hell of a lot I can do to expand it which is my current project.
Yes it would be nice to get published, I really do hope to see it on a shelve (or Amazon) one day, but in the mean time, I'm just going to keep trying to make this game the best it can be, for me :)

Thanks for reading
Robbie

I tried maintaining a website, but a full time job, children and a love for playing games meant I could only manage a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/graemun