mandelafg.bsky.social
Designs board games.
Published: Glasgow (Lookout Spiele), Overstocked (Play for Keeps), The Shakespeare Game (Laurence King), The Jane Austen Game (LK), Sankoré (Osprey Games)
Upcoming: Ayar (Osprey Games) 2025
He/Him
65 posts
135 followers
40 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
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And here's some of those pretty playing cards.
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Sometimes the most fun tests.
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Glad to hear. If you find the right partner, co-designing can really be a lot of fun and a great way to hone your design skills.
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Nice. I'll be there tomorrow, will be stopping by the demo zone to say hello.
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Aye, in other designs I've often obfuscated the points or included a dynamic element to the scoring so it can't be determined until game end, however, this has been part of the challenge of making a race game and maintaining that cleaner victory condition.
The suet was delicious.
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I think some rely too much on existing games for an 'off the shelf' solution to their design problem rather than at least having a crack at it first themselves, or at least trying to tailor it for the specific needs of their game. 🎲✂️
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Aye. I feel there are no absolutes in game design.
Incidentally, I'm currently designing a roll & move. A previous iteration included player elimination too but ultimately didn't work for the game.
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It still faces a challenge common to race games; the winner can become clear before the game is over. I feel I can reduce the frequency of this but may never be able to eliminate it from the design while keeping the impact of good/bad turns meaningful. 🎲✂️
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It's not necessarily 'going anywhere' like publication but have to remind myself that if I, and the people I made it for, enjoy it, that should be enough. 🎲✂️
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Nice idea, suspect some may feel suitably invested by then.
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Fun wee read. Like the idea of following along and then hopefully getting to test it at some point along the journey.
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Aye, I'm very fortunate to land the role. It's science-based games so perfect intersection for me.
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Thanks as always Matt. Really interesting and useful insight.
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Unsigned prototypes:
(strong recency bias as I don't log these, so have likely forgotten many from early in the year)
'Fruit Suits' trick-taking game by Sofia Alatorre
Deduction trick-taking game by Rob Harris @playtestuk.bsky.social
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Songs:
Mary Boone - Vampire Weekend
Not Like Us - Kendrick Lamar
I'll Kill Her - Soko
Red Wine Supernova - Chappell Roan
Guess - Charli XCX,
John Taylor's Month Away - King Creosote & Jon Hopkins
Deeply Dippy - Right Said Fred
A Country Dance - Joanna Sternberg
Bless the Telephone - Labi Siffre
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Books:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
The Outsider by Albert Camus
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Only Shoplifters, After Life, and Broker so far. All great though.
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Dune 2, Anatomy of a Fall, and The Menu for me.
I see Hirokazu Koreeda on your list, I'm always looking to see more of his stuff as been a big fan of everything I've seen so far.
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You know I'm a big fan of the game...I got a sneak peak at the art too and it's looking great. Exciting stuff.
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Astoundingly prolific.
Very happy for my part in some of those shared highlights. Always a delight to work with you Ellie and look forward to many more joint ventures in 2025.
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Thanks for sharing your throughts, it's always very nice to hear of people enjoying it.
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Quite the collection. Very honoured to appear among them.
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And by 'I've ever made', you can see co-designer Denholm Spurr doing all the hard work here.
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Drop me an e-mail and lets arrange a wee catchup.