If there is anything I've learned in this last year and a half, it is that good things just take time. Now this isn't a new piece of wisdom to me, but it is one thing to know something and a very different thing to experience it. As Chris, Xander, Jeremy and I began our journey together as Daywalker Syndicate™ we knew from the accounts of many of the successful (and talented) board game designers (and publishers) that it can take years to complete a compelling, quality (and most importantly, fun) tabletop game.
Incredible creators like—Scott Gaeta (Renegade Game Studios™), Patrick Leder (Leder Games™) and Jamie Stegmaier (Stonemaier Games™), to name a few—who each have different experiences and philosophies all seemed to agree on one thing...you must take your time when designing a game. Frankly, "Don't rush it!" could be the official Board Game Designers' motto. Ha!
Our first game, Wild Realms, is no exception to this rule. By the time we premiere it at Gen Con 2021 (Indianapolis, IN) this September, we will have spent the entirety of our company history (1 year 8 months) designing, developing and play testing the tabletop game. Now this is amazing, yet there is something more shocking. The game has actually been in development for longer than that! How is that possible? Allow me to elucidate. *clears throat*
Although, the four of us were good friends, life sometimes gives us stretches where we don't see those we care about for long periods of time. Facebook and Instagram are poor substitutes for phone calls and hanging out at each others homes. In this case (except for maybe one or two brief chats in the aisle of a store), Chris, Xander and I hadn't hung-out with Jeremy in almost 7 years. Needless to say, neither party knew what the other was doing in their spare time.
I'm going to shorten things a bit here by leaving out some detail that doesn't matter for our purposes—We realized right away that we needed an artist involved and preferably a founding partner in the company. We went through a bunch of our friends and acquaintances, until Jeremy came up. Chris gave him a call and we were in shock—Jeremy had been working on a tabletop game based-off of his animal artwork (which we all knew of and was our primary motivator in calling him) since November 2019...4 full months preceding our company! Now that is a beautiful providence.
If you take into account that Jeremy had been painting animals (some of which are actually in Wild Realms) for a few years before starting the game design process, Wild Realms has been being developed for almost 4 years!
Needless to say, we are thrilled that it is nearing completion. We can't wait to see the game move from play testing, to game demoing, to ultimately kitchen tables around the globe. We have poured all that we could into it and hope you will enjoy it as much as our families do. Until then. Vroop!