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What a DAY.

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Penguin SLAP! is our first game. Friday we launched our first kickstarter. Saturday was our first time running a booth at a convention. I have so much more respect for people who run booths at conventions. Penguin SLAP! at Boston FIG 2018 Boston FIG was a one-day thing, there's a lot to see, and people get tired after walking around. Each person who passes by might not pass by again, so there's pressure to try and engage every person you can. And there are a lot of people passing by for those eight hours. After the first hour or so you start to get hoarse, but at least by now you've figured out your sales pitch. A few more hours later your feet get sore, then your back from hunching over the table, then you start to realize you haven't eaten and your stomach is starting to growl. Then a little kid comes over and says "look mommy, penguins!" and you forget everything again. It was awesome. We showed our game to tons of people. We had a guestbook
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Setting up for Boston FIG!

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Tomorrow is the big day, we're going to be showing our game at Boston FIG Fest 2018! Today was the load in. Setting up the booth. We're really excited! We've got art prints, coloring pages, puzzle pages, business cards (featuring the different penguins of course!) as well as the game to demo as people walk by. We're even going to be part of a kids scavenger hunt, after which we'll be giving away a few copies of the game. :) The booth! We arrived in Boston about a week ago, and we travel pretty lightly, so most everything was acquired here this week. The banner was an online order (gotta give 4imprint a plug here, their service was GREAT!) and we brought the art prints with us, pretty much everything else was either printed or purchased here. (A good amount of which was purchased last night. It's hard to shop when you work full time. Each booth gets a vote box. Patrons at the convention get two votes to vote for their favorite games. You'
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We settled on a company name.

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We're now Low Sodium Games.   You shouldn't be so salty, it's a Low Sodium Game. We previously were called "richCraft," (which was on our old boxart and was the name of our twitch channel) and while the name was a semi-portmanteau of "Rich" and "witchcraft" I thought it was unbalanced how I was in the name and not Jules. We previous started a small company with a salty-sounding name, so we thought to continue the tradition. (For the record, we live near the ocean, hence the "salt" names.) The design is a play on the periodic symbol. Sodium is salt, and sodium's chemical symbol is Na. We made it "Nah" instead of "Na" because we say "Nah" a lot. The atomic number for sodium is 11. This is the logo you'll see on our new website, lowsodiumgames.com , (which is now where penguinslap.com redirects.) We're launching our kickstarter soon! We'll be posting lots of upd
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We're going to Boston FIG Fest 2018!

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Penguin SLAP! @ Boston FIG Fest 2018 We're happy to announce we'll be showing our game at Boston FIG Fest 2018! BostonFIG celebrates independent game development in New England, across the United States, and around the globe! They're a non-profit organization that seeks to support and showcase the efforts of independent game developers, as well as youth programs focused on game development and related fields. This year we submitted our game for curation and review, and we were selected to showcase (and potentially sell...) our game to the public! For more info on Boston FIG Fest check out their website at https://www.bostonfig.com/ We're really excited, and of course this means we'll be announcing MORE STUFF in the coming weeks! HYPE!!!
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Penguin Mechanics: Player elimination

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We're constantly looking for new ways to tweak our game to make it more enjoyable for everyone playing. As we've playtested over and over again we've noticed something that occurs occasionally that makes the game, well, less fun. You can get eliminated really early if you decide to play risky or if you're just unlucky. "I just wanted to eat fish." And it's a drag when it happens. The game is about slapping each other and trying to knock each other "out." Sometimes new players will have a very offensive hand and will simply go all out on their first turn without understanding that their attacks can be turned against them  if they aren't careful. They end up starting a slapping back and forth only to run out of cards and get knocked out of the game before they've even had a chance to learn how to play. And that's lame. Polar bear is not so happy about- WHOAAA THEY HAVE BLUE TONGUES It can be argued that high risk/high reward is just in
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Card Introductions: The Fishing Rod!

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Today I wanted to start a series of posts that focus on some of our "special" cards. Introducing the Fishing Rod! (I was actually torn between "Fishing Rod" and "Fishing Pole," so I asked our followers on facebook which wording they used. Someone ended up messaging me the difference between the two. A fishing "rod" can be cast, whereas a fishing "pole" does not have a reel and cannot be cast.) In Penguin SLAP! each player can only catch fish from the "fishing holes" closest to them. Or, more specifically, you can only draw cards from the two draw piles closest to you. P1 can only draw from those two fishing holes. So in the above example, P1 can only draw from the two draw piles closest to them. The draw piles on the other side of the table are permanently out of reach. But P1 really, really , wants the green fish on the other side of the table. What's a penguin to do? ohh, looks like somebody knows! That's right! You
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The Tuxedo Telegraph

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We've decided to start a small distribution of fliers to help promote our game. (Well, partially to promote the game, and partially because I like puzzles) Click to enlarge! We're going to travel around to ice cream shops, diners, and cafes and see if we can leave a few of these behind. They'll be free to take, and they'll be available online here too! The Tuxedo Telegraph will contain articles that will give a little more backstory and character to the penguins, while also challenging you with little puzzles. I'll post the answers to the puzzles here before the next issue posts. There currently is no schedule for these (I don't know if it'll be a weekly/monthly/quarterly thing) but I'll keep making them as long as I have time to.
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