Ignacy Trzewiczek, founder of Portal Games and designer of Robinson Crusoe, discusses his company’s motto: Games that tell stories.
We go in-depth into Ignacy’s design process, talk about his most popular games, and get to the heart of what it looks like to create games that have players leaving the table with a story to tell.
Peter C. Hayward is back on the show, and we’re delving into the secret sauce of his personal design process. Hint: It all hinges on blind playtesting.
Peter is a designer, developer, and publisher, so he has the benefit of seeing games from lots of different angles.
In light of this recent “everyone stay at home” thing, and the “don’t go to conventions because they broke” thing, you might be short on entertainment and I am here to provide! Here be links to all of my games (all three of them) as Mods for Tabletop Simulator and Shop Links for The Game Crafter, so you can play them with your friends online, or buy a physical copy! All of these games were going to be on sale at BABScon, but with that not going ahead and me stuck in Europe, that’s not happening. Anyway:
Thunderdrome is a racing game for 2-6 Wonderbolts (though it’s best with 4). You navigate a randomly generated track with a hand of cards, rationing your high speed cards for the straights, your low speed cards for the corners to avoid damage, managing your slender deck through one or two pit stops, staying close to your rivals on a cramped circuit to earn fan boost, and using that later for extra speed. It’s simple enough to get playing quickly, but there’s still plenty to think about.
Overtime is a simple push your luck game for 3-5 street criminals. Each round, the operator (dealer) deals cards off the top of the deck until everyone’s bailed and taken some loot, or two threats of the same suit show up, meaning everyone still in the round goes bust. At the end of the game, your score is the chips you get from your bravado in staying in each round the longest, plus the best poker hand you can make from the cards you took, because of this game’s other feature: It uses a regular deck of playing cards! So if you really want to, you can ignore the game I designed and just have a pack of Sunjackers playing cards.
Palomino Gold is a social deduction game for 6 to a lofty 12 backstabbing treasure hunters. One player takes on the role of Daring Do, and at the start of the game, everyone burgles the heck out of her. After passing around the cute little mint tin box, in which everyone has a chance to take a role gem of their choice or as much gold as they want, Daring Do has to interrogate the table to find out who took her gold, who’s trying to help her, and who’s actually the police trying to catch her.
Finally, if you’d like to support me but don’t think you can justify spending 30 bucks on a pony-themed board game, or you’re in Europe and the shipping is murder, then you can toss me a few buckaroonies on Patreon, or just drop me a one-time tip on Paypal!
Or if you’re not in a position to be throwing money, just enjoy the games! That’s why they’re on Tabletop Simulator. Amica magnifica, ludum gloriosum.
It’s just me on the show, and I’m talking about my latest book project called Board Game Kickstarter Advice.
I go through some of my favorite excerpts from the 50 interviews I did for the book and discuss why it’s such good advice if you want to fund a game on Kickstarter.
Charlie Cleveland, professional video game designer and founder of Unknown Worlds Entertainment, discusses the crossover of video games and board games and what board game designers can learn from their digital counterparts.
And be sure to check out Charlie’s game, Vampire Vendetta, on Kickstarter HERE.
Bez Shahriari, designer of Yogi, discusses how to design not just a game but a gaming system that can support lots of different games.
Bez designed a system called the ELL Deck a while back, and we get into everything a designer has to think about when working on a project that’s going to consist of more than one game.
And be sure to check out Bez’s game system, the ELL Deck, on Kicstarter HERE.
For this episode, I’m doing another design diary, and this time I’m talking about my monster-themed football game Dungeon Ball.
I talk about how the game came to be and what went into its design process. I also go into the business side of things and talk about the highs and lows of its Kickstarter campaign.
Andrew Lowen, from Next Level Web, is back to discuss even more things you need to know in order to market a game effectively. We talk about Facebook ads, post-Kickstarter marketing, working with a marketing agency, and more.
During the Steam Winter Sale I picked this up for $12 ish. This is another rogue-like (similar to Dicey Dungeons), except that your character is basically:
A Dominion deck, plus
A Collection of power-ups, plus
a few stats (HP, max HP, $$, etc)
And as you “Climb the Spire” you gain new cards, trash a few old ones, and get the power ups.
Like FTL, the game isn’t impossible to beat, but it definitely takes some finesse. And while there’s no “Easy/Normal/Hard” once you finally beat the game with each character you can start trying to be the “Ascension” game with increasing levels of difficulty. I thought after 20 hours it was getting some what samey, but even Ascension Level 1 adds a fair amount.
In a Board Games With Friends first, it’s a double feature! Rainbow Dash will come back with her recommendations for holiday games that are a little spicier next [unit of time] when I can get around to drawing the update.
Once again this time’s games are:
Timeline, The Mind, Codenames, and Sushi Go.
The holiday posts from last year in case anyone was looking for those again!
Anmelden
