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How to Create a Pattern Building Board Game (Tasty Humans Pt. 1)

Brand Game Development

Out of nowhere, a thought popped into my head: “what if you were still monsters eating adventurers, but the game was all about dropping them into a puzzle that represented the monster’s stomach?” How Pattern Building Arose from the Dropping Mechanic. However, I didn’t want the game to necessarily feel like Tetris.

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Creating Hard Choices in Board Games (Tasty Humans Pt. 4)

Brand Game Development

Particularly when hard choices come from simple mechanics. In my Tasty Humans Designer Diary posts so far, I have focused on the puzzle aspect of the game. The design process really started with the puzzle. I knew I needed a mechanic that gave players a choice of one adventurer from several options.

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How to Add Variable Player Powers to Your Board Game (Tasty Humans Pt. 3)

Brand Game Development

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. In my last Designer Diary for Tasty Humans , I talked about how I approached scoring based on the arrangement of tiles in each of the monster’s stomachs.

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Creating the Perfect Board Game Scoring System (Tasty Humans Pt. 2)

Brand Game Development

Once you craft the basic concepts of your game and find the right mechanics to express them , you have to set rules. In my first Designer Diary post for Tasty Humans , I talked about the mechanics of dropping shapes (which represent the titular “Tasty Humans”) in order to fill up the stomach of the each player’s monster. So What Next?

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Board Game Pacing: Keeping Your Game Interesting (Tasty Humans Pt. 5)

Brand Game Development

In each of the design diaries that I have written so far, I have focused on a specific game mechanic or isolated portion of the game. There is also an escalation in strategy as the players fill up their boards by acquiring more and more Leader tiles. They have just a single Leader tile and their monster’s unique “personal craving.”

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10 Elements of Good Game Design

Brand Game Development

In Tasty Humans , points are earned by monsters for eating people and arranging their body part tiles in certain ways in the monster’s stomach. There are limits to exactly how you can place tiles, and you don’t always get what you want. one place I’ve encouraged surprise is the facedown card mechanic.

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Tasty Humans: How Our Board Game Raised $20,536 on Kickstarter

Brand Game Development

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. To sell in this awfully noisy, competitive board gaming environment, you have to have mechanics and art that people really enjoy. On the note of mechanics, we were really lucky.

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