Our Inspiration for Estate: Raise the Realm
Four years ago, we set out to create Estate: Raise the Realm. We’ve faced plenty of challenges, but our mission has remained the same: to craft a game with a captivating story.
Ultimately, there are three major factors we used as a guiding compass:
Building A Deep Narrative Story
Creating a Gateway Euro Game: Balancing Simplicity with Complexity
Endless Replayability
Prototyping Tricks and Tips
TLDR: Don’t make the same mistakes we’ve made with our prototyping! Here are some valuable lessons learned :)
Our First Unpub Prime
Sunday, 9:00 am - We had just arrived in the ballroom. The night before, the room echoed wall-to-wall with the voices of game designers, creators and artists, and most importantly play testers. Today, we were the first ones (okay maybe second) to set up our board game. And this was no surprise, given that the previous night convention-goers had stayed up into the wee hours of the morning (I had heard as early as 3:00 am from one of the organizers.) Kathryn and I, on the other hand, had retired early, a respectable 11:30 pm, as the morning was important to us.
It was our last time to playtest Estate before heading out early for a flight back to Orlando. Others we had spoken with intended to stay through the afternoon, play testing the day away before taking their flights and long drives back home. This was Unpub Prime after all, and it only happens once a year. For Grod Games, our first year and a visit well worth it…