There are just a few hours left in the Kickstarter for my board game Four Humours, being published by Adam's Apple Games. One of the biggest treats of the entire process was working with the incredibly talented illustrator Shirley Gong to make these jumbo-sized location cards. I wanted to share an insider look at the progression of the game art, plus a list of my 10 favorite cards.
Five years ago, I had the crazy idea to make a game based on the four humours theory of personality, in which your blood, bile, and phlegm influenced your temperament. I'm happy to announce that my game Four Humours is now on Kickstarter!
With my board game Four Humours launching on Kickstarter tomorrow, I thought I'd share a little behind-the-scenes "designer diary" about my game design process.
When making a board game, how do you turn meaningless objects into things that inspire laughter, cooperation, backstabbing, or even table flips? That's the subject of my talk at last night's International Game Developers Association Twin Cities meeting. I also talked about what I learned in designing and art directing my game Four Humours.
I used to think cooperative games were boring; where's the challenge in working together against a deck of cards, instead of competing against your friends? But over the years, I've realized some of my favorite game memories come from cooperative games.
Button Shy Games hosts monthly challenges to design 18-card games. This month's challenge was to use 18 cards from a standard playing deck.
Playing cards don't offer much of a story to base a game on, but I latched on to the idea of the face card royalty. My game is Marry Up, a quick drafting game for 3 players where you're a matchmaker trying to form marriages and marry off your aces to the royal family.
Star Tribune journalist Richard Chin wrote an excellent article about indie board games in Minnesota, and he included my game Four Humours. He also interviewed some other creative Twin Cities game designers/publishers, including Adam Rehberg of Adam's Apple Games (who's publishing Four Humours), Seppy Yoon of Fight in a Box, and Patrick Leder of Leder Games.
Eleven new games were finished during our Gamer's Rhapsody and Composer Quest game jam in October. Here are the games that have been posted publicly.
This fall, we'll be teaming up composers, game developers, artists, sound designers, etc. to create new video games from the prompt, "I Barely Survived That Game Jam."
I've been nerding out lately by trying to design a board game (which I'll eventually reveal on this blog). As with all my hobbies, I turn to podcasts for inspiration, and I've really been enjoying the Game Design Round Table. They got me thinking about what makes a good board game, so I thought I'd turn a critical eye to my ten current favorites.