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  Time for Some Updates!

  May 18, 2025

  It's been a while since I updated the website with what's going on. That doesn't mean nothing has been happening though. Quite the contrary! A lot of progress has been made on the game, especially in the last year. Usually in the spring, when I am the least busy, I would dig the game out, dust it off, and plan some test plays. I always thought I was done and just wanted to make sure there was nothing more that needed to be adjusted. And then every year I would actually find a lot of things that needed adjusting. Sometimes it was something I hadn't thought of before. Sometimes it was something that had always nagged at me, but I thought would be ok in the end, but finally realized it had to change. And then I would think about it some more until the next spring when I'd again try out the "final" changes.

  About a year ago I thought I was close enough to the end to make a final push towards actually getting the game produced. I put out a call for an artist, a graphic designer, or someone who could do both. I ended up with four strong candidates. One was great, but her style didn't quite match up. Another had experience producing games, having actually worked at a game company. A third was a friend of mine who is amazing at everything she does. And the fourth was a kind of mysterious guy who wasn't actually an artist or a graphic designer, but worked with several around the world.

  In the end, I wasn't sure my friend's art style was exactly right for the game either, so I decided to hire her to help me with the Kickstarter instead (which I think will work out great. I hired the person with game experience as a sort of project manager. And the mysterious guy, Trevor, convinced me he was a real person who could get me some quality artists, and so I decided to give him a shot. It might sound like I'm leading up to saying that was a bad decision, but it ended up being a pretty good one. My project manager had some things come up and kind of fell out of the project, so Trevor picked up that aspect too.

  Trevor hooked me with his friend Dario who did the art for the backs of some of the cards. But he also hooked me up with Frost Llamzon, an artist in the Philippines. She ended up being amazing. I liked all the art she did, but she also did all of the graphic design on top of that. And she did it all really quickly. I would definitely recommend her to anyone looking for similar art services. Meanwhile, Trevor helped me not just coordinate with them, but he was a huge Dracula fan himself and helped me a lot in fine tuning the thematic elements and was a great person to bounce ideas off of. We exchanged many long emails debating various aspects of the story and how to adapt it to the game. 

  After the art was done in October, I got busy working on the St. Paul Winter Carnival and didn't talk to Trevor for a while. When it was done in February I wrote to him to let him know it was time to get going again. I didn't hear back for a while. I thought perhaps he was bothered that I had been out of touch. But then I did finally get an email. He said he had been quite sick with pnuemonia, but he thought he was finally on the mend. Unfortunately I did not get another email from him, and was starting to worry. A couple of months later though I did get one from his sister who confirmed my fears. Trevor had died. I only met him in person so I couldn't say for certain how old he was, but he was relatively young, much too young to be gone already. So as we do make this final push towards getting this game out into the world, I will be dedicating it to Trevor who did so much to help get it to this point, but won't get to see the final version.

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