Over here in the United States it’s Thanksgiving weekend, right there along with Black Friday and more. And I have a really big thing to be thankful for: I got a job that started in early November. That’s one change in my life, and a major one at that. And major changes tend to disrupt all sorts of things, for example, travel plans. It’s an excellent job doing database development helping a school for the blind and visually impaired, so it has a high social satisfaction quotient for me, which is something that I really like in a job.
But in this case, having a job will bring good changes for me and Spare Brains Games. Two+ years ago I was working on making a revised edition of Zombie Cafe, the first game (and only game, if I’m honest) that I sold. I was working with an old friend Steve Crompton, staff artist of Flying Buffalo (web site and blog) to get ZC illustrated, we were probably half way or more through the project when I became unemployed and had to put the project on hold. Well, now that I’m employed again, we’re going to restart the project! And once we get ZC finished and re-launched, I can work on other projects, such as Copts & Robbers and maybe make a go at Karaoke Screams, plus an unnamed supervillain/spy game that I really want to do.
I’m not going to make any statement saying that the new edition of Zombie Cafe will be available on a specific date, it’ll be done when it’s done. I want to test some changes, and that’s going to take some time, plus having to redo the card layouts to make the art look better. It’s possible that we’ll be done by the end of 2015, but I think early ’16 is more realistic. And the new edition will be in color and printed as regular playing cards with rounded corners.
And to provide a teaser, here’s a couple of pieces of Steve’s art that I really like:
I hope you had a good Thanksgiving or whatever and have a non-negative holiday season!
High Altitude Game Design 