This blog is where game designer Amanda Vallerand records her thoughts about designing and self-publishing board games, and the lessons she has learned along the way.

Variety without Headache #1 – Bracelets!

A large amount of game ideas I get revolve around a cool action selection mechanism (CASM, for short), which is a pretty popular subset of Euro games. However, when it comes to building out the actions for your CASM, there’s a pretty difficult line to toe: if they’re too similar, the CASM’s interesting decision space…

What if money was useful? (SISIGIP #3)

Many games have multi-use cards: I’d even say it’s one of my favourite mechanisms. Multi use cards have a lot of pros: first and foremost, they make decisions richer through the power of combinations, and help mitigate random card draw. Well, Dollars to Donuts takes it one step further. Dollars to Donuts (DtD) has multi-use…

Game Designer Organization

I’m a strong believer in “work on more than one game at a time”, because it prevents tunnel vision, helps give you distance from the project, and maintains momentum when you hit a roadblock with one project. But that requires a lot of organization. I also have ADHD, which requires a lot of organization. I…

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.