Game devs talk design methods, system mechanics in design summit
Game Developer
MARCH 13, 2023
For anyone with an interest in game design, Polaris' developer summit has different articles covering various aspects of design development.
Dev Game Designer Game Developer Mechanics 
How To Know When to Pivot on Your Board Game Design
Brand Game Development
JUNE 29, 2020
A couple of months ago, I asked the readers of this blog to send in answers to the question “ what confuses you most about board game development ?” ” I got a lot of responses, and two of them were about knowing when to pivot during a game design project. Need help on your board game?
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Theme vs. Mechanics
Brand Game Development
NOVEMBER 28, 2016
“Theme-first or mechanics-first” might be the most asked “big question” in the board game community. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Theme and mechanics are inseparable parts of board games as a whole.
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6 Reasons Escape Rooms Will Make You a Better Board Game Designer
Brand Game Development
NOVEMBER 25, 2019
Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Escape Rooms will make you a better board game designer. With this in mind, here are six reasons I believe that Escape Rooms will make you a better board game designer. Escape Rooms are master classes in theme.
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4 Lessons from Quacks of Quedlinburg for Aspiring Board Game Designers
Brand Game Development
JANUARY 27, 2020
It has since remained a hot game on Board Game Geek and a perennial favorite in Pangea Games board game giveaways! So with that in mind, what can we learn from this award-winning board game with a silly name? Need help on your board game? Mitigate push-your-luck with a good catch-up mechanic.
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Board Game Designer vs. Developer vs. Publisher
Brand Game Development
DECEMBER 17, 2018
This is why I urge each new board game designer to share the workload , delegating tasks to a team instead of doing them all alone. Let’s start with three roles: board game designer, developer, and publisher. Need help on your board game? Designers make the game’s soul.
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10 Elements of Good Game Design
Brand Game Development
FEBRUARY 17, 2020
When I was a neophyte game developer, I found an excellent article by Wizards of the Coast, creators of Magic: the Gathering , called Ten Things Every Game Needs. This two-part article was so influential in my initial design of War Co. This two-part article was so influential in my initial design of War Co.
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7 Lessons from Monopoly for Aspiring Board Game Designers
Brand Game Development
MARCH 9, 2020
When board gamers need a game to mercilessly mock , they look no further than Monopoly. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Monopoly is a bad game, but have a little respect. This is a critical element of good game design.
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5 Lessons from Catan for Aspiring Board Game Designers
Brand Game Development
JANUARY 7, 2019
Catan was the first major hobby board game to come into existence. Even 24 years later, we can still look back at this game and learn lessons from it. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. In board games, trading is not uncommon.
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4 Lessons from Everdell for Aspiring Board Game Designers
Brand Game Development
OCTOBER 28, 2019
Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. There is a reason this mechanic is present in many BGG Top 100 Games such as Viticulture , Caverna , A Feast for Odin , and Agricola. But why exactly is that? Cute fantasy themes go a long way.
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4 Lessons from Sagrada for Aspiring Board Game Designers
Brand Game Development
JANUARY 28, 2019
It is also a smashing success of a game – so let’s talk about why that is. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Take note, aspiring game designers! This is arguably one of the worst feelings that a game can give you.
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Dev Diary: 03/31/17
Brand Game Development
MARCH 31, 2017
Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Naturally, this game is nowhere remotely close to completion. Also, the game doesn’t have a defined win condition yet. The post Dev Diary: 03/31/17 appeared first on Brandon the Game Dev.
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Out Now • Solo dev Pat Naoum of the handpainted The Master’s Pupil: “Creativity is a tool”
PreMortem.Games
AUGUST 9, 2023
“Every man and his dog has made an indie game but no one has painted a game yet. A point of interest in the indie game sea.” Naoum calls himself a jack of all trades, a master of none, so going solo on game development made a lot of sense. Is this mechanic fun? Game development takes so long!
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4 Lessons from Spirit Island for Aspiring Board Game Designers
Brand Game Development
JANUARY 13, 2020
Clearly, there is much more to this game than what immediately meets the eye. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. For that, we’ll reference the game’s Board Game Geek page. There’s a lot we can learn from it!
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6 Underrated Skills That Make You a Better Game Developer
Brand Game Development
APRIL 14, 2017
I realized that in my push to create Highways & Byways , I’ve neglected six very powerful background skills that make game developers great. Game development is about more than just game development, folks. Need help on your board game? Guiding Lights: Make great games.
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Solo dev Pat Naoum of the handpainted The Master’s Pupil: “Creativity is a tool”
PreMortem.Games
FEBRUARY 13, 2023
“Every man and his dog has made an indie game but no one has painted a game yet. A point of interest in the indie game sea.” Naoum calls himself a jack of all trades, a master of none, so going solo on game development made a lot of sense. Is this mechanic fun? Game development takes so long!
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How to Diagnose Failure & Move Forward as a Board Game Developer
Brand Game Development
MAY 14, 2018
Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. We’ll use the game development process – from start to finish – as an example. If the audience shows passion and interest, continue to game design.
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How Many Blind Play-Tests Does Your Board Game *Really* Need?
Brand Game Development
DECEMBER 22, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. I even blind play-tested it at a game design convention. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.
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How to Choose Your Board Game’s Theme
Brand Game Development
SEPTEMBER 11, 2017
Games, at their core, might just be a series of mechanics and rules, but themes keep us from feeling like we’re playing out the logical conclusion of mathematical functions. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.
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How to Make Board Game Rules
Brand Game Development
SEPTEMBER 24, 2019
This week while working on my current board game design, a lot of things have come into focus. Now it’s time to start tweaking board game rules. This is where board game design often becomes very tricky. Need help on your board game? 14 Rules for Board Game Rules. Playtest a Ton.
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Art for Art’s Sake…Sometimes It’s Not Just Business
Brand Game Development
JULY 14, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. I talk a lot about the business side of board game creation. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.
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5 Lessons I Learned at a Play-Testing Convention (Protospiel Atlanta)
Brand Game Development
OCTOBER 27, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Last Saturday and Sunday, I attended my first board gaming convention – Protospiel in Atlanta. Prototype of a beach volleyball game by Julio Nazario. Need help on your board game?
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Why Gamification Makes Everything Else More Fun
Brand Game Development
JUNE 3, 2019
Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. For that reason, I’ve brought in Sean Fallon, Founder & CEO of Smunchy Games and User Experience (UX) Designer extraordinaire. Board Game Design Makes You Better at Business (Because of Gamification Principles).
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How to Learn Complex Material Quickly
Brand Game Development
MAY 12, 2017
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Over the course of the last week, I’ve taken a bit of a left turn in the development of Highways & Byways. Need help on your board game? Want to learn game development?
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6 Ways to Find Play-Testers for Your New Board Game
Brand Game Development
APRIL 27, 2020
Play-testing is the most important part of board game design. It’s how you turn rough, raw ideas into polished, ready-to-play games. ” Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Visit your local game store.
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Actually talk to the (author-led AI) murder suspect in Dead Meat by Meaning Machine
PreMortem.Games
JANUARY 19, 2024
And so, we quickly realised the potential to form a bit of a ‘Super Group’ by bringing Game Design and AI Tech together. Press B to express Doubt’, for example, is a classic case of mismatch between gameplay scenario and mechanical input. The joy of the game is that the suspect rolls with whatever the player throws at them.
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5-Minute Dungeon: How to Make a Table Rowdy (And Why That’s a GREAT Thing)
Brand Game Development
MAY 8, 2017
A couple of weeks ago, I had the absolute pleasure of playing 5-Minute Dungeon at the friendly local gaming store for the first time. This game got us rowdier than ever before and it was awesome! Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.
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Monopoly: The Game That Board Gamers Love to Hate
Brand Game Development
DECEMBER 30, 2016
on BoardGameGeek , Monopoly is the kind of game that board gamers love to hate. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. At first glance, I scoff at the notion of picking on such an old game. Currently rocking a sold 4.4
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Mordhau on consoles: “A lot of smoke and mirrors go into making things hit”
PreMortem.Games
JULY 17, 2023
To make everything working smoothly during the massive online battles requires some very specific skills from the developers. This is a completely different beast from a shooter.” “ Mordhau at its core has always been about melee combat”, says Jonathan Dunn, Game Designer at Triternion.
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Why Board Game Publishers Like Some Games and Don’t Like Others
Brand Game Development
DECEMBER 3, 2018
Yet the process, so heavy on rejection, has left many game designers heartbroken. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Board game publishers have to sort good from bad. There are mechanics in there that nobody’s ever seen!”
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How to Work in a Team in the Board Game Industry
Brand Game Development
OCTOBER 23, 2017
I’ve talked about the benefits and challenges of working alone in the board game industry. Yet I’m a bit of an odd beast in the board game development world since most people prefer to work in teams. Need help on your board game? We started designing games together. That’s how I do things.
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Tasty Humans: How Our Board Game Raised $20,536 on Kickstarter
Brand Game Development
AUGUST 5, 2019
Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Indeed, with Tasty Humans , both the game development and the marketing processes were radically different than they used to be, and this ultimately paid off. The Early Design. On the note of mechanics, we were really lucky.
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How to Design the Mechanics of Your Board Game
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? What are game mechanics?
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Double Fine PsychOdyssey recaps / viewing guide, episodes 01-17
Radiator Blog
MARCH 16, 2023
Last month, game industry documentary makers 2 Player Productions debuted a massive 32-part YouTube game dev doc series Double Fine PsychOdyssey , chronicling the development of Psychonauts 2 from its earliest glimmers of pre-production in 2015 to its final release in 2021.
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Why the Highways & Byways Kickstarter Campaign Crashed & Burned
Brand Game Development
APRIL 13, 2018
After a year of documenting the Highways & Byways development process through the Dev Diary, this is not the post I wanted to write. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. That means the highs and the lows. Use that data!
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How to List Your First Game on Board Game Geek
Brand Game Development
APRIL 24, 2017
Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. I think that many game developers make the mistake of ignoring Board Game Geek because of its intimidating design. Mechanic: Mechanics involved in playing the game, chosen from a list.
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Top 10 Board Games for Christmas 2019 (and Why They’re Popular)
Brand Game Development
DECEMBER 2, 2019
As you might expect, this is also the time of year when a lot of people to go to Google and type in “top 10 board games for Christmas 2019.” ” Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Jamey Stegmaier made a civilization game.
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What is a Tabletop Game? This is Everything that Goes into Making a Board Game.
Brand Game Development
NOVEMBER 19, 2018
Second, what goes into making tabletop games? Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Back in the heat of the summer of 2017, I wrote two articles about this A Crash Course in Games and A Crash Course in Game Development.
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A Crash Course in Board Game Development
Brand Game Development
SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
Let’s pick up from there and talk about what specifically goes into making a game. What is board game development all about? Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. ” So what goes into game development?
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Iteration doesn’t mean moving forward and backward through development
PreMortem.Games
DECEMBER 13, 2023
This article is part of the game-dev advice newsletter Levelling the Playing Field by Rami Ismail. If you want to know more about the art, craft and science of game development, subscribe here. A lot of studios spend years making a bad version of a good idea – until they go and figure things out.
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Use GDevelop to Make Your Own Games
Game Designing
OCTOBER 1, 2022
GDevelop is designed to be easy to use, but you may still have some questions, and that’s why we’re here. In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about GDevelop to take you from beginner to game developer. In short, GDevelop is a full-featured game development tool. What is GDevelop?
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Unity Bolt Tutorial: How to Add Triggers & Switches
SOVEREIGN MOON
OCTOBER 1, 2020
SOVEREIGN MOON PRESENTS… How to Add Triggers and Switches Using Bolt (No-Code Game Dev). In this tutorial we’ll learn how to add triggers and switches to your game using Unity’s bolt add-on. Our NoCode game development course teaches indie game devs how to build breathtaking games from scratch. .
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4 Lessons from Imhotep for Aspiring Board Game Designers
Brand Game Development
JUNE 1, 2020
Naturally, we needed to set the game up and take a few photos to send to her, if nothing else. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Like many board games, Imhotep has a lot to teach board game designers. CC BY-SA 3.0
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10 Best Free Space Games To Play in 2020
SOVEREIGN MOON
OCTOBER 11, 2020
Recently, we’ve been publishing a lot of content about how to make space related games without having to know how to code. However, we thought we’d switch things up a little by focusing on playing games, rather than making them. Eve Online is a breathtakingly beautiful space game with depth that many people find hard to escape.
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