Yes Indeed

A crazy weekend ....We took the chance for a half-price trip to Great Barrier Island on the car ferry. It started as a nice trip with blue skies and dolphins skimming alongside us until....we hit open water at the top of the Coromandel. My stomach heaved for the next hour as I locked myself in the loo and retched my way across the channel. I have never been so seasick in my life.

All well once we got there. Scenery beautiful. We walked into the bush for the hot pool in the river experience at Kaitoke, met some weird and wonderful Barrier locals and explored most of the island.

On Sunday I took the chance of a quick flight home (21 mins to North Shore airfield) instead of 5 hours in open water. This was a good move as I got home without upset and in plenty of time for a cuppa and change of clothes before heading to see Yes in concert. John unfortunately missed the show as the ferry was late.

The show was better than expected given that a) I've never seen them live before and b) only three of the band are original members. I was surprised to learn that the lead singer Jon Davison was having his first outing with the band.  I filmed a few clips before I got told off by security. I've strung them together into a 13 minute montage here.

Itching to get started

So 2012 is turning into quite a milestone year for me employment wise. After 19 years as an employee of Auckland University, I am now self-employed and focussing more time on SchilMil Games. I still do a little contracting to the Uni on a casual basis and do work also for FilmScan Imaging, but games are the main deal now.

Komodo and Raid the Pantry are in production right now: expected completion date is April 13th. We have written a long and thorough sales and marketing plan and can't wait to get our hands on the shipment so we can start beating down doors.

Other games under development include Kenakalan (Monkey Mischief). It is a card game where you play a tour agent trying to construct tours of Bali while wicked monkeys steal things and try to rearrange your shopfront. Here is a sample of one of the cards we are busy designing - there are 80 tour cards with different images on, eight of each of ten themes.

Stop Press! Stop Frame!

Back to the relative civilisation of NZ after a three week break in Bali. A good deal of time there was spent digesting Immodium and running to the toilet. John has sworn that our next holiday will be in Norway or Denmark! On the plus side, we did take some amazing photos of monkeys that will be needed for the game called Kenakalan (or Monkey Business) that I am designing.

SchilMil is keeping busy while we wait for the manufacturer near Shanghai to regroup after the Chinese New Year. Several new games are in the pipeline plus we are starting to prepare promotional material for Komodo and Raid the Pantry.

Here are short stop frame animations we've made for each game:

A momentous moment for SchilMil Games

Today, Julia and I took all our artwork to the printers to run a proof copy for inspection. If all goes to plan, on Friday we will be waving goodbye to our first two creations as the files wing their way to China for a production run of 1,000 of each game! Next stop world domination. 

Ahem - reality check. Next stop = a lot of hard work marketing and selling the products. But with an interlude for Xmas and a holiday in Bali, we can kick back for a few weeks until the next hurdle runs towards us.

Here is a sneak preview of the Komodo box design. I think it stacks up pretty well against my other games...

Into summer with rugby and shipping

I have come across some interesting articles about board games lately. This  one explores the history of how game goals changed from morals and virtue to the selfish and cunning aim to win with piles of money.  And this about politically incorrect and distasteful games to avoid.

SchilMil Games has been taking up a fair bit of time.  We have been keeping  two copies of Komodo and three of Raid the Pantry circulating amongst blind testers and also in the last fortnight have started development of a game with a cargo shipping theme called Manifest.  The mechanics and most of the rules of this game came to me during a night of fitful sleep. I woke at 7am and spent an hour writing it all down. My business partner Julia (Schil) has also hit inspiration with squirrels and nuts.

No ideas yet for a Dylan related game. May happen though.

The Rugby World Cup is still on here, with a few days to go until the final between France and the All Blacks. Quite a nice festival atmosphere in the city.   Since watching a few matches I think I may be starting to understand the rules of the game but one thing that is a mystery is why there aren't deaths in every match, its pretty brutal.

Partying and playing

Yesterday saw Auckland reveling in party-like atmosphere as the rugby World Cup Commenced on our doorstep. The planets aligned as it was a perfect sunny day, Aucklanders were mostly let off work early and were in a good mood. Then came the amazing opening ceremony that involved music and light shows choreographed from all parts of the city centre and waterfront. Three tonnes of fireworks from across the wharves and barges on the harbour. Topping off, the All Blacks won their first game against Tonga.  As one writer in the Herald put it, "Auckland is going off like yogurt in the sun".

Back to business. Both the games under development are making significant progress. We will be putting out a newsletter once every couple of months to let everyone know what we're up to with the company. The first one can be seen here.  Currently we are utilising various friends dotted around the country who've never seen the prototypes to do blind testing for us.

A sneek preview of one of our playing pieces

In the name of research I have been buying up games on TradeMe and looking forward to playing some of them this weekend : Jambo, Pandemic, Wasabi, and 'Break the Safe'.


A sniff of summer in the air this week as temperatures approached the magical (get the socks and woolies off) 20C moment.