1. Share the game!

Share a link to a Dropbox (or similar) folder that has the rules, PNP, and anything else necessary to try it, such as a link to a digital version. Many first-time designers are hesitant to do this, fearing their game will be stolen. The risk of that is basically non-existent, and publicly posting something actually puts your flag in the ground and gives you something to point at to say, “Look! I was working on this game.”

The goal is to get as much feedback as you can to evolve, refine, build, and cut things out of the game. If you share the game around and listen to the feedback you get — you don’t have to follow it all, but definitely listen to it all — your game will improve. Promise.

Working on a game in isolation is denying yourself so many other perspectives and possibilities for improvement. You’re also denying your game the buzz that can tend to build around games that are in development. Many BGG WIP threads have been a powerful marketing tool for the game they feature.

2. The sell sheet

If you get consistently positive feedback from playtesters, and you feel like the game is pitch-ready, start working on a sell-sheet. This is something that you should also include in that Dropbox folder, because iterating and refining that is just as important as iterating on the game.

A good sell sheet is an art unto itself; there are other articles out there that will be able to better describe how to make one. Get feedback from other designers; this is important.

Don’t forget to keep playtesting.

3. The pitch video

Then you’ll want to start working on a script for a 2-minute pitch video.

A 2-minute script is hard to write! It should include:

• Your name, name of game, type of game, # of players, length of game
• Very quick overview of the game. Introduce the game without talking about rules.
• What makes the game special/different; what’s the best part of the game.

Again, get feedback on this script before you even record it.

I record the voiceover first, then record video (using a PNP version OR a digital version, whichever gets the point across, doesn’t matter). Look at your script and record video clips that will go with each section of the voiceover. Sometimes I even play the VO on my computer while I record the video, if I think timing of gestures & movements will be important. I find doing the VO and video separately helps me concentrate on what I’m doing with my hands when I’m recording the video, and also prevents fumbling over my words and/or actions.

Import the VO and the video clips into a video editing tool and splice them all together. Sometimes clips will need to be sped up or slowed down to match the VO; that’s ok. Add text and other visual callouts such as arrows and circles only where it’s helpful to do so.

Include a way to contact you and a link to your PNP/digital version in the description of the video.

Also: keep playtesting.

4. The email

Come up with a good “cold opener” to put in your emails. This is a 2-3 line elevator pitch that describes the game. Could be very similar to your pitch video script, but can be a bit more casual.

Hello!

[game name] is a [game type] game for [player count] that plays in [game length]. What makes it different is [standout feature].

If that sounds interesting to you, here’s a link that has a sell sheet, PNP, and digital version: [link], and here’s a 2-minute pitch video: [direct YouTube link]. If you would like to see the game in more detail, I’d be happy to schedule a time to show you the digital version.

Thanks for your time!
-[your name]

5. The publisher

Look for a board game publisher that is making games “kind of like” your own. You can do this on BGG by searching for similar mechanics and themes using their advanced search, or you can pay (it’s not much) for access to Cardboard Edison’s publisher directory. They list pubs who are actively looking for submissions, what their submission process is, and even what types of games they are looking for. Well worth it.

If you’re in a game design community, ask around to see if anyone knows of any publishers who might be interested in the type of game you have. A personal recommendation is very valuable!

Keep an eye on Twitter; publishers sometimes post a call for submissions, sometimes with the specific type of game they are looking for. If you can catch someone who’s actively looking for what you’ve got, that’s an excellent — though naturally rare — opportunity.

Make a list and start sending those emails! I’ll even keep a spreadsheet of who I’ve contacted and when, so I know when to follow up with a polite reminder, if I haven’t heard anything back in a week or two. If I don’t hear back after that, I don’t follow up again.

Make no mistake, this part is work. It can be a long road, and discouraging to get rejection letters. Just know that everyone gets them, and your game might not be a good fit for certain publishers; that doesn’t mean you should give up! Expect to get many “no’s” before you get your “yes”.

6. Design contests

If you’ve gotten your game this far, another way to get publisher attention for a game is to enter it into a contest. There are a few that happen regularly, and BoardGameGeek has a whole forum dedicated to design contests. Many publishers keep an eye on the results of these contests.

Sometimes publishers host contests themselves, with specific requirements. The chances your game will fit those requirements are small, but it’s good to look around just in case.

I wish you all the best on this journey!

If you have questions or comments for me, feel free to contact me. I’m also on Instagram and Discord.

The post A “Board Game Design to Publisher” Roadmap appeared first on We Heart Games.

All art by WOMBO Dream, used with permission.
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Version 1

The first mockup I ever made had 6 numbered variants on it, laid out in a table below the main prompt. On the back: just the location and a number from 1 to 6.

The draw pile would sit with the location side face-up. To generate an encounter, you’d look at the number on the top card of the deck to determine how many prompt cards you’d draw for this encounter. You’d flip a card for a prompt, then look at the number on the next card on the draw pile — this indicates the numbered variant for the card you just flipped. This way you’d get a random variant for each card.

Problem 1: After you flipped the second card, you didn’t have an easy way to tell at a glance what your first variant was, so you’d have to write each one down as you went — or peek at the other side of the card next to it.

Problem 2: Each location had a fixed number of prompts that would always occur at that location. That didn’t line up with the kind of variability we wanted.

Problem 3: Six prompts for a single encounter felt like a lot for a player to manage; at that point it was just information overload.

Aside: the first working title for the game was “Dreamscapes”.

Version 2

While we liked the idea of more possible variation on each card, six prompt cards in one encounter didn’t feel right. We brought the variants down to 4, and I lined them all up on the left edge of the card.

This is when I had the seed of a breakthrough — even though it won’t look like it at first.

My next idea was to make a printable play sheet with spaces for each card along the top, and a solid line running through all of them. The rules would go on the rest of the page, with space for players to make notes about their character and their progress, if desired.

The idea being that you would place your cards so that the chosen variant would lay across the line, so that you could easily see which variant had been selected for each card. Here the first card is using variant #3, and the second card is using variant #1:

Problem: Technically, players could use any line on a table or piece of paper, but now we felt we needed to include a printable PDF with the game. Our goal was to have the game be completely self-contained in a deck of cards. Back to the drawing board!

Version 3

The line on the paper was a good starting point, but we needed a way to do it without any other components. This is when our wonderful little arrow arrived:

I moved the variants to the right edge of the card, and added an arrow to the left side of the card. I also added the number to the front of the card. Now you could position your second card so that the arrow pointed at the variant indicated by its number!

We had a variant selected for each prompt simply by positioning a card next to it, and the entire encounter was readable just by looking at it; no need to write down each prompt. This felt like a Very Big Moment… but we weren’t quite finished yet.

Problem 1: It still felt a little bit finicky. If your cards got jostled at all, it would be easy to lose track of which variant was which.

Problem 2: We started to feel like drawing an encounter with just one prompt card was not giving the player enough to work with. It also isn’t enhanced by the wonderful way our prompts chain together; we feel that this ‘chaining and combining of concepts’ is a big part of what makes In Dreams special.

Version 4

I was able to “feed two birds with one scone” when it suddenly hit me that the arrow did not need to stay in the same position on every card…! It seems so obvious in hindsight.

This solved the first problem from version 3 by making it very obvious how the cards should be lined up… just make sure their bottom or top edges are all lined up! The arrows will all point at their selected variant.

It solved the second problem by completely disconnecting the arrow from the number on the card. The position of the arrow has nothing to do with the number, so we could remove the number 1 from all cards and strictly have a range of 2-4… and we could still keep all four variants.

At last, this design simply felt right.

Events

With the card design basically locked in, we started exploring ways to spice things up a bit… something to add some unexpected extra flavour to an encounter. This came in the form of an entirely new mechanic: Events.

We decided to add “suits” to each card, which would give us a way to hook new mechanics into the cards:

We assigned each of the suits meaning — something that could potentially be applied to an event:

While we ended up removing this from the game, we have plans for using the suits in different ways in the future, and we look forward to all the ways players will interpret and integrate the suits in their own add-ons for the game. For now, we wanted to keep everything “in the cards” as much as possible, to remove the need to disengage from the game and look up a table in a rulebook.

With suits on the cards, we could use them to trigger an event with the following rule:

If any two adjacent cards have the same suit, draw an event from the event deck.

Creating the event deck

We explored the possibility of having event tables in the rulebook; drawing cards and using their numbers to look up an event. Again, this didn’t feel right because it took players out of the game. We decided to make a whole new deck of cards to handle events.

We really wanted to continue to use the mechanism of chaining cards to create a unique combination, so I pulled together the first mockup for a possible event deck:

The deck is on the right; you’d draw a card, flip it, and place it on the left. Then you’d draw another card and just slide it over into the space between the main Event card and the deck. Now you’ve got a chain where one of three events from the leftmost card is chosen by the middle card’s arrow. The middle card has three options for the “tone” of the event, and one of those is chosen by the arrow on the top card of the event deck.

I didn’t love this design; there was just too much visible at once for my liking, and 95% of the card on the right is irrelevant. I started to wonder if we were going to need a separate box that could hold the event deck; a box that was only big enough to show the left side of the cards:

I really didn’t want to add another component to the manufacturing process, and give players something else to lose — or get smushed, as those kinds of boxes tend to do!

I knew I had to find a better way.

Now we’re getting somewhere! Each card points at one of the three options on the other card. There are three unique events on all 18 event cards, and six different “tones” distributed evenly between the three positions — it is a truly random tone assigned to each event.

Aside: 54 events and 6 tones combine to create 324 unique events in a deck of just 18 cards.

I still wasn’t quite satisfied with the design, though. I wanted the arrows to be more obviously tied to the boxes on the opposite card…

It just needed one more change:

With a black arrow for the black boxes and a white arrow for the white boxes, there is a much clearer visual connection.

Thanks!

Thanks for sticking with me! I hope it was helpful, even if only as a demonstration that a “simple” design takes a great deal of time and care to get it to a point where it seems like it couldn’t have been made any other way.

-Mike

We don’t have comments, but feel free to start a conversation with me on Twitter or Discord.

The post Designing In Dreams appeared first on We Heart Games.