What Game to Design

Have you just started designing a game, or are you about to start one?

Designing your first board game

Do not put all your ideas in one game. Just pick one thing, and make a game about that.

Start small. Your first game should be very small. Being small is not a downside. Games do not sell more as they increase in size — probably the reverse.

Got your idea for the new game? Great! Can you make an even simpler version?

By simple, I mean really simple. Medium-light (Splendor, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride) are all way too big. Try something more the size of Love Letter. (It's sixteen cards and a few cubes.) If you design something complex, it will not only be slow, it will be complex to design.

In the game Coup, players have two character cards in their hand, and some money. There is nothing else. On a player's turn, they use one of their characters. Using the Duke gains three coins. The Assassin spends three coins to eliminate a character. The Contessa blocks this assassination. The twist is that each player's cards are hidden, so you can pretend to be any character you like, until another player challenges you. This is all the game is. It's a very successful game, and the ideal size of game to design as your first game.

Even designing a small game is an interesting challenge.

If you've started designing something medium or heavier as your first game, stop working on it. It will not succeed. You do not have the time or skill to even finish it. I've seen beginners work on huge games for years. Many of them have expensive, professional art prematurely done. The faster you abandon this huge project, the better. It's an important and painful learning experience. Hopefully, it doesn't chew up all your formative years of game design.

At the very least, start working on a new, much smaller project as well as the monstrosity.

Avoid having a board

Think about iteration time. You want to get through your revisions as fast as possible.

You don't want to have to slog through a few hours of work for each revision.

If your game is made of one (or two) simple types of components, work will be much faster. It's all the different types of components that make work slow.

A game with a board almost certainly has agents or objects that go on the board, plus all the usual other components, like cards and tokens.

Boards also require a lot of graphic design and arrangement.

Avoid having a board in your game.

My games

I've just designed a long series of medium-light weight games. The publishable ones took over 100 revisions, and 1-2 years of design each.

As I write this, I'm just starting design on my 21st game. It's my first medium-weight game (comparable to Catan). It is not an easy task. I can't get my head around the whole thing. Everything interlinks into everything else, and I need to work on only parts of it at a time, so I don't change too much and disrupt the larger structure. There's a lot of work in just creating the components so many times. The game will likely take 200 revisions, and up to 2 years. This is despite me working on it very regularly, and my improved design and playtesting methodologies. Update: I've abandoned that project.

Inspiration

If you're completely new, a great place to start is by inspiration — making your own version of a game you like. You know this game works, so it's possible to make another game in this space. Also, whenever you're lost, you can just refer back to the original, and see how they did it. You can even do this by just starting with another game, and modifying it until it becomes completely different, or you learn enough to make your own game. I often make my own games, inspired by other games.

If you're inspired by another game, you should probably not just copy its theme as well. Choose something radically different.

A new interaction

It's difficult to come up with a brand new mechanic, and it's even harder to execute it, to make a great game. I've tried this, and failed, more than once. Almost all games are made up of pre-existing mechanics.

If your design starts with the mechanics, try to create a new combination. Use two existing mechanics, but put them together in a new way. You don't have to invent a totally new mechanic, yet your game will be mechanically unique and interesting. How about a word game that involves an auction? How about a war game where you're also trying to pick up and deliver things?

Don't design theme-first

I recommend starting your design with the mechanics, not the theme. It's much easier to use a pre-existing mechanical framework, that's known to work in other games. It's hard enough to design games to begin with. These days, I don't tell people how to design a game theme-first. I can't even do it well myself.

If you really do want to start with a theme, don't invent your own mechanics. Use a mechanical base that already works. You can even steal the theme and mechanics from a single game.

Should you be creative?

If you're trying to design very light games, your biggest problem is going to be finding something new, that works. There's not much design space down there, and it's been heavily mined. The games are so simple that they can't really be "fixed". They either work, or they don't. You'll need to just try all kinds of creative stuff, because you're really looking for something new.

If you're designing more complex games, it's easy to make something that's different enough. There is huge design space left, in established genres. It's more about the craft, and less about invention. It's my advice to be less creative here, and stick to the kinds of games that work.

Radlands is clearly in the same genre as Magic: the Gathering, and its design can reference or contrast against Magic constantly.

If you try something too creative, you will spend a very long time trying to get the basics right, before you even begin to add quality to the game.

When I began designing board games, I was just designing for fun, and I designed all kinds of creative stuff. Now that I'm serious, and getting more serious all the time, this is a much more complicated question.

I'm far less creative than I used to be. My successful projects, like Radlands, have been in established genres. I put a big twist on the genre, and I execute it really well, but I don't do anything brand new. I've ventured out into creative-land many times, and not found a publishable game.

These days, I don't need to wow publishers with something novel, like most designers would probably have to. I only design for quality. I stick to safe ground that I (or other designers) have mapped out.

I don't follow the trends. I design things in spaces that were popular years ago, but are now out of fashion. If you're inspired by a game, don't be inspired by a recent game, or you'll be jumping on the same bandwagon as someone else.

People just want good games. There's little reward for making something novel.

Novelty might help you get published, but that's a low bar you want to clear without having to compromise anything.

Better to just stick to safe territory, where there are known to be good games, and give yourself a ten times higher chance of creating something worthwhile. It's also much easier, as you can be informed by the games that already exist in that space.

Gavan, the boss of Roxley (who published Radlands) once asked me "why don't you just make more duelling card games?" That was a good point. I do want to try new stuff, but I really know how to make that kind of game, and I could make an entire career out of designing duelling games.

Because of the amount of money my games are likely to make, my board game design is actually an important and serious part of my life. I need to make sensible financial decisions here. This all points in the same direction: create really good games, quickly. Do low-risk projects, that I know I can do.

Despite all this, I'm still breaking my own rules, and doing a few things that are passion projects.

I'll eventually circle down into a few niches, where I make follow-up games, in genres I'm good at. I'm still exploring niches, and I expect I'll settle into them.

Uwe Rosenberg designs a family of similar, worker-placement games like Agricola and A Feast For Odin. I like those games, and will buy more. The lack of novelty is a plus.

Do your research

You can now use AI to search for other games that have a similar idea to yours. Check them out, and make sure you're not reinventing the wheel.