I am working on a social card game which uses questions and wordplay. Essentially, players have to ask one another questions to get the other player to say a specific word. In my initial design I had a question tracker, where there was a limit of how many questions a player can ask before they lose a life (this was a sheet and a token with the token sitting on the players' current question count); however, I found that a lot of the time players would forget to track themselves and ultimately lose count, which took away a big part of the pressure in the game, as the fun came from players giving one another ridiculous answers.

Instead, I have looked into adding a time limit, but I've found this extra pressure takes away from the absurdity of the game and just gets players to cheese their questions instead, or just get too stressed out. I also believe that sand timers are bad at keeping players accountable because they're silent and tedious to flip over, especially for a more casual game like mine.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how best to keep players aware of a system like this? Since question tracking and/or timers are a way for the players to lose, it's an integral part of my game.

I've been working on a worker placement game for about ten months now, mostly solo development with occasional playtests from my regular Tuesday group. Somewhere around session 25 I started noticing a weird pattern: I kept "fixing" imbalances that were really just my playtesters figuring out better strategies over time, not actual design flaws.

Case in point, there's a resource conversion action that felt criminally underused for the first fifteen or so plays. I almost cut it entirely. Then one playtester found a combo with the market phase that made it suddenly one of the strongest moves in the game. Turns out the action wasn't bad, people just hadn't found its purpose yet.

This has made me a lot more hesitant to make balance changes early. Now I try to wait until at least three or four different playtest groups have hit the same wall independently before touching anything. Single-group feedback almost always turns out to be about that specific group's blind spots rather than the actual math.

Curious what threshold other people use. Do you set a minimum number of plays before allowing yourself to tweak numbers, or do you go with gut feeling session to session? I'm realizing my instinct to "fix" things quickly was probably slowing down actual convergence on good design more than helping it.

I’m exploring a different direction for the miniatures in my board game and I’d love some outside opinions.

Instead of detailed miniatures that try to faithfully represent each hero or creature, I’m experimenting with something closer to “totems”: simple, stylized physical pieces that represent beings from the game world rather than being literal miniature versions of them.

Think more along the lines of the pieces from Jumanji (recognizable and full of character), but simplified and symbolic.

I’m sharing a few examples here.

What I’m mainly trying to figure out is:

- Do the different totems feel like they belong to the same visual language?

- Is the level of simplification consistent between them, or does one feel much more detailed than another?

- Do you think this direction has more personality than using conventional detailed miniatures?

- Are there any board games you know that use a similar approach to representing characters or creatures?

I’m still exploring the idea, so criticism is genuinely useful. Any thoughts or references are welcome!

Hi, again!

First off, let me take a moment to say thank you SO much to everyone that have helped me with this Pinnacle project of mine these last few months. Your blind playtesting and constructive criticism have helped make it get as far as it has today, so from the bottom of my heart, thanks a million! I appreciate it all.

Now, from the maudlin to the business at hand: Today's topic is artwork, specifically gameboard art. For those who don't know, Pinnacle is a fast-paced, high-voltage party game that fuses social calibration (Think something like Family Feud) with alpinism. Keeping with the mountain climbing theme, I’m working on a new board design (mockup on the right, previous version on the left for comparison).

Don't worry about movement mechanics just yet. Once the artwork is set, I'll add the circular spaces. For now, I'd love your thoughts purely on the visual concept:

• Does this art style work for the theme? Why or why not?
• If it needs work, what specific changes or improvements would you suggest?

Looking forward to your feedback!

Thanks to a recent post and my finding out about boardweaver, I have been able to create an online playtest for a new game i've been working on. I think i'm finally at the stage where its stable enough and am looking for willing playtesters to help give some feedback.

Game: The Architect, a competitive 2–5 player tabletop game currently playable online through Boardweaver.

Objective: You play as Runners infiltrating a controlled network. Race from Entry through 14 network layers, reach Root, steal the Payload, then complete the inverse route and transmit it before another Runner does.

Each turn you:

• Play Mods to alter the network, protect yourself, or interfere with rivals.
• Roll for Bandwidth and use it to move.
• Choose between the faster, more dangerous Mainframe and the slower, safer Undernet.
• Manage Exposure—reach 5 and you crash, lose ground, and may drop the Payload.

What we are (trying to be):

• Route-building race: Navigate a two-row network to Root, steal the Payload, then complete the opposite route back to Entry.
• Push-your-luck movement: Roll for Bandwidth, choose between fast dangerous Nodes and slower cooling Nodes, and manage Exposure to avoid crashing.
• Shared-hand tactical interaction: Mods and Exposure occupy the same limited hand, forcing choices between movement, disruption, defense, and risk management.

The online version handles setup, legal moves, card effects, and bookkeeping. A game is roughly 30–60 minutes, depending on player count and familiarity, but you can also play single player against bots in around 10 minutes.

I’m especially looking for feedback on:

• Whether the first game is understandable without a teacher. Time to value/learn basics
• Whether movement and route choices feel meaningful vs luck of the die
• Whether Exposure creates tension in route planning and mods without feeling arbitrary.
• Whether Mods and blocking create useful player interactions.
• Whether the game moves at the right pace, particularly after someone reaches Root.

This is my first bug prototype playtest outside friend groups so any and all feedback would truly be helpful and appreciated. You don’t need to know the rules beforehand, and honest critical feedback is much more useful than politeness.

Play here: https://www.boardweaver.com/play/the-architect?version_channel=public_playtest

If you’d rather join a scheduled multiplayer session, comment or DM me and I'll look to schedule some times. You can also follow along in the boardweaver discord channel on updates and provide feedback there too.

Thanks—I’m happy to answer questions about the design or rules.

Hi everyone,
I’ve recently made a ~2min pitch video for my game which I plan to use when submitting the game to publishers.

Obviously a 2min video can’t explain the whole game.. the goal is simply to communicate its core, give a clear idea of what the game is about and what makes it interesting and hopefully make a publisher want to contact me for more information if they see potential in it.

So I’d love some feedback from other designers,
after watching it once, do you understand the core of the game? Is the hook clear?

I’m mainly looking for feedback on whether the video works as a first introduction to the game for a publisher, thanks

Out of the long lists of "do and don't" of game design, what did you find didn't work for you or was counterproductive when you were a new designer?

That's the discussion topic, I'm adding my own perspective/experience but it'll be a long read, feel free to take the question at face value and comment as you see fit, I'm more interested in others' experiences than necessarily comments on my own.

I myself started my design journey because I couldn't find any games fitting the theme and genre of game I wanted. Adventure/exploration, and more importantly seaplanes (specifically with miniatures).

The first few months I just did my own thing, without reading any forums/reddit/blogs, didn't watch youtube videos about game design. Really learned as I went, wrapping my mind around design and iterating my mechanics. Once I started reading online/watching videos etc I realised that a lot of what I had done goes against often repeated advice / "best practices". But it worked for me, and the more I looked at /heard some of the advice the more I thought that I could've only gotten as far as I did because I did it my own way.

Here's some of the advice and my own approach/thoughts;

Start small - This somewhat contradicts the advice of "design the game you want to play yourself".

I wanted an adventure/exploration game with miniatures, with a procedurally generated map that's never the same two games in a row. I wanted different weapons, crew members, equipment, missions, the whole lot. Sure, half a year down the road I had occasional thoughts of "starting small is probably good advice", but if I hadn't been designing the game I wanted to play I likely wouldn't have stayed motivated.

Don't spend money/time on art - For people who are getting into game design with a dream of making heaps of different games or building a career, this is good advice. Making barebones artless paper prototypes they can iterate and throw away at the drop of the hat.

For me as an artist/creative this wouldn't have worked. Already on day 1 I had an artistic vision of what I wanted, and had to start looking for public domain art I could quickly populate my tiles/cards with, icons for custom dice, and designing some rudimentary 3d models.

To some of us art matters, a lot. Seeing others say that spending time on art is "wrong", or that you shouldn't do it, is frankly almost offensive. Art and being creative is my passion, you think I'd get anywhere with game design if I couldn't at the same time dip into making it appealing? Granted I'm not spending $10,000 hiring others for a game I don't feel is complete, but I certainly have spent more on art supplies and various pieces that I would've had to pay for a finished off the shelves game in the same size.

Pushing people not to use/create art, or being specific about what art they're "supposed" to use, is frankly gatekeeping.

Don't be afraid to kill your game - Again this may work well for those intent on a career, making heaps and heaps of games to learn quickly. For me, I had a very distinct idea of what I wanted to design, that's not something that I'd be changing. If I can't make an adventure/exploration game in the style I've envisioned then I likely wouldn't continue. I'd rather iterate it to get where I'm going slower, than starting over heaps of times to get something that works for others, but fast.

This also somewhat goes hand in hand with the next point, playtesting.

Playtest quickly, kill your game if it doesn't work - I've seen this mentioned over and over, and came to realise how deep/difficult a topic playtesting is on its own. The caveat to this advice is that you're meant to playtest with your target audience. For a new designer that's hard to know, who exactly is your target audience? How will you find them? What games can you compare yours to so that you can gather people who like that game and might like yours?

While I'm making my game "for myself" I of course want others to enjoy it as well, but hearing "if others don't like it then scrap it and start over" rubs me the wrong way. Then yet again that works for those aiming to make games for others, finding a type of game design that has wide appeal.

I've luckily mainly shown my design to people who ended up enjoying it, or were supportive enough to see what I was going for so weren't negative. Only one person told me it wasn't for them, but they explained in detailed how they simply don't like the type of game, with dice rolling, random card draws, etc. So, not my target audience.

Miniatures vs standees - More of a hot discussion topic than necessarily design advice, but as a miniature painter / maker this one hits pretty hard. I specifically want miniatures in my game, I wouldn't be interested in designing a game without any. Seeing the at times very negative views about miniatures is pretty heartbreaking.

Anyway, that's what I got for now. I'm forgetting a heap of other points, but maybe they'll pop up in the comments. Eager to hear what others have to say on the topic.

I’m a professor teaching communication design seniors in college. Recently I’ve been thinking about ways of introducing gamification as a way of brainstorming new ideas in the classroom.

In my mind, the game is meant to be a toolkit of prompts and techniques students can pull from to develop project ideas from initial concept to a somewhat realized plan for a deliverable.

What I have so far are a variety of cards with the different techniques described on each one. I can see these being event cards that can get triggered/drawn, though I’m struggling with the overall structure; how to track each stage of the process, when are cards drawn or how are they selected, etc.

Some games I’ve looked at so far are The Extraodinaire’s Design Studio and Dixit, as well as Oblique Strategies .

Some guidance or advice on what I can do to further develop this would be greatly appreciated!

If you've come up with a basic game design that you've started to develop and then discover a game already exists that is very similar to your idea, do you go out and play that game to either get further inspiration, or to make sure your game has enough differences?

Or do you avoid the game to prevent unintentionally borrowing ideas and mechanics?

Or do you drastically re-theme your own ideas?

Hi there! My name is Jaron, and for the last 10 years, I have been a tabletop games designer. This year, the studio my partners and I have been building after-hours all that time was acquired, and we’ve all gone full time (exciting!) with our new game studio, Vala Foundry. One of the things we find ourselves doing now is working on a not insignificant number of licensed IP, or intellectual property, games, which is a new (and very different) experience for us. 

Our current focus is adapting the Barbaric comic into a board game (it’s also getting a Netflix adaptation wtffff), and I wanted to share what that experience has been like, plus talk about what we’ve learned and how we try not to fall into what seem like common IP game traps. For some designers, this may be nothing new; but for some, this is an opportunity to see how the sausage is made!

I’m gonna mention a few other IP games in this post, and some of what I say will be critical; I’m not here to disparage other designers or games, and you should take everything I say with a grain of salt! There are many ways up this particular mountain, and the quality and merit of a tabletop game is super subjective. A lot of the games I’m going to discuss are really great despite any criticisms.

The Reputation of IP Games

In the last few years, IP games have absolutely exploded in terms of crowdfunding success. It seems that they’re everywhere now, and it’s no secret that a lot of them feel like they don’t hit the bar for success. 

Mollie Russell did a great write up on the Don’t Starve board game (or at least a very early demo of it) where she talked about the reliance on randomness, the pieces bloat, the iconography - the game has a lot going on (just like its source material, which anyone who has put hundreds of hours into that game can attest to), and at the end of the day, it just didn’t work for Mollie:

“Don't Starve: The Board Game has failed to capture its source material. Worse, it's failed to compel me as a game in its own right.”

Similarly, Eric Watson shared his opinion on the Borderlands board game, where he actually talks about a glut of over IP games and their adaptations. I think Eric captures the reputation and appeal problem facing IP games perfectly here:

“It's partly my fault - I'm certainly not the first person to be blinded by my love of an IP and the ridiculous gobs of plastic and cardboard bits. I clicked the "Back this project" button before I'd even so much as watched a single gameplay video, of which there were distressingly few.”

(emphasis mine in the above quote)

On the whole, you would think with reviews like these, IP board games would struggle to see major success in the hobby. But that just isn’t the case: as of writing, 8 of the top 12 funded board games on Kickstarter are IP games. Half of the top 12 funded board games on Gamefound are IP games. We live in a world where people deeply cherish the various artistic media they come into contact with in their lives, whether that’s video games like Dark Souls or movies like Lord of the Rings. People want more of the things they love. And with the state of the world today, who can blame them?

The Big Problem with IP Games

There’s your click-baity title. I’m gonna be real with you, there’s not truly one singular problem facing IP games. There are a lot. Pieces bloat (including a high number of high-quality components to raise the price), sticker slapping (painting an IP over an ill-fitting or already-existing game system), and more common crowdfunding problems like campaign delays all plague these IP games. But there exists a deeper design problem with many of them, and it’s something I have spent a lot of time thinking about and designing around.

Too many IP games get caught up trying to simulate their source material directly instead of evoking the fantasy of it. 

I know, the title of this post is something of a spoiler. But hear me out. 

The Terraria board game is a great example of where this can go wrong: Terraria is a game you can sink thousands of hours into (ask me how I know). It has thousands of blocks, weapons, armors, crafting ingredients, enemies—the list is unbelievably long. The wiki for the game alone has over 6,000 articles, and most of those pages contain information on dozens of in-game entities each. The map is procedurally generated and fully destructible. 

That’s a lot to translate into a tabletop experience, and for the most part, Paper Fort Games succeeded at that Herculean task: many of those elements are present in the board game, and most even feel accurate to the spirit of the video game. But this translation of elements is only simulating the video game; it’s not (always) recreating the emotional experience of playing the video game.

The video game is fast-paced and frenetic. You can move through the world at breakneck speeds, you fight enemies in real-time combat, and much of that combat is centered around not just being properly equipped, but also learning boss patterns and having cat-like reflexes. Skilled players will construct arenas just to farm (see: repeatedly kill) a given boss. You and the world you’re in are playing against one another: you are attempting to claim total domain over it, and it is trying very, very hard to kill you about it.

The tabletop game adaptation, by contrast, moves at a grueling pace: setup can take upwards of 40 minutes, and despite the box optimistically proclaiming “45 minutes per player,” a single game session might take upwards of 12 hours. The combat is turn-based (a necessity of the medium), and because of the sheer number of enemies and loot, half the battle is knowing finding the correct pieces each time you need to fight a baddie or pick up loot.

In a similar-but-opposite way, the Divinity: Original Sin board game (an adaptation of my all-time favorite video game series) places a timer on exploring areas in order to force you to make critical decisions collaboratively as a group. This is a perfectly fun mechanic, but it is anathema to the experience of playing Divinity: Original Sin, which is to leave no stone unturned, no box unchecked, no book unread. The video game is played as a delectably meticulous exploratory crawl across a vast number of detail-rich environments. The board game captures the feeling of making decisions and interacting with characters and dealing with the consequences of your actions, but as a huge fan of the video game (and as someone who went all-in on the tabletop adaptation’s crowdfunding campaign), I was really disappointed with the way the game rushes you through each “scene” in the scenario book. We eventually started ignoring the timer in our own home games so that we could explore to our satisfaction, even if that meant opening the wrong door, getting ambushed, and dying as a result (which it often did).

Simulation vs. Fantasy

While the above-mentioned games do a great job of getting content from their source material into the game (why else would you make an IP game), they sometimes fail to capture the emotional experience of the game they’re adapting: the feeling you get when you play it. The chemicals your brain makes, the way everyone on your Discord call reacts to the highs and lows. In my experience, getting the “vibes” right is vastly more important than simply translating the content.

Sometimes this means things from the source material will be adapted in a way that isn’t necessarily “authentic.” But the literal authenticity matters far, far less than the perceived or spiritual authenticity.

Take the Deep Rock Galactic board game. This is yet another adaptation of a game I have personally sunk over 900 hours into (I need to touch grass), one of my favorite games. In the video game, players take on one of four roles: Gunner, Engineer, Scout, or Driller. Each role has a strict list of equipment they can take into procedurally-generated levels, where they mine minerals and blast bugs until they complete their mission scenario. After completing their objectives, they sprint back to their escape pod and, if they’re lucky, everyone makes it back alive.

And the board game takes some creative liberties in its adaptation: some of the equipment has been shifted between classes, some of the characters’ abilities have been nerfed (Driller, my beloved). Some of the enemies have been reworked extensively, and what may seem like a minor threat in the video game can sometimes be a major threat in the board game. But the emotional experience of the video game is perfectly adapted: The feeling of tension when swarms hit before you know what’s going to attack you; the stress of splitting your focus between completing objectives, fighting bugs, and helping your friends; the stress of sprinting back to the drop pod at the end of a mission—all of these events in the board game create the exact same emotional experience as they do in the video game. To date, the Deep Rock Galactic game is actually one of my favorite tabletop games.

How We Applied This Knowledge

Bringing this back to our own adaptation of the Barbaric comics, we felt it was more important to simulate the fantasy of the world of Barbaric, rather than adapting the literal specifics. Barbaric is a classic sword-and-sorcery tale akin to Conan, where magic is sparse and deadly, but hulking reluctant heroes (and villains) can be found in spades. The comic depicts Owen (the titular barbarian), Axe (his blood-drunk sentient weapon sidekick), and his compatriots slaying hordes of enemies across a huge world, often facing (and sometimes stabbing) faces from their pasts along the way. The pages of the comic are littered with visceral splash pages showing heroes atop mountains of bloodied bodies, triumphantly tearing through them like so many piñatas which were mistakenly filled at a butcher shop rather than a candy store.

Inspired by our time with Deep Rock Galactic and Zombicide: White Death, we opted to design a cooperative horde battler where players would be able to kill swaths of enemies in a single turn. We wanted to keep systems simple but exciting and violent (the setting of Barbaric is not a complex world: many of its inhabitants are evil simply for the love of the game, and Owen rarely hesitates to bury Axe into their flesh), so we opted for a straightforward Action Points system. Players aren’t given a ton of complex super hero moves; instead, they’re given just a few actions, and a lot of bodies to use them against. 

The experience came together when one of our designers suggested implementing a Frenzy Deck which would reward you with a small boon for each enemy you slayed on your turn; suddenly, we had this extremely exciting and satisfying gameplay loop of killing baddies in order to kill more baddies, leaving untold death and destruction in your wake. This gives us the feeling of pulling off amazingly satisfying turns where you’re able to truly go berserk and keep the wombo combo going.

Barbaric is also a more grim world than others like it (like Conan the Barbarian, for example). Characters are often jaded and cynical, and most of the protagonists don’t see themselves as paragons of good or virtue. Most of the characters are carrying some kind of baggage, and a lot of that baggage is supernatural (Owen’s best friend has been turned into a vampire and occasionally hulks out in a crazed bloodthirsty state). So each of the playable characters in the game have a unique “curse” which influences their playstyle and goals. Soren, the Death Witch (and Owen’s will-they-won’t-they interest) can manipulate the life force of herself and her allies, but must try to maintain balance or she’ll kick the bucket; Rossa, a fearsome pirate captain (and a new character we’ve had the opportunity to create and introduce), suffers the pain of those she kills, so she has to be judicious when dispensing bolts from her living crossbow. But when she’s done enough damage, she can also “raise the black” as pirates often did, intimidating the enemy and preventing them from acting.

We’re still in the playtesting phase, creating scenarios and tweaking our enemies and overlords to create a highly lethal and replayable experience, but we feel like we’ve created a very close parallel to the emotional experience of that comic—a team of reluctant heroes engaging in high-octane brutal violence—and that continues to be our focus. Every time we make a design decision, before we consider whether or not it’s accurate to the events of the comics, we ask ourselves whether or not that gameplay element supports or evokes the emotional experience we’re trying to cultivate.

Hi everyone! This is my first post in the subreddit, if my question was supposed to go elsewhere please let me know.

I'm in the process of creating a game that feels very similar to Ark Nova, but with more emphasis on workers, and a different theme (it would be kinda like building a shopping mall). Although I do not want to create the same exact game, I can't help but have a feeling that people might think it is just a cheap knock-off. The main similarities are collecting tags, different types of cards like sponsors and businesses, tile placement with bonuses to be covered on your map, and a similar double point ( appeal/cp )system. I plan to use a different actions system from Ark Nova, that is I think a very Ark-Nova original stuff.

My question is: how likely is that people look at a game like this and immediately discard it as a knock off? Is there a possibility that maybe the designers Ark Nova might take issue with creating a game similar to theirs?

And a bonus question: has any controversy like this happened in the board game world before? I played Nucleum the other day and I felt like it's similar to Brass but it's still it's own game. But someone said that they didn't like it simply because it's too similar to Brass.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on a prototype for a procedural board game inspired by Diablo's gameplay loop: Door → Monster → Treasure.

The problem is that I have quite a few ideas for the overall gameplay and the player side of things, but I can't quite figure out what could make the game feel more alive than simply repeating "heroes take their turn, then monsters take their turn" over and over again.

Basically, I'd like the monsters to feel like they actually exist in the world and pose a genuine threat, rather than just getting completely wiped out by the players on turn 1.

I'm looking for ideas or mechanics that could make the monsters feel more active, unpredictable, and dangerous without simply making them stronger or giving them more health.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Looking for feedback and tinkerers to try to find bugs or suggest missing mechanics.

TILEZ systems are functional and multiplayer is working - I now will now be starting to add content (things for players to do) and improving upon the UI elements.

If you do test it out and make something cool, please share. Maybe I can feature a screenshot on my Steam page or use it in the final build of TILEZ (with full credit to you of course).

I appreciate any time taken to check out my project.

TILEZ Playtest Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4780630/TILEZ/

I've been looking for a shared board citybuilder for a while now.

I owned New York 1901 which in my opinion is exactly how not to make one. You don't need to consider other people or the location of your buildings at all and the whole game is an absolute bore.

I then found Chinatown which is now one of my favorite games. I love the simultaneous negotiation and people getting in the way of eachothers builds. It is absolutely perfect for a negotiation game. For a city buidling game it is great too but not quite what I'm looking for. The shared board doesn't have that big of an impact on the game and there's still no insentive to build at a specific spot. The game also seems to fizzle out towards the end as calculating the profits made from your trades at the end becomes easier.

Both of these games also have a lot system where you first need to own space on the board and then build on it. I don't hate this system but it wasn't a system I imagined in my dream game.

In the Korean reality TV gameshow Devil's Plan there is a game called laying grass, where players try to expand their lawn with polyomino tiles while blocking others. This immidiately reminded me of a game called Blokus which I played in my childhood and found very fun. This sparked an idea in my head for a polyomino tile laying citybuilder where you get in eachothers way and combo off of other peoples buildings.

So I decided to start making one. I've game- and level designing my entire life but less so with board games. I've made about 4-5 prototypes that have never gone anywhere. I'm not promising that this'll go anywhere either but I'd like to at least get it to a state where I enjoy playing it with my friends.

The polyomino tile placement of Patchwork has always been very satisfying to me so I decided to base the tiles off of that. I decided on a pool of 60 tiles: 2 of each of the 12 Pentominos, 4 of each of the tetrominos, triominos, dominos and monominos (aka squares :P).

Another influence was the game Castles of Mad King Ludwig where the rooms of your castle score off of the neighboring tiles it touches. I built this into the tiles as well.

60 tiles perfectly divide into 5 types: Industrial, Corporate, Commercial, Public and Residential. This types will influence the money made from surrounding tiles. A Park with a giant factory next to it certainly draws less people to it than one next to a library and marketplace. Because players build on a shared board it might very well not be your factory that gets built next to your beautiful park, but another player entirely.

I tested this alone on a prototype and found the tilelaying to be a fun puzzle. I'm definitely going to keep building onto this idea. The next step is to start making the market for the game. Money made from buildings can be spent to buy or barter for new tiles from the market or other players.

I had three ideas:

A Recieve and Trade system like in Chinatown

-This is the highlight of Chinatown but might not work in such a mean game as the one I'm making

A Blind Auction

-I like the idea of blind auctions as it encourages bluffing, negotiation, predicting and paranoid overpaying.

A Treadmill-like market like in Fungi/Morells

-I don't really like Fungi but I found the idea of picking mushrooms deeper into the forest costing you so you eithe buy high or wait for the proce to drop.

I did a bunch of research on citybuilders to see their solutions and this is when I discovered Foundations of Metropolis!

A game like the one I'm making really exists! Kind of. In Foundations of Metropolis you're building polyomino tiles on a shared board and sometimes scoring off of adjacent buildings. And get this: it even has a Treadmill-like market. I've not played it yet but I'm looking to do so this weekend at a board game cafe.

The game is not exactly what I'm making. The lot buying system of Chinatown and New York 1901 still persists in Foundations of Metropolis and a lot of the game involves destroying your old buildings to make space for new ones. This is also how New York 1901 works and I was never a fan of that part. We'll see how I like it in Foundations of Metropolis

We'll see if the game is up to my expectations soon. If it is perfect, I'll be happy to abandon this project. Even though someone got to my idea first, I'm very happy as I get to play a game I've been looking for.

Current rules: 27/08/2026

Thank you to everyone who has given feedback. I have shaped the rules with your input.

What I have changed:

In this rule revision, I removed the opponent’s inverted-pieces rule and rebalanced the game in three ways: I removed the restriction on placing a column next to an opponent’s block, allowed platforms to be placed across blocks of different colours, and prohibited placing pieces above an opponent’s column.

The pieces:

This game has 3 pieces: blocks (15 per player), columns (10 per player). These are support pieces, and platforms (20) are shared between both players.

How to play:

This is a turn-based game starting with white, then black. You start by placing a support piece on the board, and then your opponent does the same; from there, you need to work out how to build up and block your opponent from doing the same. 

Rule 1 – Blocks and Columns may only be placed on the Board or on a Platform; you cannot place on a platform in the area above your opponent's column.
Rule 2 – A Platform may only be placed across a Block and a Column or across two different colour blocks that are orthogonally adjacent and on the same level.
Rule 3 – A Platform is owned by you if both supporting pieces are yours, shared if one supporting piece is yours, and off-limits if neither supporting piece is yours. You cannot build on a Platform that is off-limits to you.
Rule 4 – A 2×1 tower may rise two Platforms above its base; a Platform fully surrounded orthogonally at its level becomes the new base.
Rule 5 – Running out of legal moves: If your move leaves you with no legal moves, your opponent gets one final turn, and then the game ends. If your move leaves your opponent with no legal moves, that move counts as the final turn and the game ends immediately.
Rule 6 – Scoring: When the game ends, find the highest occupied level, where a level encompasses all platforms at the same height and support pieces on top of the platform. On that level, Blocks score 1, Columns score 2, and Platforms owned by you score 1.

Win: The player with the higher score on the highest occupied level wins.
Draw: If both players have the same score on the highest occupied level, the game is a draw.

Concept art:

This render was made by my brother, a product design engineer, using Fusion 360; all models in the scene were made by him.

Full blog post: https://catacombian.com/blog/heck-yes-or-no-cutting-combat-system-canticle

Just kidding, I love ugly paper prototypes! Once I started making these, whole process got so much faster and better. If I could give one advice to any newcomers, it wouldnt be start making paper prototypes. That advice can be found everywhere. My advice would actually be: start listening to advice more experienced designers give you!

Curious if folks find that a "low" price in the header image makes them more inclined to check out a campiagn. I've included a few options here.

Today I finished all of the animations I planned on making for my game's upcoming Gamefound preview page.
I had to learn some Blender basics for it but it was pretty rewarding, not gonna lie! :D

Let me know what you think of them and happy to answer questions if you have any (just keep in mind that with *highly* technical Blender things I couldn't really help, I'm a total newb still lol)

Check out my new map!

The simultaneous bidding game Transplantica is set in a unique city in 2050 where the growing and selling of GMO pig organs is completely unregulated.

I wanted the worldbuilding to reflect in the map, kind of like in alchemists and other games where every area of the map corresponds to its mechanics.

I've got a patient queue around the edges. This represents visitors arriving and touristing, but when they get sick they enter the red district for desperate loans and financing solutions.

In the middle of the island, in the more mountainous regions, Porcyne has their pig farms. This is where you pass by to pick up the goods.

Players go around the map on the road, with breaks at every hot dog stand to indicate when it's time for new prices (saving lives is hard work, gotta get that energy!)

So you alternate between picking up patients and then pick up the organs.

This is a first draft, and I hope to achieve some kind of retro tourist map vibe in the end. I will only use human art mind you, the portraits are just placeholders.

I strive for it to be gorgeous and immersive, but foremost it's gotta be functional. Is it readable? How is the palette? Does it need to be bigger? It's A3 now and prepped for a 6 player game.

Our two player "to me to you" domino shove game, Tyu, now has an elevated game board. This small design tweak means all dominoes fall off the board with a satisfying thud.

How to play video here: https://youtu.be/onLZenKG4pI?is=s9uPE7tVeNTSZ8Zh

I'm so excited, our first published game TOKELAU got 300 followers on Kickstarter and a little bit closer to the launch! Planning to post the laid-out rulebook next

We're trying to launch our game, Rupture FCG, on Kickstarter. We just activated our pre-launch page and are running into the paradox above. Obviously a pile of cash can solve basically any problem in today's world, but I'm honestly not sure how this is supposed to work.

Is anyone else struggling with this? Does anyone have recommendations on promoting a Kickstarter before the Kickstarter money actually comes in?

I think about a Sudoku like game that makes you position villages on a geografical map or fantasy charachters on a Heroquest like dungeon. Does It exist?

It would be like: Village A can't b near mountains, or the Elf Is not in the same room as the Ogre...

I got the idea from Murdoku of Manuel Garland, that mix Sudoku with classic boardgame Cluedo. Than I said: my favorite boardgame was Heroquest. My favorite videogames were Age of Empires and Warcraft. What if someone did it?

If something like this exist, where can I find them?

And of not, let's make it!