At that stage I naively thought, in the best superhero tradition, “my work here is done”. Wrong. Harald started to ask lots of questions resulting in a fair old bit of work for me ... can we have an administration summary to ease players through the administration phase? ... can we cut the number of game rounds? ... can we change the map? ... could we add Namibian landmarks to the map? So the game was reduced to 6 turns and “no go” areas surrounded by pre-built rails were introduced on to the map and the map size was reduced. This had the unexpected side effect of making some of the players’ choices more difficult. The rail building action had more options and the prospecting action was now much more tactical and required more thought. The last set of changes arose when the final version of the board began to be developed by the artist, Carsten Fuhrmann. The size of the board was limited to 400mm x 400mm so the map was compressed and the “no-go” areas removed. The price range of the market was also reduced from a maximum of 20 down to 15 so that the market index could fit on to the board. We weren’t sure how the map and market would now play out but were very pleasantly surprised when we playtested the game. The playtesters all felt that the shorter, more compact map improved gameplay by forcing more player interaction and making some of their choices more difficult. The game still clocks in at just under 2 hours and this is put down to the “additional thinking time” now required by players.

I have – rather cheekily, it has to be said – proposed a Namibia expansion to Harald. The expansion introduces another commodity (uranium) which is prospected, shipped and valued differently from the other commodities mined in the game. The board includes the a price track and starting spaces for the uranium ore. To find out how this works you’ll need to go and buy the game!

So to all of you readers who, like me, dream about having a game published one day, please don’t give up. It is not easy, and you’ll need the help of your fellow gamers to playtest your designs (and you’ll need to listen to their criticism of your “baby”), but it is well worth persevering. Believe me. My wife tells me that I’ve been as excited as my 4 year old son at Christmas during the final development phase and I’m getting worse as SPIEL ‘10 at Essen approaches. I must admit I’m just enjoying the ride and trying to learn as much as I can from the experience. I would like to thank Harald for being patient with me, a very inexperienced game author, throughout the development and publication process. I hope he finds that publishing Namibia is well worth his time and effort.