NIALL CRABTREE - GAME DESIGNER
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Why is the Guard so fun to play in Love Letter?

4/21/2021

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I'm going to start this post by saying that I believe the original Love Letter card game is one of the best-designed games, period. There is no bloat, no balance issues, the game length is perfect, and it's a great gateway game. I'm not the first person to say this, and I'm sure as hell not to be the last. 

Still, I wanted to make my post about Love Letter, one and done, specifically on the ever-fluctuating changes in the lasting effect of the core mechanism in the game, using the Guard card. Just as a warning, I will be mentioning a game I am currently working on and working on the said game consequentially made me realise why Love Letter is so good. 
Picture
Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Letter_(card_game)

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How to Save Time, Money and Energy when Manufacturing your Board Game.

4/19/2021

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​Foreword
Making a game for your friends and making your game for the world are two completely different tasks. However, this isn't THAT blog post. Instead, I want to talk briefly about ways to save time, money and energy (the big three) when making a game that you know you will send to print one day.
​
Just as a bit of me and why I have some insight into this area of board game making, I have to date dealt with six different manufacturers, four Chinese, one American and one British, and I have produced four prototypes and two published products (soon to be three). I have made the mistakes, I have made the errors, the very costly errors at that, so hopefully, through this post, I can save you some time, money and energy, so you can better spend that on doing something we all love in this community, making games!

Just a quick note, I will be mentioning my upcoming game Langskip in this post a lot. This is only because it is a game I just recently sent off to manufacturing, so I have up to date information and images regarding such process. This is in no way a marketing post. 
Tip 1 - Use a template first (or make sure your artist is using a template first). At the beginning of my game development journey, I cannot tell you the number of times that I had to change every single card in a 

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The Importance of Creating Gateway Games

4/16/2021

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Foreword
Everyone has played a gateway game, and usually, it's a player's first venture into the hobby that they have this experience, whether it be at a friends house, a board game cafe or just a game that they picked up on Amazon. This is the underlying pin of what I want to write about in this post. ​
Picture
Credit: https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/22/21068797/ kickstarter-2019-board-games-video-games-tabletop-data-china-tariffs-trump
Straight to the thesis. 
I believe firmly that gateway games are both the key and the crux of our industry. If brilliant gateway games continue to be developed and published every year, the market will continue to grow as fast as it has been doing (almost 25% on average every year since 2015). On the other hand, if gateway games diminish in volume and consistent quality, we can expect a decline in growth to the point of stagnation, like that which we have seen in the video game crowdfunding sector. ​

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Slow Burning Games with Evolving Limitations - Carcassonne

4/7/2021

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What is a Slow Burn?

I enjoy the slow burn of some board games, and what I mean by that is I love it when about two-thirds of the way into my first playthrough of a board game, the eureka moment hits me. I think this is why this game is fun; this is why my decisions are important and matter. And that statement at the end right there is the crux of what makes an enjoyable slow-burning gaming experience for me. 

Having meaningful decisions in a game can be tricky to design regardless. Having them from the get-go can create intense analysis paralysis for the newer player. That's why I think having these decisions be more meaningful towards the end of the game can allow people to canter into the experience without much drag and hesitation. This experience is essentially my entire design philosophy, so I appreciate it when identifying other games' strategies to making slow-burning "gateway" games. 
Creating a Slow Burn

Regarding Carcassonne and how it creates its slow burn, I think it does this in a few ways:
  • The only major limitation on your turn is the ever draining tile pool which doesn't massively affect your decision-making process until the mid-to-late game. This evolving limitation leaves the early game open for easy decisions and light-hearted moments. 
  • In addition to the last point, due to the limited amount of specific tiles, as these tiles get fewer and fewer as the game progresses, that's when decisions get tougher and tensions rise.                    
  • There is instant scoring, allowing you to focus on the instant gain when you first start playing, and end game scoring can be a secondary goal. 
  • Due to the nature of contesting mid game and end game scoring, competition regarding land such as castles and roads in the game is slow but ever-building and increasingly intense. ​
​There are lots of ways Carcassone avoids analysis paralysis as well but doesn't lead to mechanisms that create a slow burn, such as the tile pool being hidden, unlike in games such as Azul and Calico. Still, I've already covered that in a previous post which I will link at the end of the post. 
Picture
Credit: https://deerfieldlibrary.org/2016/01/carcassonne-a-modern-board-game-for-adults-teens/
Picture
Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcassonne _(board_game)#/media/File:Carcassonne_tiles.svg

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    Author

    Hello, my name is Niall Crabtree, and this is my comprehensive blog showcasing all of my game development 
    ​endeavors and successes, as well as essays on game design.

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  • Home
  • FATAL KNOCKOUT
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    • Lethal Deal
    • Langskip
    • Food Time Battle in Space
    • Blockers: The Stacking Game
  • Talks & Interviews
  • Contact Me
  • —————————
  • Video Essays
  • Podcast
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