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Calgary26003 Posts
Personal
I got married in November and my wife applied for immigration to Canada in December. At that time, the Canadian Immigration website said it would take 14 months for approval. I set an expectation of Christmas 2014 and a best case of August 2014. This Tuesday her status on the immigration website changed to “Decision Made”! Unfortunately, we are still waiting for the mailed documents to let us know if that’s a good decision or a bad decision. Fingers crossed!
Frozen Pawn
I finally set up my corporation. It was pretty painless, about an hour online, $200 and another required $24.69 to make sure no one had stolen my company name. Coagulation hates the name but I really like it. Frozen touches on “Chill”, Canada, and Blizzard’s influences on my gaming and my life. Pawn represents my love and respect of chess, is the shortest piece (hi!) and starts as the weakest piece but can change into almost any other stronger piece after completing its journey.
Coagulation is working on different logos. I won’t say who likes which until we hear your feedback.
Poll: Which concept (not exact drawing) do you like best?#1 (61) 32% #2 (75) 40% #3 (53) 28% 189 total votes Your vote: Which concept (not exact drawing) do you like best? (Vote): #1
(Vote): #2
(Vote): #3
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/3H2UHjd.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/6gkiiL3.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/jWO3EiH.png)
The bank asked about 5 times if I am a pawn shop. I’ve banked with the same bank for 25 years – since 1989. I have my chequing account there, a mortgage, all my investments, and two credit cards. After two 1-hour meetings trying to explain what the business was, I got a phone call requesting another 1-hour meeting. I had to listen to the guy try to explain what Magic: The Gathering was on the phone to someone for about 20 minutes. I went to a competitor and got a business account open in 30 minutes. Pretty frustrating.
Cards & Graphics
Coagulation is constantly tweaking the card layouts. The latest feedback was that the numbers were too small, and people were getting confused about which numbers meant what (Despite me saying again and again “The bottle caps are green, matching the green number!“) Coag added some icons and shifted stuff around, so here’s where we are now:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/NI1sqdF.png)
Coagulation has stepped up his game even more. His new art sometimes has a different style than the older stuff, which I think is amazing. If you go through the cards it seems like there were multiple artists, but it’s just one amazingly talented guy with multiple art styles.
I’ve picked some random cards that are my favourites:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/arPglfC.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/UzNKNus.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/V1sScK1.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/McIM2p1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RhUCVn7.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/B9CUDVM.jpg)
Testing
Coagulation finally got a deck in his hands (after we paid for emergency overnight shipping so they were available for his kegger lol) and got to test. Getting feedback and a new perspective from new players are invaluable. Since then I’ve really focused on simplifying the game again and again. If you compare the current revision of 15a versus revision 1, it is pretty hilarious how much the game has been simplified. And even still, there’s more to cut and more to simplify.
I was at a bachelor party over the weekend and managed to get two games in with 5 people each time. Both games went about 75 minutes and people drank on average 2.5 – 3.5 beers. I’m happy with where that sits now and won’t be making any major rule changes any more. As always, the feedback was very accurate and I’m going through making the changes now.
Website
sob3k is helping us plan for the website launch. Currently I have http://www.manaspirits.com (the game’s name) and http://www.thedrunkgetdrunker.com (the game’s slogan ^^ which will just be a redirect). As usual, I gave Coagulation a terrible .doc showing what I thought would work using rectangles, and a couple hours later he sent back this:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/TWXkKY5.png)
I think that looks so badass. I think I sent 3 gushing emails about it haha.
Schedule
I think rev.16 will be the final Alpha revision, which is one more revision away. With that done, I will print one last Alpha deck for graphic and balance reviews. I’m hoping to have that done by the end of September. This will let us launch the Kickstarter campaign and move into Beta in November. I still foresee challenges with rule tweaking, balancing, box and instruction design, etc. So I’m putting a pessimistic target to have the game shipping by October 2015. Of course, the earlier, the better, but having a career in projects has taught me to always expect the worst and to under-commit and over-deliver. I’ve also seen on this project that finishing the first 90% of each task seems to take half the effort of finalizing the last 10%. Hopefully we stay strong!
 
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hmm so you cheated on TL with a gurl that you "married"? That explains your inactivity :/
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Chill, I gotta say that this is so fucking awesome
Keep the updates coming!
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looks great! those are some sick pictures, and I love the banner.
yea banks can be fun like that. it depends on what accountant you get, too.
logos:
#2 pawn logo looks best, it's clean. needs some refinement, but imo it's the best.
#3 is pretty ok, but looks like something is missing (needs something in the background).
#1 has too many "serifs" on the shield (or they're going out at weird angles/shapes), and is probably a bit too wide. it would look better if it had some texture on the background shield.
card frame:
at the bottom, switch the colors of the blue crossed swords vs red skull on a shield. usually you'd wan't to make offense red and defense blue? the skull would look pretty nice in blue, especially with the frame. I might be wrong about the meanings of those 2 icons since I forgot some of the rules/stuff from the previous blogs.
ps: I agree with Coag, I would name it something else if it was my company. xD
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Calgary26003 Posts
On July 25 2014 10:13 quirinus wrote:
card frame:
at the bottom, switch the colors of the blue crossed swords vs red skull on a shield. usually you'd wan't to make offense red and defense blue? the skull would look pretty nice in blue, especially with the frame. I might be wrong about the meanings of those 2 icons since I forgot some of the rules/stuff from the previous blogs.
Good point. We are making this change right now haha  Thanks!
ps: I agree with Coag, I would name it something else if it was my company. xD
Thanks for nothing I mean!!!!! 
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Chill, this does look awesome! And as a person who loves board games/card games, I'll support this even if drinking isn't really a thing in my friend group. Although, who knows, maybe it'll become a thing afterwards, hahaha.
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Frozen is also related to Coagulation... so, there's that!
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I don't like the name much - but I don't hate it either. I would imagine a hobby shop being called The Frozen Pawn, or a pub.
I really dislike the first two logos because it feels like I have to read it rather than just look at it. If you must, FP and surround it by your logo would be cooler, or making the text smaller and the logo much larger.
I would just not add any text at all and make a simple logo, but the 3rd one kind of looks "cheap".
The MANA SPIRITS logo is fucking awesome, very professional. I like the board layout, it looks intuitive, which is the most important thing in games. I agree with quirinus about the color change.
What bank did you use that gave you the run around? TD? I ask because I am thinking about starting a business in the near future, and it'll be my first time. I've used TD for my entire life - head shit about CIBC. I've actually heard good things about small guys like ATB or Candian Western Bank (seems like they take more risk in small bizz cuz they need more bizz than the big fish). Any insight would be nice, including how important credit score is.
Thanks.
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I didn't vote for any of the options because I like/dislike them all equally...
Coagulation is one of my all time favorite artists, love everything he does. Having said that, he's maybe not the best person to design a logo :D He is completely irreplaceable on all game related art. But can we get some concept logo ideas form other sources? <33
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On July 25 2014 11:22 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2014 10:13 quirinus wrote:
card frame:
at the bottom, switch the colors of the blue crossed swords vs red skull on a shield. usually you'd wan't to make offense red and defense blue? the skull would look pretty nice in blue, especially with the frame. I might be wrong about the meanings of those 2 icons since I forgot some of the rules/stuff from the previous blogs. Good point. We are making this change right now haha Thanks! Show nested quote +ps: I agree with Coag, I would name it something else if it was my company. xD Thanks for nothing I mean!!!!!
haha
I'd also maybe put the transparent shield thingy behind the swords/skull instead of in front of them (don't want it covering them, as they are the main feature, not the transparent shield), or even remove it. too much detail can be confusing/unclear sometimes.
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The logo getting the majority of votes will be difficult to work with in future branding. I highly suggest going with the idea behind the second or third logo idea for simplicity's sake. Go with something less busy and it will be easier to plug that logo in wherever you want to put it (advertisements, other websites, branding on swag) with just a color change while keeping a distinctive image that people will recognize easily.
But that's just my input, everything else looks great, glad you seem to be doing well on this. The number of revisions and how you've been working on it for as long as you have are amazing. Envious of your ability to keep it up. Good job, dude, keep it up!
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That looks really awesome. I remember Chill from back when I first came around to Teamliquid in 2009
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Good luck with the visa. I hope that logos 1/3 don't win despite getting the most votes. People are voting on which graphics they like the most not which one will work the best as a logo. I love the name Frozen Pawn is great.
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On July 25 2014 23:29 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
Good luck with the visa. I hope that logos 1/3 don't win despite getting the most votes. People are voting on which graphics they like the most not which one will work the best as a logo. I love the name Frozen Pawn is great.
Yeah. 2 is by far the best for a logo. 1/3 are good designs / concepts but simply wouldnt work as a logo persay.
Also 75 minutes seems rather long for a drinking game, i don't know if i'd want to invest that much time into something if i was drinking with friends. I would have said 30 minutes was the optimal time. Also 2.5 - 3.5 beers is far to small an amount of alcohol.
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Agree with Nazgul.
Can't wait to play this some day.
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On July 25 2014 23:29 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
Good luck with the visa. I hope that logos 1/3 don't win despite getting the most votes. People are voting on which graphics they like the most not which one will work the best as a logo. I love the name Frozen Pawn is great.
Agree... using one or three as a product logo would be terrible. I'm guessing a lot of people don't understand that a printed product logo is not the same as a website logo/banner.
Also, Chill, have you registered for a UPC yet?
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should pay a real artist... this is some deviant art level stuff.
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Hmm, I thought it was another 200 $ (400 total) to have a copy name instead of a number, should have incorporated with a name instead.
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28102 Posts
Game looks interesting
Also, where is your wife from?
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On July 25 2014 23:29 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
Good luck with the visa. I hope that logos 1/3 don't win despite getting the most votes. People are voting on which graphics they like the most not which one will work the best as a logo. I love the name Frozen Pawn is great.
3 is a fine logo by silhouette and concept. Removing the overly detailed texture and simplifying the colors and it's as effective a logo as 2 in my opinion. I like using negative space as much as the next guy but I think condensing the logo to strictly positive space can be effective as well. I think 1 is the least useful logo by far.
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EPT
