Play testing the Ohio state map in Lakewood Ohio!
almost 5 years ago – Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 11:07:39 AM

Play Testing

On December 20th, The Bookshop In Lakewood --- an awesome used book store that you should totally check out --- hosted a midnight madness sale and play-testing sessions for Berrymandering. 

We set out a few different versions of game board: 

•  4x6: A 5 minute version layout, great for learning the rules and quickly playing your first few games to get the hang of it. 
•  6x6: Original recipe Berrymandering. When you make the board a little bigger, the number of possible cake cuts goes way up, so this one takes about 15 minutes to play a round. You can play the exact same board layout a few times, and each game is different. 
•  Ohio: When the shape of the game board changes, the strategies required to win shift a lot with them. You have less freedom in some parts of the map so early cuts can make a much bigger impact.

A Maker's Edition of Berrymandering?

We've been thinking about the best ways to distribute the game. Obviously our official version will be available in all its full-color and chip-board glory, but its going to take us some time to get them manufactured. The print-and-play version will let you all start playing the game right away, and in January we'll be sending out the print-and-play to our current backers and posting a how-to video on showing a good way to make a playable copy at home.

However, Eliot and I are both hobbyist makers. Eliot has been using laser cutters to make prototype versions of his Obelisk and I have several different 3D printers disposal. So we've been discussing designing 3D printable and laser cuttable versions of the game. That would give three different ways to make the game at home! 

Post in the comments if you'd be interested in these two other at-home options. 

We're 33% of the way there!
about 5 years ago – Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 11:45:02 AM

We're at well over $1400 dollars so far, and we're very excited to see the support from the community. For Every 500 dollars in backing we're going to build a new state-map board. When we made the Ohio map, we distributed the berries fairly close to the actual voting distribution in the state. Thats not going to be possible for all the states, so you'll have to forgive us for a bit of inaccuracy. We'll label the state-map boards according to how accurate we think they are. 

Of course, the accuracy doesn't really matter when you use the board games to actually play because you'll randomly distribute the tiles anyway. 

Here are the first two bonus maps from the stretch goals: 

West-Virginia 

Pennsylvania