Game Design Diary – September

Wake me up, when September ends…! Well September has blasted past and with it another quarter of 2018 comes to an end. I’m still designing games, and more importantly, really enjoying myself doing it. In Q3 I wanted to test whether I truly liked game design or whether it was just one of those dreams I had. And after 3 months of pursuing it with far greater diligence and focus than I ever have before, I think I can safely say I do! So I plan to continue this work for the next few months! Now, how did I get on with my aims from last month?

• Roll and Write Global Jam contest – I entered! I didn’t win, but that wasn’t really the point!
• Another mid-sized game – no. Instead I ended up with two new small games. The roll and write from the above contest, and a card game currently called Catch the Rainbow.
• Playtesting Hunt the Bismark – frustratingly not. I’ve yet to get in a solo test of this which I want to do before getting in another player. I really need to get over this emotional block I have on solo testing games…
• Widen my playtesting circle – a little bit! My wife helped me Playtest my roll and write entry which was great! She enjoyed the process and I now feel like we can start testing some of my other games together.

Global Roll and Write Game Jam

I managed to enter this! I’m very proud of myself. The rules were announced Saturday 1st but I wasn’t able to do anything that weekend so I thought I was going to fail this out of the gate. But I had a really good, spontaneous, design session on the train into work Monday morning which was enough to make me believe I could get something together.

What followed was without doubt the fastest prototyping progress I’ve ever managed! A first prototype was made and tested mid-game night, at a meet up. It was ok! But definitely needed some changes. Which meant redesigning the prototype from scratch. In a day. It was intense! But roll and writes are certainly easier to put together than other games, especially with the limits of just sheets of paper imposed in this game jam. Which made them perfect for this kind of turn around in the middle of a working week!

My wife kindly joined in playtesting duties that weekend and we made some rapid iterations to the design over the last two days before the submission deadline. There was definitely a point where I didn’t think I’d have time to get it all finished but, at 10.30pm on the Sunday night, I stopped making tweeks to the rulebook and emailed it all in.

It was quite something taking a non-existent game all the way from idea to print and play with rules in less than a week! I was quite surprised by how challenging pulling the rulebook together was. I definitely found writing out a draft rulebook for Hunt the Bismark last month easier despite it being a far more rules-heavy game! Partly this was the page limit restriction for this competition. But more so I found the core filling mechanic very challenging to describe.

Leaving the rulebook till last thing on the Sunday was definitely not the best way of doing things. It meant I was rushed, and that I had no way of running a blind Playtest for the rulebook. I did my best, but I’m sure this could have been better, and the rulebook is such an important part of a competition like this.

At the end of the day, simply entering feels like a huge achievement! Especially when I wasn’t able to make full use of the entire length of the competition. I have a whole new game! And I feel like I’ve learnt a lot through taking part in the process. Can’t wait for future competitions!

Catch the Rainbow

Since I’ve been aiming to start building a portfolio of games, I wanted to put together another prototype this month and I succeeded with Catch the Rainbow. It’s not the bigger, heavier Euro I have been dreaming of, that will have to wait till later, but it is a game and it works and that makes me super happy! One of the skills I’m working at is converting ideas into prototypes faster so between this and the roll and write entry I’m feeling very proud of what I’ve managed to achieve this month!

The early concept for Catch the Rainbow came out of my appreciation of those 100 card games like The Mind and 6 Nimmt and wondering how I could innovate on that. The idea of applying coloured sets occurred to me and that led to the Rainbow theme which, in the way of these things, took me to a set collection/tableau building game that is probably more reminiscent of Kodama The Tree Spirits than either of the games that got me thinking along these lines! Game Design is strange sometimes.

As with the Roll and Write, this design came together over a couple of train journeys. Then just a Sunday evening with blank cards, coloured markers and a couple of episodes of Jack Ryan to turn into a playable state. I was able to test it out at Playtest UK the next day and it went really well! I’ve got a few ideas for how to focus in on the elements that players particularly enjoyed in that test. Updating this should definitely be a priority next month.

Wren’s Churches

Not too much development happened here. I designed some new scoring cards to begin exploring the design space a little now that I feel comfortable with the game’s core. I was able to get in an unexpected extra playtest which brought up a few interesting points:

1. My new scoring cards might be even better than my original set
2. I found it hard to remember exactly what rules my design was using after a month since the last playtest – I should definitely get a living rulebook written up ready to refer to.
3. Player pieces should totally be Catan style wooden churches. I’ve found a seller doing them for about 16 Euro cents each. I may be picking some up soon!

October Plans/Hopes/Dreams…

As usual, I’ll round out this article with some thoughts on what I want to achieve next month so I can tell you why I didn’t do it at the start of November! Let’s see

• Solo playtest Hunt the Bismark – There must be some way of convincing myself to do some solo testing again. I expect I need some kind of dedicated, regular slot for it, like Sunday morning is solo testing time. So I can’t chicken out of it so easily.
• Make a step towards a bigger Euro design – I’m not going to pretend I’m going to finish a whole prototype, I just want to make some progress. Design an element or two. Maybe put an idea on to paper. Things like that.
• Explore Catch the Rainbow – as I said above, I have some interesting ideas for where to go with this and I’m quite excited about what I’ve achieved so far with the design.
• Wren’s Churches rulebook – obviously more design would be good too but now I’m happier with the core mechanics getting a draft rulebook written will be extremely helpful for future playtests!
• Roll and Write – I should hopefully be getting judges feedback on this within the next month so once I get that, some more revisions will certainly be in order!

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Are you working on a game design? Tell me about it in the comments below!