An Uncomfortable Admission
There’s no easy way to say it. GenCon is twenty days from now.
Ultrablamtacular! isn’t done. And I’m not going to GenCon.
As the update pace on this blog shows, progress on the game has slowed considerably. But that’s because the easy things are done already, not because I’m not working on it. It turns out that it’s a lot easier to have a great idea (or even a few) for a game than it is to turn them into a finished product.
The game remains, I believe, 90% written. And work continues on that last 10% in all its infernal bastardy. But internal playtesting was way behind schedule, external playtesting was as-yet-nonexistant, and production and layout never started in earnest.
I recognized these facts long before I posted about them here – I guess I didn’t want to admit it publically yet. I guess its possible that I could have put something together and taken it to GenCon. But it would have been an ashcan at best, and that’s not what I’m trying to accomplish at this point. And it would still have been a rushed job, even for an ashcan.
This blog is about the journey and the process I’m engaged in with this game, and this missed goal is very much a part of that, whether I like it or not. I thought in February when I decided to go to GenCon that it was an ambitious goal. And I still think it was a good idea – I got a lot of work done in trying to reach this goal – more than I’d gotten done in the previous four or five years of kicking the idea around in my head.
Whether or not Ultrablam! makes it to GenCon next year, it’ll be the game I want it to be.
