As I continue to grind Valour down into a polished gem ready for publishing, I’m occasionally working in some time on a few smaller designs; it’s nice to have a distraction that feels productive. One of these new designs, I’m calling Potemkin Empire; named after a concept we see around the…
Origins 2017 Roundup
I got back from Columbus (a tough destination for a Wolverine alumnus…) last week from the Origins Game Fair. Earlier in 2016, I set some ambitious goals for Origins with regards to ‘designs ready to pitch’. I didn’t hit every goal, but aiming for the ambitious targets ended up landing…
“COVER ME!”: Convenient covers for things you don’t know how to do
This is a second little anecdote about game design I absorbed during undergrad, while studying video games, which I think have some crossover consideration with board game design. See the entry “Bonus!“ for the first. My takeaway from “Bonus!” was that even if you can’t make something work, or there’s a technical hurdle…
Socializing with a purpose
A few weeks ago, Andrea and I were sitting at a brewery discussing the ‘why’ of various things — when she asked: “Well, how often do you stop to think about why you like the things you like?” and she threw out board games as an example. Luckily for the conversational repartee,…
“BONUS!”: Clever game deceptions
I’m going to talk a little about video game design today, but think there’s a lesson in it for board game design as well. An anecdote that I think about at least once a month: It’s my senior year at UMich, and I’m one of the apex classes of the computer science…
It’s been quiet…
…And writing this, I feel a little like one of those podcast hosts who opens every other episode with “I promise, we’re working on a ton of great new episodes, but meanwhile here’s one from our archives…” But I do have a ton of great posts coming your way — a…
2016 Retrospective
Twenty Sixteen, everyone’s favorite year to hate in modern memory. I’m not really going to address any of the globally bad shit that went down here, I’m just going to talk about myself. That’s healthy, right? 2016 was a pretty big year of change for me — so a lot of…
NaNoWriMo 2016 “Winner”!
I successfully “wrote” a “novel” in the month of November — at least per the rules of NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month): Written word-count of 50k in thirty days, which averages to at least 1,667 words per day. Since I was a little nervous about being able to consistently put out that quantity amount beyond…
Player Experience 8: “Feelings”
This is the final installment of our survey of board game “Player Experience” or “PX”. Definitely pop back and give the previous chapters a read, we’ll be tying them all together here! Feelings is a pretty tough subject (as it turns out), and I found myself quite a bit out of my…
PX 7: Theme v. Mechanics
This is the seventh entry in a multi-part essay covering board game “Player Experience” or “PX”. The earlier installments set up some an awesome baseline we build on below, so head back and check them out! I’ve written before about how I like to approach designing — and I know that there’s a spread of opinion…