I’m being urged to tell my story of how I met VivaJava: The Coffee Game. My story is out there in the form of other blogs that I’ve written… but I’ll tell it again safe from the trappings of a review, preview or announcement. This is my story and I’m sticking to it.

As I started to re-adjust my life and focus on board games the Rio Grande Game Design Competition came onto my radar. The regional competition closest to me was at the Congress of Gamers in Rockville, MD. I prepared and entered one of my designs.

There were several games at the event and many great designers. As a contestant, I was watching the other entries closely to see if I actually had a chance of winning. I really wasn’t sure that I did. After I played DeveJava I was certain I hadn’t. DeveJava was great. I loved it immediately.

A great surprise to everyone at the end of the evening, my little game came in second… and T.C. Petty III’s DeveJava came in… what? Third? Travesty! Injustice! Our games…and the games everyone else lost to a designer who wasn’t present and who’s game wasn’t played at all over the two day event! Not once. What? Really? (SIDE NOTE: Both the 2nd and 3rd place games that day have found publishers. First play? Nope.)

That was October of 2010. In January of 2011 I held the First Annual Cartrunk Entertainment Unpublished Games Festival. I invited T.C. for mostly personal reasons. I wanted to play DeveJava again! I wanted my friends to play it. I could no longer live in a world where DeveJava was not on my table or game shelf.

T.C. was able to make it to the event. He brought The Coffee Game (as I affectionately referred to it.) Three or four games later he’d earned several more fans of the game! We were going to take this game to the big time with a grass roots campaign!

We stayed in contact a little after the Unpub. I went to the GAMA Trade Show and met several publishers. I sent TC information on some of the publishers I felt might be interested in DeveJava… nothing much happened for a while.

Origins Game Fair was on the Horizion. I was going. I was taking my game and going to beat the pavement looking for a publisher. I figured strength in numbers, and gave T.C. a call. We shared a room and worked the floor. We spoke with several publishers about our respective games and things felt good.

Along the way, being a twitter guy, I had met Chris Kirkman of Dice Hate Me. We had planned on meeting at Origins and did. Through Chris I began a whirlwind tour of playing prototypes at Origins. We got The Coffee Game on the table and it wowed the crowd including Clever Mojo founder David MacKenzie and Philip DuBarry, designer of great games like Revolution and Kingdom of Solomon!

Neither of us made a solid sale at the event, but both of us had hope for the future.

The future for me came a few weeks later. By the time I went to the July Unpublished Games Showcase in Glen Burnie, MD, I was able to announce that I had a publisher, David W. MacKenzie of Clever Mojo Games. Turns out T.C. wasn’t able to announce yet, but he had also found a publisher, Chris Kirkman of what was soon to become Dice Hate Me Games!

With a publisher comes great changes. DeveJava became VivaJava:The Coffee Game and it went from being a 5-8 player game to being a 3-8 player game.

I was able to experience the changes of new VivaJava at The World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster, PA. It was awesome and developing well! I was very excited for TC and the entire Dice Hate Me gang!

A few months later, because of my support, I was invited to North Carolina for the filming of the VivaJava kickstarter video. If you look close you’ll see me at the table sitting down to play the game!

TC brought VivaJava back to Unpub2 on January 14th, just as it was reaching The Hotness on the Board Game Geek website. There were numerous plays and the table was always rocking. Despite the game now having a publisher, it was not yet published and still eligible for the feedback and play-testy goodness of the Unpub program.

VivaJava: The Coffee Game got a lot of positive feedback and several great reviews from the event. That awesome coverage leads us to it’s kickstarter Kickoff! The game is finally becoming a reality. …but that reality needs your help.

If you’re a reader of this site, or a follower on twitter, you know how passionate I am about games. This game, VivaJava: The Coffee Game, excites me. It’s a truly remarkable game and you should absolutely pledge. Look, once it hits the stores and the real reviews come in, you’re going to be compelled to buy it. This is a fact whether you know it or not. It’s going to rank up there with Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan, Agricola, Power Grid, Carcassonne, and Dominion. This game will join that crowd. No question. Get in on the ground floor. Support it now. You’ll be glad you did later.