Othello’s fleet currently defends a pivotal strategic point in this sector, defending his people millenia in the past to ensure stability for a split dimension where his people were not routed.
As their dear friend Romeo turns to larger goals for the sake of Juliet, Mercutio steps in to fight a personal battle against Tybalt.
When creating a game (especially a card game), keywords can be an extremely useful design tool. When used effectively, keywords can help convey a lot of complex information to the player in a quick and accessible way. But when used incorrectly, you can accidentally leave players overwhelmed and frustrated. So when should you use keywords in your game, and how can you use them effectively? Let’s learn the key to using keywords.
Your success with Rosalind will depend on your ability to act with bravery and your ability to pivot at a moment’s notice. Do you have what it takes to win?
Having a pre-existing audience is one of the biggest predictors of success for a Kickstarter campaign. While that’s great if you already have thousands of followers, it can be very intimidating when you’re just starting out. How are you supposed to get people to follow you when you haven’t released anything yet?
This was the exact situation we were in when we decided to crowdfund Captain’s Gambit. When we started out on our journey five years ago, we knew basically nothing about marketing or community management. But through a lot of research (and a lot of trial and error), we’ve managed to cultivate a fun, kind, and growing community.
So how did we do it? Well, today we’re going to share some of the steps we took to build an audience from scratch. Follow this guide and you’ll be well on your way to a sizeable following in no time!
A while back, AC took a deep dive into the many different ways you can modify Kings Cup to serve your drinking game needs. And while that is still an awesome compendium, it got me thinking: what if you don’t like Kings Cup? What if you prefer games like Among Us, Killer Queen, or hell even Captain’s Gambit? Is there a way to transform your favourite game into a drinking game?
Today, I’m going to walk you through my 4-step process to turn any game into a drinking game. Once we’ve gone over how to do it, I’ll also give some examples to help you out. Let’s get started!
As their dear friend Romeo turns to larger goals for the sake of Juliet, Mercutio steps in to fight a personal battle against Tybalt.
Bo Moore is a illustrator, artist and writer living in New Zealand. She's worked on everything from children's book illustrations to concept art, and specializes in the weird and the nonhuman - aliens, monsters, animals, and everything in between.
Lady Macbeth is a captain best known for her ruthless ambition. In order for her to survive her accession, she needs to slowly collect blood while remaining undetected. Then, when the moment is right, she can reveal herself and claim the victory.
On the surface, she might just seem like some kind of bloody Prospero. And, to be fair, that was basically her original design pitch. But while these two captains share some notable similarities, they also have one key difference: context.
Last week I wrote about game jams and why you should give them a try. Though I still love game jams and think that every game designer should try them out at least one, most game jams are far from perfect. While they can be a great opportunity to meet new people, refine your design skills, and inspire your creativity, those benefits come with some notable drawbacks. Not everyone has 24-72hrs of consecutive free time available to make a game. Even if you do have the time, making a game within such a tight deadline is super stressful. Some people certainly thrive under that kind of pressure, but for people like me I wish I had a bit more breathing room. So how can you make game jams less stressful? Slow them down.
In case you’ve never heard of them before, a Game Jam is basically a hackathon for game developers. The goal is to create a full game from scratch within a very limited amount of time (typically 24-72hrs). Often you’ll create your game in a small team, but you can also work solo if that’s more your style.
Most game jams will have a creative theme that participants must adhere to, such as “Occult Classic,” “Lost & Found,” or “Evolution.” Game jams might also have technical constraints for participants that want to spice things up, such as building the game in a specific programming language, only using sound effects you recorded using your voice, or making all the art in the game monochrome.
If you’re anything like me, you’re probably in a similar boat. Between new releases, Steam Sales, and Humble Bundles, your library has grown steadily over the years. But when it comes time to pick something to play, you find yourself playing to the same ol’ games. Don’t get me wrong, the games you keep coming back to are likely really good (believe me, I’m very happy with all the time I’ve spent playing Hades, Hearthstone, Slay the Spire, Spelunky, and The Binding of Isaac). But playing the same things over and over again does nothing to chip at your ever-growing backlog of games.
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of incredible games out there, and if you keep yourself limited to only a handful of them you’re missing out on so many amazing experiences. Especially as a game designer, I want to play as many different games as possible so that I can make the best games I can.
So, how can you actually start playing your unplayed games?
When I look back at the games that I played in 2020, a lot of them didn’t actually come out last year. Sure, a couple of them did, but most of them were either older games I finally got a chance to play or games I grew to appreciate more while stuck in lockdown. So for this year-in-review list, I’m gonna take a bit more of a personal approach. Rather than just limiting myself to new releases, I’m going to highlight the games I played that mattered to me. Some of these games have been out for quite some time, but I believe each one of them deserves to be on this list for helping me get through this wild year.
As I’ve talked about in the past, balancing games is really hard. And while that’s true for all games, card games in particular are very tricky to balance. Often cards games will feature dozens if not hundreds of unique cards, all of which could have unintended game-breaking interactions with one another. As a designer, you need a way to keep specific cards separated while still providing players with the freedom to make whatever decks they want to play. Thankfully, there’s a simple design trick that does just that: factions!
Due to current social distancing guidelines, it’s basically impossible to run in-person playtests anymore. This was a huge problem for us, especially since we had just unlocked a bunch of extra stretch goal content that needed to be tested ASAP. How are you supposed to playtest a board game if you can’t meet up with people anymore? Enter Tabletop Simulator.
There are two key things you need to do to win in a social deception game. The first, obviously, is accomplish your primary objective. This is usually fairly straightforward and varies depending on what game you are playing. In a game like Captain’s Gambit, your objective could be killing your opponents, gathering resources, or keeping your allies alive. However, the second thing you need to do is much trickier: you need to keep your primary goal hidden. If you don’t other players will know what they need to do to stop you. For example, in Among Us, half of the Imposters’ job is to make sure the Crewmates don’t find out who they are. It’s not enough to just murder everyone; they need to secretly murder everyone.
This second goal is the same regardless of what social deception game you’re playing. This means if you want to make your own social deception game, you’re going to need to design ways that players can keep their true intentions undetected. So how can you help your players stay hidden? Today, I’m going to share a sneaky design trick we used in Captain’s Gambit to empower our players to hide in plain sight.
We’ve talked extensively on this blog about why you should design games, why they are so awesome for self-expression, and how you can create your first game. But once you’ve taken the first step, it can be hard to know where to go to learn more. Today, I’m going to share some of the resources I personally use to expand my knowledge of game design. Though there are countless amazing creators out there, here are ten of my personal favourites.
Despite their many revisions throughout the development of Captain’s Gambit, the core concept behind Titus has remained the same. Inspired by D.Va from Overwatch, Alvin pitched Titus as a “last-stand” captain. The idea was that right when they were about to die they would suddenly explode, taking multiple players down with them. By tying the amount of damage dealt to their blood, players could estimate the impact someone would have if they died and were secretly Titus. This created a tricky tension between killing Titus off early to reduce their reveal’s power, or leaving them alive as a potential ticking time bomb.
A few weeks ago, I broke down some of the many ways that designers can classify their players. I purposefully kept that post broad and mainly focused on what some of the different typologies are. But this week, we’re going to focus in on how a game can appeal to different types of players using specific features and mechanics. For this case study, we’re going to break down Supergiant Games’ Hades using Nick Yee’s Motivations of Play. Keep in mind that this is not going to be an exhaustive breakdown of every single mechanic in the game, but rather a highlight on some of the game’s key features and their effectiveness.
Ready? Let’s go. In the name of Hades!
His system of mutual co-operation once brought much wealth and safety to his kingdom, but in recent years he has grown both vain and naive. This presents an opportunity…