Categories
General

Challenge Yourself

The Game Crafter (TGC) announced a new contest Community Anthology Challenge. I find these contests quite inspiring, as often you will need to push the design restrictions in order to carry out your vision. Here are the allowed components as well as the total printable space for rules and a game board (no cards, mats, etc.):

I will certainly think about this contest to see if I’ll manage to scrape something interesting together in the following ~3.5 months. I would assume that replayability will be a big challenge:

  • Components would definitely allow simple (w.r.t. rules) and challenging abstract games to be designed… but the gameplay might be too similar from one game to another.
  • Dice could be used in the setup to build unique circumstances from game to game. However, this would be better implemented with cards, for instance. Hence it would be a bit “lazy” design, if and when there exists a better way.

It will be interesting to see how popular this contest will be. Due to Covid-19, there haven’t been TGC contests for a while… so there might be some accumulated interest. On the other hand, this feels a bit similar to their earlier Game Pieces Only Challenge, which had 53 entries (I actually had two not-so-successful entries there). For the fun of it, let’s guess that there will be 65 entries this time.

Categories
Staking the Throne

First Impressions

There’s an interesting Board Date Project going on BoardGameGeek. The idea is to make a video presentation of your design. Interested publishers then could come and check out the presentation. However, there’s some kind of preliminary pruning based on a prototype picture and few words… and if the first impression is good enough, then you’ll need to make the actual video too. Here’s what I submitted:

  • Players: 3 to 5 players
  • Playing Time: 20 minutes/game
  • Primary Mechanic: Auction: Sealed bid
  • Game Type: Competitive
  • Audience: Family + (Medium Heavy)
  • Youtube description: Put together the best parts from For Sale, Coloretto, and High Society. Add unique twists to the mix: either aim to win the auctions or be the second to last; manage/preserve your bids cleverly as they are combos of two cards. And Staking the Throne is what you get. Round 2 of game play

Would this pique your interest… or would you move on?

Categories
General

To Blog… Or Not?

It has been five years or so since I started doing some board game designing. Mainly during nights due to the common story of “lack of time” because of more or less hectic family life and a day job… you know, the common story.

But I’m a firm believer in rather doing things properly than halfheartedly. And as I do want to design something fun and entertaining (and perhaps get it to published too eventually), so sharing some thoughts on design philosophy and my own prototypes seems a natural next step.

As a final thought for the day (since it is already 23:48), I’d like to write down two ideas from the Board Game Design Lab Podcast:

  • Momentum: It’s harder to start moving than keep moving… so just start doing (and worry about finishing later).
  • Priority: You always have time for the things that you want to do. Not “having time” means that you have something “more important” that you choose to spend your time to.