With Internet, Netflix, YouTube and all those modern technologies our world is smaller – whatever you live in USA, France or Poland you watch Game of Thrones on HBO, you go to the cinema to watch Terminator, you buy your kids Nerf gun and pretend that you are not interested in shooting with it.

It wasn’t the case when we were kids. I grew up in Poland in communism time, you grew up in USA or France and these were completely different worlds. Different toys, different activities, different TV shows…

Let me today show you one of the highlights of my childhood and literally every other kid during communism time in Poland. USA had Looney Tunes or Disney cartoons, we in Poland had 'Neighbors’. It was cartoon created in Czech and distributed in other countries of Eastern Block, like Poland, ZSRR or Bulgaria.

If in communism times we could be proud of something, that most likely would be this TV show! Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5JnsiqO9Fo

There is discussion that will never end and will always engage gamers – is KS good for the Industry? Are games from KS worse than games published by regular publisher? Should people buy games at KS or they should support their FLGS? There is so much discussion about KS and so many arguments.

There is one thing that no one argues.

KS games have best presentation of the product ever. In most cases people who put their product on KS do their job so much better than average regular publisher. Artwork, rulebook, previews, reviews, you call it, you’ll find it on the KS page.

I mention it in this shameless post because even though I am not at KS, I put so much effort presenting you the game before you buy it. I mention it in this shameless promotion post because me and my team put lot of time, effort and heart into providing you with best content possible. I mention it in this shameless way because I want you to go to Portal Games site and look at Tides of Time.

Presentation like on KS.

Published by a regular publisher.

Enjoy!

Dear readers of Boardgames That Tell Stories! If you like my writing, if you want more of it, put into one book, with guest articles from great designers like Mike Fitzgerald, Bruno Faidutti and many more, here is link – you can back it and have it on your shelf. I strongly recommend! 🙂

As I said in the previous post and as I was tweeting for couple of past weeks – I am done with Gen con releases. I finished all our boxes for Gen con, I am also done with Stronghold II ed. (I just need to get results from testers, update the balance, if needed). My 2015 to-design list is empty.

I am on vacation.

I received Witcher 3 from CD Projekt RED. I bought Mortal Combat X. I bought DVD with three seasons of Homeland. I bought 6 epic comic books albums (more than 1300 pages all together!). All cool stuff I was waiting to dive into for months. All cool stuff I was postponing because of working on prototypes like madman.

This is time to have fun. I was waiting for this for so long.

Well, there is a problem though – I managed to enjoy my vacations for one week. And then my brain betrayed me.

I am back in design mode. I can’t fight it. Guys, I need a doctor.

Rattle, Battle is ready. Atlanteans are ready. Tides of Time is ready. Huge pressure that kept me busy 18/7 for past few months is gone. Strange feeling it is.

Do you remember from school times when you had a homework to do and you knew it’s there, waiting for you? You might play, you might have fun, but this homework was always there, still not finished, still calling you back home to do work.

With unfinished game it is the same. I can’t actually rest. I can’t fully reset my brain, I can’t just fool around, play video game or watch movie. Unfinished game is there all the time and ask for my attention. Whatever I do, I know I should finish this deck, solve this problem, balance this mechanism, call testers for one more game… It’s obsession. I can’t get this out of my head. Whenever I take shower or have dinner, whenever I watch match in TV or drive a car, I think about the game.

All files to these three boxes are at manufacturers level. I can no longer improve them. It is closed chapter. I am free.

I can play video game. I can watch TV show. I can play board game. And man, this is a strange feeling after these past few months of constant pressure…