Where is Josh/GTG and what is happening with Shikoku 1889?

While I’ve been giving ad hoc updates to people as they’ve been asking, when I see a Facebook post one week and a Reddit post the next asking what’s going on with 1889, it’s probably time I came out of hiding and gave some kind of info.

First though, I wanted to apologize if I haven’t seemed as active online in 2021. I took on a full-time job last year and became a dad in February. GTG is still very much a thing that I am actively working on, but most of my board game time has been devoted to upcoming projects and customer support rather than keeping up with Slack, BGG, Reddit, or even playing on 18xx.games.

Even with those caveats, it still sounds like GTG is running pretty far behind schedule. Given the updates last year, most would have expected the Shikoku 1889 Kickstarter to hit in March or April, yet here we are in August. So let me try to explain what we’ve been working on and why I’ve been so quiet.

As I expressed in a blog earlier this year, I had no idea just how long the development cycle could take, especially when trying out things that haven’t been done before. I kickstarted 1861/1867 with (what I thought were) graphics that were pretty close to done, yet it still took nearly 9 months after the Kickstarter to greenlight printing. This time around, I wanted to have both graphics and the rulebook “proof ready” for the Kickstarter. So in other words, I’m trying to frontload as much as work as possible now that I know how much work there is to frontload.

In terms of the graphic design, we started research/discovery back in September 2020 and had the majority of design and aesthetic decisions made by December. By March 2021, we were about 90% done… but I still had aspirations about improving the aesthetic of 18xx maps. I wrote at length about why it is difficult to improve the aesthetic of 18xx tiles and maps, but I wanted to at least attempt an illustrated map.

As evidenced by the many attempts to make 18xx look “pretty”, this is quite challenging to do. We went back and forth for several months and eventually came up with something that we felt happy with in June. As you can imagine, the map is a core dependency for any graphics in the rulebook, so until the map was settled, Karim couldn’t make much progress on the rulebook graphics (though writing, editing, and layout were still underway). By the time the map was ready, Karim was pretty slammed with other projects and had to temporarily put this one on hold. We’re at the point now where work has resumed on the rulebook and some of the final design pieces are falling into place.

I won’t commit to any timelines just yet, but I will say the remaining pieces are getting the rulebook and the Kickstarter page ready. Of course, we were pretty far along with graphics back in March, so I can’t make any guarantees how long it will take to get these other pieces over the finish line. The rulebook is more work than all other aspects of the project combined.

Many have asked me if I think the current freighting situation will impact the Kickstarter timeline and the answer to that is “No”. I think I’m quite fortunate to have awareness of the shipping situation before launching the Kickstarter, so perhaps all the delays on our side were a blessing in disguise. I’m planning to do what I did last time: provide shipping estimates during the campaign and collect payment after in a pledge manager. It looks like Shikoku 1889 will be 1/2 the weight and 2/3 the depth of 1861/1867. I’d expect shipping to be on par with 1861/1867 or just slightly more — whether or not that is “prohibitively expensive” is up to your budget.

I’d feel bad to give you all these words and nothing to show in terms of progress, but I’d prefer graphic design to be complete before I release any images of components. So instead, I’ll share with you this piece I commissioned for the game to hold you over until I can share more.

This isn’t the game’s cover or anything like that, I just like Erik’s illustration style and always wanted an illustration with rusted trains. Most images of trains in 18xx games depict them when they’re in their prime which I always thought was funny because one of the central themes/mechanics of 18xx is how trains become obsolete. I thought it would be cool to capture that visually with what could presumably be a 2T and a 3T decaying while a 6T runs in the background. I mostly just wanted the illustration and figured I’d find a place to put it. My current plan is for this to be a spread in the rulebook.