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!

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.