Luke Wolyncewicz

A screenshot of my TGC store, showing ExoBase, ExoShip, Crownfell, and Dice Deck as being on sale.

🥳 The sale at The Game Crafter is now live!

Most of my games are discounted. If you missed out on the #Crownfell crowd sale, or had your eye on any of these other games, now is a great time:

www.thegamecrafter.com/designers/we...

YouTube video by Graeme Devine Mike Berg - We Heart Games Talk at CSUMB

Lessons Learned from Making Seventeen Board Games

A talk I gave for @graemedevine.com's Game Design class at California State University, Monterey Bay
🎲✂️

YouTube video by Bumblepie Braggin' Wranglers Pitch Video

I didn't think I'd have anything ready for this year's Cardboard Edison Award, but with a sudden spark of inspiration I managed to scramble together Braggin' Wranglers over the last couple of months! The key was keeping things simple and focusing on the kinetic component hook 🤠

youtu.be/YFgGg8NHCis

Mike gave a masterclass on design. Class was absolutely blown away and busy taking notes the whole talk. And what a career! Absolutely a legendary game designer.

- start small - get it on the table - make ten games - keep playing

Talking to some game design students tomorrow... here's the final slide of my deck:

Coming soon: The Daily Weather Challenge yourself to create the perfect forecast using each day’s unique conditions. Play every day!

With this incoming storm, we have a FREE game to keep you busy! The Daily Weather is a little solo game about aligning the weather with a new puzzle each day. We released the PNP / PCIO files at our Kickstarter preview page and the response has been wild.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/239...

Strega Design | graphic and industrial design Strega Wolf Eden van den Berg is an industrial designer and collage artist based in Eindhoven, studying at the TU/e.

I'm going through a rough time financially, so I'd really appreciate any #MutualAid rn! That can be in the form of commissioning me for art, or in a donation on my CCLA library, both of which can be found on my website. www.stregawolf.art Sorry for constantly being on this, just a rough time rn.

Game, Set, Match Tennis is structured as a series of sets (best of 5 sets for men, best of 3 sets for women), with the first player winning six games winning the set (assuming they win by two.

New GameTek! Game, Set, Match:

gametek.substack.com/p/game-set-m...

🎲✂️

YouTube video by Mike Berg Crownfell: Grimoire expansion playthrough - first playtest

I'm working on a new #Crownfell expansion called Grimoire, which has extra ability cards that you hold in your hand, to use instead of taking a normal turn. Played cards go to a centre row, and are then available for your opponent to pick up.

James and I playtested the 1st draft of the cards:

A Dragon's Gift Transport goods between villagers to build a lovely gift for the resident dragon in this Scott Almes solo game. Pocket sized, only $12!

A Dragon's Gift is live on Kickstarter! Transport goods between villagers to build a lovely gift for the resident dragon in our 10th Simply Solo wallet game by @scottalmes.bsky.social. With amazing art by @manonmergnat.bsky.social. www.kickstarter.com/projects/239...

Logo for the 2026 Cardboard Edison Award

It’s time! SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 2026 CARDBOARD EDISON AWARD ARE OPEN! Board game designers, show us what you’ve been working on! Deadline is January 31: cardboardedison.com/award

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG Jigokudani Created for the Button Shy Cozy Challenge Based on the famous area in Japan, Jigokudani is a 15min solo game about helping snow monkeys relax in the hot springs before the sun sets. Through...

The final entry: Jigokudani!
In this dev diary I go over how I've used the lessons from the last five years to shape my latest (and IMO best) game 🐒🛁

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

10 Lessons from 5 Years of Game Design: 1. Constraints breed creativity, deadlines breed finished projects 2. Lean into humour and emergent storytelling 3. Identify the essence of the experience, distill it down to just the crucial parts 4. Every point of friction is a chance for someone to give up on the game 5. When estimating the complexity of your game, be aware of your bias as the designer 6. Knowing the experience you’re trying to create gives you freedom to pivot and cut details that aren’t working 7. If players consistently misinterpret a rule, change the rule to match their intuition 8. Understand the difference between something that is interesting to design vs interesting to play 9. Hook-first design ensures the game you end up with is much easier to communicate 10. No theory, process, or snappy list of 10 lessons replaces playtesting!

10 Lessons From 5 Years of Game Design

Over the past two weeks I've been writing a series of mini dev-diaries finding a lesson from each of the 10 games I've finished.

Which ones resonate with you? Have you come across these in your designs?

The full series: boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG RPS Galaxy Created for the Button Shy 9 of 18 challenge In a galaxy that has evolved beyond the need for war, disputes are resolved in a more elegant form: rock, paper, scissors! Use your allies’ powe...

Day 10: RPS Galaxy

Today's takeaway: There's no guaranteed formula for game design, no amount of theory replaces actually getting it to the table and playtesting!

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG Island Delivery Created just for fun/to pitch The race is on! Whale Postal Service and Heron Deliveries are locked in a battle to become the most trusted mail service in the Seven Islands. To come out...

Day 9: Island Delivery

Today's takeaway: Hook-first design ensures the game you end up with is much easier to communicate to potential publishers! It also minimises time spent on ideas that don't have the "special sauce" needed to stand out in a crowded market.

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG Lest We Forget Created for the Button Shy Holiday Challenge Lest We Forget is a deduction puzzle in which you piece together the tale of five unlikely friends who fought at Gallipoli. Using clues from...

Day 8: Lest We Forget

Today's takeaway: It's easy to fall into the trap of creating something because it's interesting to design rather than interesting to play, especially if you've come up with a really clever mechanic

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG The Viscount's Curse Created for the BGG 54-card contest The Viscount has cast a terrible curse upon the town of Grimmsport! Hunted by enemies, you'll need your wits about you to survive and dispel th...

Day 7: The Viscount's Curse

Today's takeaway: If players consistently misinterpret a rule or play incorrectly in the same way, change the rules of your game to match their instincts. It's really hard to overcome genre conventions and pre-learned behaviours!

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG Carbon Dating Created for the Button Shy 18-card Dinosaurs (but no fighting or Jurassic Park) challenge Ever since that whole asteroid business last week, the dating pool has been really strained for ...

Day 6: Carbon Dating

Today's takeaway: Being intentional about the experience you want to create is crucial in guiding the development process. It gives you the freedom to "kill your darlings", pivot, and rework without getting too invested in specific mechanics.

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

We're at the midway point in the dev diary series, and it's a good place to pause for a day. This point in my design journey marks a significant shift in my thinking: from focusing purely on the craft of game design to viewing games as products - you'll see this play out over the rest of the series!

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG Flip-5X Created for the Button Shy Flip'n'Write Challenge Flip 5-X is an epic 5X flip'n'write space game. Explore the galaxy, expand your empire and overcome a great challenge to determine if your civ...

Day 5: Flip-5X

Today's takeaway: Managing complexity is super important! Could anything be streamlined? Does it match the form-factor of the game? Judging complexity can be hard when you've already internalized the systems, so playtest with new players often!

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG The King's Feast Created for the Button Shy Numbers on Cards Challenge The King's Feast is a solo spatial/memory puzzle. An assassin has snuck into the King's Feast and caused a panic! You need to man...

Day 4: The King's Feast

Today's takeaway: Every single point of friction or confusion is a chance for a player or publisher to give up on playing the game. The effort to perform unguided playtesting and streamline the first play pays off a million times over!

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Even better, apply it to your own games: go through the same exercise and try to answer "What is key to the experience? What can I cut out? What can I condense?"

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG XCOM 1-Card Created just for fun! XCOM 1-Card is a solo nano-adaptation of XCOM: The Board Game. It focuses on capturing the same intense strategic decision making and push-your-luck gameplay from th...

Day 3: XCOM 1-Card (a nano adaptation of XCOM: The Board Game)

Today's takeaway: Nano adaptations of larger games are a great exercise to help build your toolbox: it forces you to identify the essence of the experience and distil it down to just the crucial parts.

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG 2 - Grandma Theseus Created for the Button Shy 9-card "Ship of Theseus" challenge Grandma Theseus is a quick, simple asymmetric bluffing game for two players. One player is the Werewolf's curse, tryi...

Day 2: Grandma Theseus

Today's takeaway: Humour and emergent storytelling help a game stick in people's minds long after it's over, so lean into it whenever you can!

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG 1 - Summoning Circle Scramble Created for the Button Shy 18-Card worker placement challenge Summoning Circle Scramble is a two player abstract puzzley duel. Play as two wizard apprentices, racing to ...

Day 1: Summoning Circle Scramble

Today's takeaway: The first game you design will probably suck and that's ok! Focus on making something small, with specific constraints in mind and a hard deadline to force you to finish something and start learning!

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Dev Diary: The Road to Jigokudani | BGG Introduction Five years ago I designed my first board game. It was an absolutely magical experience - so much so that I wrote [url=https://bumblepie.space/blog/summoning-circle-scramble-postmortem.ht...

Five years ago I designed my first board game and wrote my first (slightly embarrassing) dev diary.

My latest game feels like a culmination of all the lessons I've learned over five years, and it feels like the right time to finally write another dev diary!

boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...