Jump Gate was mentioned in the board games review section of the September 2010 issue of Games Magazine.

On page 74 of the issue, John J. McCallion — the magazine’s editor-at-large for the “Traditional Game Views” section of the magazine, and author of most of the board game reviews — gives a nice, detailed description of the gameplay and ends on a friendly tone:

“We salute independent designer Matt Worden for family-friendly explanatory cards that welcome casual players, while offering plenty of card management and set-collection challenges to seasoned explorers.”

If you’re not already a Games subscriber, please look for it in the magazine rack of your local bookstore and buy a copy.  Not only are there reviews of traditional and electronic games, but there are tons of word, math and logic puzzles to strain your brain on as well.

Thanks, again, to Mr. McCallion, for taking the time to play Jump Gate with several different testing groups and writing up the review for the magazine — it’s definitely appreciated!

Duncan (spacewolf009), the New Zealander who won the free copy of Jump Gate during the launch celebration has posted his review of the game on BoardGameGeek.com.

He’s got nice things to say about the game, and I’m happy to see that he’s enjoying it quite a bit.  Click through to his review and give it a read … feel free to give it a thumbs-up and leave a comment too!

Matt Drake, at “Drake’s Flames” blog site, has written up the first public review of Jump Gate.

While Matt seemed to like the game, and gave a pretty spot-on assessment of the game-play, I think he was way over-the-top harsh on The Game Crafter.  (I left a comment on Matt’s blog about it too.)  I gave my own hit-and-miss views about TGC in my prior post, so you know that while I’m a fan, I do have some areas I’m hoping for improvement on.

In any case, give Matt’s review of Jump Gate a read and let me know what you think.

I am using The Game Crafter (TGC) to publish my board games.  If you are familiar with CafePress or Lulu, TGC has a similar publish-on-demand take on board games.

As a game designer, I am able to upload any graphics needed for custom cards and game boards, and then select a collection of bits needed for a game, and TGC makes that set of materials available as a game in their shop.  I can choose to keep something unpublished — just for me to order — such as prototypes, or personal game versions … or I can publish a game, which makes it available for anyone to order.

This is all done on-demand … when an order is placed for a game, the cards and boards are printed at that time and all parts are picked.  The whole set is then packed and shipped to the buyer.  The advantage of on-demand fulfillment is that I don’t need to pre-print and store a few hundred copies of the game.  The disadvantage is that the costs can be higher since things are not being produced in large quantities.

I am very happy that such a service is available … and I am happy that the TGC team seem to be quite focused on delivering great customer service.  I thought I would take a post to spell out my own personal opinions on the good and bad points around The Game Crafter. Read more

Congratulations are in order for Duncan (spacewolf009) from Hamilton, New Zealand, who was randomly drawn as the winner of the copy of Jump Gate that I gave away as part of the Launch Celebration.

In addition to what you normally get when you buy Jump Gate from TheGameCrafter.com, the special copy that I will be sending to Duncan also includes a box with color cover artwork, color printed rules, and 6 rubber spacecraft miniatures.  (Click the picture to the left to see a larger version.)

To the right, is a close-up of the special box cover and the spacecraft miniatures.

Congratulations, Duncan — enjoy the game!

As I briefly mentioned in the original launch announcement for Jump Gate, I will be giving away a free copy of the game through a contest on my website.  I wanted to give a bit more information about that here.

On Wednesday, April 21st, I will randomly draw a winner from everyone who has registered for the give-away and send them a full copy of Jump Gate (plus a little extra bonus).  To register for the contest, you need to first sign-up a user account on my website (yes, a blatant attempt to increase the number of registered users on my site), and then follow the instructions on the contest page.

I am already enjoying the entry comments from those who have registered so far … you have a week and a couple days left to join in the fun.

Scott Slomiany is another Board Game Designers Forum regular (he posts there as doho123) that I’ve known for a while.  I always enjoy seeing what he submits to that site’s Game Design Showdowns, and read his “MeepleSpeak” blog regularly.

He is the designer behind Pocket Civ, a viral print-and-play hit.  The player response to this game has been quite cool, and I wanted to ask him some questions about what went into designing it.

Here’s the Q&A … Read more

This is more of a personal post than game-related … although there is a connection to Jump Gate as well.

Today we had to put our Siamese cat, Cinder, to sleep.  We think she was around 19 years old.  We adopted her as a 2-year-old from a vets office that was looking for a home for her.  I think she probably would have been put down if we hadn’t taken her home with us that day.  That was nearly 17 years ago.

She was a great cat for our family, but had really gotten old over the past 5 years.  The past couple years, especially, saw her greatly reduced … but she was still very affectionate and talkative.  Her kidneys were failing and she was having a lot of trouble the last few days.

The vet said that while we could do some things to make her more comfortable for a short period of time, there really was no cure for what was ailing her, and she would continue to go downhill.  She was already doing pretty poorly … had problems walking straight, among other things.  So, we had to let her go.

Her name — and colors — will live on in the planet I made for her in Jump Gate.

Rest in peace, Cinder.

Current Version of the Half-Court Board

As I’ve been contemplating changes needed for the 3-on-3 basketball game that I mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve decided to change the way space is handled on the game board.  The picture to the left is the new version of the half-court that the game takes place on.  Each section will hold 2 players at a time.  A defending player needs to be in the same section as an offensive player to be directly defending that player.  This simplifies an issue on the previous board (detailed below).

The colored bands indicate which shooting skills a player will be using.  Guards will have better shooting skills further out from the basket, while Centers will be better inside.

Older Attempt at a Half-Court Board

My first pass at the board (shown to the right), has individual spots that would each hold a single player.  The triangular arrows would point at the spots that can be defended from that position.  This created some locations up the alleys and down the baseline with spots that can only be defended from 1 position.  While this made for some interesting positioning, it was a little hard to explain — and it changed it from a basketball sim to something more like an abstract strategy game with some favored terrain.

With that said, the court setup is something of a minor change compared to what my plans are for the cards and the dice.  I still need to get some of the details worked out before I can post about that though.

Jump Gate is officially launched!  I’m very excited to announce that it is now available from TheGameCrafter.com.

Jump Gate is a board game about space exploration in the far future.  The Jump Gate is a device that lets a spaceship immediately jump into orbit around a far-away planet.  Players explore these newly-discovered planets by jumping to them, scanning them for resources, and landing on them to stake their claim as the first to set foot on them.  Ultimately, the game is about collecting resources in a way to maximize your score.  However, some resources cause a player to put a marker on the Black Hole Board … and too many markers on that board will cause problems for some players.

There is hand-management, multi-use cards, exploration & discovery, set collection, and some racing elements in the game.  The game can be played casually, but requires good decisions and efficient use of actions for a player to really excel.  The theme is family friendly and would make a great family-game-night game.

As part of the launch celebration, I’ll be giving away a copy of the game in a couple of weeks.

Check out the game’s page both here and at BoardGameGeek for images and more details.