CCS2025: Postmortem

CCS2025 wrapped up on Saturday and there's a bit to talk about, both about the game and about team structure. Thank you for everyone who came out and played our game this weekend! Even though we couldn't be nearly as present as we have been for previous events, we want everyone to know that we appreciate each and every one of you, even if we can't take the time to talk personally about our thoughts and our game to everyone. Let's dive right in though.

How the Change in Direction Worked

Our game has been in production for 2.5 years now and while the pace we work has varied greatly within those 2.5 years, we try every time to make the game the best it can be before a showcase (maybe to our detriment as well as we usually begin to crunch before showcases but that's a discussion for another time), but with our huge shift in direction a few months back to go away from a narrative driven RPG epic to a more modern, roguelike RPG has worked very well.

The game plays better than before, looks better than before, and also feels better than before. We've had very little negative feedback regarding our game's mechanics this time around or even criticisms other than a few things which we also agree with which we'll take as an overall positive.

We'll continue to iterate upon this idea, still bringing the snarky and silly story that Board of the Kings hopefully will be known for to all of you. We've never wanted to remove our narrative, but rather restructure how it's told. We think this works and hope you all agree. We'll have a lot more changes coming hopefully through the year as our team gets more focused and tries to crunch less and less.

CCS 2025 

The one thing we want to say regarding CCS2025 is that we're mostly sorry we weren't able to be more present around our booth (also that we've somehow lost our banner between now and March, but we'll be able to get another one so that's not a big deal.

The reason we were not able to be more present is actually because many of our core team members (almost all of them actually) actually worked to organize CCS2025 this year. As we were in charge of organizing and running the event, we had very little time to be at our booth. For that, we apologize.

Although we weren't able to hang around the booth and talk personally with everyone, we think that CCS2025 was a pretty resounding success overall! Maybe not the best for Board of the Kings itself, but very good for our community and something we hope to also strive to improve over the next few years to come.

What's Next?

There's a bunch of features we hope to get in next. Along with our very talented artists continuing to replace our in-game assets, we're also getting closer to pitching our game to publishers, once we're sure the game looks just the way we want it. Since we're lacking some crucial things (like animations), it's hard to exactly show what our game is made of in it's entirety. Some video may be too ambiguous to show, but that's to be expected at our stage in development.

Beyond pitching to publishers, which is a pretty flexible time period, we're also looking to go to Secret Sauce in July in San Mateo as well as MagWest in San Jose in August. It'll be a packed month for us, and we probably won't be able to get any major changes in between now and then, but hopefully we can work to get in everything the players from CCS2025 recommended to us to make the experience great.

We've got high hopes for Secret Sauce so we're excited to hopefully make it out there. MagWest has also been to us over the years so we'll be excited to exhibit a third time and see how our game is received. Showcases not CCS will be great for our game's health now that we help run CCS, but everything surrounding CCS was fantastic regardless.

... And Lastly

We want to say, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you to everyone who has stuck with us. We've got a small community, but we know the Sacramento community has been very kind to us, and meeting all the local developers and watching all our games grow has been nothing but great for us and the community.

We were so busy at CCS this year we didn't even have time for our group photo! Our team has changed over the years, but our goal remains the same: We want to make a game that's fun for everyone, lighthearted, and hopefully funny as well. We've had many people comment and remark positively at our direction, so we'll continue heading in that direction until we find something else that works. We couldn't have made this happen without all of you.

Despite starting off as a Game Jam game, we feel like Board of the Kings has finally begun to get it's feet on the ground as something real and established. Not that it wasn't before, but it felt like we were just putting ideas down on the table rather than forming something more thorough. Let's hope everything keeps going great.

Thank you all for your support!

Go Team Checkmate!