Sorting Through Old Ideas
I'm starting a three-month sabbatical from work next week—something I've long needed. I haven't had more than two weeks away from work in over 15 years. I'm not really sure what to expect or how I'll feel. For now, I have the same anxiety I get every time I take time off work; I'm trying to get "all the things" completed at work to hand off before I leave. Oddly, I don't feel a heavier weight than normal, likely because I've been planning my leave for a couple of months now.
I haven't spent much time working on board game designs in the past couple of months. I've brainstormed some ideas in the shower, but actually sitting down to write, draw, or produce anything hasn't really happened. Maybe it's a lack of motivation? I feel tired all the time. Sometimes I wonder how parents are able to be parents. I struggle to find the energy, and my sleep has been poor. I have a few major goals for this sabbatical, in no particular order:
- Improve healthy habits such as better sleep and exercise.
- Formalize a will.
- Try to treat game design as a day job.
I could dive into #1 and #2, but presumably, you are here to read about board games and design.
Dusting off the Cobwebs
Due to my lack of content at this moment, I figured I would open my Google Drive and see what sort of ideas made it from my brain onto (digital) paper. Let's take a peek at my Google Drive folder labeled "Game Design - Tabletop."
It's amazing to see some of these ideas go back over a decade. Interestingly, some of my other recent ideas are not here as I didn't set up my workspace to sync them to Google Drive yet. But for these, I'll give you a rundown.
Rolling Poker
This is the one game I've written about in great detail on this blog. See my first entry about it here:
Alex
Mechanized
This is a competitive one-versus-one card game focused on mech battles. Players build and customize their mechs using various parts, each with unique attributes, and engage in strategic combat against each other.
- Me, 2024
The main hook for this game is that players select several cards representing mech parts to construct a unique mech. Each part card is associated with a set of action cards that are shuffled into a deck. The goal is to simplify the deck construction complexity often found in free-form deck-building games like Magic: The Gathering.
Thief V Thief
This two-player game has two thieves robbing banks and museums. A set of location cards with gems is played to the middle of the table. Players simultaneously play action cards indicating what they can steal. Some cards are faster than others. The goal is to collect more gems than your opponent by beating them to collecting sets of gems faster.
This game stands out as probably my first game that actually felt fun.
Yum Yum
Ever since meeting my amazing partner and getting her into board games, I've been trying to combine her love of food with my love for board games. This one is inspired by the simple deck-building actions of Century: Golem Edition and the wacky hijinks of the video game PlateUp!
Players use cards representing kitchen tools to prep food using combinations of ingredients that customers desire.
Cook Off
This literally just has a spreadsheet in it that I don't understand. Yum Yum is clearly the superior game...
Mutant Middle Manager
This is my oldest design. The idea is that players act as middle managers hiring and mutating their employees to be more effective workers. I took some inspiration from Evolution, which has you applying various traits to invent new kinds of animals. In my game, however, a third arm might make someone a more efficient organizer.
When I actually tested my game, the result was not fun. Task actions were completed by rolling dice, and I have since learned that dice are often not the best mechanism for handling output randomness.
FF Job Game
"FF" here stands for Final Fantasy. This concept isn't very fleshed out, but I have always loved Final Fantasy V, where you assign various "jobs" to your party members, such as White Mage or Monk.
Once in a while, when I'm really into a video game, I like to think about how I would turn it into a board game.
Scrappers / Mech Game
In the near future, war mechs have been standardized with interchangeable parts to allow quick adaptability for any scenario. A country, torn apart by many years of civil war, is now controlled by multiple factions fighting for dominance. The factions build their forces from the salvage left behind on the battlefield, adapting on the fly to counter their enemies.
Dang, past me had some cool ideas. This one has a central market of mech cards or "scrap" that players take to build mechs and perform actions to battle each other.
Action RPG Card Game
A generic fantasy co-op deck-building dungeon crawler. This game was influenced by Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game. I found that card game intensely satisfying and obviously designed for expansions. Shortly after it came out, however, Fantasy Flight Games lost their Warhammer license.
I borrowed a lot of Akihiko Yoshida's art from Tactics Ogre to put on my cards as placeholders. His art is amazing.
Don't Starve Tabletop Game
I'm always a fan of crafting games, and this was another one of my attempts to turn a video game into a board game. This game largely consisted of players exploring a grid of face-down cards representing the world, gathering resources, and converting them into tools.
A Second Chance
It's fun seeing all my past ideas. I realize a few have always lived in the back of my mind, and I would like to spend some time trying to make them work over the next couple of months. For now, I'm taking note of the following:
- Mechanized
- Thief V Thief
- Mutant Middle Manager