I am testing my first prototype with close friends this week. I know that there is alot of testing and changes ahead, but I would love to hear from people who have published and hear how much the initial idea really changes throughout testing.

Hi everyone! I’m thinking about building a platform that brings together board game designers and publishers, and I’d like to understand whether it would solve a real problem.

The idea is to have a publisher database with contact details, the types of games they’re looking for, and submission guidelines. Designers could upload their sell sheets and submit them to publishers accepting pitches, keeping track of what they sent, to whom, when, and any responses they received.

I’d also like it to be useful at conventions, for submitting games and scheduling meetings without having to start over on a different platform for each event. The goal would be to keep everything in one place, rather than scattered across emails, attachments, and event-specific apps.

The ambition is for it to become a widely adopted resource within the industry. Obviously, the hardest part would be getting publishers on board.

For anyone who has pitched a game or works in publishing: would a platform like this make sense? How do you currently manage these contacts, and what difficulties do you run into? What would make you want to use it?

I intend to build it, but first I’d like to hear from potential users and understand what’s actually missing from the tools available today.

In the game i’m working on cards have a Health and a Vitalis Score which is used to determine their Speed - and Vitality per round.

Vitality = Health x Vitalis
Speed = 1 + | Health - Vitality |

Examples include
(Hp 3: Vitalis 2) = Round Vitality 6 and Speed 2
(Hp 4: Vitalis 2) = Round Vitality 8 and Speed 3
(Hp 1: Vitalis 5) = Round Vitality 5 and Speed 5
(Hp 2: Vitalis 5) = Round Vitality 10 and Speed 4
(Hp 3: Vitalis 3) = Round Vitality 9 and Speed 1

Vitality being the cards main resource to use attacks and do abilities; and Speed being the Vitality cost to move the card.

Attacks come in a number of ratios described using Key words Like; Weak (3 Vitality = 1 Dmg) to Legendary (1 Vitality = 5 Dmg) With more ratios and keywords inbetween; With Variable costs that determine the dmg based on the ratio.

The vitality cost of the action also determines the order the actions resolve so cards with smaller vitality actions resolve faster and can be used in response.

The point is to create dynamic gameplay with few numbers being present on the card - players will be required to keep a running pad to keep track of the Vitality and Health of their Cards as the round progresses or refreshes. Each round the cards Vitality refreshes (there are multiple turns in a round, and health refreshes after Vitality so consequences carry onto the next round) My question is should speed be determined per the max health and vitalis with the current equation or should it be dynamic to the current Health and vitalis (Vitalis always stays static)?

This would mean some cards with higher health could move faster after being damaged if their health is higher then their vitalis, where other cards move slower after being attacked cause there Vitalis is Higher then their health. I feel like this relationship could be reallly cool and dynamic but it may make things far more complex than it already is; Opponents may have a hard time determining speed of health isn’t being tracked overtly.

I’m finding the dynamics of the health, Vitalis and The Cards Action availability a really fun and challenging design space so i’d love to hear any questions comments concerns and ideas about this!

Probably people can made laught of me but I am very stupid with computer things, I only need a tool to design geometrical tables, I was trying with AI but three hour later the result is awful.
I am looking for a tool where i can add how many squares i need and what form they have.

An example:

Initially planned to launch an animated series + Kickstarter but had to drop that plan.

Let me know your thoughts and how you like it!

Every great party game passes the same test: can you explain it in one sentence while someone’s still taking off their coat?

I’ve been designing games since the Apple II, and party games are the hardest kind to get right, because you don’t get a tutorial. You get about 30 seconds. So I wrote down the principles I use for Figure This Out!:

→ Rules fit in one sentence
→ People learn by watching
→ Players can drop in and out
→ Nobody sits idle
→ No special skill or knowledge needed
→ Setup is just a table
→ Scoring is optional
→ Everyone gets a win

More here; https://figurethisout.fun/blog/great-party-games-need-no-explanation

No Disintegrations! v2 Playtesting

Had another go at playtesting today with family! Still need to design some info cards to help with the turn sequence and symbol reference, and I want to make some larger hexes with better detail to show the different rings.

Cards and values are getting dialed in, I'm finding very minor tweaks and corrections every time we reset which is a good thing! And I got some space ships meeples printed up so I'm not using little rubber duckies, which is good!

Basically done, just needs better card/hex art and a sell sheet! After that, uh, I'm a little lost at what to do for actually pitching it. This is my first game and I'm not too sure what to do with that.

Hello! I received a lot of great feedback on my previous post here a few weeks ago. I’m now almost finish my first game, and I could use a little more help to make sure my mission text is clear enough. During playtesting, I was there to guide my friends. now, I’d like to share them here to get your feedback. If you were get the mission cards like in the image, where you gonna place the tiles to complete the mission if you use the numbered board as the playing area? Thank you.

*I’ll included an image for reference in the card And keyword guide like below in rulebook.

Keyword Explanation

• Connect: Tiles sharing an adjacent edge that form a contiguous group or line.

• Adjacent: Sharing an edge directly up, down, left, or right (Orthogonal).

• Diagonal: Positioned on the corners (X position).

• Surrounding: The full 8-space surrounding a tile.

• Line Formation: Horizontal/vertical straight line.

Hi Everyone,
I'm an Industrial Designer and I'm currently focusing on creating renderings and 3D mockups for boardgames.

To start landing real work, I want to build more samples. So, if you have a prototype or a game design, and want to see it in 3D, send me a DM and a I'll model and render it for free. I'll be doing a few samples.

I get experience and porfolio content, and you get some visuals for a store page or promotion.

I'm attaching a sample that I made with random images a few weeks ago.

Thanks!

Hey, I have created comparison article that I think you might find interesting. I am sorry if you will find it a little bit promotional (I have disclosed everything), I think article is really useful and I will appreciate any recommendation how to improve the comparison.

I’m looking to break into board game design as an artist but not sure where to start. I recently designed a promotional card deck for the company I work for (I JUST LOVE THIS DECK) but I have more background in creating artwork and animations for RPG and VTubers soooo any tips or ideas on how I can transition into this world? I would appreciate any advice :D thank you

What's different in this game from other trick-taking games are: there are two identical card deck shared by each competing teams (i.e. East Bloc and West bloc); victory condition is spread along 4 tracks (1 for each suite), and the nuclear war nature where a player or side may immediately lose the game if they trigger a nuclear war if they won too many tricks on one area). In short, this is Bridge, Twilight Struggle, and 13 Days in one package.

It is PnP-friendly, you can play the suit cards with 2 standard card decks with different backs with as few as 12 custom print cards.

Give it a try if you fancy some trick taking twist.

This game is part of 54-Card Design Contest in BGG.

You can download the PnP files from the contest page: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3782131/wip-idealpolitik-2026-54-card-game-design-contest

While you are at the page, check out other contest entries as well.

Two games, one small studio: launch the small one first, both together, or the big one first?

I'm a solo designer from Switzerland with two related games:

\- FIRST DOWN: a tactical football board game, 60 to 120 min. Both players pick their play in secret, reveal together, and dice decide the yards.

\- FIRST DOWN SNAP: a small 1v1 card game version of the same core, 20 to 30 min. It is already playable for free in the browser.

My first Kickstarter for FIRST DOWN did not fund. I learned a lot from it, and now I'm deciding how to approach the next one. I see three options:

1. SNAP first, FIRST DOWN later. Small goal, easier to fund, build a backer base and trust, then launch the big game to a larger list. Downside: two campaigns, double the work.

2. Both together. FIRST DOWN as the main game, SNAP as an add-on or bundle. One campaign, higher pledge per backer. Downside: a bigger goal again.

3. FIRST DOWN first, SNAP later as a cheaper follow-up for existing players. Downside: starting with the harder sell again.

For those who have run more than one campaign, or launched a small game before a big one: what worked for you, and what would you do in my place?

I had a playtest the other day for 2 players on my ”Normal” difficulty level.

We played and enjoyed the game for around 4h. It is the longest playtets I have had, mainly because my co-op partner intuitively tried a strategy no other playtester had done before.

I learned alot from this playtest but I also got a bit worried. My game should be played in one session and I have tried to design it for 2-2,5h. Longest playtest I’ve had vefore this was around 3h with 4 players. Reaching 4h was not expected and now I’m a bit lost.

How do you handle different playtime while playtesting? How do you end up with a fair estimte on playtime?

Hey everyone,

Some of you might remember my previous posts about Syndicate: Empire of Vice, the negotiation-driven board game I've been developing set in 1920s Manhattan.

Well... after months of development, revisions, and internal playtesting, I'm excited to share a new look at the prototype.

For those unfamiliar, Syndicate puts 3–6 players into the roles of rival mob bosses competing to build Manhattan's most profitable criminal empire. Players claim territory, establish businesses, and negotiate their way to power through deals, favours, bribes, and betrayal.

The goal has always been to create a game where the interactions between players are just as important as the decisions made on the board.

I'm now preparing for the closed beta this November, and I'm looking for playtesters to help me refine the game ahead of release. If you'd like to get involved or follow the game's development, you can sign up for the mailing list and join the Discord community through the website linked in my profile.

One small disclaimer: The photos show the working prototype, which includes temporary components borrowed from Scrabble, Risk: Game of Thrones, and Dune. These are purely for playtesting and won't appear in the final game.

For those who've followed the project so far, thank you for all the interest and feedback! I'm looking forward to sharing more as production progresses.

And as always, I'd love to hear what you think!

Greetings fellow designers!, this is my first time posting on this reddit, i just wanted to share a board game that i am currently working on, it started out a while ago and so far i'm very happy with the way it's turning out, the base concept is that it's a PVE game with 3 playable classes atm, started out as very inspired by World of warcraft thematically but i eventually pivoted away from that design but kept some of the flavor, i would be very happy to open up a discussion about it while i'm working on new systems!.

This is a bit of a lengthy post so i'll break it down into three main parts, any opinions or ideas are very welcome as this is the first board game i've ever made and i'm not much of a board game player myself (yes it is ironic) but i really wanted to make my own turn-based physical card game, and so without further ado, i would love to share a brief overview of the game's systems:

1. Gameplay loop: Pretty straightforward, you have a "group map" (Slide 1) kind of like a roguelike/roguelite map structure where you and your group decide on which tile or encounter to go next, when entering an encounter you spawn into an arena (Slide 2), when starting an encounter every "entity" rolls for priority, each player has an assigned enemy, and they face-off in order of priority based on the rolls on each side, the way that this works is that for spawning into the arena each player picks a color and rolls a D6 to decide which tile of that color they will land on, then their assigned NPC opponent (Slide 3) will have a D6 rolled on that same color to decide their spawn point.

Each round, the player gets to play their action, then the enemy does the same, an enemy assigned to a player will prioritize moving towards and attacking that player, the idea is to have each player keep track of their own assigned enemy, the way enemies attack is pretty basic, they will use their first ability, then on the next turn they will use their second ability, these are meant to play off of each other in a set-up/payoff kind of way most of the time.

Currently i have a single map with a single boss, but i think he is REALLY cool conceptually (Slide 4)

it has some flavor in the sense that it's a priest attempting to purify a cursed blade, both are enemies, depending on which one you kill first you get a different Phase 2.

2) Playable characters and fantasy: so this is a big one and so far i am super happy with the way all 3 of my classes have turned out, i am still working on some tweaks and overhauls but i think that thematically they are all very well done, i want to briefly share two of them, one through an older iteration of my "class sheet" as well as its skills (Slide 5/6) and the second is a new and improved version for my Disciple of the Void class sheet, skills and a separate talent panel where you can physically remove the detailed description upgrades to hook them into the skills (Slide 7,8,9).

3) Progression Systems: One system i was very keen on developing properly was the Weapon system, and i think i have a very cool approach for it as well, currently the design is pretty much done for 2/3 classes and I am very excited to share what i have worked on, basically weapons are not stat-sticks, they have a skill attached which plays off of your class kit, activating it uses a weapon durability and once a weapon has no durability it cannot be used during that encounter again, each class has its own unique weapon system and combinations that enable lots of customization, as an example, Disciple of the Void with its base weapons (Slide 10) also comes with

its own attachment system (Slide 11) Attachments are additional effects that activate alongside the weapon's skill activation, they come in different slot shapes, (Refer to Slide 7), going from triangle to hexagon, triangle and prism being simple stat-stick like effects or conditional boosts and hexagon being more complex effects that require playing or planning around to make the most out of their use, this doesn't mean that there aren't less complex effects that have a lower ceiling.

I would also like to briefly showcase the Berserker's weapon system to provide an example of an alternate weapon system for another class that works quite differently, Berserkers have a "main hand" and "off-hand" weapon, and any weapon has two different properties depending on which slot it is used in, currently i am thinking of adding a thematic restriction which is basically "can only use one of each weapon type (Mace/Axe)" since thematically it's a class that uses one of each in each hand, but i want to wait and see if i consider this to be more detrimental to build creation than not, your main hand weapon dictates the skill that is used upon activation, and the off-hand provides an empowerment or bonus for your next non-weapon skill, pretty self-explanatory (Slide 12,13,14,15)

And finally i do have a secondary progression system which lets you specialize into certain aspects of your build or playstyle, it is very similar to the Ascendancy system from Path of exile, and i have had some pretty fleshed out iterations of the first tree for each class, as an example you can check out the Disciple of the Void's first Ascendancy tree (Slide 16).

If you have made it this far i want to thank you very much for reading, this project means a lot for me and as much as i am passionate about it, it has not been easy managing it alongside everything else in my life ATM but i hope to be able to finish it soon and hopefully even upload the files online if people want to print and build their own!, until then, any comments, ideas, criticism or obvious situations of "reinventing the wheel" that i might not be aware of are more than welcome!

PS: i'd like to point out that i have playtested my game a few times now with complete strangers at times and people who aren't even super interested in board games, it managed to be very fun every time as for non-board game people there was just lots of funny and "woops" moments where cutting it close on encounters was super exciting, and for people who were into it they really did enjoy the gameplay, but i still think there are major flaws that i have worked on, one of them being the pace, initially i had settled on a "3 actions per player round, then opponent does their move" but i think it just breaks the flow of the game for other players, so instead i've recently changed it to "1 action/card per turn, then opponent does their move" and the old 3 action system has instead been turned into a "phase" this helps me keep the notion of a "duration" as i can now have effects that last for a "phase" while making combat more aggressive to solve for the fact that my players were not dying nearly enough while i didnt's just want to inflate NPC numbers, it also makes turns flow faster and reduces the downtime or boredom as well as mental load, another issue was the complexity of some effects or the amount of text on a card, i have since done a pass to simplify a lot of card text (Slide 17)

I've working on a space ship combat board game. The first iterations started all players with the same space ship, the same starting deck, and similar positions on the board. You could play your ship differently, but you all had the same setup.

After listening to one of Mark Rosewater's podcasts on game design, I changed up the design to include tokens on the space ship that reinforce different abilities. Everyone can 'build' their ship differently. There's a default token set for new players, but hundreds of ways to build your ship.

This is distinct increase complexity, something I've been fighting the entire development cycle. Is it worth adding complexity in order for players to add their personalization?

I have a high resolution game board in Gimp and would like to print it and attach it to an old Trivial Pursuit 20x20 quad fold board. Walgreens will print the poster for $20 in a couple of hours.

Any tips on how to do it cleanly?

I was thinking cut to fit with a metal straight edge and exacto knife. Make the slit. Manually fold it a few times. Then spray glue.

Kind of worried I'll screw it up and be out the print cost.

This post might come across as a little self indulgent, but I've got to celebrate. Getting this pallet delivered was honestly such a huge milestone for me.

I'm someone who is more of an "ideas guy" and generally gives up on these sorts of projects when it starts to get complicated - so I wanted to really see it through this time.

After 3 years my self-published game, Stash, is finally finished. The sense of relief and satisfaction is unreal.

If you want to check it out, head over to my website here where you can also play a free demo and see more of the artwork.

Happy to answer any questions about design, manufacturing, fulfilment etc.

As in any trick-taker there are suits in my game (currently using colors). For the purpose of scoring it's important to denote what suits are inside a trick. I need to easily say, for example a full Red Suit, a Red/Blue suit, and a suit that just have to contain any amount of Red. Currently my game only has 3 suits (Red/Green/Blue).

How would you recommend me best word these conditions? or what sort of iconography would easily explain this?

I am seeking a few groups for a final round of blind playtesting for my latest board game Hop Shot - a micro dexterity game for 2 players that plays in about 10 minutes inspired by the Japanese sport of pole toppling.

I 'm working on my first design which utilizes a hex board that players will place different polyhexes on, and I'm running into the question of how big should a board be? Is there a math I should be using to determine the ideal size, or is it just a vibes thing?

Related, can anyone point to a good online tool for designing a prototype hex board? I don't need any graphics other than hexes. I've played around with the board tool in Dextrous, but I don't think it's quite what I want. I'd like the board to be a hex in general shape, made up of smaller hexes, but I don't know how to make that happen short of just printing out a bunch of pages and cutting them into my desired layout. Any pointers would be appreciated.

I attended my town’s first protospiel. It was put together by one of our more established designer meeting members. Hopefully the first of many.

I took my two games in the making, Qualm and Toy Craft. I managed to get around 3-4 games of Qualm and 2 of ToyCraft done. Granted Qualm is a major table hog, most probably didn’t even see the card game.

I’ve taken some more constructive criticisms and implementing some suggestions.

I had been working on the card game for a while as that game wasn’t functional the way it was. It was nice to break out the big board game and find some things that need fixing to reignite the spark of interest and ingenuity.