Any experience with making a board game?
My friend and I embarked upon a journey over the past few months to create a tabletop board game. The interesting part is that we were motivated by the emergence of generative AI and the capabilities it had in rapid prototyping concepts. On a whim we said, let's see how far we can push making a board game. We pushed Midjourney, ChatGPT, and a variety of creative tools to help build the foundation for our game. We both have design chops and are into diy, creative design, and 3d printing, and technology to help get this thing past the finish line.
We are now at the point were after many iterative sessions, we have a functional and fun to play game! Our intention is to give it away as a free downloadable that folks can 3d print and paper print all the parts so they can play too! Huzzah! We are balancing the rules and creating the instructions which is not something we are relying on AI aside sticking to the theme. We are in search of inspirato on what makes gameplay fun for folks today.
Question What are the most fun, exciting, or challenging aspects of any tabletop or board games you play? What keeps you engaged?
EDIT
I didn't give many specifics on the game itself, and figured it might help. Remember we used AI to come up with this storyline. The prompt was to write a story for a "Sci-fi Christmas Horror" board game...
The basic premise is that you are attending a party at the North pole celebrating the research of Dr. Frost on ancient Christmas magic. Predictably things go bad, and you have to find your way out before it's too late and you are killed by a troop of Christmas themed monsters.
The games objective is to work together to escape the facility by collecting sleigh parts, fighting monsters, navigating a maze in dark hallways, and visiting special rooms to solve puzzles. It's all kinds of ridiculous but fun it its own way.
Congratulations on getting your game this far! You've definitely piqued my curiosity, but sadly I don't have a 3D printer.
What keeps me engaged in any board game is the under-the-table deals and subterfuge we have in our games. It's become a house rule that anything goes with alliances/rivalries around the table.
Started with Monopoly and Risk, then Catan of course, and now it's moved on to every game. Even Trouble, we've started allowing willing players to swap pieces. It makes for an interesting dynamic to have these strong bonds between couples tested when one of them betrays another.
Same! Playing Monopoly without shady deals just sounds bleak.
Thanks for your insights and I do appreciate having that as part of many games I play. One detail about this game I didn't mention is it's a co-op style experience. The idea is to take 2-4 players through the game and survive until the end. There is a bit of strategy to ensure we can all make it. You have me thinking about how your idea but from the perspective of how it could along a team dynamic.
I've illustrated a handful of board games, a couple of which that have gone to market (or are on their way). I'm also designing the rulebook for one currently.
I've certainly learnt a great deal from each about readability, silhouettes, colour palettes, printing, accessibility and so on. I think there's a big emphasis on those when it comes to video games (except printing), but almost every board game I own falls short somewhere in some crucial way (certainly not excluding the games I've worked on). Maybe expectations are lower, maybe we're still in early phases of the hobby's uptick in interest.
Often game designers don't seek the help of an artist or designer and tackle it themselves, but also, when they do, the artist has less experience working on the format. So many artists at the moment want to work on video game assets, I hardly ever see a board game portfolio.
I really like the idea of print & play, especially as you're able to update the source files as issues might arise and feedback comes in. Giving a game as much to change and grow is always going to lead to a better game.
Your experience sounds interesting and I'm curious what games you have contributed. In our case, we are a bit a jack-of-all trades duo. My buddy is and artist by trade and I moreso the technologist. Some of the details you mentioned are likely applied, but not consciously. Tha ks for calling it out though because its something we will want to be more intentional at when it comes to making it available!
For what's reached market, I've worked on a game called 'Dead and Breakfast' which is receiving an expansion soon. It's quite surreal as a lot of the base game I worked on while still studying design many years ago, so it was a lot of fun coming back for the expansion with everything I've learnt since. And then before and after that, a number of games that for one reason or another never quite worked out. But hey, it happens! It unfortunate a good deal of work I'm quite proud of will probably never see the light.
Sounds like you've got a good duo! And yes, so many of these things you intuit. It's amazing what you don't catch yourself or even within a bigger team - there's an infinite number of perspectives it'd be impossible to account for them all. Sounds as though you've got a fun game, keep playing an have fun with it!
That's awesome! Thank you for sharing your experience and your contributions. Are you the illustrator and came up with the character designs. That box art is done well and I appreciate the look of the characters in the foreground. That style is a favorite of mine.
Yes! I didn't work on logos or type, but otherwise produced all the 2D art assets. Not my typical style but they let me have fun with the theme, which I really appreciated.
This is a lovely idea - I'll echo the sentiments of others about print & play.
I'm a bit of an outlier for tabletop gaming; I'm a systems guy in my professional life, and I can't turn it off when I game.
I'll sit down and very quickly think "oh, this is a brinkmanship game, where the players' advantage comes from sharing permutations of the cards they draw up, and they're balanced by the advancing difficulty track" - and then optimize to win. Yeah, I'm real fun at parties.
The games I engage with the most are the cooperative ones about constrained communication. "Concept" is probably my all-time favourite. I have a mild visual impairment, so clean design is a big bonus. Elegant rule systems also help when convincing people to play.
My favourite game outside my preferred style is Tsuro - it's a game that I can optimize out, but I still enjoy playing.
Hey! You sparked a thought with your comment! Y
Our game is cooperative but we never discussed communication and you bring up a great point. We could work with players having actions that others wouldn't know. It could make it a challenge but also rewarding as whatever perk/buff someone has can be gradually discovered during gameplay instead of being outright known. Thanks!
Ps - We'll have to check out the game you mentioned
Congrats! If you want it to be Print & Play, how about adding paper miniatures? Not everyone have a 3D printer.
Fair enough. 3d printing isn't as ubiquitous with everyone, and while there are options to send it out for print it would hit the pocketbook. We want this to be free (as possible). I was joking we could make the origami version on our Livestream the other day, but you are giving credence to the idea. As it stands now it could nearly be all paper sans dice.
I've had a lot of fun playing board games and prototypes on Tabletop Simulator and it's been great to see official versions of stuff like Gloomhaven and Slay the Spire on there.
I really enjoy deck building games as they have a fun mix of randomness and strategy that offers a lot of replay-ability so you cant just rely on a single best way to play every game.
Variability in play is precisely what we think will help the replay-value. We have a mix of buffs, events, and actions that change the approach. One thing we have been debating is the end game scenarios(s). There is a coop adventure to get to the end that triggers a final set of actions to win. I really love the concept of taking early game actions and collected "cards" into the end game. Thanks!
For coop games: Complicated enough rules and individual turns that it's impossible for one person to decide the group strategy. This is advice from a friend of mine who's a huge board game enthusiast.
My personal desire is for no randomness to have between player turn and enemy turn, so that you can perfectly plan out your actions, down to calculating {individual hp, gold, points, whatever}. If this isn't a normal part of the mechanics (i.e. randomness does exist), then there should be an easy way to set house rules for this & in exchange make the game slightly harder to win, that feels balanced. I'm a fan of randomness setting up wildly different encounters each time, not a fan of randomness disallowing you from being 100% precise in your setup and knowing it will work no matter what the enemy turn does.