Whew a lot has been going down in the past month. Griller Z’s latest print test was just sent to the printing company, and a fresh copy with the new box art should be arriving in a few weeks. The final rules are still being flushed out, but it feels like it’s getting really close to production ready great. That of course will be left up to whoever gets the first review copies (yikes!).
I wanted to take a moment to discuss some of the challenges I’ve learned over the course of a year of Griller Z development (wow it really has been that long). One of the most interesting aspects about designing a board game has been the constant state of flux everything is in. From the beginning until the end of development (and I’m not even done yet) really anything can be cut or added. Perhaps this is because I’ve been doing most of the heavy lifting alone (Art & Design), but I think it’s important to be adaptable.
Griller Z is still version 1.0, but honestly that’s 3 complete overhauls with new art (to some degree) in each release. It’s been a real labor of love and sheer will power to get it this far. It feels really funny/terrible to be so completely certain that you have a winner to then have players take and break your hard work in seconds. Complicated is only good if it’s simple? What does that even mean, I’m not sure but I’ll tell you that Griller Z biggest lesson learned was that even the most amazing system in the world is probably too complicated. People play games for fun! You’ve got to make your players use their brains, but make it simple enough to be fun first.
Apologies for not continuing to post news about Griller Z, product reviews or anything new for a few days. Getting Griller Z to print was a huge priority, and managing some of the other Flux 6 Studios initiatives always suffers when I’m pulled into Griller. I sure hope it’s a year well worth my time.
More soon, Frank.