Silversmith Games

06/05/2020

Just to give you an idea of what we have been up to this past year, here are two illustrations.

The rectangular picture of Lily is the original moving piece we produced in 2019. Through all of our game testing we found the tile itself to be too big for the board and cards. Players were having a hard time seeing the path around and under Lily and thus having a hard time calculating their moves.

So we made a very important decision about scaling all tile pieces down. We love love love the artwork, and we loved showing it off on a larger rectangular tile, but it wasn't practical for the game play. After a few test runs where we got consistent feedback about the sizing issue, we went back to the original artwork, rescaled it, printed lower resolution images on regular stock paper which we glued onto cardboard. That is game design 101 - paper, glue, and cardboard pieces.

The smaller cut out illustration is our new moving tile. It is a little less than 2/3 the size of the original, with out as big of a background, and with a lighter color that softens its appearance against the tile cards. We are very happy with the results. All of the wizards and child tokens are now similarly rescaled.

We can't wait for you all to see the rest of the pieces. I'll keep posting up till we get to Kickstarter again.

Thanks
Jeremy

06/01/2020

Hey everyone,

Well now, it has been quite some time.

David and I are back and hard at work. We haven’t gone anywhere, but we have been busy refining Pathwise and getting ourselves ready to go back to Kickstarter soon. We’ll start posting more information in the coming days and weeks.

But let me just say, Pathwise is really, solidly good now. We’ve used the time to refine the rule set to get the game down to a fun, satisfying, streamlined, maze building game that you can play with four players in under an hour.

Thank you to all our friends and family that have continued to support us.

Jeremy

07/14/2019

We are still trucking along, promise.

We are down to the finer details for Pathwise and are having a focus group test out the variants.

Keep an eye out for more developments as we approach Kickstarter again soon.

04/19/2019

So...what have David and I been up to you ask? Well, lots.

Mostly we’ve been experimenting with ways to finalize Pathwise. We’ve shrunken the pieces so they fit better on the board, we’ve added a new spell and dropped an old one, redesigned the board slightly, and tweaked a few other things. In short, we are crafting the final product. We might not always be the best at communicating what we are doing, but we are good at what we are doing it. We have a great game on our hands and over the last two months its gotten even better.

We are going to start amping up our campaign again. This time before we go back to Kickstarter though we are going to try to address the communication efforts. We need your help though. Like our page, find us on Twitter, and pass along posts. Pathwise will be going back to Kickstarter this summer, and we will need your help getting there.

Thanks, and stay tuned for more news.

Jeremy

03/24/2019

David and I are still play testing and refining Pathwise and today we are at UnPub in Towson MD. Having a great go at it. We are finding we are close to done with everything and we are going to start gearing up for Kickstarter going ahead soon.

02/12/2019

We are still trucking along. I will be at Break My Game this weekend at the Board and Brew testing Pathwise at an event call Break My Game. Check it out:

Our goal is to bring together independent tabletop and card game developers and people looking to play test their games in an effort to promote good game development. If you are a game designer, or ju

01/23/2019

Play testing of Pathwise is going really well. We have a great game on our hands.

We have prototypes. We announced this on our page, but never really blogged about it here. I will just reiterate that getting the prototypes in our hands is one of the most amazing things that has ever happened in my life. It is so electrifying to see all the hard work pay off.

01/12/2019

Testing Pathwise at The Congress Of Gamers event in Rockville MD today. Been getting great feedback and having a lot of fun.

01/01/2019

First ever test run of the game on the first day of 2019!

12/29/2018

Funny how life works out sometimes.

The day after we shut down the Kickstarter campaign, the prototypes of Pathwise arrive on my doorstep!

This is really happening - the game is becoming a reality. I'm so happy right now.

The artwork is of course amazing, thank's to Rana Gainer. The pieces and cards all fit together perfectly. This is amazing.

Now that they have arrived, I have to send out the copies to David and Rana. The three of us will be testing the game in the coming weeks. Then we will return to Kickstarter once we are ready.

We've come so far, and have so much farther to go. But we are celebrating today!

12/27/2018

Hi everyone,

We have some difficult news to break, so we are just going to get it out of the way up front. We are suspending our Kickstarter campaign.

This campaign has been a great journey, and it has taught us a lot about what it takes to be successful at Kickstarter and about what the game community is looking for in a crowd funded game. Unfortunately, we think we just jumped the gun a little too early. We had our eyes on the campaign, but didn't have the production to back it up. With our prototypes still caught up at the printers, the campaign was a challenge without the physical game to show. Plus trying to work on the game itself while also communicating and running the campaign proved tricky.

Once we have the professional prototypes in hand we will be taking them to local events around Washington DC, Baltimore, and New Jersey for people to play test. We will relaunch crowdsourcing once we have some solid reviews, new videos showing how the game is played, and a heartier promotional plan. This effort to bring Pathwise to market is not over. In fact, it will come back stronger.

Thank you to all our Kickstarter backers. We appreciate all the support you showed us. Please keep an eye out in the coming months for our relaunch.

Sincerely,
Jeremy and David
Silversmith Games

12/18/2018

So, the adventures in getting things printed in China continue...

We placed the order for pieces from China a few weeks ago, and kind of went silent about it. There has been a lot happening. We are learning a lot about production and what it takes to get a whole project printed and set up correctly. A lot of it has to do with making sure pieces are lined up correctly, and that the graphics are clear and will print as expected. Today, for example, there was a question about cut lines on the main cardboard printout. Communicating with the printers has been interesting to say the least. Between language differences and the time zone, answering such a simple question can take a couple of days.

So, while we had hoped to have the test copies soon, we are going to have to wait a little while longer.

We are learning a lot. This game is great. It will happen. Just have to keep pushing along.