Welcome to a collection of Games I’m Designing, and an assortment of half-baked ideas.
At the end of December 2018, I decided to dust off an old game I had designed and put aside in 1986 called Para-Mania. It had been a while since I had played many games beside Euchre, so I decided to start with some research into the current state of board games.
Holy Crap!, I’ve missed a lot in the last 30 years or so. I spent the next couple years listening to every board game design podcast I could get my ears on, as well as anything about playing board games, psychology, design, and anything else that could be remotely related to board games. I also picked up a few books on board game design, product design and psychology as well, and am slowly and methodically working my way through them. I started playing the newer games and buying many the important games that have shaped the hobby these last 30 years. In other words, decided to go “All In”.
Two and a half years later, my game collection has grown to over 120 games, and my library has grown as well. I’m currently working on a few designs at the moment and have more game concepts and unique mechanisms documented than I can possibly pursue in my remaining years. Hopefully I can pass these ramblings of a madman on to somebody who can use them, before I’m on the wrong side of the dirt.
So far the games have been anything but successful. They ranged from mediocre to outright disasters. I’ve heard that every game designer has a dozen or so bad games that they have to design before they make a good one. It looks like I’m about half way there now.
You can check out the Prototype Graveyard if you want to see all the mistakes….er I mean…Lessons learned.
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