Two Years of Indie Game Design

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PlayGames2Learn.com - Educational Games - Indie Game Design

Thank you Nikita for two years of #TheIndieTabletopNewsletter! It’s been a great vehicle to share progress and find out about the work of other indie game designers! 🙂

In celebration, we thought we’d recap what we’ve shared over these 24 issues:

  • July 2020 – we introduced PlayGames2Learn.com in the first issue and listed the dozen+ educational games and activities we had already shared on our website as a by-product of our homeschooling approach to #MakeLearningFun – including “The Bone Game”, which was designed by our daughter to specifically “help other kids learn the bones of the skeleton in a fun way”.
  • September 2020 – we gave more details about #PiratePursuitTBG. The pirate hunters use their knowledge of pirate lore to reveal the pirate’s location and drive them away from the treasure fleet – or better yet, capture that blasted bilge rat of a thieving scallywag!
  • October 2020 – #PiratePursuitTBG released later this month and in the newsletter we advised of our special ‘employee pricing’ discount to every subscriber on our mailing list.
  • November 2020 – following #BoardGamersLift on Twitter, we found out some game designers also write books. That’s something we do too! So we shared about our ‘playful’ comedy adventure, “The King and Queen’s Banquet – A Play in Three Acts”, that was created from a puppet theatre conceived by our daughter.
  • December 2020 – we recounted our achievements in the past 12 months, including the debut of Captain Flim Flam and his mini pirate crew for #TalkLikeAPirateDay. And we released “Miser vs Miser”, a game inspired by the characters from the 1974 stop-motion animated special, “The Year without a Santa Claus”.
  • February 2021 – we talked about playing games over the holidays, and how as often as not we just make up games from our brains – riffing on an existing game or inventing something new using available game components or other household items.
  • March 2021 – shared an excerpt from one of our blog articles discussing nugget-based learning and how, in this technologically-enabled education climate, we’re all learning more and more via interest-driven, bite-sized pieces, or nuggets, of information, including through game design.
  • April 2021 – six months after releasing #PiratePursuitTBG, we introduced our historical novel, “The Day the Pirates Went Mad”, and the bug hunt contest to search out any typographical issues in the e-book before the subsequent release of the paperback.
  • May 2021 – with the official book launch of #TDTPiratesWentMad, a historical novel for middle-grade readers and up, we had now completed four big projects! “The Bone Game”, “The King and Queen’s Banquet”, “Pirate Pursuit – The Spanish Treasure Fleet”, and “The Day the Pirates Went Mad”.
  • June 2021 – we shared how the origins of our chess-teaching game, “Chess Attack”, are rooted in my youth and were influenced by D&D. Now “Chess Attack” exists to engage younger players through the excitement of the dice roll while they also practice the planning ahead required for well-played chess matches.
  • July 2021 – we celebrated the one-year anniversary of #TheIndieTabletopNewsletter! We also introduced the first of a set of related print-and-plays, “Elemental Minions: Dominion”, as ready for playtesting.
  • August 2021 – we introduced a new #PiratePursuitTBG, “Pirate Pursuit – The King’s Pardon”. Play as one of 8 famous pirates like Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, and Charles Vane, collecting as much pirate lore as you can before taking the King’s Pardon or being caught by your doom!
  • September 2021 – we completed the design of “Pirate Pursuit – The King’s Pardon” and talked about how the feeling of being done with a creative project is a powerful one. But it can also be fleeting. Remember to remind yourself to honour the creation and the effort that went into it.
  • October 2021 – we submitted “Pirate Pursuit – The King’s Pardon” to TheGameCrafter.com’s Small Box Challenge. The store page also went live with a full description and pictures!
  • November 2021 – we shared the comments we received for “Pirate Pursuit – The King’s Pardon” from the community voting in the Small Box Challenge contest. It was a fun experience, we learned a lot, and it strengthened our resolve to complete our trilogy of #PiratePursuitTBG games.
  • December 2021 – taking a look back at the previous year, we highlighted the release of “The Day the Pirates Went Mad” and “Pirate Pursuit – The King’s Pardon” as well as a few other accomplishments. We launched EmmaSharpesAdventures.com & a related collaboration with @WitchwayGames. We added custom tilesets to “Chess Attack”, including Clan Dinosaur by @TunaCetiV. And, we completed “Elemental Minions” with an extra game mode, making it a 4-in-1 print-and-play game.
  • March 2022 – we discussed in a blog article how games and books can give students some of their needed STEM / STEAM coverage. And, better yet, springboard into related activities and inspire some inquiries!
  • April 2022 – it was the release anniversary of “The Day the Pirates Went Mad” and we announced an e-book giveaway. Also, each year, we’ve donated a percentage of any monies received from our creative works to the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation (BCCH). In 2021, we committed to donating ALL of it. This year, we’re doing it again!
  • July 2022 – Happy two-year anniversary #TheIndieTabletopNewsletter!

At PlayGames2Learn.com, we hope you will find a game or activity to help #MakeLearningFun for your children or classroom. Most of all, we hope our games might inspire them to design games of their own!

Check out #TheIndieTabletopNewsletter for monthly updates from other indie game designers!

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At Silverpath Publishing / PlayGames2Learn.com, we believe in #LearningThroughPlay to help #MakeLearningFun. We publish fiction and educational tabletop games for children and young adults.

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