SEVEN SWORDS BACKGROUND

How it Started

Seven swords started in November of 2018 as a way to bring my interest in game design together with a fun activity for my two young daughters. I had few dozen dry erase playing cards that the girls liked drawing on, and I had been watching a game design show "Extra Credits" and it made me want to finally put a game together and see if I could make something enjoyable for myself and the kids that fit into the shorter timeframe that we had for playing boardgames.

The next thing I knew, my kids wanted to draw monsters all the time for my game, and one afternoon at a family gathering they had pulled a bunch of cousins into drawing stuff too. These monsters started getting names and stats, and then we started figuring out some of the base mechanisms for play.

How it Evolved

I kept a notebook where I started forming direction, coming up with rules, and writing down suggestions and improvements. After a bit of tweaking, I had a base mechanic involving three main stats that seemed to work well together. It was a little hard to get used to at first, and remains a part of the learning curve to get used to, but seemed both like an interesting mechanic and something that played well.

After a little playtesting a few of my friends, family and students kept making suggestion after suggestion that were hard to implement, but that added a lot to the game. These ideas seeded more ideas and soon monster lords, paths, legendary equipment all started coming together. It was a very organic process that grew over more than a year.

Iteration and Polish

I have a saying that my students hear me say a lot. Everything you do, do it with excellence. And I wasn't about to put a game together that didn't live up to my standards. I started a loop of design/playtest/revision that has probably consumed over 3000 hours of my time over the last few years. I have put a lot of time and effort into Seven Swords. Looking back it seems like a lot, but it took me learning some structure behind game design. (what makes it fun) but also had me learning how to work with tools like Illustrator and Dreamweaver. So the personal growth aspect of making this game has been great. So far really the only thing I have outsourced has been the artwork, for which Barbara Morris has been so great with.

Where it is Going

Though this project started out as a just something for family friends and students, I have been working hard to make Seven Swords into a game that could be published either independently or by a publisher. I used to think I couldn't find a publisher as I'd have to give up more control that I was willing to, but I have since seen some great organizations that work very well with designers, so I'm not convinced I'll have to go it alone. Somewhere along the way I decided that I should keep pushing to get this game in front of playtesters and figure out in earnest if the game could go father than a few copies. It's been a labor of love that I simply want to bring it into existence, as it fills a spot in my game collection that I can't otherwise fill.