Game Designer Wannabe

Logo Contest

2010-09-01T06:00:00.002-04:00

Okay, I give up. I am asking the community to help me come up with a logo. Let's start with the carrot. If I select your design as my new logo you get:One free copy of any design of mine that ever gets published "Now hold on there, Michael," you object, "what if you are never published? You've been at this for over four years and have still not been published!" Aha! I have thought of that. I'll

Company Name, Part 5

2010-08-30T06:00:00.001-04:00

This is my last attempt before outsourcing the design. Is this any better?

Company Name, Part 4

2010-08-23T06:00:00.000-04:00

Everyone hated this logo, so how about this one? Thoughts?

NYC BGD Meeting - August 2010

2010-08-16T06:00:00.023-04:00

Last week was the August meeting of the New York City Board Game Designers. This time we were down at the NYU Game Center. It was a nice space, though with a tad of an echo. The first game I played was a combat game with a space theme it was very dice heavy. Very. Dice. Heavy. Even the ships were represented by dice. The type of ship you had was not a choice, but the random result of a die roll.

Municipality - Week 38

2010-08-09T06:00:00.026-04:00

Back on July 31st, Andrew Parks took another look at Municipality for me. I already considered the game to be "done", but wanted him to take one last whack at it before I start shopping it around to publishers. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. There were just a couple of tweaks needed to streamline the rules. Instead of a complicated initial selection meant to balance out the advantage

Company Name, Part 3

2010-07-26T06:00:00.001-04:00

After the tepid reception that my last two proposed company logos received, I decided to pivot from a generic, geographic name to a descriptive name that means something about the way I think about game design. What do you think?

Company Name, Part 2

2010-07-22T06:00:00.002-04:00

In my last post, I promised to show some possible company names and logos. I only have two to show you today, but the other ones were just variations on one of the names, with no substantive differences. Without further ado, here are the two I've come up with so far: So, which one do you prefer? Or should I forget about both and come up with something better? Let me know in the

Company Name

2010-07-19T06:00:00.032-04:00

I'm considering self-publishing one of my designs. Before doing this, however, I need a new company name and logo. Up to now, I had thought my company's name would be GDW Games and its logo would be the one to the right. However, there are two problems. First is that GDW Games is a little too close to Game Designers' Workshop. Although they went out of business over a decade ago, I just don't

Sadly, I'm All About the Flour

2010-07-15T20:34:00.000-04:00

Brett gets at exactly what I usually do wrong.The only question that counts, of course, is to ask of the game: “Is it fun?” “Is it fun?” (bellows the incredulous and imaginary designer). “Didn’t you notice how clever it was? Didn’t you stop to admire all these hand-picked, top-quality ingredients! Or marvel at my cunning for putting all of them together with such subtlety, novelty and elegance?

DexCon 2010

2010-07-12T06:00:00.000-04:00

This convention did not as well as the last one went. At the last convention, I got players for both of the scheduled playtests. This time, no one showed up for either one. While some people asked about the game, no one felt like trying it out. Granted, one of the slots I was given was 9am on Saturday, but even the Sunday afternoon event drew no takers. I'll have to debate whether to bother

Draft of Combined Board

2010-07-08T06:00:00.000-04:00

Based on the responses to the choice between two proposed layouts, I decided to go with a single board for Municipality. I think I've finalized the layout and am curious as to what everyone thinks. For comparison, here is the version 6.2 board: Now here is the version 6.3 board: The only thing missing are the bridges, which will be in the same general location. What does everyone think?

DexCon 2010 Preview

2010-07-06T06:00:00.024-04:00

I will be attending DexCon 2010 and have placed two playtests for Municipality on the convention schedule. Details on the two sessions for the game are below. It would be great if we could replicate the success of the playtests at the last convention. If you're going to be at the convention, come try the game out.B0738: [PLAYTEST] "Municipality" presented by Michael Keller. Municipality is a

One or Two?

2010-06-28T06:00:00.002-04:00

I am prepping Municipality for presentation to publishers. Part of this is finalizing how I would like the board to be laid out. Originally the game's roles were cards that players grabbed. Eventually, someone (apologies to whomever it was for my failure to remember) suggested just leaving the cards where they were and placing player markers on them. I quickly then changed the non-moving cards

Erasing Expectations

2010-06-21T06:00:00.003-04:00

I hosted a game day on Saturday and it went very well. After a couple of games of Zendo and a human victory in Battlestar Galactica (woohoo!), someone asked to play Municipality. During this session, something unexpected happened. One of the players expressed extreme dissatisfaction with how population growth now works. He preferred the original method, where population cubes went directly on

NYC BGD Meeting - June 2010

2010-06-14T06:00:00.001-04:00

I previously asked for opinions on a new, alternate way to show the interactions between building types in Municipality. The response was shockingly negative. Even though I was skeptical before I even showed it, the uniform response against basically obligated me to actually try it out. I was worried that this reaction was the effect of viewing the diagram in absence of the game itself. I am not

Off-Topic: Grid Game

2010-06-13T10:08:00.001-04:00

Via Boardgamenews, Grid Game is shallow, but I think the sound is what makes it astonishingly satisfying. Play it and you'll wake up an hour later not knowing where the time went. It reminds me a lot of The Game of Life. My best score so far is 1421. Can anyone top that?

The Blind Leading the Designer

2010-06-07T06:00:00.001-04:00

It's about time for me to end development on Municipality and move on to other designs while I shop it around to publishers. For this game, I'm going to do something I've never done before: a remote blind playtest. A blind playtest is where the designer does not explain the game to the testers. Instead, the testers are given the prototype and a copy of the rulebook and they have to figure it

Information Redesign

2010-05-31T06:00:00.001-04:00

I have previously spoken about my attempt to deal with growth in Municipality being complicated. The last time, I sought to address this through reducing the frequency of consulting the growth chart. Unfortunately, in further playtests, this didn't seem to do the trick. This time, I've figured out a way to get rid of of the chart entirely. Here is the chart that has proven to be so opaque to

A Great Line . . .

2010-05-28T09:34:00.001-04:00

. . . and a good point from BrettSpiel:How many game designers does it take to change a lightbulb? All of them. One to fix the light, and the rest to say that they wouldn’t have fixed it like that.

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

2010-05-24T06:00:00.001-04:00

So far, we've seen Municipality's new Office Tower tile and its new Housing tile. It is now time to round out the trio with the Factory tile. I wanted this tile to look very polluted. Factories are the only way to actually lower the star rating of other tiles. I came up with two versions, one with only ground pollution and one with both ground and air pollution. Which one do you like better?

Housing Art Tweaks

2010-05-17T21:19:00.000-04:00

In response to some comments on my last post, I have decided that removing a couple of the houses from that tile might be necessary. However, before I go that far, I wanted to try a different option. What do you think of the below change? Is it enough to make the card readable? Or do I still need to actually remove the overlapped houses entirely?

Where the Heart Is

2010-05-17T06:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I showed you Municipality's new Office Tower tile. This week's treat is the redesigned Housing tile. You might notice that I made the stars larger. They were going to be a half-inch in diameter, but that is too small for a token to be easily grabbed, so I had to enlarge them. I will apply the change to the Office tile, but that shouldn't change its appearance too much. Again, here are

Off-Topic: They Should Call It Battlefun Galacticawesome

2010-05-16T23:06:00.001-04:00

I played my third game of Battlestar Galactica today (all three times were with the Pegasus expansion). I was again a human and successfully outed one of the two Cyclons. I, of course, credit my admiraling skills with our escape from New Caprica. My only regret is that I did not get to send Ben (my gaming nemesis, who I am destined to decapitate one day to absorb his power, as there can be only

Shiny New Office Tower

2010-05-10T06:00:00.001-04:00

Following up on my prior post about redesigning the look of Municipality's permit cards, below is the new version of the Office Tower permit. Although I originally only intended to do this for aesthetic reasons, I actually added gameplay functionality changes as well. I am now including the star limit on the permit card itself rather than placing it on the player reference card. What do you

NYC BGD Meeting - May 2010

2010-05-03T06:00:00.042-04:00

This weekend the New York City Board Game Designers had their monthly meeting. There were five of us in attendance, including a visitor from the U.K., who managed to avoid being tarred and feathered by roving bands of Tea Partiers during his stay. First up on the block was Municipality. This was the third test of Municipality since the major changes I had finally relented on making. The test