Working on another shared board tile-laying game! No keepers yet, but fun to try using a pretty old game design muscle again.

This is Matt’s most important video so far. Thanks for being vulnerable and getting the conversation going about the hard stuff in our job.

The players of the Super Mega Lucky Box app are amazing!.. I didn’t think 85 points was even possible and someone just got 88! It has been really interesting to watch players optimise this game so long after its release.

My Essen release Tropicalia had its first version all the way back in 2014, but the central mechanism has remained the same from the start: two-phase worker placement. First, place workers around the edge of a grid, then move workers along their row or column to claim an action space. 1/3

I have 2 new games currently crowdfunding! 👻 Sinister Institute is a magical co-op adventure set in a haunted swamp! 🌴 Tropicalia is a puzzly worker placement game about harvesting fruit and building a village! Honoured to be sharing the campaign with Kramer and Kiesling's new game too!

A sneak peek at the next release from Joey Games! Dropping in Q4.

Working on a shared board tile laying game like it’s 1998!

Triple J is running a poll for the greatest Australian songs of the past 50 years. A great chance to come up with my top ten but almost impossible to choose just one Go-Betweens track! 🐨

I have been enjoying this book by @3mbg.bsky.social ! It thoughtfully onboards newer gamers with the way it categorises games and uses some nifty tag icons. Plus nice write-ups of games of all complexities. Recommended!

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I was on a podcast recently and was asked what piece of art I’d recommend to everyone, and my response was Pet Sounds. Unexpected, honest, personal, and at times super weird, but also somehow a hit. It shows that art can be challenging yet still completely a gift to the audience. RIP Brian.

Just posted my designer diary for 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was a real journey figuring out what this game would be, and then actually getting it to work! A real privilege to work with the Kubrick Estate, and a huge thanks to @themaestroteam.bsky.social for their work and for this opportunity.🚀

Really enjoyed Friedemann Friese's Fishing. A wild frankenstein curveball thrown into the trick taking scene.

We're delighted to share that both 52 Realms: Adventures & Koala Rescue Club have been shortlisted for Best Print & Play game at the Golden Geek awards 2024. There’s some great titles nominated this year so we’d love your help in voting for one or both games. boardgamegeek.com/geekawards/b...

New maps available for the two Joey/Postmark print-at-home collabs: Koala Rescue Club and Scribbly Gum! 🐨🐛

My designer diary for Misfit Heroes is up on BGG. Looking back on such a long process, I realised I learnt a lot about game design from designing this game. I also learnt I never want to prototype transparencies ever again!

I love HABA!

Really excited that Misfit Heroes is now funding on Kickstarter! It’s my crazy deck-mutating combo-creating tableau builder. And it has a frogman in it… a frogman!

It's Misfit Heroes launch day! It was such a pleasure to work on this game with @philwh.bsky.social . Check it out!! kck.st/43R3LPS

Earlier this year I started a Board Game Club in Burwood, Sydney. The next event we're celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Sushi Go with the creator, @philwh.bsky.social. Come play some games and hear the story of Sushi Go! 🎟️ RSVP www.burwood.nsw.gov.au/For-Resident...

Just updated my web site to include my latest releases. If you're interested, I have mini-designer diaries for each game! www.philwalkerharding.com

This was a really fun chat! Some really interesting questions and some great games discussed.

It was a real honour to design a game about one of the great films! At times the pressure to do it justice ran high for me, but I think we produced something that feels like the Jupiter Mission feels. I hope fans of the film feel this way when they play it too.

Misfit Heroes is launching soon! It’s a tableau builder where each character is created by combining a card and a transparency which alters it, meaning there are 1000s of possible characters and the deck can mutate every time you play. Years in the making so I’m really happy it’s almost here!

It was a lot of fun to working with Phil Walker-Harding on this upcoming game from AEG. Only about a month to go!! www.kickstarter.com/projects/ald...

The As d’Or has been nominating great games in recent years. Really excited to try For a Crown!

I didn't get to play too many 2024 releases, but 3 of my favourites were: 🏛️ Foundations of Metropolis (Emerson Matsuuchi) 🧚 Fairy (Mashiu) 🎰 Flip 7 (Eric Olsen)

The "line between inspiration and stealing" in game design is rarely discussed well - because what constitutes the real design work of a board game is not well described by comparison to other creative work. It's not the same discussion as copying a melody in a song, or making a better rougelike.

It's so cool to me that there are still Cacao tournaments in Germany. Really thankful that Abacusspiele continues to support an almost 10 year old game! 🍫

I am making a starter pack of boardgame people (players, researchers, designers, etc) in Australia. It is embarrassingly short so far, so please let me know if you or someone else should be added. go.bsky.app/JNbGLf1

I haven’t done a huge amount of co-designing but this article rings true for me!

Game of the year!?

The most played games on BoardGameGeek for over 20 years! I really enjoyed this video put together by Igor Larchenko. It starts when I was getting into the hobby, so a nice trip down memory lane. Also, amazing to see the staying power of Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride.

Working on a card game about birds who want chips.

Played two new-to-me games with @doscar.bsky.social: King of Tokyo Duel and Wrath of Fire-Mountain! Both are excellent dice chuckers. KoT Duel adds two tug-of-war tracks while Wrath features area majority scoring and a volcano that shifts map tiles (and awesome dinosaur minis!).

Got some interesting new games in a local math trade including Hase und Igel with original SdJ 1979 logo!

Great to see more board game folks here! A fun question I’ve been pondering: What are the best ever game rules? i.e. which single directive leads to the most surprisingly great play? Mine so far: Blokus: You can only touch your pieces diagonally. Time’s Up: Reshuffle all the cards each round.

I've been using PlayingCards.io to test new prototypes lately. It's the quickest and easiest way I've found to do a digital test of a card game. You can also play a whole bunch of standard deck games there. Recommended!

Ok, last old prototype pic! This is Llamaland, back when the llamas were much less fun-looking houses. I cut lots of tricky pentominoes from foamcore because I wanted to show how important thick tiles were for playability. Thankfully Lookout went with super thick cardboard!

Another couple of old prototype pics! The Imhotep expansion, which was super lo-fi and just pieces of paper for most of its life. And Sushi Roll, which required stickering 30 dice a bunch of times!

Here’s another old prototype photo. This is Gizmos, then called Inventions. I had a lot of fun finding art from old books in the British Library archive. Unnecessary, but for me sometimes doing full “art direction” on a prototype is a fun project, and instructive for the design.

Here’s some more old prototype photos from way back. These are Tanis and Gingerbread House (then called Chocolate Factory). I really went through a 3D components phase after Imhotep!

I thought I’d give bluesky a go! I just found some old pics of Bärenpark prototypes that I thought could be interesting to share. A really early version and the final one (when it was theme park themed).