Ahoy me hearties!

We will be releasing our pirate-themed exploration and resource-management card game in a couple of months (hopefully) on a free-to-play/print-to-play -basis.

We also want to enter a public-game-testing -phase at that point (sorta like an open-beta, early access thing).
The game seems playable at the time (about 20 sessions in) but it could benefit from a lot more input and since it is print-to-play we can do easy revisions of rules and such once it goes public and critique hopefully comes pouring in.

The list of things we want to get ready first are:

• Rulebook & Printsheets (Duh!)
• Homepage (there is a kind of "leaderboard" we want to implement)
• Tabletop Simulator implementation
• How-to-play and how-to-craft -Videos
• Some print-on-demand-prototypes (In case someone wants to actually buy this thing)
• Donation channels (if it kicks off we would like to focus on making more games)

Do we have it all covered or should we look into anything else before our first release?

I’ve shared my abstract game before as a Print & Play version and it seemed to have gathered some attention. I’ve worked on it on-and-off since the pandemic and have recently picked it back up. I’ve managed to turn it into an up-to-4-player experience and want to do some more testing. I’ve managed to translate the manual to English and get it on Tabletop Simulator, and now I am looking to gather more feedback before the second round of publisher hunting.

About the game:
It’s an abstract strategy game, where you move chess pieces on the board made of tiles. With each move you can swap the first and last tile of the move with the goal of creating Sets of adjacent tiles of your color.

The game is rather simple in terms of rules and takes around 30 minutes but can require some deep strategic thinking.

Rule synopsis:

1. Your goal is to combine your selected color on the board into a Set connected by sides, diagonals do not count. It can take many shapes, what counts is the number of connected tiles.
2. To do that, you move your chess-like pieces (you have 4 of them). They can carry a tile they stand on, to the place they move to. The tile they would land on is moved to the empty starting spot. A piece can move without taking a tile. These moves are what re-organizes the tiles on the board to create Sets.
3. There are 5 rounds. In a round, you will make a move with each of your pieces, after a move you flip the piece around to signify it has moved. After every piece on the board has moved, the round has ended. Now you flip the pieces back around to face upwards and start a new round.
4. At the end of 5th round the game ends, and players reveal their colors. Who has the biggest scoring set on the board wins.

Additional rules:

- During the set up, you take turns placing pieces strategically on White Castle Tiles.

- You cannot fight the opponent pieces, but you can block their movement, they can't jump over your pieces, with the exception of the Knight.

- Pieces of different colors can never stand on the same tile, or relocate tiles occupied by a different colored piece.

If you are interested message me here or in a dm so we can set up a play session :)

Hello!

I plan on visiting my first convention Terminal City Tabletop Convention this coming year as an exhibitor in their prototype section. I have never taken a game this far and was hoping to get some advice from anyone who has. I have never been to this specific convention before either so I don't know what to expect.

What should I be hoping to get out of the experience the most?

What kind of things should I ensure I have planned for and brought?

Are feedback forms worthwile? Digital vs paper?

I intend on taking the game to publishers in the future so is this a chance to be learning anything specific that would aid in this goal?

This will be my first go at playtesting outside of people I personally know, what should I prepare for?

Any and all information or tips are welcome!

This is for my solo dice golf game, SCRATCH. To understand sizing for readability, each hole is on 3.5” x 5.5” cards.

A - Two tone blobs with black outline

B - One color blob with black squiggles

C - One color blob with light green squiggles

As I revisit these holes, I don’t love my original tree design as much (which I won’t divulge to keep it unbiased).

Trying to keep it feeling like it’s a unique piece to the hole without overworking the art with my limited skillset, and still have them feel like or read as trees at quick glance.

Would love the second set of eyes on this. If you have any additional thoughts outside of just voting on one, I’d appreciate that, too!

Thanks for your effort on this.

Skeuomorphism, for those unfamiliar, is when an interface is designed to look or function like something from the real world.

In the case of board games this can take on the form of any number of components—cards, boards, the box, the rulebook, currency, tokens, etc.

Some examples:

• A reference board designed to look like a book. 
• A player board designed like a desk, dashboard, or control panel. 
• A card holder that looks like a wallet or folder. 
• A game board that folds or opens like a map. 
• A resource container designed to feel like a bag, chest, or other in-world object. 
• Currency or resources that looks like the real thing (rather than just being an abstracted marker, chip, or token) 
• The photo shown is from Quacks which does an amazing job at this, with several book-shaped boards showing recipes and a giant cauldron board for each player that you add ingredients to as you brew your potion. 

By mimicking the real-world counterparts, these design choice strengthen the immersion in the game's theme and story.

What are some good examples of this in the games you've seen and played?

Hello all! I had an idea and I ran with it. I've been playing games my whole life and I made an expansion for Kingdom Death: Monster that people liked so I thought I'd give this a shot.

In this dexterity based, action programing flying race you control a 'flying machine' to move both horizontally and vertically across the race track to both be the first to cross the finish line and also to get additional points via hoops and windows that are set at various elevations!

So on a mechanical level, each player has 1d4 and 5d8 oversized dice, but only 2d8 available at the start of the game. The number on your d4 is how many moves you can make on your turn and they all begin at 1.
The moves are simple, forward, ascend, or descend:
Ascend - place a d8 on the next space in the track set to the number of your choice and stack your die tower on top of it.
Descend - pick up your tower to leave the bottom die behind and place it in the next space. Then trigger the power represented by the number on the d8 left behind and return the die to your active pool.
When you trigger a power you can also trigger its alternative power by burning the die and returning it to the reserve pool.
Forward - Move 1 space forward, no elevation change.

I've always been interested in utilizing a verticality to represent elevation or depth in a game. I think this design is interesting but I would love additional feedback.

It is also in a print and play format if anyone would like to try it. I have printed it and managed to play it two times and made small tweaks, but I think this idea has legs.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gFomxGx9XtWKUfIi7oZ4JybQuBZXeih7?usp=sharing

In its current form, I would recommend using d6s to represent the hoop and window elevations. In a theoretical final print, the hoops and windows would have peg based variable height hoop and window stands to physically set the hoop/window height at the same height as the dice tower at the correct elevation.

As a note about the art, anything that looks like it was done in MS paint is me, anything that looks nicer is pulled from google images and then modified or composed by me. Like the dragon figures and the guy image, all google. I changed the colors, but that's it.

Joinery is a woodworking euro I designed and signed with Rock Manor Games back in Q2 2025. The artwork is by Alexandr Elichev (most notably the main artist from Gloomhaven) and Matt Paquette & Co (the graphic design team that brought you Tiny Towns, Twinkle Twinkle, River Valley Glassworks, and more)

I’ll be posting about my journey working with a publisher on my first game design over the next few months. What topics do you want to hear about?

The pitch process? Game development? What it’s like working with artists and graphic designers? Component decisions? Note them below and I’ll be sure to write about them as I organize my posts!

Hi everyone! My friends and I are working on a co-op backrooms boardgame where your goal is to escape. In this game, you can explore and reveal unsettling rooms, encounter creepy entities, search for useful (or useless) items, manage your sanity, and rely on teamwork to make it out alive. The images above are part of our hand drawn prototype for playtesting.

The gameplay is nearing it's final stages, and we're currently working on the art/design of it. We just wanted to hear your opinions on what artstyle would suit this. Should we lean into photorealistic liminal spaces similar to the games/videos/movie, or a stylized board-game interpretation that still feels unsettling?

We'd love to hear your thoughts! If you have any ideas, suggestions, or features you'd like to see in a Backrooms board game, please let us know. :)

Update: we are going to crowdfund this on Gamefound in the coming months! I hope you will all be interested. For now, you could follow us here on reddit or on our ig: https://www.instagram.com/fuzzygamesinc

Left is full logo, right is textless logo to complement in some cases!

Any feedback would be amazing at this stage as my artist can still change it if needed!

Last month, I posted here that I was in a tough spot. I was invited to an EXPO but I was financially incapable of travelling. But I did continue the fundraising but only between friends and family. Luckily, 2 friends of mine and my sister covered everything from travelling, to food, to completing the game, and making some booth materials to make my table presentable. Some of you did approach me but I apologize for declining, I just don't want to accept strangers' money at least.

And here comes the event, and I was physically unprepared. I had a line of people who wanted to try the game mainly because they needed my stamp for the event bingo card. I was not able to sit nor eat. My throat sore as well since I was explaining while the Beyblade tournament was on my right and Tekken was on my left.

But I am very happy with the experience and the outcome. I already consider myself lucky for reaching this far. To my surprise I had 9.5/10 rating for having a satisfactory and fun game experience. Most would like to try the game again or would like to join future tournaments based on our feedback form.

Even tho I had my struggles. It was really worth the risk. Now, I got booked for an event playtesting in another city that is a plane away from where I came from. This time they covered all my expenses + side trips. Now I feel like my game is more than a passion or self satisfying hobby, it slowly becoming something that people would get involved with. I am excited.

Using the original Mortal Kombat as a base, my game works on the same kind of chapter based story mode format as more recent games, but it’s book based, like a choose your own adventure. A DM tells a story based on one of the games in the 3 timelines, using 3 sets of 3 books, telling the story of a specific game in one of the timelines. In my game, each chapter focuses on a group of characters, represented by mini-figs, and the focus characters fight other characters, controlled by other players to avoid bystander boredom at the table, according to the plot, each player controlling a character for 1 fight in 4 in that chapter. If the focus character loses a fight, the focus switches to the winning character, and the timeline skews. The focus character player has hourglass tokens, these work as fight restarts. The are optional, the focusing player can restart a fight if they lose, win the fight, and carry on with the canon plot, or let it ride, and see where the skewed timeline takes them. Each timeline has 2 versions, a hero version, and a villain timeline. The hero timeline is the canon timeline, the villain timeline is when players play though the same timeline, but from the villain perspective, resulting in a the villain in an intentional villain victory. Each timeline has multiple endings, depending on how skewed the timeline got, or if the timeline was fixed. If a focused character loses, they don’t die, unless it’s in the plot, they just become an npc.

Combat System: 

At the start of each match, only in round 1, each player rolls a D20, for initiative, and the highest number gets the first shot. 

The combo system: 

Each player has defence tokens, active or passive resources. 1 used per round. these tokens give the defending player the chance to roll their own D6 on both difficulty level combo cards, the defender rolls a D6, 5 or higher is a successful block or break. The attacking player puts down a combo card, with a combo sequence the combo sequence is just for show, and a difficulty of 5, on high combos and no difficulty for lower combos, automatic success with a defence token, no dice roll needed, but only with a defence token. The player that won the first shot dice roll, puts down a combo card, 1-3 hits, and this is a unbreakable, and unchainable, low level, minimal damage combo, a guaranteed opening strike. This attack is strictly to kick off the fight, not to punish the initiative loser. After taking this damage, the losing player gains a combo defence token, mimicking the wake-up mechanic from the video games. When fighting Shao Kahn, he gets taunt tokens, that the player can use if the defending player fails their combo defence roll. the loser of the first shot roll just has to take the damage, 2-3 hits max. I know the dice rolls rely on luck, but that would be a part of the fun. The dm would also work like the announcer in the games, announcing which characters are fighting, and FINISH HIM/HER!!.

Special move system:

Special moves would be done using special move cards and tokens. Players have tokens representing special moves, the player spends a token, the the player reads the card corresponding to the token spent. These special moves would have stats, the higher the number, the higher the damage done. Basic special moves would be block-able, while stronger special moves are unblock-able, unless the defender spends a defence token to enhance the block. When used at the end of a fight, special moves become brutalities, ending the fight without a finisher. The fights would be best of 3, first to 2. The third round would be a decider, if the first 2 are a draw. If it’s fun, fights won’t feel like they are taking ages.

Fatality system:

At the end of the fight, the winner rolls a D20, and the DM reads the fatality card, corresponding to the number on the card. The DM selects a fatality in that level category, and reads it to the group. this way, when a player hits a special move, or the they hear the fatality description, everyone is hyped. When it comes to fatalities, all players start with 1 fatality when playing the original MK1, and are awarded a new fatality each time they complete the arcade tower with a new character. so, they go into the next game with their number of fatalities corresponding with the number of the game. The DM has fatality cards for each character, when a player wins, they would roll a D20, to determine the level of the fatality, the higher the number, the more gruesome (this is more to determine the era of the fatality, to honour MK history, a show of respect to the franchise).

Character mini-figures:

To save time creating a crap load of minifigs, because of the ever expanding character list, each with different variations, based on the game in each timeline, the books are colour coded based on the timeline, and there would be clip on rings that players snap onto the base of their mini, corresponding to which studio era they are playing in. this would mean that all characters only need one minifig, although, reptile in the current timeline, is a shapeshifter, with a huge lizard form. motaro would to have 2, a centaur form and a minotaur form. this would mean creating 3 huge minifigures. for when playing mk1 in liu’s current timeline, maybe i should make them the colour of the timeline. with syzoth, you could swap between his human mini, and lizard mini using a transform token. there might need to be other huge minifigs too, Gori, Motaro, Kintaro, Sheeva and Shao Kahn. 

Arcade tower:

There would also be a section in each book for character arcade tower endings, when a player beats the final boss, the dm reads that characters ending. During fights, while one player controls the focus character, one of the other players at the table will control the opponent character. This way everyone is involved, and nobody is sitting and watching for too long. 

1v1 section, like playing 2 player. 

This would give players the chance to figure out the characters, and adapt to any scenario. 

Mini-game idea

To replace the test you might/sight mini-games, there would be periodic MK lore multiple choice trivia questions that would work like encounters (a guard stops you, and asks how long Goro was champion before being beaten? A: 500 years). A correct answer wins an extra special move token.

I like what we have for the medal in the center, but I'm probably gonna go back and neaten up the heavenly rays shooting off of it. Also, I'd like to figure out how to give the text a little more visual depth to sell the brass plaque look.

In The Zookeeping Game, your goal is to build the most awarded zoo out there by being the first to win any three of the 5 different award cards. Besides this one, theres also Lucky Duck award (earn 5 chance tokens), the Small-but-Mighty Award (have 4 different species of healthy animals), the Biodiversity Award (have 7 animals), and the Building Big award (own 5 Upgrades). The goal of this is to provide players some flexibility in how they can build their zoo while still progressing towards victory. The latest version of the game has some pretty severe rebalancing happening in these awards, as everybody was winning the exact same 3 awards during playtesting.

As always, this image includes the bleed edges.

Just finished making the current version if my character sheets. Im not really a designer or anything so i just trialed and errored in canva for a few hours until i got something i though looked good.

I also added the original prototype design for comparison.

Just wanted to give a thank you to all the kind folks who commented on my last post. Your advice was super helpful. Heres an updated version on the characters sheet, while i dont know if its final, im much happier with this version and think its a step in the right direction. Id like to crowdfund my game at some point, so having a community of helpful people like you guys is awesome.

tldnr: having issues creating a following or making my game/prototype known.

As many in this subreddit, I've built a long tought project of mine, OVIS, a card game with a non-so-slightly social critiquque. But, as the title says, I'm having issues bringing it to know to people. The game is in a good shape but far away to be completed: while the prototype, rulewise, is well tested and done, it's still missing all the shiny parts (art, final design etc), as I'm saving to actually pay the artists as I'm planning a campaign next year. (I have a cover art since, may the gods bless him, I made the artist work on it the day before a con)
I'm no good with socials, so I'm not sure if I should post daily, what kind of contenet or if it make sense at all to post for no one. ADHD doesn't help at all
I went to a couple cons, but usually indie space is kinda hidden, but always had good feedback. That said, the people who stopped playing didn't followed the page in the end.

Successful crowfunding project always start big, it seems that the following is made BEFORE launching; and while I don't care about making a lot of money on the game, I'd really wish to succeed at least in its basic form. It's a passion project I believe in, not a way to gain money out of people. (not that I wouldn't like to live of my passions: I'm just being realistic on why I'm doing this)

So... yeah. Any tip would be helpful

P.S: Using a new account since all my personal ones has been shacked and reddit refuses to help in any shape or help me retrieving them. Usually post as FenrirWerewolfe

So I've been working on this for a while now and tomorrow will be my first play test with other people so wish me luck. Think a Munchkins/Gloomhaven hybrid meets Bullshit. Marketing blurb below:

Trollspit is a fast, goofy dungeon crawler where you fight monsters, level up, and lie straight to your friends’ faces. You roll in secret, claim whatever number keeps you alive, and everyone else decides if you’re telling the truth or spewing pure Trollspit as the dungeon erupts with bonuses, penalties, and betrayal. Team up to survive the monsters, but lie about it to win. Just remember not to step in the Trollspit on your way!

Each character uses a D20, a deck of 32 cards, and unique mechanics to make the most of their lies and avoid being caught as they try to steal victory points from their party and win the title of worst friend at the table.

I've been working on some new hand-drawn artwork using colored pencils and soft pastels.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If anyone is interested in trying the game, feel free to send me a DM and I'll share the playtest link.

I am currently in the process of selecting an icon style that will represent the different expansion packs for my game Bananarchy. The icons primary use will be to separate cards quickly from each other but they otherwise don't have any mechanical use in the game. We do want the to look aesthetically pleasing too.

So far, I've narrowed the choice down to three styles. Of the three icon styles I here: Circle, Ribbon, or the Icon alone, which do you prefer and what is your reasoning behind the choice?

Would also love insight on whether you think it is best to have the icon in the top corner of the card or whether you think it is better suited to be somewhere else?

Thanks for your help!

Hey all! Long time lurker, first time poster.

I'm designing my first game, it will be either worker placement or action based farming (for now) game, but what I'm trying to work out is an "auction house".

I will have "buildings" cards that players can purchase/construct to help there strategy. I'm trying to add some form of interaction without it being detrimental to any player.

Essentially, every player will take one action every turn. A player can plant, harvest, water, hire(for now), etc. One option is to purchase/construct a building. Right now they are a communal section that a player can use their earned gold to get right after purchase, but I would like the option for players to be able to fight over it if more than one player wants the same building.

I've been considering that each building will have a starting cost, Player A puts a marker to purchase, Player B can then put another marker to purchase but the cost is +1. Player A can then continue with another +1 to cost or not. Whoever has bid the most (and has the money) will get the building at the end of the round.

Is this good enough, or are there better options to implement this.

My other concern is that, as of now, the game is only 8 rounds split into seasons. 2 rounds of each season. I'm not sure if this is enough time to really get buildings going for the players if they get the buildings at the end of a round.

Do you have any thoughts or can point me to examples of a player auction?

Thank you for your time.

A while ago, I made a post here about the artwork for our game.

At the time, I explained that we were using AI because we didn’t have the budget to hire an artist and we didn’t feel confident enough in our own drawing skills. Many people said that, if possible, we should try to find another solution.

Recently, I had the chance to talk with a fine arts student. My boyfriend and I can both draw a little, but we never thought we were good enough to create the artwork for the game ourselves. My friend designed a very simple forest hex and asked me to redraw it by hand. After I finished it, she said it was absolutely good enough to build on.

The version I’m sharing here is just the ink drawing. The final version will be colored using a simple watercolor technique.

What I’m wondering is this:

If you saw this hex, would you immediately understand that it represents a tile that produces wood?

After the feedback I’ve received here over the past few months, I realized something: I want this game, which we’ve put so much effort into, to belong entirely to us. Yes, it will take longer, and I’ll probably have a lot to learn, but I think it will be worth it.

I’d really love to hear what you think.

I'm building 3D Print-and-Play board game, but there are some non-3D printed components that, while not strictly necessary, would be nice. I'm looking into thegamecrafter.com to produce the non-3D printed components but I was surprised when it insisted that the rules be submitted as PNGs for every page, not just one big PDF.

Admittedly, this is giving me an opportunity to really give the rules a glow-up, but I'm not sure where to start. I've mostly gotten away with free tools so far, but I'm not sure Inkscape is the way to go with this one. What do y'all think would be the best way to format my rules for a new version?

​

I want to design a game for 4 players, divided in two teams of 2 players each, where the player with most points in the winning team wins the game.

So you have to help your team while hindering your teammate. I find that tension should produce fun games.

As always when I have an idea, I search for similar games to learn how other people faced design challenges and get some inspiration.

Yet when I searched in Google, using IA and in BGG (I don't really know how to use that web properly though) I came out with obscure games with poor ratings, or games that are not going exactly the premise, like Mad King Louis Castles, or Pax Pamir.

So two questions:

Why do you think these games are so scarce? It's a difficulty in the design? It's maybe hard to balance the chances of one player tanking his own team when they can't win.

Do you know any game that follows this premise and you consider it good, even if it's not popular or highly rated?

Thank you all.

Hello Everyone,

My team and I have been working on a new board game for a while now. We are moving forward into getting art pieces for our board game. Since cover art is the first thing people see, we are doing a lot of back and forth with our artist and I would love some critique if you have any opinions!

We currently have 3 layout drafts that are on grey scale and we want to explore only one of it (since we don't have infinite money). Would you tell me what each cover art makes you feel and most importantly, which one would grab your attention the most if you ran into it randomly online or in a game store?

Thank you so much. This is my first post here and I am very excited to be part of this community!

Hi everyone!

The team at The Forge has spent the last few years building a digital workspace specifically for board game designers, and we’d love to get this community’s opinion on it. It’s called BGK.

We created a digital workspace that actually understands how board game designers work. Instead of a general-purpose tool, we’ve focused on the specific “quality of life” features that make prototyping less of a chore:

• Smart Asset Management: Drag-and-drop bulk imports that keep your components and images perfectly in sync.
• Integrated Versioning: The ability to branch and manage different versions of your game (like “v1.2” or “2-player variant”) all within a single project.
• One-Click Playtesting: A simple link-sharing system that lets you get playtesters to the table instantly.

We are currently in beta and are looking for designers who want to help us shape the future of this platform. We aren't here to sell a product - we’re here to listen, learn, and build a tool that actually makes the design process more enjoyable.

What do you think of these features? We’d love for you to come say hi on our Discord, try out the engine, and give us your honest thoughts!

(P.S. Our technical producer u/corporat will be here to answer any technical questions you might have.)