From Monopoly to Food Chain Magnate, and many games in between, players earn the victory by becoming the wealthiest by game end. Given that so many games are economic simulations, perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. What might surprise us is how many games, even economic games, are not won by becoming the richest player. I »more
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Design Patterns: Triangular Scoring
A quick note before we get into today’s post. I recently appeared on the fantastic Ludology podcast, hosted by Geoff Engelstein and Gil Hova, where I talked about this series of design patterns. Some of you may be reading this now because you heard that episode. Welcome! If you’re a regular and want to listen, »more
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Blind Remote Playtesting In 10 Easy Steps
Blind playtesting, where players encounter your game as a consumer might, and must learn how to play from the written rules, is a critical part of the game design process. Some designers reserve blind testing towards the end of their process, and primarily use it to refine rules. Others start much earlier, sometimes relying on »more
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Guest Post, JR Honeycutt: Make Choices, Feel Things
JR Honeycutt is a developer and designer who is known throughout the industry for his work on legacy games from Seafall to Charterstone to the upcoming Betrayal Legacy. In the past, JR has worked with Dirk Knemeyer on the Tesla vs Edison franchise, and with Daryl Andrews on the Fantasy Fantasy sports franchise. JR, in »more
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Design Patterns: Asymmetry and Player Interaction
We’ve spent the last few weeks talking about various ways in which games start with asymmetry, or introduce it along the way, in order to reach the ultimate asymmetric outcome of winning and losing. Today, we’ll close our series on asymmetry by talking about player interaction. Broadly speaking, nearly every competitive game can be reduced »more
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Design Patterns: Asymmetry And Opacity
Welcome back! This is the third part of the asymmetry series. You can catch up here, or just keep reading. No prior knowledge required! Well… except this bit. Last week I said: I am not addressing the asymmetry that arises based on the natural outcome of non-mirrored gameplay. Players take turns and make decisions and »more
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Design Patterns: Asymmetry (Part 2)
Last week I introduced the topic of asymmetry, and wondered out loud about all the different ways we use the term. Is there any hope of putting some order to all the chaos we uncovered? Probably not. But we’ll try anyway! It might help to identify different categories of asymmetry. I’m going to try out »more
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Design Patterns: Asymmetry (Part 1)
Recently I’ve been frustrated by the term asymmetry in game design. What are asymmetric games? Common examples are Cosmic Encounter, Chaos in the Old World, Twilight Struggle, Android: Netrunner, or Fury of Dracula. Looking over that list, it’s clear that we mean lots of different things when we talk about asymmetry! Twilight Struggle, for example, »more
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Design Pattern: I’ll Rates You!
After last week’s post about worker placement games that dont’ favor buying a lot of workers, a lot of readers brought up some additional examples. By far the most common one was one of my favorite and most-played games of all time, Through the Ages. Thing is, TTA isn’t a worker-placement game. It’s a tableau-building, action »more
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Design Pattern: Don’t Work Harder, Work Smarter
When sitting down to learn a new worker placement game, many of us are just waiting for the answer to one question: how do I get more workers? Since workers are the currency of a worker placement game, getting more workers is the key to getting more of everything else: resources, turn order advantage and »more