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Author: Dan

Game Design Exercise #2 – Collaboration

Game Design Exercise #2 – Collaboration

Over the years, I have cobbled together a few game design exercises that I thought I’d share with you… This next design exercise I’ll call Collaboration for lack of a better name. I found my first time playing it here way back in 2007. It is one that has always pretty amazing results. Participants each contribute to a set of game rules, then play the game to completion with a winner. It sounds like it would be difficult to get a fully functioning game…

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Game Design Exercise #1 – Wild Pitch

Game Design Exercise #1 – Wild Pitch

Over the years, I have cobbled together a few game design exercises that I thought I’d share with you… This first one is called Wild Pitch and is an exercise in focused creativity. All you need is some pencils/pens, some small strips of paper, and, of course, some other designers. Any number of designers will do, though I prefer small groups of four or so. To start off, each designer brainstorms (silently to himself) to come up with a slew of fictitious…

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Burgoo Milestones

Burgoo Milestones

Today is the last day of the Burgoo Kickstarter campaign. If you haven’t picked up a copy of the game, now’s your chance!  The campaign already hit its funding target on Day 1, so I’m only holding my breath to see if it reaches its last stretch goal of 20K to get slightly thicker tiles. Looking back, I realized that I have reached a few milestones and broke a few personal records with Burgoo: #1 – It has had most…

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Garage Sale

Garage Sale

Earlier this year I set out to make a game not based on general inspiration but a specific set of requirements. Those requirements were solely based on what I thought were the properties of a successful or “hit” game. While choosing concepts from that list, I ended up being inspired after all (restrictions tend to do that). Over the course of many months, I made a game that I, and many others, enjoy very much. The game is called Garage…

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Chocolate Factory

Chocolate Factory

Now that the Island Siege Kickstarter campaign is over and the game has been successfully funded, I can move my focus to some of my other designs for awhile. I have finished construction of a prototype for one of my latest designs called Chocolate Factory. It is a game for 2-4 players that lasts about an hour. This particular copy of the game is going out to a publisher for review. Here’s an overview of the game: At a South American…

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Designer Notes: Island Siege

Designer Notes: Island Siege

[Note: These design notes were originally posted at the kickstarter campaign for Island Siege.] Initial Design I created Island Siege with the goal to create a game where players had to balance construction with destruction. This manifested itself as fort building and cannonball hurdling in the Caribbean. After an early mock-up of the game, I knew I was on to something. The key mechanic involves rolling dice to attack forts (destruction). The catch is that this is also how you gain…

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Island Siege Kickstarter is Live!

Island Siege Kickstarter is Live!

The Kickstarter campaign for my new game Island Siege is live! The publisher APE Games has done a fantastic job so far in putting the game together. The game will come with some great components like cards with gorgeous artwork, custom metal coins, and mini-meeples (smaller than a regular meeple, but just as cute). Island Siege is a fast-playing game of fort-building and colonization in the Caribbean Sea. Players build shoreside forts to defend their colonists from attack and to score…

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Monkey Lab “Variant”

Monkey Lab “Variant”

When Monkey Lab was originally published, some changes were made to the original design that I was unaware of. Not until I opened a copy of the published game did I see that the cards were not quite as I expected. There was not much to do about it at the time, but I thought I’d share now this with anyone interested. Published Card Distribution: 8 x Move One Item 8 x Exchange 8 x Steal 8 x Move Twice…

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