Howdy Partners!
Howdy, partners.
Whether you playtested our game at KublaCon last year, met us at GDC last week, or just found your way onto this blog, HOWDY!
It's hard to believe, but Jim and I have been working on Lonesome Star for the past five years. This is our first email, so let us know what you want to hear more about— game design? Art? Our favorite games? We'll share more about our process and how things are going in the days to come.
In case this is only ringing the most distant of bells, a quick refresher: Lonesome Star is our co-op tactics board game. It's designed to be played by four people over 12 sessions, telling a tight and coherent story that feels like a great season of TV with memorable characters, great dialogue, and a story with twists and turns.
GDC
I wasn't able to make it out to GDC this year, but Jim had a great experience meeting many of you. We got some great feedback, and it sounds like players had a good time. It's fun to think about fellow game designers playing Lonesome Star!
The Clock
In Lonesome Star, initiative order is determined by each character's place on the clock. Different actions take more or less time, and characters can be sped up or slowed down on the clock. Players have loved the clock since the very beginning of our game's development, when we had one good idea (the clock) and a lot of bad ideas (everything else, at first). For the past five years, we've been playtesting with a pen placed on a round piece of cardboard with numbers written on it. But now we have a prototype with..... magnets.
When you rotate the hand of the clock, it snaps into place with a wonderful little clicking sound. If you haven't gotten to do this yet, you have to trust me here— it is a very satisfying little moment. We're still discussing what the final component will be, but if I get my way, it will have magnets.
Character of the week
I think every time we send you an email, we'll include some art. Our character artist is the peerless Omercan Cirit, who we found through his gorgeous work for The Wildsea. He's been with us since the beginning; we ignored every piece of advice about waiting for art and emailed him when our game was still in the "initiative clock and some bad ideas" phase. Since then, he's made nearly a hundred different characters for us.
This one is named Skullcracker, and players meet her in the biggest city they visit in Lonesome Star. We imagined it a bit like Blackwater in Red Dead Redemption, or New York in Gangs of New York. Not a shining metropolis, but a place of grit and wealth and dirt all mixed together. So Skullcracker here is still Western-coded, but a little more sophisticated than some of the enemies we meet along the road.
Alright, that's all from us this week. Stay tuned for more from us, and thanks for reading! Drop us a line at lonesomestargame@gmail.com.
-Hamilton