Kevin Sylves

ExoShip, my solo game about overthrowing an authoritarian government on a generation ship, is on sale now!

Mirroring @filamena.bsky.social post. If a fellow game designer is associated with one of these games, you’re not cool with me and will never get my respect.

This shouldn’t be a designer problem, it’s a publishers fault, but we hold the power by refusing to work.

You got me - have heard such good things about this game, picking it up!

ExoShip, my solo game about overthrowing an authoritarian government on a generation ship, is on sale now!

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
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I'm such a bad judge of these things in terms of notoriety. But Xoe Allred is doing incredibly innovative work, and Marceline Leiman is a designer to watch.

BG Stats 2025 Plays: 127 H-index: 4 Games: 63 New: 40 Players: 20 Locations: 9 Hours: 49 Days: 66 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game: 18 A Gentle Rain: 9 Patchwork: 6 Championland: Track & Field: 5 Mysticana: The Queen's Interests: 4 Cinderella at Midnight: 4 The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth: 3 Queendomino: 3 The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth: 3 66 designers: Dustin Dobson: 7% Bruno Cathala: 4% Jamie Thul: 4% Julio E. Nazario: 4% Scott Almes: 4%.

Happy new year! My 2025 in games

High Tide High Tide is a compact 2-player strategy game that comes with a travel-friendly storage bag—perfect for beach trips, café tables, or cozy game nights. Each round, players stack and shift tiles, aiming...

For no reason whatsoever, gonna remind that you can support your local trans girl by buying my games directly from my lovely publishers!

High Tide www.underdoggames.com/products/hig...

Phantasmic buttonshygames.com/products/pha...

Looking for some last-minute gifts? 🎁 My two releases this year are small, fast, and are perfect stocking stuffers.

They’re both great for travel and playing with both gamers and non-gamers alike!

Check out High Tide and Phantasmic! 🪡 (1/4)

Crownfell Design Diary: No such thing as a bad idea - We Heart Games What started as a joke post snowballed into my favourite game design yet. Here's how it happened.

The entirety of #Crownfell 's existence was triggered by a throwaway joke...

With just 8 hours left in the crowd sale, here's the story of how it got started, and where it went from there. 🎲✂️

Downtown Las Palmas is now on sale at @buttonshy.bsky.social! To celebrate, here's a "how to play" video for everybody picking up their copies. Thank you everyone for your support! 🥰 🌴🏙️

buttonshygames.com/products/dow...

Hope yall were able to recover from your turkey hangovers!!!

✨ My new card game Phantasmic is NOW AVAILABLE FOR SALE!!!! ✨

GO CHECK IT OUT!!

This is so cool! Get in on this 25% discount of a super cool, super portable chess-like with solo mode before the crowd sale is over!

Four more days to get #Crownfell at a steep discount!

1-2 player asymmetric chess-like card game with 17 unique pieces and stunning artwork by @stregawolf.art (solo play with expansion)

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

With a Crowd Sale, delivery of the game is guaranteed; there’s no risk or questionable funding goals.

And the discount is already up to 20% off, and climbing…!

50 copies! That means the discount is up to 19%!

Nebulae, Medusae… Crownae? Yesterday on BlueSky, Marceline Leiman asked a great question. Using only one or two extremely vague words, how would I describe the titles on offer at this year’s Indie Games Night Market? N…

Today I investigate three more indie games, all of which are ambitious and explorative of what games can accomplish. These are good'uns. spacebiff.com/2025/11/18/h...

I've been watching from the peanut gallery as Mike has been designing and developing Crownfell. He has put so much work and iteration into this design and the final result looks *fantastic*! I can't wait to get my copy - the crowdsale is on now!

Crownfell Game Review – Meeple Mountain Crownfell, a tremendous two-player abstract game, is more than just a pretty face. Read more in this Meeple Mountain review.

A new review up on @meeplemountain.com this morning, for the excellent Crownfell from @weheart.games. This is a sharp two-player abstract with some killer art.

www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/crow...

Looking for a new #solottrpg? Take a moment to check out Infinite Paths, funding on Kickstarter now! Infinite Paths is a solo RPG system that's designed to be easy to pick up for both new and experienced #ttrpg players, and flexible enough to cover whatever genre or style you'd like!

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Reminder: I’ll be selling this game Crownfell and its upgrade neoprene mat *in person* at Pax Unplugged during the Indie Games Night Market in addition to my own games!!

Mike put a lot of effort to make this edition of metal cards special for the market—and I have no doubt it’ll sell out fast!

YouTube video by Roll Them Bones 52 DUELS - A fight with playing cards for 1-2 players

youtu.be/ciIa0usT7wM?...
FIGHT WITH PLAYING CARDS. Introducing 52 Duels, a 1 or 2 player duelling game coming to kickstarter next month.

Sign up to get notified when we launch! www.kickstarter.com/projects/pos...

Infinite Paths A solo TTRPG system

The Kickstarter campaign for Infinite Paths is now live! Check out this sleek, fiction-first solo RPG system that can be adapted to whatever story YOU want to tell — or choose from one of the included settings if you need a little jumpstart!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/lea...

I probably would have thrown the 9 and 4 of clubs. I like keeping the double run in case the flip is A-5

Which modern games offer a chess-level depth with no dependence on luck/hidden information, without any of the cons that exist in chess? Chess has withstood the test of time due to its astounding depth to simplicity ratio - there's only a handful of rules, and yet the board states and strategic possibilities are near-infinite. However, chess has a few major and unavoidable issues: 1. First-player advantage: There's no way to get around the fact that white always has the upper hand. 2. Limited opening strategies: Unless you're playing Chess960 (Fischer random), the number of optimal opening strategies are relatively small, and once you reach a certain level of skill, the start of a game is mostly down to memorising those openings. 3. Length of the game: At high levels of classical chess, moves can take very long, with the result being games that take anywhere between 2-7 hours, most of the time spent thinking. 4. Draws: The biggest issue, in my eyes - when two players are evenly matched, a large percentage of games end without a result, and on many occasions, the last hour is played with both players aware of that eventuality but unable to stop it.

I found a Reddit post about “common issues” with chess and if there were modern chess-like games without them... it got me thinking about #Crownfell and how it addresses them.

www.reddit.com/r/boardgames...

Allow me a short thread… 🎲✂️
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5. It has been centuries since any one human could know everything that is known; understand everything that is understood.

This is a remarkable power of science. We delegate trust and authority to experts as internally established in ways that are remarkably resilient to mistakes and malfeasance.

RFK Jr. in interview with Scripps News: ‘Trusting the experts is not science’ HHS Secretary RFK Jr. sat down with Scripps News for a wide-ranging interview, discussing mRNA vaccine funding policy changes and a recent shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said."

It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy.

I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.

Coming soon: Infinite Paths A solo TTRPG system

I'm thrilled to finally announce Leafy Dragon Games' next project: Infinite Paths!

Designed by @jamiethul.bsky.social, this sleek solo TTRPG system lets players jump into an epic adventure of their own creation in just a few minutes.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/lea...

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Drawing Dungeon is a great dungeon crawler where you have some choice over the enemies you encounter and even the layout of the map. A really clever and fun roll-and-write, recommended!

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...