Roadtrip!’s Game Board Kludge – When Flavor Dominates, Everyone Cries Well, I’m nothing if not obstinate. Perhaps it’s the Capricorn in me; maybe it’s because I’m the first child; possibly it’s just because I don’t like the word impossible. Whatever the reason, I recognized that it took me entirely too long to fix some of…

Roadtrip!’s Theme Mechanic – When Flavor Drives Rules To Ruin To continue the discussion from the last two posts, if you want to design more robust games and design them faster, I believe it’s crucial to analyze your game design process. I admit that the impetus to undertake this discussion arises from my program management…

Last week, I asked the Chicken and Egg question of game designers: What comes first? Mechanic? Theme? Component? Audience? In other words, I asked how do we each design. Clearly, there is no single correct answer to this inquiry. Every individual is, in fact, individual; and so everyone has his or her own style. Nevertheless, I asked…

I recently saw a tweet about the site Boardgamizer. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s intended to stimulate the mind and challenge the skills of game developers, by randomly providing theme, mechanics, victory conditions and constraints for a yet-to-be-designed game. Needless to say, it got me thinking about how we designers dream-up…