Comma Cube Games

Devlog #17

Hello everyone, Cam here! Due to unforeseen circumstances, things have slowed down a bit with the underworld project. But don’t worry, it’s still happening! Ben and I have been working on it regularly, mainly developing alternate characters and getting art specs ready, but with the slow down on the art front, Ben and I have shifted our focus to another one of our projects, that I’ll refer to very unofficially as “the robot game.”

The robot game is actually our second attempt/spin-off of a previous project I’ve mentioned before, “the pumpkin farming game.” It was the one with the “trade your trash” mechanic, where when you take an action (from the row of action cards) you get a corresponding trade card, which you can trade to another player to enable them to take that action during the trade phase. Long story short, as it progressed, Ben and I came to have very different visions for which direction the game should go, so we kinda just tabled it for a while, but we still did want to develop something that used the trade your trash mechanic. So after a while sitting on it, Ben started working on a new game, keeping the core of the trade your trash mechanic and adding even more interesting player interaction. Oh and of course, robots.

The game is a bit much to fully lay out here (and also constantly changing), but here’s the basics of its current state:

Essentially the goal is to build and power up as many robots as you can. Robots will give you points at the end of the game, and will give you special abilities during the game. By powering up a particular robot, it may give you the ability to salvage extra components from the scrapyard for instance, allowing you to build robots faster than your opponents - things like that.

Sell components to power your robots, strategically place your prospectors in the scrap yard to prepare for the salvage, get components, and build robots. That’s essentially it! (Except it’s more complicated(but in a good way!!))

The reworked trade your trash mechanic inspires crazy multifaceted deals between players, and along with a dynamic component selling market, outbidding your opponents for salvage priority in the scrap yards, and a few other elements, there ends being a lot of interesting player interaction, which we like! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 but also plenty of long term planning and strategizing to keep the brain juices flowing.

Very exciting! It’s a fun one, and I’m excited to work on it every time Ben and I get together! It’s also just in a fun stage of the process, so many things changing, solving problems after every play test. It’s satisfying to make some changes and have it work noticeably better the next time. The past few games, we’ve found ourselves saying, “that’s the best game we’ve had so far.” And man does that feel good 😎

See you in the next one!

We’re back!

Cam here 👋🏼 After some soul-searching, and re-prioritizing Ben and I are very much back in the swing of things. Many projects happening, our underworld game being top of the list, but we’re also preparing a design for Cardboard Edison, as well as developing some early stage ideas here and there.

We’ve also been playtesting some prototypes that some of our friends are working on which has been really cool. Feels cool and special to be part of this little group of local designers. Shout out to Wesley M. Adams and Timothy Bumpus, you guys rock 🤘🏼♥️

Ps sorry Tim I forgot to get a picture of your game 🙈

Devlog #16

Hey everyone it's Cam. Sometimes making a game is hard. Sometimes progress is difficult and slow, this is one of those times. There have been many things happening recently that have slowed down our progress/ forced us to change priorities. This is part of starting/running a business and collaborating with other people. Missed deadlined can cause a cascading effect down the chain throwing things into chaos. It's not fun, its not rad, but I try to keep an eye on the larger goal that we're working towards, and when a problem comes our way, try to find a solution and keep moving toward that finish line. There's a larger goal ahead of us, and we will achieve it. As long as we keep moving forward, however incremental, it's just a matter of time 👏🏼👏🏼

Devlog #15

Hey everybody, Cam here. It's been a while!

It's true, I have been slacking on devlogs lately, but its not for lack of things happening! Over the past few weeks, we've been spending a lot more time on logistical things, prepping for upcoming events (including CubeCon which was yesterday), and handling some more back end starting-a-board-game-company kind of things. Not exactly game development so it felt weird to include a bunch of that in the devlogs, but if people are really curious about that side of things, let me know in the comments, there's plenty to talk about!

As for actual game development, we've been working on a few things like component design, board layout, and alternate characters. We've got some real spicy special ability ideas for alternates being tested, so were excited for those, but still much testing to be done! Component designs and layout will still take some time but bit by bit we're making progress. Maybe in the next devlog we'll have some pics to show 😲 We've also (after a very long journey) narrowed down the final name options for the game:

Infernal Favors
Fables and Favors
Bribing the Underworld

Over the past few months we've created a massive list of different name options and created framework of criteria to narrow it down to a few that have the most ring and describe the game best. Our final step is making sure we pick the name that is the most punchy and sticky, and by getting feedback from a large group of people, I think we'll have the best chance of picking the right name 😎 so please, share your thoughts in the comments! It will help us immensely 🙏🏼

That's about it for now! I'll write up a separate post about CubeCon later today, but until then, enjoy a photo of some recent alternate play testing on our brand new artful prototype boards!! 🤩🤩 I'm realizing I think this is actually their fist showing on facebook in physical form, so... here they are! haha still subject to change, but nonetheless very cool to have something with art on it existing in real life 👏🏼👏🏼

More to come soon...!