Making a Board Game

Playtesting I did more playtesting over the weekend. Got my first hard "nope".  Someone played one round and just bounced.  To be expected, not too upset about it. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it and wanted to play more. Some interesting take-aways:  For the cooperative version (at the very least) I am realizing that all the restrictions around where things go are not really necessary.  I am curious to try a more "wild west" approach where things could be placed pretty much anywhere on the factory floor. There's a tension in the design:  For a particular challenge, there's a "thing" I want to happen.  E.g. for first challenge, if the Nut Dispensers go Almond then Peanut and the Orders go Peanut then Almond, there's no way to finish the Challenge without at least one Cross Tile. Players will fail and redo Challenges.  There should be some variance when things are retried or it may become too easy. The cards you use to do Actions will always be ...

Publishing Those of you who know me well probably could have told me this, but I recently realized myself: I don't want to self publish. Self-publish pros No barrier to entry (you can publish anything you want, no one is stopping you) Complete creative control. If the game is a massive success you get all the sweet sweet cheddar. Self-publish cons It's a very crowded marketplace. It's a very non-deterministic process.  Like how do you get your game to sell in mass numbers?  There are best practices but it's not an engineering problem with a single provable answer, it's some combo of strategy, hustle, and dumb luck. You spend a lot of your time just running a business.  Like worrying about trucks delivering your stuff or some factory in China that made your pieces wrong. That last one is the deal-breaker for me.  I got into engineering because I enjoy the creativity of building things using math-y skills, and I looked up 30 years later and realized I spend like 10 pe...

Legos I ordered some Legos to use for game bits: nut dispensers, roasters, salters, nuts (can add extra Lego to mark roasted/salted), and squirrels (the squirrels are cute). These are easier to grab and move around than the paper. One downside: I got two different shades of brown for nuts (light brown is Almond and dark brown is Peanut).  The mapping is non-obvious, and for people who are colorblind it might be very confusing.  Maybe I should go with radically different colors (like green and blue or something). But the designer in me thinks it's weird to have green mean Peanut.  Maybe change the game narrative to peanuts (brown) and pistachios (green)? A salted roasted almond, roasted peanut, and a Squirrel. Playtest I ran another playtest with my friend and his daughter (tween).  I'd say both of them are pretty smart and occasionally play games but they are not "gamers", like they don't regularly play or collect board games. We played a new cooperative version o...

 Game Design The game is "Nuts". It's kind of a play on words:  The game involves shipping actual nuts. The game has some degree of chaos (things are "nuts") The game involves some "things have not gone according to plan" moments ("Ah, nuts!") The basic idea: the players are all execs at a some nut shipping enterprise. The main game board is a factory floor with conveyor belts connecting nut dispensers on one end with orders on the other end.  Along the way the belts may pass through areas that modify or destroy the nuts.  Gameplay involves configuring the factory floor, adding "crosses" (a-la Ghost leg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_leg) to the belts or moving elements, so that the orders get filled. The key elements I want to deliver: Ghost leg is just an interesting logic puzzle: how to map set A into set B.  The "crossing" mechanic makes for a meaty problem because any choice affects several different outcomes (by...

As of today, I am going to work full-time on developing board games. Background This has been cooking for quite a while. As long as I can remember I've been into board games.  Like to the point of annoying people around me (a babysitter once claimed she could not play another game of Casper the Ghost because she "hit her head on the toilet").  Since high school I've been trying to design board games, but always as a hobby: made a few playable demos here and there but never really put serious time or effort into it. Generally speaking I've got a strong creative streak: love writing music, writing and performing plays, doing improv, etc.  It's just the best feeling in the world to come up with some cool new "thing" for people to enjoy. But that energy has kinda taken a back seat: I am also very risk-averse.  Really going after some creative pursuit always felt too scary:  * Many people try and fail. * What if I'm not good enough? * At the end of th...