Aeronautique Games

08/01/2024

Hello.

No, I'm not terminated. But I have been quiet for a long time. Loads of unavoidable reasons have kept me off balance for a couple of years now, but I hope to be able to focus more on AG for the foreseeable, which would be nice 🙂

Although silent, I have been working away at a few different things, and I do have some plans which I hope you'll like. I'll be talking about them in more detail as they develop - most aren't far from unveiling - but to give you an idea:
* An improved website with its own shop
* Historic aviation related items
* Expansions for Route-Finder, including Mythos and Dragon themes (with my most excellent collaborator JbyC (https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/JbyCShop)
* Exhibiting and gaming at Worldcon2024 (https://glasgow2024.org/)
* Hopefully exhibiting again at Tabletop Scotland, which I highly recommend having exhibited at the 2023 show.

I've also been tinkering with other games as well as developments of Route-Finder; when I feel something is clicking into place I'll post some more.

But I do feel AG has a lot to teach me, as well as a lot of potential. I hope to explore both far more thoroughly in the coming months than I've been able to, and I hope you find something engaging in the journey too 🤠

17/11/2022

If you're around London, Orcs Nest have stocked Route-Finder 😁Thanks folks!

Was in "Central London's oldest and only serious games shop" a couple of weekends ago - very friendly staff, and what a range of games! Well worth the visit.

Their online shop is pretty decent too: https://orcsnest.com/
Just watch out for the spider...😳

29/06/2022

By popular demand, RF:I map is now available for download from Aeronautique Games 🤠

https://irp.cdn-website.com/0ce14bff/files/uploaded/Aeronautique%20Games%20Route-Finder%20Intercontinental%20Map.jpg

Gathering Games; Early Nerd; Atomic Comics & Games; Bulwark Games and others - feel free to download and print it to the scale you want!

29/06/2022

If you're looking for games in Keighley or Bradford in Yorkshire, drop into Gathering Games. Going by our conversations at the Aeronautique Games stand at UK Games Expo, Fez and Sahd will give you a really warm welcome.

Cheers, guys, hope it's going well!

https://gatheringgames.co.uk/

27/06/2022

Thanks for your enthusiasm Early Nerd, was great to catch up with you a few times at UK Games Expo.

Hope we can fly some copies of our Boardgame in a Book "Route-finder: Intercontinental" over to your pilot friends!

https://earlynerd.games/

New Arrival Early Nerd Upto 30% Off SHOP NOW On Sale -33% Add To Cart Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest £49.99 £33.45 -29% Add To Cart Corrosion £45.99 £32.77 -21% Add To Cart Carnegie £59.99 £47.47 -22% Add To Cart Stardew Valley: The Board Game £54.99 £42.94 Board Games -39% Add To Cart Wings...

24/06/2022

Can't think of a better home for a game about 1920's aviation than Atomic Comics & Games beside the UK's Fleet Air Arm Museum 👩‍✈️

Thanks for considering Route-Finder: Intercontinental, our Boardgame in a Book!

https://atomiccomicsandgames.co.uk/

22/06/2022

My first interview about Route-Finder: Intercontinental , our 'Boardgame in a Book' based on 1920's global aviation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z_ZFWfkVDo

Courtesy of Ludus Vulpes, shot at Aeronautique Games stand at UK Games Expo 2022.

20/06/2022

So we had a great UK Games Expo at the Aeronautique Games stand with Route-Finder: Intercontinental.

Loads of sales, and many very useful conversations with the likes of Osprey Games, Wotan Games, Imagination Gaming, Spiral Galaxy Games Ltd, and Panda Game Manufacturing, and many others, not least my first interview (😮) courtesy of Ludus Vulpes (see separate post), as well as several shops wanting to stock us which we'll also list in separate posts.

Particularly tickled that the format of a "Boardgame in a Book" (TM Christine Stewart 😁 ) blew people away, as 'innovative' and 'unique', which 'they'd never seen before'; combined with comments that we'd 'really thought about production costs and the business' as well as the gameplay, which many people 'knew exactly who they'd buy it for', it was a really good 'launch' into the games industry.

All of which has given us a few different ideas about how to take things forward. Obviously we're hoping one of the publishers will pick us up, but otherwise, we need to reach out to the shops to stock the game, and then decide which of the new games / styles / markets we might develop first, none of which I expected when I started this a couple of years ago, but a good problem to have.

Taking a stand was definitely worth it for the presence it gave us - people found us in the expo literature and hunted us out, and our location gave us plenty of passing trade too.

A highlight of the show though? Finding a Sankara Stone with Indy! (thanks to The Galactic Knights 🤠 )

Roll on UKGE 23!

06/06/2022

Brief note for now, still recovering from UK Games Expo 2022.
Excellent show for where we're at; running down the landing checklist: decent sales, very useful information on selling and markets, informative discussions about future ideas, a few cold called publishers didn't reject it out of hand 😁, and several retailers took copies or want to discuss. So lots to follow up and think about, and we'll see what happens.
Thanks to Christine, Marnie, Simon, Seonaid, Helen and Mark, couldn't have done it without you.
And thanks for the buzz from Imagination Gaming for walking round a corner and seeing it on your stand, and then you putting it out in your play testing! 😁

03/06/2022

One of those brief conversations which show the benefits of networking. Our new tagline:

"Games about planes."

A statement so blindingly obvious we didn't see it.

Many thanks Jollyboat 👍😁

03/06/2022

Excellent first day at UK Games Expo 2022 , some sales, some leads, some very useful info. Here's to an even more excellent second day 😎
Thanks to Early Nerd, Gathering Games, and Bulwark Games for dropping by, look forward to talking with you further 👍

08/05/2022

24/04/2022

UK's ‘Spirit of Innovation’ is officially the world’s fastest all-electric aircraft.

On 16 November 2021, the aircraft reached a top speed of 555.9 km/hr over 3 kilometres, smashing the existing record by 213.04 km/hr.

The UK Government-backed ACCEL project which developed the aircraft involves UK companies Rolls-Royce, Electroflight and YASA. The aircraft was propelled by a 400kW electric powertrain and the most power-dense propulsion battery pack ever assembled in aerospace.

The aircraft also set a record for all-electric aircraft for the fastest time to climb to 3000 m in 202 s, breaking the current record by 60 s.

Electric flight is set to be as transformative as the jet engine was 70 years ago. Never before in the history of FAI record attempts has there been such a significant increase in speed over such a short timeframe, highlighting the rapid pace at which the electrification of aerospace is advancing.

It's like we're back in the 1920s, where rapid technical development in aircraft design means records are broken on a regular basis.

And Britain is leading the way.

Now if only there was a game which reflected this time in aviation history 😁

https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-releases/2022/20-01-2022-the-spirit-of-innovation-officially-breaks-speed-record.aspx

21/04/2022

We'll be at UK Games Expo 3-5 June, Birmingham, UK.

We're due to be at Stand 2-341, Moonstone Avenue, Hall2

Drop by and say hello 👍

https://www.facebook.com/UKGamesExpo

UK Games Expo is the UK's largest Hobby Games Convention - Expo is on Friday 31st May-2nd June 2024

25/02/2022

RF:S Day 20

(OK, I know that's a bit behind. But it's when the work was done, honest 😁)

So we did have a 2 player playthrough, which worked quite well. My Guinea Pig (GP 😁) found it quite simple and logical to follow, and quite exciting. So that's all good.

On the down side, the Contracts still weren't working, so using the idea of splitting them into the separate decks for Easy (cheap but no stages more than 4), Medium (bit more challenging difficulty wise, and earn more £), and Hard (stages of all difficulties, and highest paying). So need to rework the Contract Deck a bit. Also discovered you can get knocked out quickly, if you crash your aircraft and haven't the £ to replace it - especially true in the second round 😑.

So that's where I'm at now. The basics seem fine, but how many rules or conditions do I want to add to address particular situations. This can also have an effect on the fun / complexity balance of the game, and so the audience its aimed at. There's an audience for fun games, and an audience for complex games, but rarely do they overlap.

🤠

16/02/2022

RF:S Day 14 & 15

Following the play test and its concerns about balancing the finances, I've been working up the Contract Deck, which had thrown out lots of ideas for the Company Deck, so that's progressed too. I also scoped out an Investors Deck to give players starting capital, and modified the aircraft costs 😁

After all that, I gave it all a second play, and it did work better 👍 But I found the Contracts and Stages too challenging for the early aircraft, so that's another consideration - how to make the game playable to start with, without meaning the players grow exponentially later in the game (maybe some kind of gearing later...? not sure yet). So I adjusted the route difficulties a bit as a start, and am considering removing the Cargo feature from the aircraft and the contracts, as that's acting as a second barrier to winning a contract.

I don't think there's a fundamental problem with the game, just more tweaking and adjustments - but I guess it would be easy to tie the player up in rules to try and make allowances for weaknesses in the basic structure. Have to avoid that. It's meant to be fun, not an exercise in reading comprehension!

Have another playtest lined up, first one with two players.... 😬

🤠

12/02/2022

RF:S Day 12
Had a first run through today, only lasted 2 rounds and about 20 mins with one player. Doesn't sound much, but it has thrown up quite a few issues, points and clarifications, which is exactly what it was meant to do.

Overall, the round steps worked, the money available drove aircraft purchase and contract decisions, and the map forced decisions about which contract to take with the aircraft I'd bought, which is all good.

But that's about it. I need to alter the flight deck, contract deck, and the financial values. There are features that aren't being used, like the cargo each aircraft can carry, or the Fortitude penalties in the Flight Deck. And financially it would take an average of 10 rounds to buy another aircraft and expand your fleet, and that feels too long - a game that's a trudge of doing the same thing over and over again before you see progress may be realistic, but it's not going to be fun, and that was one of the main objectives set out in day 1.

So the general shape of the game seems OK at the moment, but there's a lot of tweaking to do.

🤠

10/02/2022

RF:S Day 9&10
The last two days have been taken up prepping for a first physical prototype. Some of it's been simple translation from notes to something easy to refer to, like the aircraft cards, but trying to work out the contract 'cards' meant starting to think about that aspect - how to balance out the money each player could earn in a round against how difficult the contract is to complete.
All I can say at the moment is I've created enough to enable a first attempt at playing. I've no idea how it'll work. Although I'm confident the round steps make sense, it's the details that'll make the game enjoyable and challenging, and I've no idea how they'll work together.
Play testing at this point will throw up major issues in the gameplay, as well as tweaking details and noting what helps a player understand the game.
We'll see what happens!
🤠

08/02/2022

RF:S Day 8(?)

Unfortunately skipped a couple of days in the challenge, but they've not been unproductive.

I mentioned previously this clash between a round lasting a year or so, and a flight lasting a couple of days, and it became a hangnail in the game logic I started snagging. If I couldn't resolve it, the game would need changing significantly, and perhaps even broken into different games. Nothing wrong with any of that, but you don't want to have a pile of rework to do.
So I thought about it, and got some other very helpful thoughts from a Game Designers FB group. And the solution I'll run with for now is to...

remove references to time in the game 🤣

This means the game now becomes a more abstract model of the start of a small airline, with several rounds. We lose any reference to years, except the most general 'we're playing in the 30s', and the players can imagine a round is as long as they want. It doesn't matter to the gameplay. It does put a bit more pressure on getting the finance balance right, though, and I took a rough pass to see what that might look like.

Of course, all this may only bother me, but it did hold up development, so I'm glad I have a solution I'm happy to pursue.

On a different note, I also sketched out a possible cover 😁

🤠

05/02/2022

RF:S Day 5
A bit of a change today - some focussed research to inform game details - namely aircraft that might be involved - and picked up some other pieces of history that should be useful.

Including shifting the timeline a bit as airlines in Scotland didn't start successfully until the late 1920's early 30's.

Using actual aircraft, airfields, etc in the game is important because historical accuracy is a key part of the game marketing. I could build exactly the same gameplay but set it 2279 with shuttles beween the planets of Alpha Centauri. But the 'infotainment' element - that these things existed and these things happened - is what at least some people will hopefully play the game for.

So the aircraft below are the ones used in Scotland back then, and in looking at those aircraft, I've tried to model their relative capabilities in terms of Fuel (stage distance they can cover), Cargo (how many passengers or cargo they can carry), and a relative Cost to Buy, Sell , or Scrap (a crashed aircraft). These allow the player to choose the aircraft they want to buy to meet the Contracts and Routes they want to fly.

The aircraft Costs are informed by a couple of historical tidbits - that Highland Airways was set up with £20,000 in capital, and Aberdeeen Airways £8,000 😲 This also suggests a financial range in the game of £'000s, rather than £'00s, or £'000,000s.

So I now have a rough process for playing the game, a board, some aircraft, and a Flight Deck. Putting together another couple of areas of information - namely the Company and Contract Decks - should allow me to do a first playtest, which will really start to shake out problems in the way the game is played. After that comes a circular process of refining the game elements to balance the game, and working out the actual gameplay, as well as the thematic issues.

🤠

05/02/2022

RF:S Day 4

So today was doing a first pass at some details, such as the map and the Flight Deck - I know these are needed, and attempting them this early informs the development of the gameplay, and will also change them quite a bit, hopefully in a virtuous circle.

On the map, each stage has a 'difficulty' number, a combination of the distance and difficulty of flying that stage. These feel a reasonable attempt at this point.

The Flight Deck is a starter adapted from a previous game, showing different things that might happen during a flight and how these might affect the player's aircraft and company.

One issue these have identified in my thinking so far is a jarring mismatch in timescales - the Flight section which models only one flight which would take days at most, and the Round which covers several months or years. Something will have to be worked out!

Another issue is there may be too many stages in a contract, say between Edinburgh and Baltasound - with each stage needing a Flight Deck card, it could mean a player takes a while to do a contract while the others have nothing to do. Again, needs some more thought.
🤠

04/02/2022

RF:S Day 3
A little cheat today as I wasn't up to doing much. I drew up this map for a different version I was considering before, but it won't take too much alteration to work for this game. Indeed if I decide to include Water landing strips, it'll be this map.

The major change I want to make is to change the city names for he airfield names, to be more in keeping with the theme, and maybe alter the colour scheme. The actual land / sea split is more for decoration - for the game it's irrelevant. It's the routes between the dots that matter, so the routes, the dots and the names need to stand out.

I still need to add the routes - which airfield connects to which. This'll be a bit artificial, because in reality the aircraft could (eventually) go anywhere. But we can stretch reality - the first aircraft couldn't fly over the Highland mountains, for example - to build in some gameplay; i.e. if you're constrained to certain routes and you've got to meet a route's conditions to fly it, then you're making the player think about what routes they can fly, what contracts they can take, and what aircraft they want to buy. The routes and their conditions are quite tricky, and will change as we get into play testing later.

But for now, this is the base map I'll be working from. The connections to Shetland, Norway and England offer great interesting potential.

🤠

02/02/2022

RF:S Day 2
Not sure it's a good thing that I've found the benefit of these challenges on just Day 2. Having to report progress is what forced writing today!

Anyway, had a deeper thought about the parts of a Round, which led into capturing the bits of the game which will need balancing to allow challenging but achievable gameplay. In no particular order, these seem to be the map and the 'distances' between airfields, the aircraft performance and £, Company cards to allow you to affect other players, Contract cards to give you goals and £, and Flight cards to give risk / reward while trying to complete Contracts.

Thoughts also wandered into terminology and finished off on a first pass at the elevator pitch, which also helps crystallise what the game should include. As it often does, my mind also drifted across a lot of things not immediately relevant, but which might be, like do we add the complexity of float planes and water landing only airfields? Feels a step too far at the moment, but useful to have in the back pocket.

So after a slow start at writing stuff down, some useful scribbles 🤠

01/02/2022

I've joined a "28 Drawings Later" challenge to be creative in February, and decided to stop thinking about another game and actually design it.

So here's the proper start of Route-Finder: Scotland 🤠

Day 1
At the moment, the idea is each player is the boss of a new airline in 1918 Scotland. Each round each player draws 1+ contracts and tries to fly the contract and earn the £ payment. You can buy or sell aircraft (and so try for more contracts each). Winner is the one with most £ by 1929, and if you've enough, your airline has a chance to survive the great depression.

It's feeling like a competitive game, with small elements of both resource management and random luck, based on historical accuracy.
🗻💭🛩️📈🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, roughly 🤣

26/11/2021

Surely one of the most beautiful aircraft ever produced, the DH 88 Comet was built with one purpose in mind: long endurance racing.

This de Havilland DH88 Comet Racer named 'Grosvenor House' after its sponsoring hotel, is known for winning the 1934 England-Australia MacRobertson Air Race in 70 hours and 55 mins - just under 3 days, a record at the time. It's been restored and is still flying today with the Shuttleworth Collection.

Only 5 Comets were originally built, designed specifically for the MacRobertson. The course covered some 11,300 miles from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk to Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria, with compulsory stops at Baghdad, Allahabad, Singapore, Darwin, and Charleville, Queensland. By the time the 1934 race started on 20 October, sixty entrants had become just twenty, including a route finding KLM DC 2 which would come second, and a Boeing 247 which came third. Just eleven aircraft would eventually finish the race.

Such a specialised aircraft as the Comet struggled to find other uses apart from record setting, and technology soon moved on to enable faster and longer endurance aircraft.

But few ever matched the DH 88 for style.

Create your own tales of world spanning flights with
Routefinder: Intercontinental
https://tinyurl.com/buyroutefindergame

18/11/2021

Not necessarily endurance machines to get you round the world, Gee Bee racers were at an extreme end of engineering, designed for pure speed racing. And they definitely stood out, helping with sponsorship 😁

The Gee Bees were fast and manoeuvrable, winning many races for pilots like Jimmy Doolittle, but the design was difficult to control and unfortunately killed many pilots.

Photo from Kaye Woods and Ellen Milbrath, taken by their Father, Mr. William Anderson.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/07/gee-bee-model-r-cute-but-dangerous.html?m=1

A Gee Bee R1 at the Cleveland Air Race, 1931 or 2.

Create your own tales of world spanning flights with the board game
Routefinder: Intercontinental
https://tinyurl.com/buyroutefindergame

11/03/2021

So we got a review from FlyPast Magazine, the magazine for aviation history and aircraft restoration...

Particularly liked "intriguing game", "a whole heap of aviation-based fun", "high quality", and "oozes a spirited sense of adventure" 😁

Why not pick up a copy and find out what they meant?
🤠

26/02/2021

Route-Finder: Intercontinental
Family board game

* Write your own stories in the Golden Age of Flight!
* Prove you can fly an aeroplane you design across the world!
* Can you beat Earhart, Coleman, Post, Johnson, and all the others?
* Explore finance, engineering and geography.

Play on your own, or with friends and family, together or against each other
1 hour to play
Ages 8+
£9.95 (free p&p)

Visit Aeronautique Games for more information.
Purchase from: https://tinyurl.com/buyroutefindergame

A boardgame of international flight in the 1920’s Play on your own, or with friends and family, together or against each other! Explore finance, technology and geography in the Golden Age of Flight, proving global air-routes do exist! In Route-Finder: Intercontinental you play a daring 1920’s cr...

04/02/2021

Got this as a great present, can't recommend it highly enough. Good quality & printing and best of all, subtle / obscure(ish!) 😎

If you're looking for something for a plane or history nut, this is a good shop to start with.

But I'll be there before you picking up some to gift on myself 🤠

Thanks Flyingraphics, keep up the good work 👍

https://www.flyingraphics.com/collections/insignia/products/supermarine

Supermarine was famous for winning the Schneider Trophy and producing the Spitfire.

28/01/2021

Have set up an Etsy page on the better half's JbyC jewellery shop for the physical Route-Finder: Intercontinental boardgame:

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/946353379/route-finder-intercontinental-boardgame?fbclid=IwAR0AM406Q8mRsS-SpDI19cSkz6WLtTmIucgR3RiI1GuUGnAqwwhm7DCDC5g

Seemed easier for buyers than the mess that is Facebook's 'Shop'.

Happy purchasing 🤠

A boardgame of international flight in the 1920’s Play on your own, or with friends and family, together or against each other! Explore finance, technology and geography in the Golden Age of Flight, proving global air-routes do exist! In Route-Finder: Intercontinental you play a daring 1920’s cr...