Category: Game Designer’s Notes
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Game Designer’s Notes #9: Cooperative games
Trying to beat other people isn’t the only way to play games. Sometimes working together can be fun too, and that’s where cooperative games come in.
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Game Designer’s Notes #8: Preventing never-ending games
Everyone knows that one game that takes eons to play. Is there a way to prevent games from getting that long?
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Game Designer’s Notes #7: Simplifying mechanics
If faced between choosing a complicated mechanic and a simple one, here’s why you should (almost) always pick the simpler one.
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Game Designer’s Notes #6: Catch-up systems
Everybody hates games when they’re so far behind that it’s not even funny. How do good games avoid such situations?
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Game Designer’s Notes #5: Paths to victory
From battle to trade to building, there’s usually more than one way to win a game. (Or, as they say, skin a cat. Ugh.) But why do game designers do that?
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Game Designer’s Notes #4: Types of victories
Chess. Catan. Taboo. Exploding Kittens. Each game has a different victory condition, but how many kinds of victories are there?
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Game Designer’s Notes #3: Types of luck
Dice rolling and flipping coins aren’t the only two types of luck there are. But what are the other types, and how do they affect game design?
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Game Designer’s Notes #2: Varying luck
Everyone loves it in games when the dice are on your side. But how much die rolling (or how little) should games have?
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Game Designer’s Notes #1: Elimination
Everybody hates it when they get eliminated from a fun game. But can elimination still be used in a fun way?
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Game Designer’s Notes #0: Introduction
From Tic Tac Toe to Catan, the world of tabletop games is growing and active. Join me in my exploration of tabletop gaming.
64th Opinion 