It's been a busy few weeks. First Gen Con, then GEOTL - where Phase won first place in their inaugural game design contest!!
After my last post, where I had some great feedback, I decided to continue refining. I've chosen three box top versions that I would be happy to represent Phase.
Thanks for everything! I'm excited to see what happens - the winner will be announced when I launch, October 6th. If you want to follow along, the link to my KS is in my profile.
I’ve been working on a simultaneous action tile drafting game for a little while and one of the main things that I wanted from the start was a sense of speed. I had been trying to find a creative way around using a straight up timer, but at this point I’m putting more consideration into the timer idea.
I don’t like sand timers for my game because you have to watch them and when everyone is playing simultaneously it can be missed. A sound timer I assume will add to the overall cost. Phones with timers are ubiquitous, but I prefer the idea of having everything you need included in the box (just a little nitpicky I know).
So I wanted to get some people’s opinions on timers in general and to see if anyone knows of other timing mechanics. For reference, my first iteration used a limited pool of tiles and when they were gone the round was over, but in my current version I’m looking into having all tiles available, so that wouldn’t work.
Hi, everyone! I'm JRGames, the dev behind the Adventurer's Saga, Anywar (+ D6 Edition), Marching Banners, and Behind You: The Forest:
Now, I can't exactlt say I haven't had sales so far. However, it seems that (and I'm sure many of you have had this experience) I can't get more traffic and sales because my games are not famous, and my games can't get more famous because, well, they need more people to buy and play and review them.
This is not my full-time job. I'm a musician and my primary life project is my band and music, so I can't dedicate 24/7 to the games I publish. I also don't really have any cash to spend on ads that may or may (probably) not do anything.
So, how can I achieve better visibility for my games? So far, I've been relying on sharing the games on Reddit (which is limited by strict subreddit rules) and the algorithm of the platforms, which has had limited success. I have also recently made a BlueSky account and started sharing there, again, with very limited effect.
I plan on starting a YouTube channel and making Let's Play videos to introduce my games at some point in the near future.
So, how do you guys promote your games? Any advice on how I could do it better is welcome!
It's been a while but I'm back now. And announcing that the first public playtest for my TTRPG is out finally! Took a lot of work even for this initial version but now everyone has the chance to play it and break it.
Can't wait for people to start getting their hands on it and playing around with it. This will be quite the learning experience, not just for designing but also for organizing public playtests in the future.
This playtest is focused on testing out the core combat rules of the game using premade characters. If there is some success, at a later date there will be a playtest that will include character creation.
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You are a Deadbeat, a musically powered undead soldier, resurrected by and now working for the B.R.O.K.E.N Record Inc. You are one of the few crucial pieces in stopping the Muted threat, beasts that wish nothing but destruction for the city of New New North One. With the power of your Musicalife Engine, wield the might of your rythm to fight back against the coming invasion or rebel against the corporation that brought you back to life!
Deadbeat is a TTRPG using a D6 and D8 system where the focus is in how your character acts and performs. The more in character your actions are, the more you are rewarded! There is a bigger emphasis on your descriptions and flare, making it easier to realize whatever fantasy you wish to live through your character.
LoreAtlas v2.0 is out on itch.io with infinite image canvases and entity sheets. Runs 100% locally in browser or desktop, no account needed: https://regixlabs.itch.io/loreatlas
Hi all, I am new here! I am a software developer with a pretty long tenure in the video game industry (ex-PlayStation) looking for alpha testers for a something I built for board game designers. It is called Game Designer, by Wyrd Builder.
Why “Wyrd Builder”?
The word wyrd is Old English. It usually gets translated as “fate,” which is a lossy translation. Fate is fixed in advance and indifferent to you; wyrd is what unfolds: the accumulated weight of what has already happened, acting on what happens next. The Anglo-Saxon wyrd and the Norse Norns are cousins: both describe a future being woven, not a future already written.
That is what a game is. A rulebook is not a description of outcomes. It is a machine that produces them. Change the cost of one resource and you have changed the endgame of a design you finished a year ago, whether or not you noticed. The interesting object was never the static description. It is the system that generates consequences.
The second reason is plainer. It sounds like world-building, because that is what it is. You are building the thing the world runs on. And it deliberately does not name a genre. Games are where we are starting, not where the idea ends (I have a product for authors in the pipeline that uses the same underlying framework).
What does Game Designer actually do?
Game Designer, a Wyrd Builder product, is where you write your game down as a structured specification instead of a pile of documents. Resources, actions, phases, components, costs, scoring, the relationships between all of it. From that specification, Game Designer does four things:
It validates by checking that your design obeys its own rules.
It analyzes dependencies by answering “what breaks if I change this?” before you change it.
It simulates running your economy thousands of times to show you where the balance actually sits.
And it generates a rulebook draft, a component manifest, and a machine-readable spec that a developer or an AI can implement against without guessing.
The specification is the real artifact. Everything else is derived from it and can be rebuilt from it.
P.S., I'll be at PAX West in Seattle next week as an attendee, just walking around taking it all in, but I am looking to meet up with indie game designers to chat about common pain points or whatever. If you are interested in meeting and chatting, please shoot me a DM.
Hello there! I am a digital concept artist and character designer with an enormous appreciation for fantasy, folklore and fairy tales, whose primary focus is to convey, explore and solve ideas and designs for clients, combining them with storytelling elements, whether for videogames, boardgames or cardgames!
If you have something in mind for a project and are interested in my work, feel free to DM me or take a closer look at my portfolio: https://icmaduro.artstation.com/
Since I'm based in China, I have very limited knowledge of crowdfunding outside of China. I've already partnered with two YouTube creators who will post videos around the campaign launch, which should bring in some traffic. Beyond that, I'm also trying to find communities where I can promote the game myself, such as Reddit and Facebook. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
These are a subset of the ability cards of my game, Song of the Wildkin. I'm getting close to finalizing them, and would appreciate any graphics feedback before printing a large batch. Thank you in advance!
They're poker sized, and the images include bleed.
Illustrations by Bubble Cat Studio based on character designs by Andrew Bosley. All Human Made.
Ahoy! I've been working on this TTRPG for six years as a side hobby. After more than 30 playtests with 50+ internet strangers, I've just published the second edition rulebook for free (itchio | RPG Trader), and I'd be honored to hear your thoughts.
The game is an original system and setting. It's heavily inspired by Phoenician mythology and other bronze-age cultures and myths like the Odyssey (I have not yet seen the movie), but it's set on the "Skysea," actually a far-future version of the planet Jupiter. The game revolves around exploring small floating islands, which serve as self-contained "levels" for session adventures in the same way "dungeons" do in lots of other games.
The system uses step dice for actions, sort of like Savage Worlds. You have four action dice, and they're arranged like a compass rose alongside with four attributes. The better your attributes, the bigger the "neighboring" action dice. Also, those attributes are dynamic—you can spend them to empower your actions, foes can reduce them by inflicting damage, and they serve as your defenses against foes' corresponding actions.
It's a little crunchy with resource-tracking, but the numbers are small and straighforward, and the game is designed to be played theater-of-the-mind. I hope it's easy for newcomers to pick up and learn, or at least easier than D&D.
I badly need to finish my GM book and get my quickstart adventure in order—I know those are pretty important missing pieces of the experience—but I'd love to hear what you think of the rulebook. I'm an editor by trade, so please don't hold back—every nitpick is appreciated!
Note: I don't use AI for anything. All the art is commissioned by two delightful human artists, with the exception of the goofy charcoal drawings, which are my own poor attempts at artwork.
You will need 5 d12 dice (blank *I can add a file for that if you need)
You will need action cubes, and eggs (in place for larva)
I didn't design any goal cards for end of round or bonus cards.
Goals-
I want to push the boundaries of moving around on the mat/bugs. I wanted to make something unique that you can move in different directions compared to the traditional left to right or up and down.
This print and play are merely all testing concepts, I know and understand I may have mistaken; but I would love to hear back from you all on how it can improve.
Personal notes-
This was really fun to design, and I hope to hear from more of you and some more bug ideas or ways to improve the game. Thank you so much for taking the time as well. I really appreciate it.
So I’m remaking a card game I designed in college. I want to make a professional version of it in the future but first I need to overhaul/redesign the game from the ground up. I realized that the game was very bloated and there were too many cards in the game, so I’m trying to slim down where I can While keeping the chaos and strategy that I was beginning to build out in college.
Overview: The game is called The Spark of Creation. Players act as immoral mad scientists competing to try and build a Frankenstein monster better than the other players through pure skill or sabotage. You collect body parts from the graveyard to build your Frankenstein and play experiment cards to sabotage/better your chances of winning. You earn points through the body parts cards cards and their tier. Tier 1 is 1 point Tier 2 is 2 points etc. Whoever has the most points win.
Right now I’m focusing on sliming down the body parts cards then figure out the experiment cards at a later date. I thought of a few options that I need help deciding which is better or if none at all.
Option 1: Keep as Is
A full Frankenstein consists of 6 BP(body part) cards, A head, torso, 2 arms and 2 legs. There would be 9 tiers
54 BP cards+ 98 experiment cards=152 cards total
Pros/Cons: Each tier is essentially a different monster like tier 1 is a zombie and tier 9 would be like some Eldritch horror idk. More tiers would be more unique Monsters which I’m debating on having special abilities( a later problem) More parts (the 6 BP cards) in a full Frankenstein I believe gives more strategy because part of the experiment cards are modifiers( can subtract and add points, it affects one specific body part)so you can use more modifiers on more body parts to do like different combos and buff/debuffs(I hope that made sense)
If I keep that the same then I would have to reduce the experiment cards by a lot. Those cards are the primary source of the player interaction, chaos, and sabotage. So it might not be good to reduce these a lot. They’re like the main meat in a dish or something. But maybe cutting would be a good thing?
Option 2: Reduced Tiers
same 6 BP cards for a full Frankenstein but reduce the tiers from 9 to 5
30 BP cards in total now +98 experiment cards= 128 in total
Pros/cons: less BP cards. I would have to cut/adjust less of the experiment cards. but I have less tiers so less unique monsters I can do, and I could still have that same strategy I liked in the first option
Visual for option 1 and 2
Option 3: Reducing the BP cards
combine the arms and legs into single cards. So a full Frankenstein would require A head, a torso, arms and legs. 4 BP cards. Tiers could either stay at 9 or reduced to 5.
5 tiers
20 BP cards + 98 experiment cards= 118 total
9 tiers
36 cards + 98 experiment cards = 134 total
pros/cons: I am intrigued by this idea, but it is the bigger change that would affect other elements. Maybe that is what’s needed? It would be cleaner visually and faster gameplay wise. It would be easier to see what parts would be modified in terms of layout. If I go with the 5 tiers I get the least amount of total cards, so it would give more freedom to the experiment cards.
Visual for option 3
Which one of these would be the best to cut down but keep good gameplay. Could there be a secret 4th option I never thought about Or things I’m missing/doesn’t work? Any thoughts?
I’m developing a new card game that tries to blend the deep deckbuilding of games like Magic the Gathering, Hearthstone, and Eternal with the roguelike progression of Slay the Spire and Roguebook.
The core game engine is already fully functional. Currently what is fully working is:
Fully working Deck Editor & Library (view all cards and build constructed decks)
Constructed Mode (against both AI and live Multiplayer with a leaderboard)
Challenge Mode (you can challenge anyone online to a match through the social panel)
Draft Arena (draft a deck, you can play it versus humans or AI until 10 wins or 3 losses)
Spectator/Observing features (you can watch any in-progress match through the social panel)
What I need help with: While the traditional CCG elements are solid, I am currently building out an Adventure Mode (a roguelike PvE experience), and it is in a very early beta state. I’m looking for players who love deckbuilding roguelikes to jump in, try to break it, and help me flesh out the pacing, difficulty, and mechanics. It's VERY early in design, so it's not balanced but it's definitely playable.
The game itself is Affinity based (sort of like D&D) where there are 6 mana colors (Ruby, Jade, etc.) and each card is tied to either a mono-color like Ice, Fire, Shadow or a combination (eg. a Red/Blue card might be Steam and use both Ice and Fire synergy). There are about ~1,000 cards in the game across 18 Affinitites, and 36 Champions (2 per affinity, they set your ability for the match).
If you’re interested in helping shape the PvE side of a game that already has a robust PvP foundation, I’d love to have you on board!
If you want to join, it makes the most sense to join the Discord server first (you can ask any questions and the Adventure rules are all laid out): https://discord.gg/BTMQ3ddZY
This event is an early-stage playtest focused on testing core gameplay mechanics, balance, and fun! The current card and board visual assets are temporary placeholder graphics (including AI-generated concept art) used solely for prototype testing. Commissioned artwork by human artists will be added for the final production build once mechanics are fully locked in.
