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Today I want to talk about the most important part of board game design: playtesting . You might have a wonderful idea for a board game in your head, but when real people (including you) play it, you might realize it doesn't work. You will realize there improvements you can make. Other people may find broken systems you didn't think about. Some people might just plain not like your game, and that's valua ble to you to understand and see why. For me there are three critical as

We've all run into it before, you're playing a board game with friends and one player is winning so hard, you realize there's no chance for you to catch up and the fun drops off a cliff. The players disengage from the experience and are waiting for it to be over. This is deadly to game design because it breaks the cardinal board game rule: board games are meant to bring fun to the players. They invest their time and money into this product so they can get fun out. So when you

Board game players "want to feel rich, they want to feel powerful, and the want to feel clever." -Gabe Barett, Board Game Design Lab I remember the first time I ever played Terraforming Mars. My friend picked up the game at Essen 2016 and we played in a group of five at our favorite bar. I was blown away by my first experience of the game and had the feeling of wanting to play another game after. There are several things Terraforming Mars does very well as a board game. When

How clans are received in Into the Mountain and how their differences impact game design.

Hello Reader! Have you ever played a board game where before the game starts, you randomly (or not randomly) pick out a character, group,...

I'm glad you're reading more about the development of Into the Mountain. I'm following up on post #4 about removing cards in...

When sharing board games I hear the comment a lot "I really like games that have something unique." I personally have a mix of reasons...

Hey! Curious about board game development? What's going on in Into the Mountain v4.0? 3 new players and one returning player got to...

I’ve finally gotten experienced some initial playtests of the next iteration v4.0. I was expecting things to be a little rough around the...

I’ve been very much looking forward to writing about the game design of Into the Mountain. As I wrote about in the 4th newsletter, the...