One Hit Kill

The road to becoming a professional artist

July 6, 2015 One Hit Kill, Psych 101, Random Advice

Noah Bradley, who illustrated several of the weapon cards for One Hit Kill, has a great post up about his journey to becoming a full-time professional artist:

The reason I decided to become an artist has nothing to do with what would make me the most money, or what I was “talented” at, or even what I necessarily always enjoyed the most. It was simply something that, in my gut, I just knew was the right choice. Without anything better to go on, that’s what I relied on.

From this moment, the fear began. I have spent every day since, with some variance, utterly terrified of failing. Of not being good enough. Not making enough money to support myself. Being a horrible, embarrassing failure.

And it was this fear that propelled me to improve.

Every writer can relate.

One of the things that’s impressed me about working with Noah is his commitment to working on his own projects in addition to assignments. Particularly in the fantasy art industry, it feels like there’s an easy path to burnout. How many orcs and angels can you really be proud of?

Working screenwriters face a similar grind with endless pitches and revisions, while TV writers have to find new stories to tell with the same characters each week.

Devoting time to your own work is one key to staying sane. The work you do for yourself is almost always a better expression of your potential, because you’re not trying to meet anyone’s expectations.

This is one Noah’s personal illustrations. It’s what first got my attention:

landscape

I have no idea why this piece exists, but it compelled me to contact him. When stranger shows up offering you work, you’re doing something right.

The Automatic Gate

June 4, 2015 Genres, One Hit Kill

As a screenwriter, I’m always looking for ticking clocks to increase the tension in a story. One of my favorite sub-tropes is the Automatic Gate.

No matter what you do, it’s going to shut, and you’re either in or you’re out.

maze runner gif

At noon Friday LA time, Kickstarter’s automatic gate will slam shut on One Hit Kill. The backers will be inside, and the rest of the world will need to wait.

I think part of the appeal of Kickstarter is that it’s an Automatic Gate at heart. From the moment I launched the campaign, there was nothing I could do to speed up or slow down the closing gate. The deadline really is a deadline, and nothing can stop it.¹

We’re more than triple funded, and will be shipping OHK to backers in September. Some will see it a lot sooner at playtests.² Everyone else will need to wait.

If you want to get it on One Hit Kill, and you want it in September, now’s the last chance. The clock on the Kickstarter page is literally counting down.

In just a few hours, it’s One Hit Kill or squish.

One of my favorite Automatic Gates comes in The Abyss, where (mild spoiler) Ed Harris’s ring does in fact stop the gate. But I couldn’t find a good gif for that. ↩
We’re always looking for great playtest venues, so by all means reach out if you have a spot. ↩

How and why we made the One Hit Kill app

May 25, 2015 Geek Alert, One Hit Kill

When One Hit Kill ships in September, it will have printed rules in the box like every other game.

But because OHK is designed to grow and change — both with our own expansion packs and user-created variants — we wanted to be able to quickly update and “officialize” rules to reflect the state of the game.

So we did what we do. We made an app.

The One Hit Kill app is free in the App Store. There’s also a web app that works on Android and other devices.

Under the hood

This is our first iOS app written in Swift, Apple’s next-generation coding language. Nima Yousefi originally prototyped it in Objective-C, but when it became clear we would be using primarily stock elements and libraries, he rewrote it in Swift.

Nima reported very few issues making the change. Swift is certainly readable. It’s the first app we’ve made where I can look at the code and basically understand what’s happening, so that’s remarkable.

Within the app, the pages themselves — from rules to the FAQ — are written in Markdown, and rendered as text rather than web views. (We do the same thing in Weekend Read.)

The app pulls its data from the cloud: Rails running on Heroku. From a web interface, we can update the text and images for any piece of content, then push it out live. It’s not Facebook or Twitter levels of performance, but it meets our lightweight needs.

We are on the verge of submitting version 1.1 of the OHK app, which trades out some of the table views for collections. That allows us to flatten some of the hierarchy and show more cards at once, particularly on the iPad.

Making it work on Android

Because a lot of our backers will be on Android or other devices, we wanted to provide a version of the app for them as well.

After considering several alternatives, we chose Framework7 to build a web app that would work regardless of the platform. Framework7 unapologetically tries to fake an iOS look, but our Android users haven’t objected. For iOS developers in similar situations with fairly simple, text-based apps, we’d recommend giving Framework7 a look.

There can only be One

Our primary reason for building the One Hit Kill app was to make it easy to update the rules and artwork.

Another goal was to protect the name One Hit Kill.

It’s not an idle worry. The Exploding Kittens game in the App Store is terrible: a generic whack-a-mole with no relation at all to the wildly popular Kickstarter. No doubt thrown together in an afternoon, it’s attempting to draft off the Kittens brand name. (The developer’s other games include “the 2048 game” and Flappy Chappy, neither of which have any reviews.)

The One Hit Kill app should at least stave off the most obnoxious clones, and keep the name available to us down the road.

So take a look at the app, and check out the web app if you’re curious.

One Hit Kill itself is available exclusively through Kickstarter, and only until June 5th.

One Hit Kill is now on Kickstarter

May 12, 2015 One Hit Kill

Minutes ago, we launched the Kickstarter for One Hit Kill, our new card game of ridiculously overpowered weapons and monsters and cuddly rabbits.

UPDATE: We funded! Really quickly. We’ll be sending out the game in September — and this will probably be the only chance to get it this year, so don’t wait. We also announced our stretch goals and achievements, including an app.

After months of work and testing, we’re damn excited to show you what we’ve designed. We’ve been playing the game non-stop, and it’s time to release it into the world.

With your help, One Hit Kill might become your new favorite game. Please check it out!