Daniel Solis

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...