Clik here to view.
Global Game Jam 2013 – Introducing “Heart Burn”
Here is my submission for this year’s global game jam: Heart Burn. Much like last year’s Global Game Jam, I wasn’t in attendance for all that much of the weekend after Friday night. But while I was...
View ArticleGlobal Game Jam 2013 Board Games
Last year I spent a fairly significant amount of time going through all the games created for the Global Game Jam in the Board Game category. I then got about five of those games into a “playable”...
View Articledeck building with standard playing cards
I posted a set of rules on BGG this morning for an idea I had for a deck building game with standard playing cards. The game was specifically envisioned for the 2013 Solitaire Print and Play Contest. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A 4X Dice Game
This project came about while I was joking yesterday afternoon with my friend Patrick about how we needed to rush a space-themed dice game to Kickstarter before TMG publishes Eminent Domain Dice. I’m...
View ArticleWhen Board Games Go Mobile
When you consider some of the game design imperatives for mobile games — playable in short bursts, interruptible, simple touch controls, UI that fits on a small screen — you may not immediately think...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Root Down
tl/dr: I just submitted an app version of a board game I call Root Down to the app store. The app will be free, and represents not all that much effort on my part, but if there is interest, I’d like to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Primitives and Hex Primitives
As a sort of follow-up to yesterday’s post on small-grid games, I realized that I haven’t made this pair of games public anywhere yet. (That I remember.) That post led to some Facebook discussion,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
thoughts on CCG & LCG apps
Today Hearthstone is finally available worldwide, and I will definitely be spending some time with it on my iPad. I have played it a bit on my desktop, enough to get the feel of it, and decide I wanted...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Workers, Workers II, Workers III
I had the pleasure of attending United Geeks of Gaming’s Game Designer Sessions event last night, and play testing the latest (third) iteration of a game whose working title has always been “workers”....
View Articlecreativity is hard — tips for playtest feedback
I was musing on game design this morning, and came to a conclusion that I already knew both intellectually and intuitively, but one that I’m not sure I’ve articulated to myself previously: Game design...
View ArticleSome Tools for Tabletop Game Design
Below you can find my slides from the presentation I gave at last night’s IGDA Twin Cities meeting. I think the presentation went okay, but I should have realized ahead of time how boring a topic...
View ArticleQ&A – Porting Board Games to Digital
I recently answered a short barrage of questions by some non-technical folks researching the business feasibility of board game conversion. Since I gave them these answers freely, I thought I would...
View ArticleAsynchronous Turn Notification Thoughts
I was recently asked by a friend my opinion about how often is too often to notify the player that it is their turn to play. I personally feel a player should not get more than two or three reminders...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Entanglement – a new board game
I had a strange idea this morning. “What if every time you moved a piece in a game, you were also moving one of your opponent’s pieces?” I don’t know of any other games that have this same mechanic. I...
View ArticleAbstract Strategy Game Description Generator
So, I made a webpage/toy to generate a pseudo-random abstract strategy game description. It’s pretty much just mad-libs style text substitution, but randomly chosen from arrays of strings I’ve...
View ArticleClik here to view.
pyramid games for every BGG game mechanic
At least partially inspired by another BGG user’s lofty goal of 1 new pyramid game a month, around January 1st I had the even-more-ridiculously insane idea to make a goal of designing a new pyramid...
View ArticleNotes from pyramid games playtesting
My good friend Nate was kind enough to playtest 3 out of four of the pyramid games I posted yesterday (we didn’t play the party game), and the results shouldn’t be terribly surprising, but they were...
View ArticleNew Chess Variant Videos
Tonight, a chess variant is sitting at the top of r/gaming. That itself is probably newsworthy, but watch the video below of Speed Chess (apparently unveiled at the Tokyo Game Show 2015) to see why I’m...
View ArticleA Strategy for Abstract Strategy Game Reviews
Today I posted over on Board Game Geek asking for help defining a review system for abstract strategy games. For posterity, here’s the contents of that post: I’ve been thinking about criteria for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Eigenstate on BGG
I wrote a forum post about Eigenstate over at Board Game Geek in the Abstract Strategy Game Forums. In the post I cover where I got the idea, how I made the original prototype, and a bunch about ideas...
View Article