This past Saturday, I presented The Patchwork Ship for live playtesting at 1UpState 2026 in Albany, NY. It’s a great event, and I had a lot of fun talking with other exhibitors like Bozoware and Polyhedron Productions.

The good news is that the month and a half of heads-down bug fixing, content and art additions, and usability improvements paid off! I was complimented on the gameplay, content, and polish, and if someone sat down to play, they stayed until the end (one even returned for a second run). I got a lot of additional content and mechanics requests, so people want more. The bad news? I still have to explain the basic mechanics up front before people “get” it.

This past Saturday, I presented The Patchwork Ship at the 2026 Rochester Game Festival. Deep appreciation to all who stopped by, asked questions, took stickers and business cards, and of course, played it! So, what’s changed since the last expo two months ago?

The first public playtest of The Patchwork Ship at the Summer 2026 Lake George Games Expo was a success with a massive amount of takeaways! All photos were taken with verbal consent.

There were over 400 tickets sold to the event and I was busy demoing all day. I ended up with five pages of handwritten notes as I watched people play and asked them about their perspectives. I’m really deeply appreciative of the time people spent playing and the depth of the feedback that I got!