We’ve been running silent for a long time here at TSS as we work to get our funding together, but there’s been a lot going on under the surface. We have our first iPad game in progress, and are bringing some more core team members on board to get development fully underway. More about that soon, but in the meantime I have something else to announce.

I’m very pleased to inform you all that Collins Epic Wargames has agreed to publish the board version of War Patrol, my tactical submarine game. You can listen to the announcement over at The Gaming Gang here The board version is currently in development under the title “War Patrol: Silent Victory in the Pacific”, and will get a slot in CEW’s production queue once that process is done. I’m tremendously excited to be working with …

Wow! I’m very surprised and gratified by all the responses I’ve gotten about playtesting War Patrol. Keep ‘em coming!

To everyone who’s already volunteered: great to have you aboard! We’re in the process of assembling and proofing the final playtest kit now to make sure that you get the most up-to-date version of the game. Expect a contact early next week about delivery of the kit. Sorry for the small delay, but frankly I didn’t expect this much of a response this quickly. We haven’t even gotten our first game out and already our customers are showing us how awesome they are.

author: Jeff Dougherty

The Shenandoah Studio is looking for playtesters for the board version of our forthcoming iPad game War Patrol. The objective of this round of playtesting is to make sure that the game is fun, engaging, has replay value, and is easy enough for a general gamer audience to learn.

Playtesters will receive a complete playtest kit in either PDF or dead-tree form, whichever they prefer, and will be credited as members of the War Patrol production team for both the iPad version and the physical board game, should one be printed.

If interested, contact Jeff Dougherty or leave a comment below this post. Looking forward to kicking off our first series of playtests!

subject: playtest
author: Jeff Dougherty

Given how long I’ve spent on the project, it’s actually amazing (and possibly a bit depressing) just how many things from that first page of notes are still part of the game. The patrol-level search grid, drawing cards to resolve attacks, the threats your sub will face, and even the four depth bands are all on that page. The labels have changed a bit, but by and large the concepts haven’t. Despite some scribbled references to angles and torpedo engagement angles, I knew at the start I wanted the game to have a lot of abstraction involved in it, for two reasons.

First, my major design influence at that point was the work Steve and I had done on Hell of Stalingrad, which left me with a very strong conviction that simpler is better in games. (I still think it’s true …

Greetings and welcome to the Project Simonsen design diaries.  We’re hoping to make this an occasional feature where designers of games currently in development talk about their projects, what’s going on with them, and a bit about their creative process.  Since I work right across the desk from Eric I was the obvious first victim of contributor to this feature.  So, welcome!

I started the War Patrol project because I was at a point in my life where I literally had to either start designing a game or go completely insane.  (Looking back on where it’s got me, sometimes I feel like I split the difference, but that’s another story…)  I’d worked in biological research ever since graduating from college a few years before and started medical school, but left a few months before when the workload and stress just turned …