Daniel Solis

As the year draws to a close, I'm planning actual paid advertising for Smart Play Games in 2015. One thing I learned from my time in the ad world is that it's very easy to spend a lot of money in an unreceptive market. So I needed some data to find out where I should be sending my directed advertising, particularly any promoted tweets. Thankfully, DriveThruCards was kind enough to provide a big sales report that included country and state for each of my sales up to mid-December of this year. That should be plenty of time to measure sales for each region and perhaps give me some insights as to where I should spend my ad budget. Below are interactive pie charts and maps where you can see sales by country and by state. Sales by Country USA being the top seller is no surprise. The expense of shipping internationally is the biggest barrier to the POD model's global reach. That being the case, I'm surprised to see Australia beat out the UK for international sal...

This weekend Patreon backers got a double - whammy of goodies. First up, a new set of icons inspired by Love Letter and the Dominion core set. This includes some more specialist actions like "trash a card" or "buy a card" which is distinct from "gain a card." Tricky stuff. I included the Dominion example above for some context of where I drew inspiration for each icon. That was also an opportunity to suggest how you might use language-neutral typography to represent things like "You may trash up to four icons" or "If opponent plays an attack card, you may cancel it." The second update went out exclusively to $20 backers. It's a vector CCG frame in InDesign readymade for DataMerge. Because it's vector, it should be pretty easy for you to customize to your liking without losing any resolution. Get both goodies on my Patreon here: Tabletop Game Icons inspired by Dominion and Love Letter Vector CCG Card Frame Hope y...

Wow. How about that Legend of Korra finale? Normally I don't talk about anything besides game design and the business of tabletop game production on this blog. However, one of my core tenets for the past few years is finding non-violent themes for otherwise competitive games. More than that, finding non-violent themes that are better matches for their mechanisms than a traditional war/combat trope. In this, I think my modest creative goals are similar to what the folks behind Korra achieved in the finale. For what is definitely an action -oriented cartoon, Avatar: the Last Airbender , and Legend of Korra in particular, have often shown the consequences of violence. On the subject of violence, three big themes clicked in the finale. (Legend of Korra spoilers follow, hence the non-spoiler image up top...) Violence as Vulnerability The big giant glowing Avatar State is when the Avatar is most powerful, but also most vulnerable. The whole thousand-year-long cycle of Av...

Hearthstone Cards ( Source ) Good news, graphic designers! Next month, I'm releasing new Skillshare course on laying out cards for a collectible card game. This series of videos focuses on how to make the borders, backgrounds, high-def graphics, and variable text of a typical CCG. I'll be dissecting the graphic design from popular games and breaking down how to get the same effects from Photoshop and InDesign. It'll be fun! Look for more in coming weeks.

People of Earth! Smart Play Games now seeks small card games to license for print-on-demand publication. This is a weird idea, so check out the FAQ below! What's all this then? After a successful run of self-published games on the print-on-demand site DriveThruCards, Smart Play Games wants to help other designers try this fast, low-risk publishing option. In time, we want to make print-on-demand a viable "farm league" funneling high-quality, customer-vetted products to traditional publishers. What is Print-on-Demand? To the customer , it's just like ordering any other tabletop game online. Presently, the one difference is that Smart Play Games' preferred printer DriveThruCards does not offer custom printed tuckboxes, but that will be added in coming months. To the designer , it means faster releases, aimed directly at an engaged and connected audience. It's also an opportunity to test out niche game ideas that might not be viable in traditional p...

The kind folks at Chalk Board Game Reviews did a full fancy-dress review of Belle of the Ball! This was just delightful. :D Excellent work, everyone!

One of the most perplexing challenges of tabletop graphic design is how to design a whole deck of cards with variable text, stats, images, and borders. Fortunately, DataMerge makes that much easier as I describe in my SkillShare course . But there are some advanced problems that still pop up even when you've mastered DataMerge: Namely, inserting icons into any part of the text. I discussed one method of doing this a few weeks ago , but that relied on using a pre-existing dingbats font for your icons and making bizarro GREP styles. As of that post, I hadn't found a reliable and easy to use font creator that flowed seamlessly from Illustrator to TrueType to InDesign. Well, I'm happy to say Icomoon is the app I've always wanted . You can upload your own SVG vector files, assign keywords to them as ligatures, and save them as TrueType fonts. When you type your keywords with this font, it's automatically replaced with the icon you've chosen. All you need to d...

A few months ago, Brazilian publisher Funbox Jogos licensed Light Rail as Metrocity and Suspense as Emboscada . They had a Black Friday sale to launch both products and it's safe to call them both a smash hit. Within 24 hours, nearly a fifth of both print runs were sold out! That's a hell of a start for any product launch. Check out these preview videos for Metrocity and Emboscada (Portuguese).

My next batch of icons on Patreon will be something a little different. I'm trying to make language-neutral icons for existing games, the first set being Love Letter and Dominion. Fortunately, some of the basic concepts in these games have already been covered in past icons. Basic actions like "discard from hand" are well handled. I won't just copy-paste those files with new names. For the rest of the icons, things are a bit tricky. In some cases, cards' effects are simple enough that I can make one icon for them, just as I have for the past several batches. That is, each file is a generic standalone icon. If your game has some complex effects, you can put those simple icons together, like letters from an alphabet. In other cases, like Dominion, the effects have multiple steps and so are somewhat outside the scope of the existing icons. I can make files for each card, which would necessarily mean some repeating iconography (+1 action, for example). Or I...

This weekend I was on Something From Nothing talking about my first foray into the realm of CCG design, or as I more often call it "cards with words," or "cards with effects." Chevee Dodd had lots of really good advice for how to model the kart racing theme of A La Kart. In response, I had rambling, ambiguous answers to his questions. Oh my god, I just would not shut up. Not my best showing. :P

Almost every Saturday morning, I volunteer at the local animal shelter socializing puppies and then tweet updates about each one. Part of this #pupdate is noting which puppies would be best in a family with lots of activity or other special conditions. I've been doing the #pupdate for over a year now and since the beginning, folks have asked if I'd do a game about it. Well, here we go! I'm happy to announce Arf! the game of picky puppies. Players are volunteers at an animal adoption fair, trying to offer puppies different homes that meet their very specific demands. Some puppies want lots of room, others want lots of food, some want only love and don't care about room or food. Picky picky! Arf! is now available on DriveThruCards ! Remember, you have to place your order before December 8 to be sure to get it before xmas!

Each month I make public my sales numbers for my print-on-demand card games. No sense burying the lede here, November was an awesome month for Smart Play Games ! To the numbers! 11-2014 2x Arf! (preview copies) 1x Bird Bucks +1 35x Kigi   +30 21x Koi Pond: A Coy Card Game -1 6x Koi Pond: Four Walls (Promo Card 2) -2 6x Koi Pond: Four Winds (Promo Card 1) -2 10x Koi Pond: Moon Temple +2 17x Light Rail +1 10x Monsoon Market -2 4x Nine Lives Card Game +3 3x Penny Farthing Catapult +0 7x Regime +7 3x Solar Senate -5 31x Suspense: the Card Game +16 1x Ten Pen +0 107 Total Sold $1,301.89 Gross Sales $361.80 Earnings Grand Totals for 2014 (to date) 1564 Products Sold $10,924.16 Gross Sales $3,170.55 Earnings Sales were up for many products after a brief post-convention lull. We exceeded July's numbers and fell just short of the August spike from just before GenCon/Pax/Essen. Holiday shopping began in earnest well before...

As I mentioned last week, A La Kart has at its core the DNA of a CCG. There are focused constructed decks tailored to unique play styles, customization options for advanced players, and expanding options released over time. The whole shebang. This is a new territory for me, as I tend to design more standalone, (hopefully) elegant, single-deck games. So, I got to work researching. I played Magic back in the day and a bit of Netrunner earlier this year.  I downloaded and played Hearthstone , SolForge , and Adventure Time: Card Wars . Explored the deckbuilding side of things with Dominion , Ascension , Quarriors , Valley of the Kings , Master Merchant , and Star Realms . My wife and I have really got into Kaijudo , and we're disappointed that the CCG business model requires such a huge critical mass that the game is no longer supported despite some avid fans. That's another story, though. But throughout all this, I've found some really smart people talking about CC...

The first full year of Smart Play Games is coming to a close soon and I've collected many many capital-O opinions about the viability of the POD business model for indie card game designers. Overall, I'm favorable and very pleased with my results from 2014, but the economics of the system shouldn't be taken lightly. Today, I wanted to talk about pricing in the POD market. If you were curious about what goes into the pricing of POD products, the general idea is... High Margins, Low Prices My earliest releases were fairly large decks of cards around 90 cards. The economics of print-on-demand releases dictate a fixed price per card as a minimum cost for production. Because DriveThruCards doesn't do rulebooks, I have to print rules on cards themselves. That means higher minimum cost for production. My own earnings come from the margins I choose for each sale of a product, which DriveThruCards allows me to set at my discretion. I quickly found that a 90-card dec...

I'm really pleased to share the first look at the branding and concept art for A La Kart , the racing card game currently in development. The game is designed to be accessible, affordable, but with the customization options of a light CCG. It will be released as a series of 2-player duel decks starting with Sugar vs. Spice at Sundae Speedway . Check out the concept art of the first two racers from Kaitlynn Peavler and Kristina Stipetic !  The Sugar deck is for the defensive player. She's sweet on the surface but always just a few steps behind the leader of the pack, ready for an opportunity to take the finish line at the last second. She's got great recovery, but a low maximum speed. The Spice deck is for the speedster player. She's optimized for high-speed straightaways and reckless daredevil maneuvering. She's vulnerable to hazards, but her accelerates fast once she's recovered.

If you missed it this weekend, a trio of Princess Bride card games just went live on Kickstarter. As You Wish is a funky set-collection drafting game by me. Battle of Wits is a raucous party game for up to ten players by Matthew O'Malley. Miracle Pill is a strategic game about reviving the Man in Black by Philip DuBarry. This set of games is definitely for fans of casual games with real sense of design to support the fun. Only a few days left to back the project!

Heyo! The rulebook for Arf! is available for your review here ! I'd love it if you could spot any ambiguities or grammar issues. There is a surprising amount of information to pack into this light auction game, so it was a challenge to fit it within such a small amount of space. It's surprising how much text you have to use in a rulebook when the components are language-neutral! I hope it all makes sense.

Tonight in Durham, NC at the Museum of Life and Sciences from 6-9pm, I'll be running a Belle of the Ball and Smart Play Games demo table at their Game Theory event! It's ages 21 and up with plenty of fun games of all kinds, including tabletop games, video games, tournaments, and more. There will be super smart peeps from  UNC and Duke will be there to talk about the nitty-gritty of game theory, with plenty of interactive examples. Details and ticket information here! Hope to see you there!

Good news! The card game I pitched to a couple years ago is almost ready for kickstarter! Game Salute is releasing a set of three individual Princess Bride themed card games by Phillip DuBarry, Matthew O' Malley and yours truly! Back it on Kickstarter! My entry is called Princess Bride: As You Wish , it's inspired by the really neat drafting mechanisms in the 2-player variant of Antoine Bauza's Little Prince game. As You Wish expands on those ideas to up to 6 players, mixing in more interactive set collection, and making turn order based on the prior round's draft. All the while, you're remixing the key scenes and characters of Princess Bride into your own personal love story. I'd love it if you could look over the rulebook and offer any feedback for making the rules clearer. I think GS did a really good job so far, but more eyes always helps! Thanks!

Today's #BoardGameHour discussion about rules covered quite a bit of territory, but perhaps lost in the shuffle were some really nice examples of rules done right. One of those was Jaipur, whose rulebook has one simple trick that I try to use whenever possible. Above you can see that the two basic actions in the game are color-coded, almost like buttons you can press. Either A or B. When you turn the page, the next page spread is also color-coded, with option A on the left and option B on the right. It's so clear and obvious, I just love it.

I seem to have stepped into a hornet's nest recently while designing the cards for Arf! In most of my simpler games, I try to include ranks and suits on two corners of the card, so you can fan the cards in either direction. I asked people on Twitter and BoardGameGeek about whether it's worth the clutter in order to accommodate both hands and... wow, the responses can be rather passionate. On one side, we have southpaws who often have to contort their wrists in order to see the pertinent information on their cards. Holding cards as feels natural ends up obscuring the game data. On the other side, we have a few right-handed players who seem really, really opposed to making any visual compromises for 15% of the general population. (I couldn't find firm numbers about how many players are left-handed, but I suspect if color-blindness is any indication, it's more than 15%.) There is a third path, since I'm producing these with print-on-demand services. I ca...

One of the trickiest aspects of doing production design in tabletop games is figuring out how to automate tons of variable text across a set of cards or tiles. (Good thing I have a handy video tutorial course on just that subject.) But the really advanced next step of that process is figuring out how to insert icons at any point in a body of text without relying on linked image files. This is a challenge most commonly seen in CCGs but quite present in any number of other games, too. I asked my tweeps for some advice on how to do this with InDesign GREP without having to learn any fancy coding. I've always been of the curmudgeonly opinion that there ought to be an option for graphic designer that doesn't require them to be a programmer, too. Perhaps I'm a Luddite in that respect, but fortunately I'm not alone in that sentiment. Andy Lenox sent me this list of GREP tricks, the last two of which were the real key I was looking for. Now this might be a very round...

We're approaching the end of my year-long challenge to polish and release a new game each month via DriveThruCards. As a part of that process, I'm releasing sales reports for each month so you have some perspective on your own POD sales performance. First up, here are some charts! And here are the numbers! 10-2014 0x Bird Bucks +0 5x Kigi new! 22x Koi Pond: A Coy Card Game +4 8x Koi Pond: Four Walls (Promo Card 2) +3 8x Koi Pond: Four Winds (Promo Card 1) +4 8x Koi Pond: Moon Temple +0 16x Light Rail -10 12x Monsoon Market -1 1x Nine Lives Card Game -4 3x Penny Farthing Catapult +1 0x Regime -2 8x Solar Senate -10 15x Suspense: the Card Game +11 1x Ten Pen -1 107 Total Sold $ 829.11 Gross Sales $229.75 Earnings Grand Totals for 2014 (to date) 1564 Products Sold $8,809.34 Gross Sales $ 2,583.43 Earnings Summary Clearly August and September were the huge spikes in sales, converging around Gen Con sales. Since then, w...

When you're making your first game and doing the graphic design yourself, watch out for these common pitfalls of typography. Click the image below for full-size description of nine different legibility problems and what you can do to avoid them. This image is released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Creative Commons License.