Welcome to the final instalment of the History of Sinoda! Well, the history of how Sinoda was made, not the entire history of Sinoda. We’re hoping this is the beginning of the long story of Sinoda, as more people learn about it and enjoy it and it gathers more fans. Anyway, if you’ve been following since part 1, you’ll know about how we came up with the idea, refined the rules, changed the board, and chose the name. And now… the release!

On Friday, July 26, 2000 copies of Sinoda arrived at our facility. And by “facility”, I mean Bill’s house. Bill was on vacation, so upon receiving notification of imminent delivery, my daughter and I went over there to meet and unload the truck. The truck arrived with four pallets of boxes, but, unfortunately, no pump truck. The truck had a lift at the back to lower the pallets, but since they’d forgotten to put the pump truck in at the warehouse, we couldn’t get the pallets to the back of the truck to lower to ground level. So we carried them all out and into Bill’s garage by hand. Well, I used Bill’s wheelbarrow to move them up the driveway so I could take 6 at a time.

Since Bill had left his car behind and left me the key, we also loaded his car and mine with as many boxes as could fit, then my daughter and I each drove a car back to my place and unloaded them into my basement (our secondary storage facility!) Then we both drove back to Bill’s house, loaded my car again, left his car in his driveway, then brought another load back to my basement.

It was hot, sweaty work, as it was a rather warm day, but it was exciting to see so many copies of Sinoda! Dreams and hopes had become reality!

Now that we had them, we needed to do stuff with them! Our release party was scheduled for Wednesday, July 31st at Dicey Business, but before that, there were preorders to deliver! I set about to delivering as many as I could, including a trip to Ottawa on the 30th, returning on the 31st, just in time for the party! On my trip to Ottawa and back, I brought Sinoda to people who preordered, as well as the stores Wizard Tower, Toys on Fire, The Comic Book Shoppe, Trinity Hobby, Sequence Gaming, and The Gamer’s Table.

Among other friends I visited, I also stopped in to see Dr. Brian MacDonald of Brains on Games. Dr. Brian interviewed me way back in 2020 about Mathemagician’s Duel when that came out, and we’ve been following each other (on our public social media, not in a creepy way) since. He was pretty interested in Sinoda as he saw us posting about it, and in March we finally got to meet in person when he came to Breakout Con in Toronto. He got to play Sinoda and enjoyed it so much that he preordered a copy for himself. We got to play again when I dropped his copy off at his house, and then less than a week later, he posted a review video on his channel! Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDlt4RgFM9A (Yes, this is the same one that is embedded on our Sinoda page (as of the writing of this blog)). He does great reviews with a focus on how the games develop or practice specific cognitive skills.

As a side note to anyone traveling to Ottawa to visit these stores, there’s a section of Cedarview Rd. in Nepean that goes from a 60km/h zone to a 40km/h zone very quickly, without any narrowing of the road, or residential driveways being attached to it. It still feels like a 60km/h road, but it’s not. And there are speed cameras. Just sayin’.

Upon returning to Mississauga, it was time for the official Sinoda Launch Party at Dicey Business! We chose Dicey Business because we spent a lot of time there, did a lot of playtesting of games with their unsuspecting customers, and they always promoted us and treated us well. There are events at other stores that we love to visit, but it was important to us that the first one be at Dicey. So, I got home, washed off the traveling sweat, put on some fresh clothes, gathered up the family and headed out to our comfort zone away from home. I’m going to include some pictures from the event, but I don’t have enough space on this page (and I guess, technically, this page is infinite) to tell you about how much fun we had. Being surrounded by our friends and family to celebrate something we had accomplished was pretty amazing. Many games of Sinoda were played, a Sinoda cake was eaten, Bill and I autographed people’s Sinoda boxes… it was awesome. I even gave up my first sticker from the Beat Me At My Own Game challenge when I was bested by Mitch, whom I played once before a couple of weeks prior.

Of course, just because we’d officially launched doesn’t mean we were done! Only two days later, on Aug 2nd, we went to The Boardwalk Game Lounge in Peterborough to run demos there during the Peterborough First Friday Art Crawl. We had a great time hanging out there, meeting people and teaching them to play Sinoda. And the day after that, we did a Sinoda Day at The Dragon in Guelph, where Miguel became the first person to defeat both Bill and me to earn BOTH stickers from our Beat Me At My Own Game challenge. Again, it was a good day in which we got to do what we enjoy: meeting people and sharing our game with them.

On the way home from The Dragon, we stopped at Games on Tap, a game café in Waterloo, where we met a fun group of students who were interested in playing a six-player game of Sinoda. Then, I lost to one of them in a head-to-head match, giving up my second sticker in one day! Either I was tired, or the competition is getting good! To be fair, she is a chess player and has a very analytical mind! Congratulations Abby!

Over the next couple of weeks, we did a bunch of stuff. More than I can explain here in detail and document with pictures. To get more detail, you’ll need to head over to our Instagram or Facebook page and scroll back and read all about what we were up to following the release of Sinoda. But, here are the highlights: I drove to Nova Scotia and visited some awesome game stores while I was there. There was Fact or Fiction games, which is a relatively new store and mostly focuses on collectible card games, but they have a spot for Canadian indie game designers. I enjoyed visiting and hanging out there. Also, I went to Lantzalot Games in Blockhouse (just north of Lunenburg) and The Local NPC in Sydney. I also discovered Wired Village games in Pictou, and hung around Cooper’s Cabin to run some demos while I was there. On the way home, I stopped in at Gamezilla in Moncton. I wish that I lived closer to every store so that I could visit them all more!

While I was on the East Coast, Bill was busy promoting Sinoda at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Peach Festival with our friends It’s All Fun and Games. Besides visiting some other stores during the month, he finished up at the CNE in the gaming area they set up this year for people to play games and also meet some local designers! He was there a few days, along with our friend Joe Slack, who also had a booth to promote his solo puzzle game, Relics of Rajavihara. We found out about this event from our friends at Changeling Gaming Events. Want to see if there’s a game event happening near you? Follow them! Anyway, Bill had a great time meeting a bunch of people and playing Sinoda. It was a great way to introduce people to our little game.

So then, what’s next? Sinoda is out and we did some events… but we can’t stop there! We have even more events coming up! Check out our events page for more information, but here’s a quick overview: Sinoda Demo Day at LVLUP Games in Mississauga on Friday, September 6th, Guelph Comics Jam at The Dragon on the 14th, a yet-to-determined event on the 21st, I’ll probably be at Event Horizon Hobbies in Midland on the 28th, Protospiel North is October 4th – 6th, and CleriCon is October 25th – 27th! And, of course, we are at Dicey Business every Wednesday evening. Come and say hi! Oh wait! I’ve just remembered that we’re going to be at the Mississauga Comic Expo on November 16th!

Thank you to everyone who has followed our journey this far and continue to follow us to see where we go. And, welcome to anyone just joining us because you met us one of these events and enjoyed our game. We are happy to have you along. We very much appreciate the support of everyone who has encouraged us to get this far, given us ideas for game promotion, told us about local stores or events to get in touch with, or simply took the time to chat with us about Sinoda, or anything, really.

See you soon!