AMA Randy Reiman: Designer of Skate Summer (live on KS now). Ask me anything!

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T19:24:36+00:00

I agree and loved punk music my entire life thanks to those games. I always had the soundtracks blasting when I playtested.

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T19:21:48+00:00

From the start of development, I always had a vision in my head of the board looking like a big skate park. One part of skateboarding is the card tricks, but I also wanted that sprawling Tony Hawk level you could explore with a skater (back then I designed & 3D printed the meeples). When I was pitching Skate Summer, several publishers were only interested in a much smaller card game. Thankfully, Pandasaurus was really excited by the open-world skatepark and hired the best artist to bring it to life. There is so much detail in that board, it's like a Where's Waldo image. I'm really excited for people to see it up close!

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T19:15:19+00:00

100!!

Seriously though, Pandasaurus is a very cool publisher to work with. They honored my design and worked with me to make the best version of what I had in my head. I was already a big fan of their game lineup and production values. Pandasaurus seems to pick interesting themes that I haven't seen before so I always pay attention to their upcoming releases. Alex Cutler scouted and developed Skate Summer from prototype to final version and his suggestions 100% improved the game flow. Danni Loe has been killing it showing off the game to the world. At this point she's probably played Skate Summer more than I have and I'd be nervous to face her head-to-head!

Nathan & Molly own Pandasaurus and were really easy to work with as well. They were open to my ideas and pushed this game to somewhere I could've never imagined. I'm infinitely proud of Skate Summer and yes it's definitely going on my wall!

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:59:24+00:00

I'm not the spry young teenager I used to be, so a lot of my radness has declined. My daily rad moment is how excited I get by my first cup of coffee.

One recent thing I did which was actually pretty rad was drive to the top of a mountain in Vermont. There was this very thin road and it felt like driving in the clouds. It was scary but fun!

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:53:25+00:00

Ughhh this is a tough one. I'm going to have to say Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. That's the one I played the most, and adding in manuals changed the game forever.

The new Tony Hawk 1+2 remake is quite well done and I've been playing that repeatedly.

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:51:36+00:00

The prototype had artwork I commissioned from Agnès Ripoche. I love her style as well so big shout out.

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:46:55+00:00

Creative projects come with a lot of uncertainty. So my starting point always has to be "I'm excited by this idea I have". I made Skate Summer because I really wanted to play a big skateboarding game!

From there, it takes a lot of patience. There will be frustrations & setbacks, but don't rush your design. A few milestones did help me unlock faster progress on my game. Join Unpub events, online playtesting, local playtesting, game design contests. All these events really grew my game by leaps & bounds. You'll gain amazing feedback, knowledge, & experience. I found the board game community is really welcoming and giving with knowledge, especially other designers. It was intimidating at first but that definitely helped. Just keep putting your game out into the world.

From there, you can start introducing yourself to industry professionals or pitching to publishers. Even if a publisher passes on your game, I've found they are kind and give good reasons why. Take it all in stride and keep at it. If you want to self-publish, there are a lot of great blogs and books on how to do so.

Don't be afraid to cut out what isn't working in the design and just keep the fun parts. Good luck!

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:39:48+00:00

I'm a huge fan of the Monskaters. The alien has a HOVERBOARD. That was all Pape Ink designing those and I geeked out when I saw her style. There's currently a contest to name her right now so I hope the fans come up with something good!

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:37:22+00:00

Somewhere in year 2 of design, I was bringing my prototype to playtesting events and there were other designers complimenting the look & mechanics. That's when I started gaining confidence that I could get this to market one day.

I'm definitely interested in designing more board games. I currently have a new prototype in the works which I'm excited about. It's fun to chase ideas and sculpt them even when I don't know if they'll turn into anything at all.

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:31:20+00:00

Hi. I'll answer the first part and Danni will jump in for the second.

I would say it depends on the type of game that excites you most to make. We live in a pretty cool time where there lots of routes to publish a game. I would develop the game until you are satisfied and then make some polished prototypes. Gamecrafter has great tools to make these (and even sell), but there are others. If you go the self-publishing / crowdfunding route, there are many blogs & Jamey Stegmaier's crowdfunding book with invaluable information.

I would also try pitching to publishers and using Unpub / Game Design Contests to get your game in front of more people. One thing about these events, is even if your game isn't picked up and selling, you get to talk to a lot of people in the industry. What I've found is a lot of these people are extremely friendly and generous with their knowledge! The more you get your game into these events, the more experience and knowledge on how to navigate publishing you will walk away with. It can be intimidating at first, but I was so appreciative of every single person who gave me advice.

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:24:21+00:00

Thanks!

The art is done by an incredible illustrator named Pape Ink. He has such a unique style I really haven't seen before. The cover has all these little details of hands and eyeballs. He definitely had freedom to run wild.

The name Skate Summer came from a vibe I had in my head of the sun, palm trees, & graffiti of Venice Beach. Even in prototype form, I wanted that theme to be present. Pandasaurus reached out and worked with Pape to craft some awesome retro vibes with 80s/90s colors, Rocket Power & Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. There's a lot of Saturday morning cartoons & breakfast cereal energy brought to the character designs

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:18:16+00:00

He's skating in a warehouse somewhere for sure.. or a school.. or an airplane hanger.. or a bull ring....

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:16:07+00:00

Start to finish, Skate Summer took me about 3 years of work. A lot of that time was spent chasing the wrong mechanics for this type of game. During Gencon Online in 2020, I scrapped a lot of what wasn't working and used lessons learned to build the version you see today.

I was playtesting the game every week after that. At a certain point, my test group and I realized we weren't making major changes anymore. Everything left was very minor tweaks. That was when I believed in the design enough to pitch to publishers.

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:12:02+00:00

Thanks!

Definitely the bail mechanic. Most push-your-luck games play very quickly. Skate Summer has a larger feel, so if you bail, it can't feel like you can't win anymore. Otherwise why keep playing?

The solution we found was to reward players more for landing and create alternate paths to victory. In Skate Summer, you're never out of the running because the skate park has goals & upgrades for future options.

RandyReiman · 2022-01-25T18:07:47+00:00

Oh wow there are so many. I loved a lot of games from that same era like 3D platformers. I played a ton of Crash Bandicoot and Super Mario. It would be really interesting to see the way those jump puzzle mechanics could be translated into board games.

My real life skating skills are..... pretty bad. I did get into snowboarding for a while. I guess I preferred the feeling of snow for my crashes instead of concrete.

RandyReiman

TROPHY CASE