Designer Notes

AUGUST 2, 2021

The game, a historical 4X set in classical antiquity, released on July 1, 2021, and is available for purchase here. One challenge that has haunted all Civilization games since the beginning is Infinite City Sleaze (ICS). The following is an excerpt from the Designer Notes for Old World.

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Brand Game Development

AUGUST 5, 2019

It’s a puzzle-solving, tile placement board game for 1-4 players where you play as a fantasy monster who’s hungry for villagers. We could not be happier with how the campaign turned out, and the game is available for pre-order now ! Need help on your board game? On the note of mechanics, we were really lucky.

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Brand Game Development

SEPTEMBER 4, 2017

Getting started in board game development can be both intimidating and expensive. I’m almost certainly not the only blogger you’ve looked to for advice, and I can probably guess one thing you get told a lot: “play more games!” Need help on your board game? ” (Yeah, gee thanks, Sherlock.).

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Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Beta 11 was a huge milestone in Cogmind development, having completed a comprehensive review of all items and their stats and mechanics in order to rebalance where necessary, a process I wrote about in detail last year. As part of this drive, for months I’ve been creating over 100 new items, most of them including new mechanics.

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Interesting Choices

NOVEMBER 30, 2018

I was recently in Essen for the release of NEOM, which is what the game previously known as Draftopolis or City Draft (written about extensively here and mentioned briefly here ) has become after being published by Lookout Games. Of course you would have to plan around natural disasters if building a city! Risk/Reward.

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Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

For the last few years, we’ve been living through a glorious age: the Great Board Game Renaissance. In a world aglow with smartphones, tablets, and those annoying billboards that change every five seconds on the side of the road, analog gaming has become a welcome retreat for millions. Need help on your board game?

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Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 23, 2023

Fastforward to September of 2022 and the game, Marvel Snap, is finally out globally after a considerable amount of time in soft launch. What I mean by that it is easy to pick up and play, which for a card game is no small feat. Most importantly, the game was and is performing! What’s the best way to describe Marvel Snap?

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Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the third of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

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Brand Game Development

JUNE 25, 2019

Pattern building board games are really popular among the hobby board gaming crowd. Board Game Geek cites Azul , Sagrada , A Feast for Odin , and Quadropolis as pattern building board games. These titles earned – and keep – respect in the hobby gaming community. Background of Tasty Humans.

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Interesting Choices

OCTOBER 5, 2011

Also wanted to give a quick update on my various boardgame designs: City Draft - This 7 Wonders inspired drafting game is consistently liked in playtests and has been improving slowly and steadily. The game feels too easy, doesn't have enough strategy, and doesn't seem to quite evoke the feelings that I'm looking for. Good times!

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Nvidia

NOVEMBER 8, 2021

The payload registers are the mechanism NVIDIA OptiX offers for passing arbitrary data along with a ray, from the caller that traces a ray, and back. This payload mechanism is very lightweight, similar to passing arguments to a function. Improved customization and performance NVIDIA OptiX 7.4 Image Courtesy © 2021 Koke Nunez.

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Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 10, 2021

Our 2021 predictions have been sponsored by Facebook Gaming. Facebook Gaming helps developers and publishers to build, grow and monetize their games. Mat Baker has been making mobile games for 15 years. Laura Taranto has 12 years experience in casual games and is a product advisor and puzzle game aficionado.

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Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

This is a holiday shopper’s guide to all things Board Games. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Hobby Board Games. Tasty Humans is a 30-60 minute, tile-laying, pattern-building game for 1-4 players. Are you excited?

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Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the first of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

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Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

In the latest episode of the DoF Podcast, Mishka reconnects with Rina Onur Sirinoglu, CEO of Spyke Games, to talk about her exciting new mobile gaming venture, which recently secured a $55 million seed round. Rina co-founded Peak Games, which has become a game-changer in the Turkish gaming scene.

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Brand Game Development

JULY 8, 2019

Of all the mechanics in the board game world, variable player powers remain a fan favorite. Games with this mechanic range from Gloomhaven to Terraforming Mars to 7 Wonders. Part of their popularity comes from the ease with which they add variety to games. Need help on your board game?

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Deconstructor of Fun

OCTOBER 27, 2020

And while those two titles dominate the top charts, Playrix road to the top started a long time ago with a non-assuming little game know as Township. The game was launched in 2011 as a freemium social game first as Google+ (!) Strong iPad monetization indicates that this is a game played at home by a more mature audience.

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Designer Notes

AUGUST 24, 2021

The game, a historical 4X set in classical antiquity, released on July 1, 2021, and is available for purchase here. Old World has a lot of different currencies (referred to in-game as “yields”), which represent things very concrete (Iron), somewhat vague (Orders), and VERY abstract (Civics).

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Interesting Choices

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

I've been fascinated by board games that revolve around drafting for years now, and in early 2011 I wrote a post on the pillars that make these games click. I've created an online prototype for playtesting that has seen almost 2000 games completed with at least a dozen players clocking in at over 100 games apiece.

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Brand Game Development

OCTOBER 19, 2020

Brandon is humoring me with a mini game blog series where I give you MY perspective on board games. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Game Play Overview.

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The Liquid Fire

JANUARY 17, 2024

In that project, we had some unique challenges thanks to a non-square board where tiles were optional. In addition we had to consider tile heights – and whether or not a unit could jump as high as needed. In contrast, the pathfinding in this lesson will be for a 2D square board with no missing tiles.

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Designer Notes

APRIL 1, 2023

For example, at the start of Civ 4, you can just click on Gunpowder, and the game will show you exactly which 11 technologies to research to get there. For a game with average playtimes in the hundreds of hours, this becomes a real problem. Need some iron to build a Swordsman? What happens each turn then?

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PreMortem.Games

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

Studio owner and Lead Developer Max Hermann originally developed the idea for the game in the time when he was still a computer science student and active in the RimWorld modding scene. “I That’s when I formed the idea of building a new colony sim from the ground up, centered around the idea of exploration and travel.”

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Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

This analysis is written by Taras Koshelev (Lead Game Designer at My.Games Venture Capital) who focused on game mechanics and loops and Michail Katkoff (Founder of Savage Game Studios) who covered the market and marketability. But as we all know with Playrix, their super power is not making the most outstanding games.

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Brand Game Development

JUNE 10, 2019

Great components are critical to board games. Hardcore gamers pride themselves on mastering games with unique gameplay and complex rules. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Fiddly pieces can ruin otherwise great games.

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Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 8, 2024

Why does this game matter? Well, Supercell hasn't launched a new game since Brawl Stars in 2018, so Mini becoming a hit would have an impact on the trend of the whole company. And it’s the only game soft-launched to date from Supercell’s Shanghai Studio, which was opened 5 years ago. It was not.

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Designer Notes

AUGUST 31, 2021

The game, a historical 4X set in classical antiquity, released on July 1, 2021, and is available for purchase here. The first Civilization game was like a game design thunderbolt, sent from the heavens and marking everything it touched.

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Brand Game Development

AUGUST 26, 2019

Self-publishing a board game is a long, drawn-out process. Some of this goes back to the process of creating your game, getting it manufactured, and raising funds. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. You have to very slowly build your reputation.

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Brand Game Development

JANUARY 2, 2018

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the ninth of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

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The Liquid Fire

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

We will also provide a tile based room for them to fight in. I only care about facing left and right, though if I were making a top-down game I might want other directions as well. I want the combatants that are lower on the tile map to appear above the combatants higher on the tile map so that they appear closer.

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Brand Game Development

JANUARY 15, 2018

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the eleventh of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

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Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 14, 2020

We originally created a taxonomy together with Game Refinery dividing the games market into four different categories: Casual, Mid-Core, Casino and Sports. We pulled the data of top 1000 games from last three years from the one and only App Annie and aligned the data with the categories, genres and sub-genres.

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Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 17, 2022

Xsolla has dedicated tools that will help you create your own online commerce platform, improve your performance marketing and discoverability, and expand your game business on mobile and PC. Clash Mini is one of the three Clash games Supercell announced in April of 2021. As expected from Supercell, Clash Quest is a polished game.

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Mircosoft Game Dev

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

with 17 alpha builds distributed in 2022, and continuous development effort since 2019. The ugly reality of software development is that legacy code builds up really quick and keeping it up to date, ready for new challenges that arise several years down the line takes a lot of effort. It has been a long road to Godot 4.0

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Deconstructor of Fun

JUNE 20, 2019

There are several reasons why Matchington Mansion is on our lips: Firstly, it’s because the game is raking in over $15M in net revenues a month. Secondly, it’s because the game was able to challenge Playrix successfully in their own game. Then he’s going to analyse the studio that made the game.

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Designer Notes

OCTOBER 14, 2021

The game, a historical 4X set in classical antiquity, released on July 1, 2021, and is available for purchase here. I don’t think it’s possible for a 4X game to consistently provide a satisfying, climactic ending; the genre’s strengths come from the vast possibility space, the lack of guardrails, and a commitment to reward smart play fairly.

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Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 4, 2020

Supercell is one of the rare companies that doesn’t try to beat the competition; rather, it tries to beat the high score set by its own prior games. To date, Supercell has created multiple genre-defining games and generated billions in revenues -- all with little more than 300 employees (!). Our short answer is no.

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