In this week's video, I explore some of the different techniques I use to reliably generate new ideas for board game design! youtu.be/uo-MAq_7YxI 🎲✂️

If you dread having to explain a rule in your game, that is a giant blinking sign that reads: CHANGE OR REMOVE THIS RULE 🎲✂️

Taco Cat Games is now taking pitches from outside designers. We've sold over 13 million games, through all major US retailers. Read about what we're looking for and how to submit here: bit.ly/pitch-taco-cat This thread also covers it so you don't have to click through. 🎲✂️(1/19)

Each bar here is top rating of the current #1 player for each of a bunch of games on Board Game Arena. The highest measured skill for each game on BGA. Azul, Boop, & Patchwork have the three highest. Not surprising: spatial mechanics are especially good at creating depth.

I recently saw someone try to make the "if a game is good, it'll find an audience" argument the other day and I've been mad about it since. Success is never guaranteed. You can do everything you can to improve your chances, but I wish more people recognized that quality work ≠ guaranteed audience.

I asked designers what the ideal online game submission system would look like. Here’s what I've got so far: ✅ Be specific: the publisher should state exactly what it is (and isn't) looking for. ✅ Prep upfront: list all required materials and file sizes for submission up front. 🎲✂️(1/3)

First of all, feedback like this from one of the designer friends I admire the most means the world. So thank you, Marceline! Second, this feels like a great opportunity for a lil chat on why my prototypes look like they do. If you're curious, follow along for a 🎲✂️ thread:

I'm the Director of Game Design at Taco Cat games, makers of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza (12m+ copies sold). We've mostly done internal design, with occasional, informal outside submissions. I'm now building a real submission system. Question: what does it need to be the very best? 🎲✂️

A rulebook should integrate words and pictures to guide the reader's attention just right. Words mixed with pictures can scatter attention, so the reader doesn't know where to look next. No one has more practice guiding readers through words & pictures than folks who make comic books. 🎲✂️(1/5)

A trend in tabletop games that has taken me by surprise: Hobbyists' recent enthusiasm to play games with mass market mechanisms, like Flip 7, Magical Athlete, Hot Streak, etc. Until recently, hobbyists generally regarded the mechanisms of such games with contempt. What's changed? 🎲✂️

Was chatting with a game designer friend about sell sheets - and as I was thinking about how I use them I came across a stark realization None of my signed games had sell sheets exchanged between me & my publishers. Not a single one.

Picture walking into a huge convention hall stuffed with 5,000 new tabletop games. That isn't a historical archive; it's just one year of new releases. In that sprawling ocean of cardboard, wood, and rulebooks, only 10 games will become the defining hits: The elite 0.2%. 🎲✂️(1/3)

"Sometimes, one must explore completely baseless assumptions to learn new things"

Richard Garfield's been explaining how luck & skill are not opposites for well over a decade, but I still encounter designers & players who haven't internalized this lesson. I suspect it's the number one reason people tend to underrate the amount of strategy in lighter games.

The only prescriptive advice I’ll give young designers: Make games only you could make. Don’t ask me what I mean by that, cos you either already know - or you’ll figure it out.

In today's video I share some insights from judging entries from this year's @cardboardedison.com award, and some tips that you can apply to your own games, whether you enter them in a contest or not! youtu.be/9_5Wv6CaHKY 🎲✂️

I make games because I love every step of the process—the initial idea, the scrappy first prototype, the first playtest filled with glee and failure and hope. Here’s my scrappy first prototype of Tiny Towns. [1/6]

There are few hot takes I agree with more than this. - too many hobbyists take rules complexity as a proxy for depth, which it isn't. - too many hobbyists play simple games, don't understand the strategy but assume they do, and conclude "shallow". It's hubris.

For designers at the start/early of a game, it’s important to look at prototypes of signed games and really internalize how utterly plain and in-fancy your prototypes can and should be, and still be pitch-ready. Many prototypes are overdeveloped, when you can save time on preparing your pitch! 🎲✂️

In the last weekish, I've seen a burst of board game design posts here that seem unusually thoughtful and effortful. I want to encourage more of this. Imo our communities are only as good as our contributions, and we undervalue how useful a platform like this could be with high care/effort. 🎲✂️

I studied a bunch of icons from various published board games while preparing a rule book for Cardboard Edison, with a particular focus on Ian O'Toole. For those who come after, this article captures what I learned 🎲✂️ rossongames.com/icons #BoardGameDesign

At the nick of time, I finished my @cardboardedison.com Award judging for 2026! 🎲✂️ It's always a pleasure to be trusted with so many games from so many people around the world, and I hope that my feedbacks can help improve those projects. That said, 6 general tips I can give for next year:

Pandemic creator Matt Leacock on fighting for designers’ rights, working with developers effectively and his publisher ‘pet peeves’: boardgamewire.com/index.php/20... @mattleacock.bsky.social

I've been thinking about game budgets a lot over the past couple of years. There are big chunks of the tabletop market that are able to support publishers and designers, and mostly I think its because of a combination of strong crowdfunding communities + cheap dev costs (often less than 50k). 🧵

In today's video I go over what I earnt as a full time game designer in 2025, comparing my income over the past few years and how it varies from game to game. My aim has always been to increase transparency in the industry and help newer designers with what to expect. youtu.be/avLL2siSmyc 🎲✂️

To be more specific: if your 🎲✂️ game relies on "cards with words," those cards are where the real fun of your game is. If you don't show us those cards in action, we can't see how awesome your game is. (I imagine this applies as much to publishers as to contest judges)

Most people learn games from half-remembered rules, in a fugue of distractions: kids, TV, phones, or just enjoying each other’s company And most finely tuned hobby games need to be played perfectly and optimally or they’re … a rough experience Recalibrate

Something I’ve seen repeatedly in tabletop game design is designers mistaking a "situated experience" for a marketable game. It looks like this: 🎲✂️(1/19)

Today's 🎲✂️ observation after judging 10 @cardboardedison.com entries: Strive for high coherence across your components, mechanics, and theme. When all 3 align, the mechanics are easier to learn, it's satisfying to use the components, and players feel immersed in the world.

Personal Celebration: I managed the design studio that made the Trekking games, and I designed Trekking the World 2nd Edition. Just snapped this pic at Target. Those games are making their way in the world! (and are surrounded by killers on those shelves)

Even the simplest rulesets in games can lead to incredible emerging complexities. There are only 12 card types in Abandon All Artichokes (if you include the Rhubarb expansion), and yet there are a huge number of possible configurations, depending on... 🎲✂️

As a game designer, you may have to fall in love with what you're making to make it well. But then remember there's a broad distribution of opinion about each game, and now you're likely on its positive tail. Now you're at risk of going blind to what folks elsewhere in the distribution think. 🎲✂️

10 Lessons From 5 Years of Game Design Over the past two weeks I've been writing a series of mini dev-diaries finding a lesson from each of the 10 games I've finished. Which ones resonate with you? Have you come across these in your designs? The full series: boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

Today's video is about approaching game design in a new way - trying to design a bad game from the start! youtu.be/wj3IZtxw_PI 🎲✂️

I increasingly spend time thinking about designing games for spectation as opposed to just active participation. On the extreme end, you have game shows, which are nearly 100% about spectation & interesting to me for that reason. But many types of games benefit from considering, What's fun to watch?

I was startled at how much more I could see when I began rewatching recorded playtests. I hadn't understood how my attention is pulled in the heat of conducting a test. Rewatching affords a deeper kind of observation. 🎲✂️(1/2)

A split test is a playtest where players play two games back-to-back and then compare their experiences. It’s now my default testing method. This thread explains why it’s been transformative for me and how to do it well. 🎲✂️(1/18)

Note there are multiple flavors of "stuck". Here I'm mostly talking about this feeling: "I see no good options and I don't know how to advance." ...rather than: "I don't know how to choose between my options." But the latter can also be a problem if it slows the game too much. 🎲✂️(1/3)

Brag: This past Saturday, I conceived, designed, made files for, printed, sleeved, and tested a game in under an hour. Today the company I work for greenlit it. Personal record for return-on-design time. 🎲✂️

An excellent framework for thinking about how to turn a good game into a good product (the two aren't the same): TLDR: make a compelling promise, deliver on it, then exceed expectations. jboger.substack.com/p/games-as-p... 🎲✂️

This tip is specific to strategy game design. Two benefits: 👍 players can learn the rules in pieces, over turns, instead of all at once. 👍 It can create an escalating game arc. But be careful not to make the early turns *too* simple. That can make for a boring first impression. 🎲✂️(1/2)

I suspect "in the wild", folks play games wrong more than many designers think. I also think there's a degree to which this can't be fixed, thanks to 2 unfixable issues: 1. lots of folks dislike learning rules, so they learn poorly 2. our short term memory is tiny 🎲✂️(1/3)

If players touch the pieces too much in a game, it'll often feel fiddly. It'll also add cognitive burden: using our hands requires surprising brain power (I was once a neurobiologist). Protip: count touches-per-turn in tests 🎲✂️(1/4)

As a game creator it’s part of my mission to make games that connect people in community with one another, creating memories and cementing relationships. In truth choosing joy, community, and play *is* a radical idea in this day and age. Taking account of that power and using it is revolutionary.

"Good design does not tell users what to do. It adapts to what they already do."

My final video for 2025 compiles the lessons I learnt about games design this year, from rethinking how I work, what I want to design, and the people who I couldn't have done without. Thank you everyone who has supported the channel this year, and have a wonderful 2026! youtu.be/62zLZONQc4Q 🎲✂️

Decision paralysis occurs when players can’t make a choice, usually because there are too many options or the outcomes are too complex. This slows the game down and often leads to frustration. There are a few design techniques you can use to reduce this (🧵1/6): 🎲✂️ #gamedesign #gamedev

My first video looking back at 2025 - this one focussed on the state of the board game industry and what it means for designers. A very happy holiday season to everyone! youtu.be/XH4o2alaNoA 🎲✂️

Day 8: Lest We Forget Today's takeaway: It's easy to fall into the trap of creating something because it's interesting to design rather than interesting to play, especially if you've come up with a really clever mechanic boardgamegeek.com/thread/36308...

"There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking."