Refining Card Layout & Iconography

Continued from “What’s the Hook

When making a set collection game, there needs to be some obvious way for the players to see which cards belong to which sets. And when making a set collection game with cards that can belong to two different sets, there needs to be two obvious ways. Such as the numeral and the suit printed prominently in the corners of a standard playing card.

Good Graphic Design shows, at a glance, which cards can be grouped together. Skyward, read more

Tiny Ninjas

Stephen King has two great rules for anyone aspiring to be a writer: Read a lot & Write a lot. (This is slightly apocryphal, as he has quite a few rules/tips/suggestions, but these are important ones, and I was trying to be dramatic.) These very same rules obviously apply to any creative endeavour. If you want to be a composer you should definitely be listening to lots of music. And if I want to make board and card games, it follows that I should certainly be playing plenty of them.

With that read more

Game Ideas

Game ideas are cheap. This must be true because I have a few of them, and they didn’t cost me anything, save for, you know, a life time of personal experience and endless hours spent watching TV and movies. My memory is not what it used to be, so it seems a good idea to write these ideas down while I have them.

Verdant Grove

… is the magical forest location of my first card game, mentioned in my last couple of posts, and inhabited by Sprites, Nymphs and Gnomes. But I think this simple card game will read more

What’s the Hook?

Continued from “The origin of a beginning

With the origin of a beginning of an idea in mind, I started to think about the Hook of the game. (Oh yes, I had been veraciously absorbing boardgame podcasts, blogs and articles, and had picked up all manner of good ideas about how to move forward in this endeavour.) What would make the game … not unique, I’m certainly under no delusion there … but memorable? What would make someone choose it over all the others that are read more