As usual, for me, I have been busy both with my existing projects and planning out future projects.

So let’s start with some exciting news (Well I’m excited!).

Those who follow my blogs will know I have been talking about Kampfgruppe for a while as a future project. I knew I wanted to do a WW2 squad based game but needed a good ruleset to base it o, preferably with some kind of existing fan base. I think I have found the perfect game – Valor & Victory by Barry W Doyle. Check it out here on boardgamegeek.com. Kampfgruppe will have a name change and become Valor & Victory. It’s very early days so you won’t see too much for a while. I have some ideas on how to get very early builds out to people that want to see development and be involved in the process – more news on this to follow in the coming weeks.

My work on Invaders from Dimension X is slowly but surely reaching completion and I have started to share ideas with my graphics artist on the second game in the series – Space Vermin from Beyond. There is a lot of artwork to do so I will let him work on that over the next few months and then I will start working on the core code. I can use a fair amount of the framework from Invaders from Dimension X but it has a different ruleset so there will still be quite a bit of coding to do.

With frequent feedback from my guru QA goto guy, Jonathan, I have been busy fixing issues and making small changes to make the game flow better. I now have 2 of the scenarios working with the campaign scenario left to do. Target is to have the game complete by end of March and then more testing. I also have the original game manual to review and edit to get it aligned with the computer version of the game. Hoping to get most of that done this week.

Work on this has been on hold while I focus on getting Invaders from Dimension X to near completion. I will be looking to move back to working on the AI for Korsun in early April. Target completion for this game is End of April/Early May.

I have been working with a new artist on the map for this game. Still a little way off from getting a final version but its shaping up nicely. Once I have that I will put the basic code framework together and then start on the game specific rules. No timescale on this yet.

On my list of 1001 things to do before I die is designing a board game/computer game combination. I now have the finished map from another graphics artist I am trying out (and who I hope will be using on Valor & Victory). I sent it off to a boardgames company to print up. Yep, this is totally not the way to design a board game but enthusiasm got ahead of reasoning. I have been thinking about the counter design and have a good idea of how they will look. This is very much a long-term project.

I finished my first book review (Battle of Wills) and sent it off last Friday to the editor. I actually found doing this surprisingly stressful. I had to read the book and write up a review in 3 months (I did it in slightly over 2 months). That seems like a lot of time but with everything else I do and not planning out reading time for this correctly, it was constantly in the back of my mind as something I had to do.

I am still maintaining my magazine on Flipboard on an almost daily basis. It makes for a great read if you have an interest in all things war-game related. So please so check it out.

Yeah. Uhmm its still in the same state as it was last month. I did go try to buy some paint yesterday but the shops closed when I got there. Its now becoming a family joke that it will never get completed. I will prove them wrong!

The day job! Yep, I do all the above in my own time. I have a great full time+ job as a Program Manager which I am also equally passionate about. Isn’t that why we have 24 hours in the day – to do the things we love.