Satya Nadella preaches “customer-obsession” to his employees. He proclaims, “the core of our business must be the curiosity and desire to meet a customer’s unarticulated and unmet needs with great technology.” The word “unarticulated” strikes a note with us while we’re deep in Far Away’s iterative design and playtesting phases. We receive a lot of feedback. All of it is recorded and considered. However, the data only goes so far. Feedback often misses the root problem and directly addressing it may work against the player experience.
Narrative and Challenge
Far Away is our first “traditional” board game. Most of our titles are narrative-driven games. We strongly feel there isn’t an explicit line between the two genres. Games tell stories: every session creates a small world. That feeling is made explicit in Far Away, as the players must feel each world is unique. In this medium, the players have the unique opportunity to reinterpret each permutation of cards and hexes. Far Away’s creatures are the focal point for this novel storytelling.
Aww SHUX, We Already Made that Joke
The excitement of launching Far Away’s Kickstarter and a weekend at SHUX has equally uplifting and exhausting. Thank you to everyone stopped by our booth, especially fans from last year. We can’t wait to return for SHUX 2019 with a (maybe?) final version of Far Away in hand.