Game Design

Following up on an earlier post about "euro" boardgames, I wanted to talk about how I ever got the idea to design my own games. Going back a ways... I have always enjoyed creating things. As a kid, I would draw mazes in which you had to visit different rooms in a certain order to solve them. I played Dungeons & Dragons and created characters and dungeons for other players. I created stories on cassette tapes. I even designed an outdoor game where one person has to face different creatures in increasing difficulty. This would involve fighting with sticks and frisbees and losing limbs. If you lost an arm, you had to put it behind your back. If you lost a leg, you had to hop on one. I think I still have the rules to that game somewhere, I am not kidding!!!

Since I have started playing board and card games recently, I first started creating variations on existing games. I came up with a few Poker variants that I called Viva Bush and Die Kerry. I helped Mike with his redesigned Chess game by playing it and brainstorming about new piece types and how they would move.

My first attempt at my own original design was a Rock-Paper-Scissors card game. I found various clip art on the web, designed the cards with computer software, and printed them out on card stock. I even laminated them. This first attempt was a very simplistic game and after playing it a few times, I knew that I wanted to create something more engaging.

Thus, began my journey with creating my game Castle Raiders which I have spent countless hours on for the last year and 1/2. The idea for this game sprung from the idea of stealing items from castles. The more items you tried to raid, the more risk you would take that you would be found by the guards, so there is a press your luck feel to it. However, the more items you raided the better off you were. Players would then be able to trade these items and it would benefit them to create sets of items as that made the individual items worth more. Players would then be able to purchase weapons and other abilities that would help them in their castle raids. Each phase fed off each other.

In the early days, the game was fun but had flaws. First of all, one game could not even be finished in one sitting. The game was more of a race game in which the player who got through all of the castles first would win. This made the end of the game very anti-climatic and not exciting. Mike, Elizabeth, Bethany, and I played it a lot and each time I would make changes to the design. Over time, the design got better and better as I took some things out, and added other ideas. I thought up, tested, and discarded a countless number of ideas, always looking for the "Best" way to approach the design. I spent countless hours printed, cutting, and corner rounding cards. I have used countless a lot, but if I had to estimate I would say that I have maybe spent about 500 hours working on this game!!

Since the early days, I have exposed the game to some of my other friends and most recently at the Florida Suncoast Gamers gamesday. The feedback that I have gotten has generally been good and has always helped me to improve the game in some way. Sometimes I would take a step back before taking two steps forward, but that is just how it works when you are testing many different ideas.

As of today, I have the latest version of the game ready to go for another playtest. My latest changes were big - I created an actual track in which all players track their progress in the castle each raid. With Bethany's great idea, I completely redesigned the player boards. I am really looking forward to showing off the latest version.

In the meantime, I also have been designing a dice game involving the use of the common types of dice used in Role-playing games (D4, D6, D8, D10, and D12). I will be entering this game, which I am calling Dice Invaders into the About.com 2006 Game Design Competition. I played the game with Bethany for the 1st time 2 nights ago, and she liked it. An earlier version was played with Mike, Elizabeth, and Sean and everyone had a good time making up names for the bad guys (the Norts!).

I have a few other ideas kicking around my head, but generally I like to work on one thing and finish it before going on to the next. One thing that I have really had to learn is that you must have a tremendous amount of patience if you want to see a game design improve to the point where it is good enough to potentially be published.

In that regard, I wrote an article that I posted over at BGDF on the "7 Traits of a Highly Effective Game Designer", in which patience is 1 of those traits. Only time will tell if I have what it takes to be successful in game design, but for now I am happy with how I am progressing.

I have to send out a big THANKS to everyone that has playtested my games so far as well as thank BGDF for their suggestions and discussion as well as just absorbing as much information as I can about game design as possible.

So, in sum, I think that designing has always been in my blood since I was young and game design is my current outlet for that creativity. I guess blogging is another form of creativity and probably the reason I wanted to start my own.

Thanks for reading!