Every game should tests players’ skills in one way or another, or else it doesn’t have meaningful decisions baked into it. Skills that are common to many games include being able to gauge probabilities and calculate expected values, to be able to convert in-game currencies like money, goods and victory points, and to be able »more
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Design Pattern: We All Do The Same Thing But It Turns Out Different
Game designers struggle mightily with symmetry. Symmetry in what players can do helps ensure fairness, but it can also produce mirror-image play that’s boring. Besides, players love to identify with their in-game avatars, and having different abilities helps players do that. So do other asymmetries like having different setups, different units, and so forth. Some »more
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Design Pattern: It’s A Cover-up
No, I’m not talking about politics, or make-up. I’m talking about the design pattern of using tokens of different shapes to cover up an area, which has experienced a major surge in popularity lately. Based on the mathematical concept of tessellation, or how to completely cover a surface with geometric shapes, this design pattern offers »more
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Design Patterns: Everything You Do Is The Reason I Don’t Trust You
Distrust is a delicious ingredient in game design! What’s so fascinating about this design pattern is that it’s about the metagame, the game above the table, rather than the game that’s on the table. In a game featuring this pattern of stoking distrust, players typically have some shared goals and some opposing goals, and play »more
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Design Patterns: What You Do Helps Others Too
For the inaugural post of the series I wanted to talk about a pattern that has been really important to my own designs, and that has become a hallmark of modern games. What you do helps others too is a pattern in which your play doesn’t function to block others as much as it opens »more
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Introducing Patterns in Game Design
I’m a fan of the Game Designers of North Carolina Podcast (GDoNC), which features conversations between game designers on design-related topics. In episode 33, Mark McGee spoke about how he designed his games around a central message, a kind of moral of the game. He mentioned a couple, like “teamwork is awesome or “you can have it now »more
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New PnP – Mosaic, a Roll-and-Write Game
Want to try one of our games? You can print this one on one page! In Mosaic, you’ll try and restore the Mona Lisa of the Galilee, an ancient tile portrait of a mesmerizing, mysterious woman with just a hint of a smile. Mosaic is a roll-and-write game, like Yahtzee. You supply the dice and the »more
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Game Design Glossary: Decision Scales
The Game Design Glossary is an ongoing series about defining new terms in tabletop game design. Learn more about it here! This week, we welcomed Matt Wolfe, the designer of Wombat Rescue and Avalanche at Yeti Mountain to talk about Decision Scales. Listen to the whole discussion on On Board Games Episode 235 here, download »more
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Pickpockets is on Kickstarter now!
Lately I’ve teamed up with designer Matt Loomis to make tons more games. Our first to be published is a small game in the Buttonshy Games stable of wallet games, called Pickpockets. These are games of no more than 18 cards, packaged in a small wallet. Our is the first REAL wallet game though, because »more
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Interview on the Game Design Round Table
Dirk Knemeyer and David Herron invited me over to their show, the Game Design Round Table, which is one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. We had a great chat about designing games, telling stories, and collaborating with others. We even shared the news that Dirk and I are working together on a project. Head »more