Officially launched!

On 9th November, 2024, we officially launched the game at FLAG Con 2024 in Ithaca, NY. We had 12 slots, 14 of which filled (yes you read that right), and 2 additional people joined in midway through, and Wythe and I also played a few rounds, too.

Planning the launch event

Wythe and I literally planned out the actual launch event over drinks an hour before the event.

I had been thinking about some ideas of what I wanted to do but didn’t have specifics figured out. I knew I wanted to do a bunch of players sitting near each other, in pods. I knew I wanted every game to be going concurrently. I knew I wanted it to have a “grand melee” kind of feel to it.

We had toyed with the idea of doing rounds or something similar, but that felt too strcutured.

What we decided on was to do essentially that:

• Long table with players in their immediate area (4 max) involved in the same game
• Players rotate from game to game, as they like.
• Winner of each game gets a “point” (we used Stillfleet stickers, since they matched the points on the cards and also we had a bunch onhand)
• Top 3 winners at end of the tournament get a free copy of the game.

I managed to teach 14 people how to play the game, all at once. In hindsight, this was incredibly ambitious, but I think it speaks to the ease of learning the game. Wythe and I floated around during to handle individual rules questions and reminders.

The playmats helped a lot.

I joined in on a few of the games, once it seemed like people had a good understanding of the game.

People played for about 90 minutes or so.

Signage

Kae (our studio designer and animator) designed this awesome banner for Robot Hospital. It looks so professional! This felt like it really added a level of professionalism to the product, and to our “booth” area.

Playmats

The playmats were an idea I had for facilitating onboarding. While the instructions do contain diagrams, there are certain things that a visual reminder like a playmat can make more apparent more immediately.

The initial playmat was for the common space (one playmat for the game), but we realized doing playmats for individual players would probably work better. I did a sketch of the playmat and did the dimensions and all that as a wireframe, and then Kae did the layout.

It has spots for all the cards the player plays, as well as some reminder text about the cards that do player interactivity. The playmats were a hit, and definitely helped people learn the game even faster.

Promo cards

My original idea for the Promo Cards was to leave three robot parts in random places and if someone finds all three (they have to match) they can turn them in and get something cool (a commemorative art print or something).

We did three promo cards that showed (most of) the full card art for the completed robots, and on the reverse it had a QR code that pointed to