First steps in game design
So, you love playing games and you’d like to try to design some games yourself, but you’re not sure where to start. Here are three ideas to ease you into game design…
1. Create twists for existing games
If you find yourself wondering what would happen if you adapt a particular mechanic in a published or public domain game, then try it. Add new components, change a key rule or alter the victory conditions. Try these:
- Create a competitive mode for a co-operative game, or a co-operative mode for a competitive game.
- Create a game that uses the components, but not the board, of a current game to create an entirely new one. Or create a game that uses the board, but none of the components of a current game.
- Combine two classic games to make a mash-up.
- Make a game expansion that adds new characters with different abilities to an existing game.
- Make a game expansion that adds new power cards or resource types to an existing game.
- Create a solo or two-player variant of a game that starts with a higher player count.
- Alter or adapt a mechanic in an existing game to completely change the outcome and the strategy required to be successful.
Domi-No-Go: A early solo puzzle game
Iamonds: An early ‘boxes’ inspired pen and paper game
Rainbow Throw Pro: An early roll & write inspired by dice which have little dice inside.
Gobby Dice: An early word game
2. Tackle small design challenges.
There are many open board game design competitions that you can use as inspiration for house challenges – or, indeed, you could choose to enter. The ‘design contests’ forum on Board Game Geek is a good place to start. Or you could try these ideas for starters:
- Design a game that uses one standard pack of playing cards and three D6 dice.
- Design a short game using something un-gamelike that you have around the house – for example, the spices in the spice rack, an old set of toy cars, a keyboard, flowerpots or egg boxes.
- Design a 15-minute cooperative game for exactly two players about Valentine’s day.
- Design a bidding game where you are using cards to win cards that you hope will let you win more cards.
- Design a game that uses exactly 18 cards, at least one of which must remain physically hidden on your person until a big reveal at the end of the game.
- Design a game around a chosen theme – for example, Vikings, moon exploration or rival chocolate tycoons.
- Design a game using a diminishing resource (crisps?) where the game is eaten as you play.
- Design a roll & write game about monsters cooking brunch that you can email to friends and family and all play on Zoom.
3. Design a game a day
Set yourself the task of coming up with a new game every day. You don’t have to actually create prototypes for all these ideas, just sit down for 20-30 minutes every day to map out an idea. It doesn’t matter if the ideas aren’t very good, most ideas that most people have aren’t. But the more you practise coming up with ideas and thinking about them, the more natural this becomes and the more likely you are to come up with more ideas in the future. Schedule time in your calendar to do this. Look for inspiration each day so that you’re not coming to the page cold, or ask ChatGPT to give you a stimulus for your design that day.
Contra-Banned: An early design about pupils smuggling goodies into their boarding school, which came from a game-a-day challenge.
Suits You: An underwhelming early card and dice game with a fabric board.
When you’ve got a game idea that you want to pursue, follow these steps:
- Make a prototype quickly. It’s important that it is playable, but it doesn’t have to be pretty. Your aim here is to get the game to the table as speedily as possible. Resist the temptation to try to solve every problem before the first playtest. There’s so much more that will happen in a playtest than you can theoretically predict.
- Playtest. Play the game with other people and see what happens. Identify the bits of the game that are the most fun and interesting for players. Also identify the bits that don’t work very well.
- Develop. Make changes that lean more into the fun/interesting things and away from the boring/frustrating things. Work quickly to a second prototype.
- Playtest again… Then repeat the develop/playtest cycle until you have a game that you’re happy with.
I think it’s very helpful to work on multiple games at the same time. This stops you from getting too tied up and emotionally invested in any one game. It also gives you practise at working on different types of games and solving different kinds of problems. Tackling it as an exercise in learning about game design (rather than wanting to get a game published) is probably the most fulfilling approach.
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