Despite Far Away’s arrival, we’ve been keenly focused on getting Hair of the Dog finished. We’re talking with manufacturers to get everything set and expect that production will start within a week. Our timeline is covered in the most recent Kickstarter update, so rather than rehash everything here, we wanted to take a minute to chat about what’s been going on behind the scenes. Transparency is always a good thing, so here’s where our last-minute efforts have been focused.
Testing and design progress are tightly coupled. Unlike some previous titles, such as Conspire, there’s a need to test the mechanics with actual components. The design of the pieces affects a player’s ability to learn the game. Put another way: a rule could be confusing to learn without an icon on a piece that makes everything mentally click together. For Hair of the Dog, we made the decision to work through the dog art on the cards first. This was a massive undertaking for the ~250 unique cards. While this was valuable so that we could maintain communication with backers and draft off of the energy from the Kickstarter to secure reference photos, it meant that we didn’t have other components done earlier. We refined the rules, particularly those of the modules, the best we could with placeholder art.
To compensate for the timing, we’ve been running intensive quality check playtesting sessions. Our testers have been pouring over the rules and pieces in an attempt to break the game one last time. We’re happy to see players digging through rules as they teach each other and discovering the rules conclusions on their own. This has uncovered some difficulties that we feel great about fixing at this stage. Nothing major is getting gutted or added; if you’ve played with us at KublaCon, Hair of the Dog is basically the same, plus a bunch more dogs, bar tiles, and some modules you didn’t try.
The remaining work is now to translate this game from our files to ones Boda Games can use to create thousands of copies. We’re talking through what the player pawns, sip tokens, and mugs look like. We’re getting all the tokens aligned so you have something to punch out in a few months. And yes, there will be a plastic inlay for this game. The lessons of Far Away are not lost on us.
Our next major update on Hair of the Dog will be when the proof copy arrives. If you have any questions about the design, playtesting, or production process, please let us know. We’re always happy to share our knowledge with you. Best case, you learn something and use that lesson to make a killer game.
--Alex