It is weird to be looking at twelve copies of House of Whack, all shrink-wrapped. The shipping boxes say “DreamPunk Productions, LLC” on the side. It’s kind of like it’s a real game or something.

I wonder if seeing the other 988 boxes will make it even more real.

I have waited years to say this:

House of Whack is now available for pre-order! The game will ship out in mid-November.

I encourage you not to wait, but to go ahead and order your copy right away. This will provide me with a real world test of the ordering system. Please consider buying more than one copy as it will make a cool holiday gift!

Visit www.houseofwhack.net to place your order.

While there have been many contributors to the game over the years (they are credited in the manual), I would like to take a moment to acknowledge some of those people (in chronological order, if you must know):

Besides me, stavros has put more time and energy into play testing House of Whack than anyone else. I brought one of the first prototypes over to his apartment and we played for hours and hours. stavros is an accomplished film maker and artist. Check out his site www.dogonepictures.com to find out more. He recently completed the film Committing Poetry in Times of War. Some of stavros’ photography appears in the game. You can see more of his work at Model Mayhem.

My father, Alfredo Monserrat, has always encouraged an entrepreneurial spirit in me. He is working on a book about surviving in America as in immigrant. Visit his site at www.monserrat.com.

Deborah Reese is a really fantastic and dynamic person. She owns Seventh Goddess, a boutique which sells world-class lingerie. She is also the lead singer of Black T-Shirt Monday. They give a performance that is not to be missed. Also, she introduced me to the Landmark Forum, which has transformed my life in ways I could not have imagined. I can never thank her enough.

Dave Glowacki has been one of my best friends since college. He has been doing some really impressive work in the mobile entertainment arena, bringing many popular titles to cell phones. He is now a Mobile Producer for Electronic Arts, one of the giants in the video game industry.

Cory Williamson is an industrial designer and board game aficionado. His designs include complex devices for the medical industry. I met Cory shortly after moving to Austin and he’s turned out to be a great friend and a fellow geek.

Arvind and Becky Raichur have been the best bosses I’ve ever had. I’ve developed a friendship as well as a great employee relationship over the past eight years. If you need a lawyer or legal information, please visit our two flagship sites: www.attorneylocate.com and www.alllaw.com.

Thank you everyone for your encouragement over the past few years. This is a big deal for me and I’m glad I have you in my life to share this moment.

Drey

An update on House of Whack…

No matter how many times I brought up the fact that the printer was able to create nice glossy, tri-fold cards that didn’t fall apart, they would not acknowledge it. They either would completely ignore the message or say ridiculous things like the nice glossy cards were identical to the horrible cards that fell apart.

Their final solution was to laminate the cards. This initially looked okay, but then the laminate started to blister and wrinkle. Also, they wanted an extra $950.

Since all the other cards they have done look great, I decided to just redesign the entire Guest deck as non-folding cards about 2/3rds the size of the current cards. One of my original designs involved a card that could be rotated one way or the other, like some Magic cards I had seen. Mischa reminded me of this design when he suggested it himself. I had been so enamored with the cleverness of the trifold concept that I had abandoned this rotating card idea.

So now I am almost done recreating the Guest cards in the new format. This has also given me an opportunity to tweak a few abilities and make some edits. Since the manual, box and quick start guide make reference to tri-fold cards, I will have to include an errata sheet explaining the change. This will also be an opportunity to get people to go to the web site and download the latest version of the manual. There have been some significant changes to the play mechanics. Or rather, I have a collection of house rules I recommend that people use.

I’ve designed the game so that it can be “patched,” updated, and modded pretty easily, which is coming in handy now.

Finally, it’s here!

I received the sample unit of House of Whack today. I could hardly stand the anticipation all day long. It’s like my first child was being delivered to me via FedEx.

On the whole, the game looks fantastic. The cards are on that nice stock you get in quality Euro games or Fantasy Flight games. There are a few color issues, but I believe they can be easily resolved.

One rather large mistake was the printer misunderstood the instructions to score the tri-fold cards and instead PERFORATED them.  You know, for easy TEARING. So they need to clear that up.

Also, they actually randomly collated the sample just like a final game. There was one small error, but they otherwise deciphered my intricate collating instructions. This is a huge weight off my mind.

I played a game tonight with stavros and Jaqui (she creamed us). I couldn’t get over the quality of the cards. I just kept looking at them, you know, and touching them. I also discovered that the little wooden houses from Rio Grande Games’ Power Grid make excellent player tokens. I think I will recommend that people buy a copy of Power Grid or Caylus so they can use the tokens for House of Whack.

To sum up: I am very happy and excited and much closer to having HoW on the market!

You can right click and choose “View Image” for a slightly larger version.

I have launched 1000 stars.

500 to break atmo

490 just to get your attention

8 to call the others

1 to wish on

and 1 for you.

8586 2252 0850

I just heard back from the publisher and the printer is going to need another two weeks to print the sample unit of House of Whack. This is really disheartening. At best, I’d have it by the 19th.

On Christmas Eve I drove down to the airport post office because I had received a package notification. What could this be? A Christmas present, perhaps? When the clerk pushed a large box from the board game printer over to me, my heart just about exploded. I grabbed it, forced myself not to tear it open in the car, and drove quickly home. I thought that I had just received the best Christmas present ever. My game was finally here! I thundered into my driveway, leapt from the car and went inside. I opened the large, heavy package to discover…

…a big thing of jelly beans. What crushing disappointment. Even though there were 49 different flavors, it was not enough to counter the blow. It was like a cruel trick. They had suggested the game would be ready around the same time, but instead sent a bunch of multi-colored sugar. It was then I realized just how much I cared about the game and how I had been longing for it for quite some time.