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[Seeking Developers] Various nestorgames, including Coffee, Line or Colour, OMEGA, TAIJI, TAILITS

Posted: 15 June 2024, 00:47
by Grant Badger Fox
I am Grant Fikes, and I previously had an account here under the name "mathgrant". Without going into the story of why I decided to leave the board game scene in 2021, two longtime buddies (Kenku and Spheniscine) persuaded me to return to this site a few months ago, and I want to compensate for my absence by bringing some new games to this website. I am not well-versed in programming, but I am willing to pay a programmer to do my bidding if the price is right. Still, I am very rusty on the process of getting from "willing to pay a programmer" to "game finished", and need all of the help I can get.

There appears to be a list of nestorgames for which BGA has a license. To this list, I want to add the following:

* TAILITS. I designed three games that were published by nestorgames before the pandemic affected the supply chain, two of which (Battle of LITS and Mammalath) are published on this site. Initially, I was reluctant to get TAILITS developed, but I've seen that both of those games gained enough exposure through BGA to have enough ratings to be ranked on the Geek, and I must admit that I'm mildly curious as to whether TAILITS is as middling as those two games or might actually be decent. TAILITS was published with one-sided tetrominoes that cannot be flipped, due to limitations of the nestorgames format, but I'd like the BGA version to reflect my original design with flippable two-sided tetrominoes.
* All games designed by nestorgames namesake Néstor Romeral Andrés. Néstor has emailed me giving me "permission to code any of my games", but that's obviously not enough to get those games added to the license list, especially since, as far as anyone besides me and Néstor is concerned, there is no proof that this conversation happened. There might not even be proof that I am the person whom I claim to be! The Nestor-designed nestorgames of most interest to me are Coffee, Line or Colour, Omega, and TAIJI, but the Geek has a list a list of all such games.

Brief descriptions of all of the aforementioned games:
Coffee: A game of the n-in-a-row variety, played on a square or hexagonal board. When playing a piece, you must place a rod on it, making it resemble a coffee bean (hence the name); the rod points to the row in which the opponent must play. Geek, rulebook
Line or Colour: A game of the n-in-a-row variety with a brain-breaking alternative win condition: claim n spaces of the same color instead. Geek, rulebook
OMEGA: 2 to 4 players play in this beautiful game where the product of the number of pieces in all of the groups of your color is your final score. The designer says, "It feels like a cross between Hex and Go." Geek, rulebook
TAIJI: Play domino-shaped pieces, each with a light half and a dark half, trying to make large groups of your color. Geek, rulebook
TAILITS: What if TAIJI used tetrominoes instead of dominoes and used the rules of an obscure Japanese puzzle called LITS (the same one that's the basis for my Battle of LITS)? Includes two double games in which a TAILITS board becomes a TAIJI board, or a TAIJI board becomes a Battle of LITS board. Geek, rulebook

Re: [Seeking Developers] Various nestorgames, including Coffee, Line or Colour, OMEGA, TAIJI, TAILITS

Posted: 25 June 2024, 20:00
by pdw3
I am interested in the Coffee game. But I'm expecting to be unavailable until October. If nobody else has picked it up by then, I'd be happy to work on it.

Re: [Seeking Developers] Various nestorgames, including Coffee, Line or Colour, OMEGA, TAIJI, TAILITS

Posted: 06 July 2024, 16:59
by FindYodaWinCash
Hi Grant,

Coincidentally, I have just developed one of the Nestor Games games that was available on License. It is Cairo Corridor. I choose this game because it is pretty simple (conceptually anyway), and I was looking for a project for which I could gain expertise in the BGA software framework before diving in and coding more complex games. I have currently submitted it to be introduced to the Alpha testing community; from my point-of-view, the game is finished, but various testers might reveal a bug or other sorts of enhancements. I would send you a link, but I think you need a developer login to play on a project before its released to Alpha.

I was a software developer for many years, but I am now retired. But I always enjoyed coding, and I am looking to code more games.

I haven't looked at these other Nestor Games yet, but I will soon to let you know if any of them would be something I'd be interested in coding up. But I thought I'd just let you know that this was in the works.

From what I understand, and from what I've seen from the BGA release schedule, new games are coming online with pretty rapid frequency, maybe as much as a new game every 3 days or so. I think the BGA admins are quite swamped with work and it can take awhile to move games from the end of development to a released product. This is what I've read online; I have yet to go through the process personally.

Regards,
Dave

Re: [Seeking Developers] Various nestorgames, including Coffee, Line or Colour, OMEGA, TAIJI, TAILITS

Posted: 15 July 2024, 23:50
by Bosuonparedo
I am not sure if it is on that list (not a dev, can't see it) but my one published game, Nibble, was a Nestorgame. I would love to see it on BGA as well.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/325421/nibble

I am the designer and since Nestor is no longer publishing it, I guess I have all rights to say that it would be allowed as a BGA implementation.

(I do have a couple unpublished variants as well, in case anyone is interested. But even just the base game would be good to see.)

Edit: Grant, if you would rather that I not post here and start a new topic instead, please let me know and I will. Sorry to hijack!

Re: [Seeking Developers] Various nestorgames, including Coffee, Line or Colour, OMEGA, TAIJI, TAILITS

Posted: 20 July 2024, 18:44
by Grant Badger Fox
Today I learned that I should have "Notify me when a reply is posted" checked when I start a thread like this. I must look like I don't even care with this late reply.

pdw3: I am in a contract with BGA user BanBan (https://boardgamearena.com/player?id=3838624) for the development of Coffee. If things go well, I would love to have BanBan knock off the rest of my wishlist as well, but there's no reason why I can't establish professional relationships with more than one developer. Message me when you're available, and we'll what happens. I can't promise anything will happen, but it might!

FindYodaWinCash: Nice! That license has been available for a while, and I do like the unique geometry of the board. If you finish that adaptation and are up for adapting something else, do message me about it!

Bosuonparedo: Nibble is not on my current wishlist. The designers retain the rights to any game that nestorgames has published, and all of the games I listed above were designed by me or by Néstor, which whom I am in contact as a result of our past professional designer/publisher relationship. I believe that you can use the form at https://boardgamearena.com/gamepublishers to grant BGA a license to the game you designed; turning that license into an actual game might best be done in another thread besides this one.