Last week, I posted about why making print and plays is a great thing for designers to do. This week, I navigate my first two creations and see what I can learn from the whole process. My first time: Cutting stuff up with Barbers! The first game I set-about printing and creating myself was Barbers!, a game designed to fit into a mint tin about cutting the head and facial hair of people in a barber shop. I first discovered it when it’s creator Harshad Deshmukh was looking for testers for a solo mode of the game. Given it was small but had a quirky intriguing theme, lots of fun looking artwork and involved trying to do useful things with...
I’ve never made a print and play (PnP) game before. Is that ok? Well… maybe I’ve been missing out. There are lots of reasons to create a good PnP game, even if you don’t think of yourself as a ‘crafty’ person. Read part I? You can read Part II here. I have a confession – and as far as the board game industry goes, it feels like a pretty embarrassing one. Until recently I had never, ever printed a game from the internet. Not a card game, not a dice game, not an enormous eurogame. Other than a brief fumble with a 2 player Brass board which lasted all of 5 minutes (before I spilled coffee on the poorly sellotaped,...
Want to know how Magnate works and get a closer look at its components? This is the post for you… As I announced before Tabletop Gaming Live last week, the Magnate art prototype is now ready. Since it’s starting to look like the game that was always in my head, I thought it’d be good time to tell you more about the game itself and its components. But rather than walk you through a bland component list, I thought it might be nice to give you a tour of the game; the closest thing in written form to being on the stand with me, with a real-life copy of Magnate. Ready to get going? Then follow me… At the heart...
Some people hate Ticket to Ride; people who do not appreciate its brilliance. I hate the United Kingdom expansion as much as they hate the basic game. But unlike them, I’M ACTUALLY RIGHT… right? I like to think that I am a pretty positive person. Generally, I don’t like writing about things that I dislike – there are enough things that I do like to write about and enough to say about them. And I’m not a reviewer really, so I’m not here to save you money from games that you might not enjoy. But like a moth to a flame, I am constantly and mysteriously drawn back to writing about TTR: United Kingdom. Not to bathe in its glow...
With the receipt of renders I take a closer look at some of the game’s buildings and the source of their inspiration Everyday that goes by Magnate starts to come together a little more. This week was a major milestone: I received the first ever renders of the game’s 3D buildings from my sculptor. While these are only the first iteration, they already look fantastic. Why do they matter? A big pleasure of the game – for me and many of my playtesters – is the way the city emerges in Magnate. It starts off small, but it grows physically as the player’s fortune grows. Happily, it tends to grow in semi-realistic ways: An office in the middle of nowhere...
