Jay

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...

#Crownfell is an asymmetric, abstract, 2-player strategy card game that is live on @thegamecrafter.bsky.social!

No stretch goals, except for this: The more people get it, the lower the price goes *for everyone*.

Add-ons include a playmat & solo expansion.

www.thegamecrafter.com/crowdsale/cr...

But even then, I'd still lean on the common language ("library deck" and "market deck" vs "library" and "market").

The Crownfell base game box, standing beside the playmat, with some cards on the mat, mid-game.

The crowd sale for #Crownfell has been approved for November 18! Add-ons include a neoprene playmat and a solo expansion.

This 2-player asymmetric chess-like has 17 cards unique movement and abilities.

Sign up to be notified here (shares appreciated!) 🧡 www.thegamecrafter.com/crowdsale/cr...

Trans lives matter.

I understand if maybe CGE can’t say anything critical about JKR or the HP license

They *can* say that trans lives matter. But they haven’t.

In conclusion, are players getting bogged down in AP because your game's decision space is too broad or because they're trying to concoct the perfect plan too far into the future? You've got more than one lever to pull to fix it. 🧵 8/8

On the other hand, in a heavier game you may want deep strategy and planning, but not overwhelm in the immediate term. Maybe have a hand of 5 cards, but instead of drawing from a deck, draw from an open market to increase visibility into the future, while still limiting predictability. 🧵 7/?

For example, in a light game you may want lots of in-the-moment fun choices, but no AP-inducing deep strategy, so maybe go with a hand size of 10, but give players the ability to force each other to discard their hands to disrupt future planning 🧵 6/?

Depending on what type of game you're designing you may want to increase one to provide a specific feeling, while decreasing the other to manage overall decision space and prevent analysis paralysis. 🧵 5/?

You could juggle the hand size to find the sweet spot for your game, but the problem is, the *types* of decisions that arise from option breadth and information horizon aren't the same, since the former provides tactical flexibility and the latter provides strategic insight. 🧵4/?

You might want to increase the decision space, so you double the hand size to 10. But you've also increased the information horizon, so the number of choices doesn't just double it increases exponentially. 🧵 3/?

Consider a game where players have a hand of 5 cards and on a turn play 1 then draw 1. The breadth of decisions on a turn is 5, but they also have some information about the next 4 turns. If card order matters, this increases the real decision space (since A=>B is a different choice to B=>A). 🧵 2/?

Great 🎲✂️ article about decision space!

That said, I think it's useful to go further and note the impact of *information horizon* on decision space.

Decisions aren't just about this turn, they affect future turns too. So knowledge of future game states directly impact your decision space now. 🧵 1/?

It can definitely be disheartening to be so far away from cons (I'm sure Finland is still cost/time prohibitive enough)... I had to laugh though when comparing Origins to the 10 alternatives given. Looks like I can shrink the distance I'd have to travel from ~15,000kms to ~14,000kms. 😅

Any options for Australians who'd like to pitch to you? 🥹

I've got a flip & write that'd (IMO) be the perfect complement to the Next Station series...

So yeah, turned out to be a relatively easy (and fun!) exercise that has not only shifted my mindset, but has also generated new and exciting ideas, refueling my enthusiasm after being in a rut for a while. Highly recommend giving it a go and I'd love to hear back if anyone does!🧵 6/6

From that, I generated 10 concepts, some with real potential IMO. I also showed my list to friends to see what stood out. My favourite was the most common #1 pick, which is validating, but a dark horse I'd dismissed emerged as #2, which is interesting too. The exercise keeps paying dividends! 🧵 5/6

🎲✂️ exercise:

Come up with as many game ideas as you can, but each is limited to 3 bullet points. If you can't make it sound compelling in 3 bullets, it's already missing the mark. All 3 points should be strong hooks (a mix of mechanical/thematic/component) and ideally form a cohesive vision.

🧵 4/6

And in an increasingly competitive space, if you want to engage, if you want to get signed, if you want people to buy your game, this is where designers need to be aiming, IMO. So, I spent a week doing an exercise to generate new ideas (or re-imagine old ones) viewed through that lens... 🧵 3/6

First, some context... I keep hearing in design circles how important it is to have a clear hook. But when I read about TGDA's Take My Money award, it really drove it home to me - I'm working on games with pretty ok hooks, but certainly nothing I'd call "take my money" good... 🧵 2/6

I tried a new game design exercise recently and it's been such a great process, I wanted to share it and encourage other people to give it a go. 🎲✂️ 🧵 1/6

I'm probably the first to say this, but yes to both. :)

Not at the moment, unfortunately. I'll see how these pitches go, but if I do another round of testing I'll share things here.

Thanks! Might need to be a coffee assisted second wind. 😄

Three finished play sheets for my prototype flip and write game, Vertical Village. Sheets have been filled during play to show "villages" of tetris-like block structures with roofs, windows, doors, and stairs.

As an Aussie with no access to cons, I'm *super* excited & grateful to be pitching Vertical Village to 9(!) publishers at the @unpub.bsky.social virtual speed pitching event this week! 🤞🥳

(Realising I'll need to talk for 90mins straight at 2am local time *slightly* tempers that excitement... 😅)

Thanks! That's what I assumed, but wanted to double check while the design was in the very early stages before I potentially locked it into a path that made it less publishable.

Re feeling beholden, I should've been more clear. I mean a situation where the game pretty much requires the specific geometry of bridge cards. Bridge cards allow tile laying in (close to) a 2x3 grid, whereas poker cards are much closer to a 3x4 ratio.

🎲✂️ question:
Is it safe to assume the majority of publishers would be just as happy printing bridge-sized cards as poker-sized? Or would I be limiting my chances of getting signed? (Obviously ignoring niche publishers like Button Shy that hyper focus on a very specific product model.)

I wouldn't worry about it. That sounds like a publisher problem.

A sellsheet for the flip-and-write game, World's Edge, by me, Mike Berg. There's an old-style nautical map in the middle with a hand-drawn map on it in the middle of the page. There's too much other text to put here, sorry!

I've finished off the sellsheet for World's Edge! This game won a design competition a while back, has seen a bunch of development since then, and I'll be looking for a publisher real soon!

(if anyone knows any pubs looking for small-box flip-and-writes, I'm all ears 😅)
🎲✂️