Apiary: Tales from Production 

As an amateur game designer, I love these behind-the-scenes peeks at production. Thanks, Jamie!

That ink wash seriously increased the visibility of the numbers. That was an excellent improvement.

Being red-green deficient myself (colorblind), I must say that I really appreciate how much thought and effort Jamey puts in to vision-friendly components! I recently played a very popular game with high hopes of loving it. Sadly, I will not be adding it to my collection because it used very similar earth tones as it’s color palette. As a result, most of the colors all looked brown to me and I was constantly having to ask people, “What color is this?” It really took the fun away from the game! The fact that Apiary uses high contrast colors and dual coding by way of unique shapes really makes me that much more excited for this game!!! Thank you Jamey!!!

I love those backsage videos, big thannks for sharing, what an inspiration ! Love the fact that workers don't block each others, I am curious to see how this plays ! Also, big thanks for sharing the rulebooks !

I finally got my copy. It is a beautiful game. I like to see all the work and thoughts that went into it. Excited to get it to the table.

This is fantastic. I loved hearing about the stages of components and everything!

Love the look of those beeples and a great idea with the ink wash to make the numbers clearer.

Enjoyable video to watch while I punch out my new Apiary game. Interesting insights and history of the "evolution" of the process. Cheers!

I love these videos so much. Thanks for doing these.

Crazy how much thoughts goes into a boardgame! Thabks for the video :) Also we got expeditions yesterday, me and my wife are enjoying it a lot!

Whoa! Those washed bees look AMAZING! I'm looking forward to getting this game!

Great job on those ‘beeples.’ They’re so unique, I figured it must’ve taken you a few stabs to nail that design. And being so central to gameplay, they really were something you needed to get just right. Looks like a wonderful production overall.

Hopefully this will be ready for pickup in Essen. Looks amazing!

The ink wash was absolutely perfect. Funny, if they weren’t washed, i would have done it myself.

Beeples!

I worry that the wax and honey may look similar. This “feels” similar to the red rising color issue with the original metal tokens. Hopefully they are much more distinguishable in person. I say this with love and respect for your games. I’m a stonemaier champion and only say this with warm affection to your products.

One unnecessary component I would be interested in would be a prepainted QueenShip and different QueenShip miniature model designs.

The meeples look so cool with the ink wash

Thanks for this look behind the curtain. Your videos have made designing board game and getting it published go from seeming insurmountable to very possible. The components look great for this and I actually have a question regarding production costs. Obviously the exact answers will differ across manufacturers and things like how detailed components are. But do you have rough estimate on what the price difference is between cardboard components that you punch out, wooden components, and plastic.

Thanks for always sharing these stories with us. Love to see evolution and iterations as dev goes on. Can those bee meeples stand on their legs at the back? Could they have been placed upright for hibernation? So, form factors on multiple use from one design element, or is there already a use for the meeple standing upright?

As much as I love chunky wooden components I like the choice to forgo them in the case of the hibernation tokens. Not just b/c of production cost either. Often I see minor components getting upgrades. There’s certainly a glut of upgraded component on crowdfunding. I feel having a little-handled component get a deluxe upgrade sort of overstates its importance. The gameplay implications are subtle and vary game to game. But I often think an appropriate connection between frequency of use and significance of appearance aides in learning and rule retention.

These videos are great, Jamey!

Can you name a few things that make a positive impact when receiving a prototype submission and maybe some things that you see that designers should avoid doing when sending a prototype?

Very much looking forward to this. Being another amateur beekeeper (in the UK) the theme compels me . i also love worker placement, especially with twists (Honey Buzz is great in that regard). Thank you soooo much for making this game ! I will be online asap on 4th October .... 🙂 On an unrelated note, I see you have what looks like a map of Wales on the wall behind you. It looks amazing. I was wondering where you got it from ....

Jamey, I have an idea for you for a top 5 or top 10 list and it ties in with Apiary. Something like "favorite games with the Small World double asymmetry mechanism". (Okay, that title needs work.) But I've noticed you as a designer publisher really like this - in Scythe, a faction mat is randomly paired with a player mat, and both mats are unique. Expeditions (mech mat + character/companion), Tapestry (civ + city map), and Apiary (faction + hive map) all do this. It's also perhaps an angle you didn't explore in your "if you like Apiary you'll probably like" video, at least I'm not sure that you did.

Thanks as always for posting this. It seems like in each of these reviews I find something new that interests me. In this one it's definitely the resource tokens. The problem of giving the wax a strong identity doesn't seem to have an easy solution. Did you consider or test using a hexagon? I would wager that the strongest association most people have to beeswax is the honeycomb itself. I know it doesn't mark the wax proper, but just like using a flower for pollen and an amphora for honey, sometimes a container is the strongest indicator. Also how firm a constraint was using a metallic finish? For candles I would figure the colour of choice would be a milky white or pale yellow, and for beeswax more of an orange.

I wonder if Board & Dice considered an ink wash for Origins: First Builders. I always felt that game's presentation really suffered as a result of not doing that. Origins has a dice placement rule that your die value must meet or exceed the value at a worker placement space shown on a dial (the dial rotates after each use to get more restrictive). It's a fun mechanism and the centerpiece of the game, but the dice values on the plastic dials are unreadable under normal conditions. Incidentally, those dials represent alien motherships, so the "Battlestar Galactica" look, as you call it, would have probably worked great for that game too. Is this something someone could do with their own copy? Or is ink washing something you'd need a lot of skill or special materials to do?

Biomechanically speaking it's best to turn the dice to the right (like a door knob)