🎲✂️ Inspired by video games, my next game will come with half the content locked in a special box. For €20,- you get a Season Pass code that opens it for a month (30 days).

Last week we played a game of Catan with my in laws, and the rules they played with were WILD. They did the placement draft with the numbers face down, so you had no idea what the good spots were. They also played with open hands, and you could choose the card when you stole one

Life would be a much better game if they fixed the runaway leader problem

I actually wish bgg would include critic scores for board games along with user (audience) scores - like rotten tomatoes. Why can’t we have acknowledged board game critics after many decades of board game review and critique? Sure it’s a bit exclusive but it could be organised in a sensible way.

Collecting board games is a hobby entirely unrelated to play them.

🎲✂️ I'be been working on a solo roll & write campaign, and I'm having way too much fun writing the dumbest story for it. I hope y'all are ready for the Adventures of Sir Pencilot, a graphite knight from Pencilvania, and his nemesis, the pirate Rubbert E. Raser

I unfortunately don't remember who said it, but I've always liked this quote: "Anyone can solve a problem by adding rules. A game designer needs to solve the problem without adding rules. A good game designer solves the problem by removing rules."

Mike Bithell@mikebithell.bsky.social · last wk.

Game design isn’t about being able to identify problems. Everyone who plays games can identify problems. Game design is about diagnosing player experience, having intent, and executing. I think to a lot of folks outside dev, game criticism (an art in itself) is seen as interchangeable with design.

I posted this after our first attempt at the Haneda red scenario in Sky Team. I love Sky Team, but this scenario is ridiculously tight. It took us 8 tries before we were lucky enough to make it. 12 if I count the times we restarted after round one because we hadn't rolled the 1 we absolutely needed.

Bart de Jong@bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 3w ago

🎲✂️ Co-op games seem to have an intrinsic problem with their difficulty scaling. Increasing the difficulty should increase the importance of skill. This is true up to a certain point. When the margin for error becomes too small, the randomness in the system itself can start creating unwinnable states

Games can be games without a hierarchical result. We must broaden traditional definitions of tabletop games to give designers the agency and opportunity to express themselves in new, exciting, and challenging ways. We should be creating new ways to explore artistic mediums, not shutting them down.

David Masnato 🔜 PAX West@davidmasnato.com · 2w ago

After almost 2 months waiting in the pending queue and a contentious submission process, Pax Playground is finally on BoardGameGeek. Despite having a ruleset and player objectives, BGG didn’t want to list the game because the ending doesn’t explicitly identify players as winners or losers.

I understand BGG needs to delineate what does and doesn't qualify as a board game to keep their database from getting messy. But using "has win conditions" as a requirement is clearly outdated. There have been plenty of recent examples that prove boardgames can move beyond that framework.

David Masnato 🔜 PAX West@davidmasnato.com · 2w ago

After almost 2 months waiting in the pending queue and a contentious submission process, Pax Playground is finally on BoardGameGeek. Despite having a ruleset and player objectives, BGG didn’t want to list the game because the ending doesn’t explicitly identify players as winners or losers.

I’m killing the product category that brought us the most licensing deals. Sounds crazy, right? After 5 years of self-publishing, I realized publishers were buying the game, not the box.Here’s why we’re saying goodbye to our $25 games. #boardgames #selfpublisher #vietnam

🎲✂️ It seems to be less and less common for published games to have a minimum player count of 3. I appreciate the desire for games to be playable at 1 and 2, but that choice puts strong constraints on a design. I fear it limits diversity, as certain interactions simply need 3+ players to work.

🎲✂️ Took me only a couple of hours to realise that RPG's solved this problem decades ago. In your typical RPG, players gain more powers as the difficulty rises. So instead of narrowing the path to victory, they just move the whole thing upwards on the complexity scale.

Bart de Jong@bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 3w ago

🎲✂️ Co-op games seem to have an intrinsic problem with their difficulty scaling. Increasing the difficulty should increase the importance of skill. This is true up to a certain point. When the margin for error becomes too small, the randomness in the system itself can start creating unwinnable states

🎲✂️ Co-op games seem to have an intrinsic problem with their difficulty scaling. Increasing the difficulty should increase the importance of skill. This is true up to a certain point. When the margin for error becomes too small, the randomness in the system itself can start creating unwinnable states

Gloomhaven is perhaps the only game where I would prefer a re-theme with the same mechanics over a different game in the same universe. I absolutely love the Gloomhaven system, but I don't care for the gloomy fantasy setting. I'd love a spacehaven, ninjahaven, anthropomorphicanimalhaven, anything

W. Eric Martin | Board Game Beat@index.wericmartin.com.ap.brid.gy · 3w ago

Cephalofair Games gives a first look at a "Gloomhaven drafting game"

If you're looking for game recommendations this Summer, we've got you! ☀️😎 - Welcome to Parks - Flip 7 - Mushroom Cats - SCOUT - Hanabi - The Hobbit: There & Back Again - Things in Rings - Pickle Grab - L'oaf - The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

🎲✂️ Playing games makes me want to design games, and designing games makes me want to play games. It's the ideal virtuous circle, but unfortunately all too often interrupted by boring things like life and responsibilities.

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/46... These Wingspan spinoffs are getting crazier each time

Timespan

Lead your civilization from the stone age to the space age in 90 minutes.

boardgamegeek.com

This is so very important. We've come a long way with the designers' (and illustrators'!) names on the boxes, but still it's the publishers who get mentioned in media coverage. Even most game awards mention the publisher but forget the designer.

Sen-Foong Lim@senfoonglim.bsky.social · 4w ago

More to what I was talking about re: proper attribution. The @ttgda.bsky.social is working to reduce instances where publishers, media outlets, and content creators fail to acknowledge the creatives behind the games. irp.cdn-website.com/2b6905d0/fil...

deeply annoying that creative breakthroughs don’t come on schedule from direct work but from things like “open-ended conversations with interesting people” and “doing nothing”

That one playtest where you feel a game finally coming together is my favourite part of design. When all the parts move in exactly the ways you want them to, when the players are feeling all the things you want them to feel, when the game transcends the cardboard, that's pure magic.

gamefound.com/en/projects/... My friends over at Wulfhorn Games have just launched their newest game on Gamefound. Go check it out if you're into backstabby intrigue and/or want to support a friendly bunch of indie creators!

Council of Serpents by Wulfhorn Games - Gamefound

Three noble Houses are vying for power, but you are not one of them… You are a member of the Council of Serpents, and manipulate their attributes to ensure the Triumph or Collapse of a specific House....

gamefound.com

This afternoon I will be interviewed about the design journey of my game L'Oaf. I'm slowly getting used to people writing or talking about my work, but this feels way more personal. It's flattering but frankly also a bit scary. Any tips for how to not make a fool of myself?

This is the best news in a very long time

W. Eric Martin | Board Game Beat@index.wericmartin.com.ap.brid.gy · 2mo ago

Look for a new look on Spirit Island once it finds a new home

On behalf of all people who run crowdfund campaigns and artist stores, let me be the one to say it today: International shipping really is that expensive. It really costs that much. I know it's expensive. That's really what it costs. I'm sorry. I don't set the prices. But it really does cost that m

Did you miss Rattlesnake designer Michael Hardacre's design diary over on @boardgamegeek.com? We now have a version on our website blog as well. Read all about the creative process behind this chaotic, card-based, cowboy shootout: https://bit.ly/4ovmEjN // AVAILABLE NOW // https://bit.ly/3J8NKwH

🎲✂️ Hey a general cast out there, if you're one of them newfangled Instabooktube content creators and you've been following Pact with some interest, reach out to me, because we're starting planning for the media part of the publishing cycle.

Jason Gamber was responsible for the incredible illustrations and visual style for L'Oaf. It's always a joy to see games come to life under his skillful hands

Zach Hoekstra@zhoekstra.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🎲✂️ One thing I'm really appreciative of for Jason Gamber, my graphic designer for PACT, is that he does an amazing job at blending symbols to really communicate some subtle stuff about the world. See his coin notes here for example (www.jasongamberdesign.com, he's done a ton of great stuff)

More board games stuff from UKGE day 1! Checked out and picked up L'oaf and Steery. Both are the sort of small quickplay games you can pull out anytime.

This week we're commending L'oaf, a game that explores the vagaries of working a job that demands too much. You play as a worker in a bakery. Your goal is to work as little as possible. Its a good game if you know how to bluff. #boardgame #cardgame #bakery boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43...

L'oaf

Bakers try to work as little as possible, without getting fired!

boardgamegeek.com