I’ve always tweaked games and made up my own rules. I didn’t know that this was unusual in any way. Even when I was a kid playing crazy eights, my favorite part was when we would each make up our own rule and then spend the next 15 minutes or so deciding how the new rules would be implemented. Even playing a simple game of backgammon involved deciding which version were going to play; the Russian version, Acey-Ducey, Snake, Standard rules, or some hybrid of one of those. And then, there was the doubling cube.
Board-games like “Monopoly” or “Billionare” were always played with house rules. I only recently read the official rules of monopoly which are nothing like how we used to play. I’ll have to try the official version one day. Meanwhile, I recently came up with an alternate version called “Monopolitis” which you can download below. I haven’t tried it yet and I’m sure there are a few bugs to work out, but you’re welcome to download the rules and give it a try.
The first half decent game I made back in April 1987 was Loose Endz. A tile laying game using domino type pieces with paths on them rather than pips. It seemed to play ok but I gave my prototype away in 1989 and never really re-visited it. I’ll have to resurrect this game again some day. This game might actually work, but I’m sure somebody has already done something similar, if not identical already.
Another game was Stryker, created around September 1986. It was a cross between Mancala and Checkers. I finally whipped up a prototype in early 2020 and tried it out with my #1 play-tester, my wife. This game has only one flaw. It doesn’t work. It’s funny how something can seem to work in your head but can crash and burn when you try to play it. I guess I should have tried it out 30 years ago. Lesson learned! Get the Prototypes to the table ASAP!
The next game from October 1986 was called Pivit. I managed to make a prototype back then and it seemed to work, but nobody wanted to play it, so I put it aside. I dug it out again in Feb. 2019 to finish the design.
This abstract strategy game definitely looked cool. If it was played a certain way, it was actually fun, but only if you followed a certain strategy. The game tended to fall apart and get tedious most of the time. This is where I learned the importance of a “Narrative Arc” in a game. This game was flawed in many ways, but it’s worst problem was the backwards Narrative arc. Games are supposed to ramp up and get more interesting and intense as they progress, not devolve into a tedious chore. Lesson Learned!
A more recent addition to this prototype graveyard is a game called “Bug”. A really cool concept where players are controlling bugs which are scurrying around competing for food while avoiding predators. The object is to stay alive longer than your opponent. The rules rattled around in my head for a good month before I got them sorted out to the point where I could make a prototype. I thought I had the coolest game ever. After all, I’ve been learning all this game stuff, I’m a real expert now, what could possibly go wrong.
I finally made the prototype and realized that this game wasn’t going to work for a number of reasons. The theme was cool, but the mechanisms were convoluted, and there was no clear direction to proceed. It was also too much work to keep track of all the moving parts. It was like my brain, somehow, barfed up a bad meal. This game immediately went to the junk-pile. After this, I started testing my basic concepts a little earlier to see if they are viable before proceeding. I’ve heard this called the MVP (Minimum Viable Prototype). Lesson learned.
I guess this junk-pile wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the game that got me started into all of this two and a half years ago. Para-Mania.
Para-Mania came about around November 1988. That summer I had tried skydiving and was really smitten with the sport, so much so, that I created a game about it. I worked out the underlying mechanisms, wrote the rules and started creating the deck. I didn’t know what I was doing back then, but that didn’t stop me from blindly forging ahead.
There was no need to test out the concept because everything worked perfectly in my head. (Or so I thought.) The first thing I needed was a deck of cards. Back then, you couldn’t buy blank cards (Index cards didn’t occur to me back then.) so I bought a few standard decks of cards and carefully sanded off the faces so I could paint on the new images. This took a while, but I finally had a complete deck of about 100 cards. It was complete and ready to go. (I couldn’t have been more wrong.) I carefully put them away, and waited for an opportunity to try the game out.
It was over 30 years before I would dig them out and try out the game. My first play-test was an absolute mess. The game had some serious bugs, but there was some fun buried somewhere inside that mess. It was a heartbreaking to take a black magic maker and start modifying my hand painted cards. Lesson #1, don’t spend a ridiculous amount of time on my prototypes. Lesson #2, It may look good on paper, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
These are images of my first prototype. The Playing board is ugly as sin, which is just about right for an initial prototype. The cards, however were ridiculously overdone.
With the next version, I went digital, and created my new deck to start working out the bugs. I would print out the cards and slip them into card sleeves which made prototyping and testing much easier.
The game went through a few more iterations before I realized that it was an overly large and impractical table hog.
The next version involved more hand management, and set collection, had a smaller footprint and included individual player boards. It was starting to be a little fun and challenging with fewer and fewer bugs. The following is an image of my last physical prototype.
Things were going along quite well until Covid 19 punched the world in the eye. No more playtesting, at least not face to face with people. I had to adapt or abandon my pursuits. I went 100% digital with virtual prototypes on Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator and was able to continue play-testing using these programs along with Discord. It was one hell of a learning curve, considering that my sole on-line presence two years ago was two Facebook posts from my mom. I was no stranger to computers so I eventually got it all figured out. And now I’m even blogging about all the lessons learned in this massive undertaking.
I finally got my digital prototype of Para-Mania up and running and it looked really cool.
The game was decent and fairly fun, but that was the problem. In the ultra-competitive world of board games, a game must be really fun and stand out or it simply won’t make it. If play-testers aren’t asking you to bring it out and play it, then you don’t have any chance of success in the game market. I am currently re-working this game because I believe there still a certain something that will make this game a winner. At least I hope so. This old version is sadly going on the scrap-pile.
Junkyard Dogs
I decided to put together a quick card game based on one of my first game ideas after Paramania. The idea was a game about the neighborhood “Sheeny-Man”, or junk collector. Sheeny-Men or “Rag-Men” as they were called in the UK, were the first recyclers. I have many fond memories about visits to the Sheeny-Man when I was a kid and needed some obscure part or gizmo for my latest backyard project. The game would be about swapping and trading junk.
I tried to distill down all the ideas in “Sheeny-Man” into a simple card based game. Players “Picked” from the different junk piles to acquire junk or trade junk from their junkyards with the other players. Players tried to collect sets of junk which could pay off when they sold them. There was an accumulation phase and an auction phase to each turn. The first phase progressed in clockwise order, but the second Auction phase was initiated by the player who won the last auction. These two phases ran independently, providing an interesting rhythm. At least that was what I intended.
I never could get the game working right, even after about 5 iterations. I finally had to send it off to the prototype graveyard. One day I will make the “Sheeny-Man” game that will bring back the experience of picking through the junkpiles that I enjoyed so much when I was a kid.
The following are additional games that ended up in the graveyard.
I don’t think of these games as failures but rather successes in the wrong direction.
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