Tag: Faza

The Faza have Landed

by Ben

The Faza have landed, but Faction Zeta is here to defend our city from the extraterrestrial invaders!

After more than a year of developing the game and traveling to local board game groups in Philadelphia to playtest it, we finally shared it with the board game community at large. We sent out a few copies of Faza to do blind playtests with people across the United States.

 

 

A regular playtest, when the game designer is present is easy to troubleshoot. If the players feel confused about a phrase on a card or in the rulebook, they can turn to the game designer and ask a quick question. When doing a blind playtest, it can take a few days to troubleshoot an issue and might result in not completing the game due to vague rules. While it’s still a work in progress and we continue to receive feedback as we continue iterating on the game, the feedback we’ve received so far has help us to develop a detailed how to play section of the website accompanied with video tutorials.

 

 

Interested in trying out Faza? Send us a message.

Naming the Game

by Ben

I wish had some advice here about how to name products in general, but I don’t. So I’ll explain how I came up with the name Faza, because I didn’t. So this is going to be a short post…

After coming up with the sci-fi metaphor of space aliens and human survivors, early on my wife suggested I look for the word ‘alien’ in Farsi. I didn’t even get a chance to have a list of interesting and unique words or phrases shot down by my significant other.

She provided the initial direction to explore words in Farsi (since I also speak Farsi, the native language of Iran) and began listing out phonetic translations (so I got to create a list after all, but it wasn’t in English). After listing these words, I found the majority of the words too difficult for an English audience to pronounce, except for one: Faza.

Faza is a phonetic translation of the word “space.” The first “a” sounds the same as the “a” in “cat,” and the second “a” sounds like the “a” in “wash.” Faza has come to be the name of the alien species human players encounter in the game.

In retrospect, I guess I do have some advice for naming products – ask my wife.