Talking to a game design colleague it became clear that the idea behind Moonflight was a good solid one, there needed to be a good, interesting background. My first instinct was to lean towards a slightly dark, mysterious, fantasy theme. There are several backgrounds t...

I admire the simplicity of an elegant design idea, hopefully most games designers and developers do. The concept of a deck builder is extremely elegant. The act of building a deck is satisfying and includes action, engine and scoring in a single simple act. So it goes...

Urban Nights is designed to allow multiple players to engage in a small playing area in relatively short time. It requires each player to have only three miniatures and to place a series of objectives. Game play then revolves around a largely non-directly confrontation...

Pitch and Yaw is designed to simulate one simple fact, that ships at sea are a constantly shifting environment and unsecured debris or the sea itself are often more deadly than intentional combat. Pitch and Yaw simulates a boarding action combat between two sides in a...

Moonflight is based on a basic deck builder pattern but extended by the secondary concept of a "deck unbuilder". By valuing a player's hand rather than their deck during final scoring it opens up a secondary layer of play and speeds up final scoring. 

Next I found Enchanted Forest (1982) which is an awful game, and paid £18 for it and two other games, Ghost Party and Spy Ring. Enchanted Forest is easily the worst of the three. Ironically, Spy Ring is actually pretty ok. It does mean that for £6 at best Enchanted For...

SSO has a number of semi-hidden references throughout its artwork and flavour text. The whole feel is entrenched in film futurism from the '70s and '80s and retro futurism from the '90s onward, almost any film or TV show you care to think of is referenced. However ther...

Early in 2017 I decided to engage in the slightly fool quest of collecting the entire Spiel De Jahres based on the fact that I noticed I already had six. I've decided on two entirely arbitrary rules, one I will neither look up what the actually SDJ winners are nor buy...

Language in games design regularly requires a specificity and accuracy alien to casual speech, made all the more onerous by the necessity of brevity to aid memorable retention. Also not aided by the tendency of some people to use words like onerous. Probably the worst...