Making Plans as the Wheel Turns

PlayGames2Learn.com - Making Plans

Another year is coming to a close, and we’re making plans for the next. We thought we’d share our look back and our look forward.

This year has been a challenge in so many ways. But while adapting to on-going restrictions & other issues, we kept busy working on educational games & activities to make learning fun.

In the first part of the year, we released a half-dozen games and activities:

  • “Chess Attack” – a game from my youth where chess pieces have to fight for the right to win a combat
  • “Snort! The Truck-Spotting Travel Game” – a game from our daughter’s youth where we would try to spot all the different trucks we could while singing ‘Trucks! Trucks! Where are you?’
  • “The Bone Game” (PnP ed.) – a special print-and-play of “The Bone Game” for all those families trying out distance learning / home schooling for the first time
  • “Project: Risky Decision” – a game from my training days for introducing the concepts of risk management and mitigation on software projects
  • “Probability Battleship” – a sudden inspiration at the time when everyone seemed to be talking about roll-and-writes
  • “Pirate Ship Paper Craft” – an activity to make a 3D ‘board’ for “Pirates vs. Skeletons”, but it is also fun in its own right

In the Fall, we debuted Captain Flim Flam and his mini pirate crew for #TalkLikeAPirateDay. I have a feeling we will see them again, from time to time. 🙂 We also got a little ahead of ourselves and threw together “Miser vs Miser”, inspired by the characters from the 1974 stop-motion animated special, “The Year without a Santa Claus”.

But for a large part of the year, our attention was focused on completing “Pirate Pursuit – The Spanish Treasure Fleet”. This game and “The Bone Game” were the two ‘flagship’ games that launched PlayGames2Learn.com just 2 years ago. But it had taken a backseat to the many other smaller games we have released since then. Now we were going to finish it.

Pirate Pursuit – The Spanish Treasure Fleet is a family-friendly game filled with educational content related to infamous people, historical events, world geography, and naval vocabulary during the time of the Spanish Treasure Fleets. Play as pirate hunters, chasing the crafty pirate across the sea – or play as the pirate themselves, trying plunder the Spanish treasure fleet before the pirate hunters can answer too many questions about pirate lore, and capture you!

– See pictures and learn more about how to play at TheGameCrafter.com

We were lucky enough to engage the artistic talent of Jon Merchant, and with his help we were able to release #PiratePursuitTBG at the end of October. It is the biggest, most beautiful game we’ve made yet! We just love it!

Now, as we head into December, we’re taking a bit of a break from all our game design efforts and are making plans for what’s next. Of course, we already have a lengthy todo list, but we still need to sort out the priorities.

For example, we have a bunch of expansions and add-ons planned, like:

  • Create a couple additional tilesets for “Chess Attack”
  • Try our hand at translating a game, using “The Bone Game”
  • Add ‘adventure mode’ rules and playing pieces to “Pirates vs. Skeletons”
  • Capture some additional pirate lore for the next Pirate Pursuit game

And there are new games too! We have several patiently waiting for their turn, and there will be others we don’t even know about yet! 🙂

How much will we get done? We’ll just have to wait and see. But one thing we do know – first and most importantly, we will be working on finishing our other big project of the current and previous years – our historical fiction for middle-grade readers, set at the turn of the 18th century.

Originally a vehicle to entertainingly prompt discussion about the geography, history, technology, and personalities of the Age of Sail, it quickly grew into something more. And now we have a novel to publish!

In our story, the Golden Age of Piracy is just around the corner and famous captains have already come and gone, but now new names are on the rise. Follow the adventures of our eleven-year-old heroine as she learns to sail the sea, bonds with her fellow shipmates, and then must save the entire crew from a cursed pirate treasure!

Yes, the pirate-theme is a bit of a problem. 🙂 This tale is expected to release in late Spring. Stay tuned for updates!

Thank you for all your support and encouragement. We hope you have a pleasant and enjoyable holiday season, and we look forward to seeing you in 2021! And remember, #MakeLearningFun!


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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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