Exciting things are happing at Lutz Getaway! Actually, they’ve been happening for over 3 years now! But, we are super excited to being close to possibly publishing our first board game, Ocean Adventures!
Back in October of 2019 I got the inspiration to create a board game after my son began having seizures. I wanted to find something where he could put his creativity to use. Since Jeff’s and my dream is to live aboard a boat and cruise the world by ocean, I thought a game about that lifestyle could be fun, so I started brainstorming ideas. I came up with the idea of cruising the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, with Bermuda since that’s where we want to begin our adventures once we actually have a boat.
I had a piece of cardboard about the size of game board so I started out by drawing a map of the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and Bermuda. My mom and Jeff were my first guinea pigs, and we brainstormed and tested ideas. I used some mechanics from various games we enjoy like Ticket to Ride, Terraforming Mars, Everdell, etc. We tried various ways to move, figured out cards, money, equipment, and other mechanics and ways to make the game interesting and balanced.
Once we figured that out, I drew the map on a poster board. After trying out several different ways to move, I decided it needed a grid for movement and to have players pay to move. I used index cards for the deck of cards and wrote the different adventures on them, and used cut up poster board to make tiles for equipment and sea tiles. I found stones at Hobby Lobby to use for player pieces and plastic gems for money. We played the game on that poster board for probably 6 months at least. We had friends play who gave their opinions and ideas for some of the cards and tiles, but the basic game play seemed to be pretty solid.
In April of 2020, I began creating some of the designs for the game on my laptop using Canva. I’m no graphic designer but have some experience creating graphics and of course I love board games, so I felt I could, at the least, get some of the cards created and what not. My son drew the backs of the cards and the countries for the map so I took photos of them and uploaded them to Canva.
I did a lot of research on self publishing board games and found a website that allows you to customize game boards, boxes, tiles, cards, mats and more. They have some components as well, but I did end up ordering the wooden boats we are currently using from a different website. We are still using the plastic pieces I got at Hobby Lobby for money. I was able to publish most of the game from the one website and that was shipped to me in July of 2020. Good times in the middle of the Covid pandemic.
We’ve been playing the game for over 3 years now and have tweaked a few minor things here and there, but for the most part, the game play works well. However, I’m looking for a few strangers to play without my help or direction. I prefer local people as I don’t want to pay shipping costs and risk not getting the game back.
In the meantime, I am working on the having a second version made with updated artwork, created by my daughter. It’s nice having creative children. She is giving it to me as a Christmas present, which she surprised me with a couple of weeks ago. My son hasn’t had the time or desire to work on it anymore, unfortunately.
With that being said, here is a sampling of some of the cards and tiles for the game.
Once all the artwork is complete, I will make another complete game, which is prototype 4 I do believe and can use it for testing. Once we are sure the game play is as good as we think it is, and that there are no errors in the design or artwork, I will launch it on Kickstarter. At least that is my plan so far. I’m still researching the best way to go about getting it published without selling it to a big company. Unless of course they want to pay me a million dollars, then I might consider it, lol.
So, if you have friends or family that are board game enthusiasts, please share this post with them!
Also, I’ll be making a video about the game and how to play in the near future. It will be on our YouTube channel, Lutz Getaway.
And here you thought we were just a travel blog. 😉
