Goblin Toboggan is now in the hands of a publisher for review and should be making an appearance at Metatopia in NJ, November 6-9. Things are starting to move along quickly and it is very exciting!
Of course sending out the prototype meant it is time to focus on one of the other project ideas that have come up during the Goblin Toboggan design process. At the moment I am having a lot of fun working with my brother Jim on a concept that he generated and that we are currently calling Fabergé Chickens (because the famed Fabergé Eggs had to come from somewhere. I hope to have a playable prototype ready to go for the UnPub mini happening here in San Diego in a few weeks.
On the topic of new projects I have connected with designers who have a backlog of ideas that they never seem to have enough time to get to, but I also know there are other designers who get stuck (by which I mean all designers at some point). If you are in need of a design challenge or some inspiration I made a quick excel file that pulls the mechanics and themes from BoardGameGeek.com and randomly generates 1-3 mechanics and a theme. From there your challenge is to develop a concept using those mechanics in that theme. It is completely random and sometimes the combinations it generates are absurd, but I find that a few clicks through (recalculating the formulas) usually generates at least one interesting starting off point. Feel free to download the file below and use it. The columns to the right contain all of the data (it is just white text to remove the distraction). I took out a few themes that just never appeal to me, but I also added some and encourage you to do the same.
Of course sending out the prototype meant it is time to focus on one of the other project ideas that have come up during the Goblin Toboggan design process. At the moment I am having a lot of fun working with my brother Jim on a concept that he generated and that we are currently calling Fabergé Chickens (because the famed Fabergé Eggs had to come from somewhere. I hope to have a playable prototype ready to go for the UnPub mini happening here in San Diego in a few weeks.
On the topic of new projects I have connected with designers who have a backlog of ideas that they never seem to have enough time to get to, but I also know there are other designers who get stuck (by which I mean all designers at some point). If you are in need of a design challenge or some inspiration I made a quick excel file that pulls the mechanics and themes from BoardGameGeek.com and randomly generates 1-3 mechanics and a theme. From there your challenge is to develop a concept using those mechanics in that theme. It is completely random and sometimes the combinations it generates are absurd, but I find that a few clicks through (recalculating the formulas) usually generates at least one interesting starting off point. Feel free to download the file below and use it. The columns to the right contain all of the data (it is just white text to remove the distraction). I took out a few themes that just never appeal to me, but I also added some and encourage you to do the same.
the_great_game_idea_generator.xlsx |