We'll be at Seattle Mini Maker Faire!

Oh, there's so much to tell! We're prepping to launch our very first Kickstarter. No, not Pocket-Tactics - we're still figuring out the best way deal with the manufacturing headache. We're launching Wayfarer, our tabletop RPG system, powered by our Continuum Narrative Engine.

Oh. My. Gods. This has been in the works for years!

Wanna come talk to us about our creations? We've got a booth at Seattle Mini Maker Faire on March 22 and 23. We'll be chatting incessantly, showing off (and playing) Pocket-Tactics, talking up Wayfarer, displaying our 3d printed creations, and surrounding ourselves with crazy Maker creativity. The event is at the EMP, 10am to 5pm on both Saturday and Sunday.

We'll be raffling off some cool prizes, so come say hello and see what we do and see why you should pledge support to all things Ill Gotten Games. (Shameless plug for the Kickstarter campaign. Sorry.)

What an honor!

So, it's hard to have a blog where we talk about our adventures where we don't feel like we're just tooting our own horns.  I mean, we're not walking around with huge egos or anything, but sometimes accolades just fall in our laps and this is our place to talk about them.  So let's just say this...

It's an HONOR for Arian to have been invited to be a guest speaker today at the Microsoft Store at University Village in Seattle.  Makerbot sought him out to be a presenter and he's bringing some of his amazing 3D printed designs.  We hope to see you there, 5 to 7pm!

Oh, and he will have his newest printed marvel there, Baby's First Mace.  It's just too damn cute.

We Went to Hackathon!

It's been a while since we've posted, but it's certainly not because we haven't had anything going on.  We've been BUSY.  There are now 16 factions of Pocket-Tactics, not including a few redesigns lately.  Context is another new game Arian created, a word game this time.  Jeremy and I had a beautiful baby girl, who keeps our hands full and us entertained.  And that's not to mention the hours and hours of development that's been going into three different versions of Continuum - the Continuum Adventure Engine, Continuum Mini, and Continuum Narrative Engine.  More on all of those soon.

But the big news is that Arian traveled across the country and got to participate in Hackathon at MakerBot Headquarters in Brooklyn, NY.  Holy hell. He got to see rooms filled with MakerBot printers while meeting 3D printing enthusiasts across the country who have actually played Pocket-Tactics.  So cool.

Arian's team came in second for the competition at the Hackathon.

He came home inspired and has been pounding out the codex work ever since.  We're still exploring options for printing Pocket-Tactics in a more cost-effective way, but in the meantime there are so many other projects nearing completion.

For more timely updates, be sure you friend Ill Gotten Games on Facebook!

Another new game...

Yep, Arian and his creativity have been at it again.  We're excited to announce another new table top game, completely unique and printed on the faithful MakerBot Replicator.  Once play-tested and perfected, we'll have copies available through the Etsy shop, but for now...

Coming soon from Ill Gotten Games: Hover Derby, a fast-paced, hyper-competitive game in which two to four players race hover cars through the futuristic city of Cosmopolis!

The splash page, as well as all the components for the game, were created in TinkerCad.  Check back soon for some pics!

And the winner is....

Well, it's been a few weeks since the contest to create the perfect Pocket-Tactics logo ended.  There's no excuse for the delay in announcing the winner, aside from being really busy being featured on the radio and making crazy progress revising .  Without further adieu...

The winner of the Pocket-Tactics logo design contest is TinkerCad user Michael Wortman!!

We love the streamlined look, the pocket-y design, and we fully intend to make the piece into a belt buckle to wear proudly to our next gaming convention.  The designer will receive a hand printed and painted copy of the game, as well as design credit when we get the Kickstarter campaign going.

Honorable mentions, too, for some of our other favorites:

Tinkercad user Badger

Tinkercad user Mr TinCans

Michael Wortman again

We really had some amazing entries into the contest and we really appreciate the time and effort that everyone put into creating art for our game.  We're already brainstorming ideas for more contests in the future.

Speaking of logos, our amazing artist friend Austen Zaleski took a jumble of ideas that we emailed him and designed our new Ill Gotten Games logo.  It's exactly as we'd envisioned, but somehow even cooler and better.  HUGE thank you to Austen for his creativity and attention to detail (sounds like a report card, and we think he gets an A).

Wired Magazine Features Pocket-Tactics. YAY!

It happens really, really rarely.  All three of us tend to be pretty verbose.  But we're humbled and speechless to be featured on Wired Magazine's website today.  Wow.

Huge thank you to Joseph Flaherty for writing such an awesome article and promoting Ill Gotten Games, Pocket-Tactics, and 3D printing.

Wow.

Hey Turkeys! We Won the Black Dynamite Design Contest!

So, Arian happened upon something epic on the Thingiverse.  One of our favorite things to do at Ill Gotten Games, when we're not playing or designing games, is to watch movies or TV shows - the more independent, obscure, or cult-y the better.  So yes, we'd seen and enjoyed Black Dynamite before.  We recite quotes from it frequently.  For the Thingiverse to announce a contest to create the a 3D model that represented the cult classic was uncanny.

As many of you know, Arian has been designing like crazy, specifically working on Pocket-Tactics.  So what better way for him to enter the contest than to create a few larger than life versions of Black Dynamite, some of his enemies, and New York themed tiles and turn Black Dynamite into Pocket-Tactics.  In 2 days. And so Black Dynamite: Throwdown Showdown was born.

He didn't do it alone, mind you.  Jeremy has been busy working on the models for another Pocket-Tactics faction for future release and Laurel has been coordinating schedules for our Kickstarter video, which we recorded this weekend.  But Black Dynamite was Arian's focus, so he enlisted the brilliant help of his little brother, Cameron, to create some 2D art (in MS Paint!!) to accompany his contest submission.
    

Talented family, right??

So, all those long, manic hours of designing, printing, and painting paid off yesterday when the MakerBot blog announced their big winner, complete with a footnoted disclaimer that they're really and truly not in cahoots with Arian somehow - their last two posts have been about his work on Pocket-Tactics.

We're looking forward to some swag, but really just more recognition about our little game is the best part of the win.  Stay tuned for more news soon - about our Pocket-Tactics contest winner and the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.