Villages of Valeria

Sometimes you get good news, but it's not the right time to make noise about it. And then when it is time, you're busy and you don't get around to it. That happened to me this year with this bit of news: I sold a card game design, which we hope will be published in (probably) 2017!

Deckville...
That design was called Deckville: City of Cards, and you can read about my early design work on it here. In March 2015, I went to the excellent GameStorm convention in nearby Vancouver, and showed off three of my designs in their Game Lab area, which is dedicated to as-yet-unpublished games. There were few publishers in attendance that year, but I got lucky: Deckville was noticed by Daily Magic Games. They were looking for card games to publish, and thought that Deckville was a good candidate. I gave them a copy to take home and try out, and soon after we had a deal.

Since then, I've been working with Isaias Vallejo, an experienced designer and founder of Daily Magic Games, to get the game ready for publication. We've made a lot of changes to my original design in order to make the game more suitable for their target audience: they want games that are easy to learn and quick to play. I was a little reluctant at first, thinking that they wanted non-strategic games with little to think about, but happily I was wrong about that. We've worked over the design until its play time is significantly shortened, but it still offers plenty to think about in under an hour of play. It's been a pleasure working with Isaias on this project; it's definitely been a joint effort, and we will both be listed as designers when the game is published.

...is now Villages of Valeria
We also gave the game a new theme (which I admit it desperately needed!) and a new name. It is now Villages of Valeria, with a fantasy theme to match their first-published card game. That game, Valeria: Card Kingdoms, will be available in stores in early 2016. It's a fun, light-weight game featuring wonderful artwork by Mihajlo Dimitrievski, who is also doing the art for Villages of Valeria. Here's a sample, the artwork for the "Witch's Hut" card:

Kickstarter and Print-and-Play
We hope to launch a Kickstarter campaign for Villages of Valeria in early 2016. I'll post here when the Kickstarter is up. In the meantime, a print-and-play version of the game is available now on BoardGameGeek: click here if you're interested, try the game, and send us your feedback!

Related Games
Another of Daily Magic's games is now in the last days of its Kickstarter campaign. Check out Mana Surge on Kickstarter!

Isaias Vallejo is also the designer of the board game Sunrise City, which is a nicely designed game that's a lot of fun. I recommend it.