Just a little update on the progress of the Zombie Stomp! gameboard.

As you can see, the ship is pretty much done now. All that’s left to do is damage the ship up to match the sketch, add thrusters, and then add details in the interior of the ship. After that, I can work on a nice, spacey background and all the labels, lettering, and logos.

Then, of course I still have to make it into a PDF complete with rules and all that. But now that I think about it, the rules might be simple enough to just put right on the gameboard. Or not, a summary of them at least.

Enjoy!

I thought that it might be a good idea to update you on the progress that has been made on Zombie Stomp!. So, here it is.

The board is progressing nicely but I have been running into barriers with my general graphic design skill level–or lack thereof–and that is slowing me down. Here’s what we have so far.

I’m actually rather proud of what I’ve made so far–although perhaps only in the way a father can be. I know that it probably looks amateurish to the professionals out there (you know who you are) but I’m impressed with what GIMP is capable of doing for free and I’m having fun.

The playtest that I planned to do this weekend has run into life-schedule-conflict-stuff and I have to postpone. I’m thinking a couple more weeks out so probably mid-September. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on the graphic and posting the results here for you to see.

So I’ve been a little lax in reporting in of late. My family and I went on vacation and the last few weeks have been really hectic. But, I haven’t been sitting on my laurels the entire time, I have been working.

While on vacation I worked on my short story which has the working title of “Big Time”. Big Time is the story of a small time reporter, Theodore Chang, who has big dreams and an attitude to match. It takes place in a far future world where man has long since colonized the stars and has built a massive network of portals to connect all the planets into one metaworld that they call Pangaea. Theo gets a chance to do an exclusive interview of Gigacity’s most famous serial killer–the Portal Killer. The Portal Killer had hacked his way into the portal network and was using it to invade the homes of the rich and famous through their private portals, killing them in their sleep. That is, until he was caught. But then, why do people keep dying? Big Time should be a lot of fun and hopefully a bit surprising.

Zombie Stomp! is also moving forward. I plan to playtest the game at the end of the month and hope to have the rules written before then so I can hand them out at the playtest. I’ll post them here first, of course. And the results of the playtest afterwards too.

And I’ve also been working with my friend Benjamin on a joint venture to produce web-based computer games for your enjoyment under the brand Hard Boiled Geek. There’s isn’t much at our site yet–actually there’s nothing–but Benjamin is working on that.

Our first game is a stock trading game called Corporate Raiders. If you want to check out what the game has so far you can visit it at corporateraiders.hardboiledgeek.com. The game is still pretty young right now. We just have the mechanism to display the status of the market. Our next step is to actually make the market move. Then we can start adding features to buy and sell and start adding players.

Benajmin has a real knack for creating interesting companies for the fictitious Atlantic Stock Exchange and reading the names and descriptions of these companies can be a lot of fun. I encourage you to check it out and give us some feedback on how it looks and the content. If we like you’re feedback we might even name a company after you! Once we get some more functionality up and running we’ll also want to start inviting some beta-test users. So if you’re interested drop me a line at guy@guyroyse.com.

So, while I haven’t been posting much of what I’ve been working on, you can probably see that I’ve been a busy little beaver. And, I’m have a lot of fun making all this content, even if there isn’t much for you to see at the moment. But when it comes, all these irons I have in the fire will be done at once. And won’t that be fun!

I’ve been working hard on the Zombie Stomp! game-board and though I would share a work in progress image so y’all knew I was working on something and hadn’t abandoned the project. So, here it is.

As you can see, I have got the interior walls and structure in place and the textures on the floor. I’ve also added doors but not any hatches yet. Exterior walls, damage to the ship and large items inside of the ship are next. After that, a nice spacey background and then details such as frost in the cryopods, little yellow and black caution strips, maybe some blood splatters. That kinda thing.

I’m also thinking I will need some kind of logo for the game. If anyone had some ideas for a logo, suggest them in the comments or email them to me directly. Major props will go out for whomever puts a logo together for the game and epic props for the one arbitrarily selected by yours truly.

Once the board is done, I’ll start working on the PDF. I’m planning on including in the PDF detailed rules and the game-board—conveniently sized for printing on card stock, cutting up, and spreading out on the gaming table—plus cutout zombies and humans that can be folded as little triangles and used a game pieces.

So, as planned, here is the sketch for the Zombie Stomp! Gameboard.

There are a couple of things to note here:

1. Humans start with one pawn in Engineering, two on the Bridge, and three in Habitation.
2. All eight zombies are split evenly between the two cryopods.
3. Zombie are too stupid to use hatches (the little lens shaped things with T’s on each side). Only humans can use them.
4. The Port Cryopod, the Aft, and the outside of the ship are vacuum. Humans cannot enter these spaces unless they go through a hatch and suit up. Zombies can enter these areas just fine using regular doors. No significant depressurization of the ship occurs.

I plan to work on a better board, making it real purdy-like and everything using GIMP, over the next couple of weeks. Once it’s ready I’ll post it. I’ll probably post some preliminary stuff as well so you’ll see the sausage being made and too keep feeding y’all content.

I also intent to work on the rules and play-test them over the next couple of weeks. Expect those sooner as writing documents is easier than using GIMP. And please, play-test the rules yourselves and give me your feedback. Either send me an email at guy@guyroyse.com or drop your feedback in the comments on the blog. The more data I have, the better.

And, of course, if you give me play-test feedback you’ll get props in the final PDF. And who knows, maybe in an actual print version of the game some day.

Once I get the game finished I may make new maps if their is interest. I’m thinking that a classic dungeon for a nostalgic D&D feel might be fun or perhaps a small town Main Street—complete with a theater showing a zombie flick— for that real B-movie experience.

This game will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license so that you and your friends can take this content, remix it, create maps, expand the rules, or whatever. I heartily encourage you to do this. Right now. Right this second. Go crazy! Just be sure to post links to your stuff in the comments so everyone else can share in the fun.