State of the Button - December 2015

Hey everyone! This is our first formal update here and I just wanted to thank you all for jumping on here early. I can tell you that we have a lot of fun things planned, and even more that are not yet planned. We're working on some great content for each of the packages.

Some you I know personally and others, I recognize many of your names from previous projects, but I don't know how much you know about Button Shy. I stress the words small and DIY (do-it-yourself), as we don't do things by normal means. We hand assemble the wallet games, we handle all of our own fulfillment and we even sell almost 100% directly to customers at our site. Why do we do it this way? Well there are so many reasons. It's not just to be different because that's cool, but it's to make a difference in this very busy, yet tough to break even board game industry. 

So we're doing things like the wallet games, the postcard games, print and play games (including a print and play CCG! - this is probably the extreme end of trying new things, I know). 

DIY Board Games - Episode 000 and Episode 001

For much, much more about what we do and why we do it, we recorded the first two episodes of DIY Board Games. This is a documentary style podcast that shows an inside look at our day to day operations. 

Episode 000 is our first shot at this. You';ll hear me go through the why's of Button Shy in much more long-winded detail. :) I run through a standard night's to do list and work on some Matterkin world building with Marty Cobb. It's just under 30 minutes long.

http://www.buttonshy.com/bs/diy/DIYBG000.mp3

Episode 001 is a dual interview between myself and Marty Cobb. He asks me questions about the origins of Button Shy, my gaming background, first designs and more. Then I interview him on the same and more. It runs for a little less than an hour.

http://www.buttonshy.com/bs/diy/DIYBG001.mp3

In both of these, we are finding our footing and testing out a few different methods of delivery and documentation. We're working on some video setups as well so you can see what we do. Also, we'll be releasing these to the public one week after the release here, but some episodes, like the designer film interviews, will be just for patrons.

Avignon PNP

Avignon is our January Wallet Game. It's a 2 player tactical influence game, designed by John du Bois. The game explores the 14th century struggle for the papacy in France and Italy, with a neat tug-of-war feel. John has described it as inspired by Word on the Street meets Guildhall, which is very interesting and also right up my alley. 

The PNP here is very basic and not full art as of yet, as we are wrapping the art / graphic design up right now. We're playing with text and icons on the cards and will be testing these over the next few weeks. 

Here's the link. It's 2 pages (plus rules) and very light on ink.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u2qi6hzij7k6hv6/Avignon-PNP-092415.pdf?dl=0

And here are 3 bonus cards that we are testing if you would like to give them a spin.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3iz0shtttfg0dzk/Avignon-PNP-092415-BonusCards.pdf?dl=0

The art is inspired by chess style pawns, both to represent the subject matter and the gameplay style. Expect this full art PNP very soon. 

The Cult Film Postcard Games

I'm working on some hints that don't give everything away, but for now I wanted to list every movie and every designer. Which will be paired up? This is something you will discover over time. :)

Movies

Beetlejuice

Donnie Darko 

Edward Scissorhands 

Oceans 11 

Office Space

Pulp Fiction

Rocky Horror Picture Show 

The Big Lebowski 

The Room 

The Warriors

This Is Spinal Tap

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Designers

Ben Begeal

Ben Pinchback & Matt Riddle

Bonnie Neubauer

Doug Levandowski

Jason Slingerland

Jason Tagmire

Jay Treat

Jon Gilmour

Josh Mills

Matthew O’ Malley

Nat Levan

Rob Couch

There's so much talent in that list of designers, and we're going to explore that over time. Both here and in the DIY Boardgames podcast. We unlocked the interview milestone so we'll be interviewing each designer on their games and the film that inspired it. 

Thanks again everyone. We will be back soon!