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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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“Post-Balance” Cogmind Item Expansion

Grid Sage Games

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.

Balance 52
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A dramatic design shift for Spellstorm

Keith Burgun

For month after month, I tried fixing them with different supporting mechanisms, different ways that cards were obtained, different ways damage was dealt, and a lot more, but nothing really fixed the fundamental problem. Once I realized that we were going to have to ditch the core mechanism, that kind of meant something like starting over.

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indiecade + board game designs update

Interesting Choices

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. I thought I was onto something here after I hit a design breakthrough a few weeks ago but I'm getting discouraged again based on recent playtests.

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Marvel Snap - The Definitive Deconstruction

Deconstructor of Fun

At that point, Second Dinner revealed that their first project just so happens to be a licensed Marvel IP, which the team has been working on for six months already and is currently beginning to playtest. This intro makes it easy for players to get started and feel comfortable with the game mechanics.

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Bringing it Together – The Board Game as a Project

Brand Game Development

With various other developers, I’ve talked about all the different parts that go into making a board game: the core engine , the mechanics , rules , and storytelling / internal narrative. Drapple is an abstract, tile-laying gardening game. I also try to go to as many conventions as I can and playtest as much as possible.

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building a better drafting game

Interesting Choices

Not long after that I started working on a game (then called City Draft) that would be strongly inspired by a few key influences: 7 Wonders for the mechanics and structure, Carcassonne for the idea of placing tiles in a grid, and SimCity for the theme. Science is purely all or nothing. Few viable paths to victory.

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