yet another new face - Austic Labs

Hello Greg!

Pleasure to meet you man :)

Right, its: "Be a bastard time" from the word go I am afraid :(

I have just had a look at your wordpress blog, and it looks awesome - I suppose you are going for something that crosses into the realm of "toy" as well as "boardgame" - that's awesome. What with the solar leds and gears and that. It will be hard to get the hobby board fans on board as it is something that they don't yet know (people tend to like what they like) BUT at the same time gives you a huge open field of possibilities that us cardboard-chit guys are entirely banned from entering. I think that you could probably do really well should you find the right game and if that right game gets the right prizes in the right competitions!! :)

Oh no, I've verged onto "be cool time" and its "be a bastard time" - my apologies...

So I first read your name I thought it said "Autistic Labs" - I see you have a fancy logo (very nice btw, like the style) but if you haven't yet started up a company with the name or you are not incredibley attached to it - I would suggest having a serious look at it man - A wise man once said to me : it's all the name - which the more I realised, the moer I found to be very true.

ALSO, man, you seem like a really knowledgeable guy and if Dralius likes you then in my books you are pro (dralius is a pro, and by proxie as are you as well as your impressive blog) BUT if you title your own thread "...yet another new face", personally, I am going to be very angry at you. You are entirely downlplaying yourself by ALREADY TELLING US NOT TO CARE ABOUT ANYTHING YOU SAY EVER !!

You may as well say "...please don't bother reading this, it's just some rehashed crap...."

That makes me sad Greg damnit!! I want boardgames to be cool! (See the emu?!) and the quickest way we can make boardgames cool is by NOT calling ourselves "Autistic Labs" or telling people not to care about our threads!! lol

*mega bastard rant over*

But greg, as said, it is genuinely nice to meet you and your blog is awesome (and very professional btw!).

I really like the gears thing man - I think there could be some really big space in that one to make something really nice you know - you said you were worried about scoring points with your design - what I would suggest is using the piecees of your game and almost entirely changing the concept.

Perhaps you CAN have a genevea mechanism - or perhaps one red, one blue for each player (or what have you) and have it as the first thing that people place - think of it like hive when you have to place your queen bee - that is your scoring track.

Then each player takes turn in placing one (or two) gear(s) down (from the big stack of gears) OR turning the main turner one revolution (or whatever their choice of gears is) OR removing a gear from anywhere.

Perhaps set the geneva so that red counts clockwise and blue counts anticlockwise - OR there is only one and it is a tug of war thing.

Each gear can only be connected to 2 gears (or what have you) and you may only place a gear that does not "break" the system (eg: stop the gears rotating)

- I am sure you would need a load of clever rules to prevent game breaking (eg perhaps you can only connect a smaller gear to a larger gear - or something? Or like, only green gears can ever connect to blue gears or seomthing ... I don't quite know what the result of these kind of rules will be - but have a feeling that something like that will probably have to be put in place)

But I would suggest that you do not give up on the basis that "the game is just not fun" - best solution: Make it fun! lol I mean you could even slap in a little motor and have it as a "rave to the win action game" or something?

But either way: killer concept and I really wish you well man!

sam