Daniel Solis

Time for another Patreon update! Designing Trickster has been a nice opportunity to re-visit some of the older icons I designed when my Patreon campaign first began. I've learned a lot more about how these icons are being used in real projects and how they can be improved. So I redesigned some new icons for basic spaces in card games like the Deck, Discard Pile, Hand, Tableau, Trick, and Exile. From there, I made icons for every combination of "Move from A to B" and "Swap between A and B." For example, if you needed to show that a card effect makes you discard twice, then you could do something like the following example: Or if you wanted to say "Remove two cards from any player's hand from the game," you could do the following example: Pretty simple and elegant syntax you can use here, I think. Grab the zip file and a link to the whole icon archive at my Patreon .

Inspired by Eric Martin's deconstructed game boxes , I thought I'd try my hand at cutting some game boxes for space. I started with an older game that I know I'll re-sell or trade away: For Sale. It's a classic, super-fun, and also waaay smaller than its box. I followed Eric Martin's tips from this video . I  recorded my process in the video above . Next time I'll keep the title intact. I didn't even realize I was cutting it in half until it was too late. Doh!

(Source: BGG, James Clarke's fan-made Seasons score board.) Just a general FYI for score tracker layout. Generally score trackers fall into two groups. "Snake" score tracks follow a serpentine S-shaped path. The "Snake" is best to represent a step-by-step journey, often for games with small increments of scoring happening somewhat frequently. If you use a snake, make sure it's clear that you have a path to follow. You don't want to arrange the spaces in a grid, which implies the Graph layout below. "Graph" score tracks that are arranged in a grid, with rows of ten spaces each. If you use a graph, you'll gain a lot of fans among engineers and mathematicians. This is much more abstract, but can be extremely useful for jumping double-digit increments at a time, especially in endgame scoring with lots of bookkeeping. (Edit: For more, Geoff Engelstein covered some of this on Dice Tower Episode 398 at 7:15.) And as always, make su...

Trickster is an odd blend of tactical take-that, a sliver of push-your-luck, and a fondant icing of theme holding the whole thing together. I've been actively developing Trickster: Fantasy and several other Trickster decks for a while now. The core game is a very nice canvas on which to play all sorts of little mechanical effects. Creating In the development process, I brainstormed a big list of powers on this live doc . Most of those were developed in the absence of theme per se . They're mainly just shaking out the possible permutations of moving a card: from (your/opponent's/anyone's/the) (hand/collection/discard/trick/deck)  to (your/opponent's/anyone's/the) (hand/collection/discard/trick/deck) Plus some miscellaneous card effects that might be fun form a purely mechanical standpoint. This was all a very rote process without much inspiring "story" behind the powers. The strength of the Fantasy deck is that each hero's power just ...

In the year 10,000, the throne of EUROPA sits empty without a clear successor. A series of elegant psychic contests will sway the loyalty of the world’s Factions. Whoever can accurately predict the tide of public opinion will become HEIR TO EUROPA.   I'm happy to say Heir to Europa went out for print proofing last Monday. In about a week and a half, Nick Ferris and I will each receive test copies of the complete deck with rules and cards for approval. Given DriveThruCards' past record of high quality printing, I'm pretty confident we'll be ready to flip the switch shortly thereafter and have the game available for sale before the end of April. I definitely hope it'll be the big star of the second quarter for DriveThruCards. Lots of good buzz about this game from the last UnPub. I'm also sending out review copies in about a week, so I'll be reaching out to a few board game media peeps to get their contact info. Hope all of you dig it!

( Photo Source : +Michael Harrison  ) The Game Designers of Carolina held a great UnPub Mini event at Atomic Empire last Saturday. This is the third year for an UnPub Mini at Atomic Empire , the second organized by GDoC, and it's grown each year. We had fifteen designers with full tables for nearly the entire event. ( Photo Source : Matt Wolfe) My plan for playtesting A La Kart was to run two concurrent two-player demos of Fish vs. Chips at the AutoBun and Sugar vs. Spice at the Sundae Speedway. I made significant edits to Fish's deck after March's extensive outside playtesting revealed how overpowered it was. I made some minor tweaks to the other decks as well, and kept track of win rates for each deck over the whole day. Sugar and Spice went back and forth a lot over the day, with minimal repeated final scores. That says to me a lot is riding on each player's decision and a little bit of luck, so I feel pretty good about where they stand now. He...

GameField just announced that the Japanese edition of Kigi will debut at the upcoming Tokyo Game Market on May 5! It's so cool seeing how quickly this little print-on-demand game has grown in popularity. It was by far the fastest seller in the recent Spring Sale, moving over twice as much as the second-place seller. I'm just glad people enjoy it!

I was very very smart and scheduled a big spring sale over a holiday weekend, when many would be away from their computers. Oops! Well, my poor sense of scheduling is your gain! I'm extending the Spring Sale at Smart Play Games through Saturday April 11, which just so happens to overlap with Tabletop Day! You have a few more days to pick up a bunch of great little card games. So far the top sellers have been Kigi , Koi Pond , and Light Rail . Check them out and many others for super-cheap prices this week!

The kind folks at Campaign Coins asked me a few months ago to design a special commemorative coin for Tabletop Day . You can see the meeple-licious results above. You can find this commemorative coin in three colors, Copper, Silver, and Gold, but only in the promotional Tabletop Day kit at your local Tabletop Day event this Saturday April 11!

My plan for the Trickster line is to have the same seven suits across the entire line. When new decks are released, I just put out seven new characters arrayed across those universal suits, so you can combine characters from different genres and IPs. That means I need a universal card back that would remain evergreen across the whole line. I didn't want to get stuck in the " Deckmaster " situation, where the card back has obsolete branding elements locked in perpetuity. I decided to follow the example of Pairs , and lift elements from classic card backs. I just whipped the above card back up over the weekend, pulled together from a bunch of stock Victorian floral patterns and vintage labels. It feels a bit slapdash, with some odd gaps and tangents floating around, but it's sufficient for a prototype.

Spring is in the air at Smart Play Games ! For a limited time, all of my card games are 25% off. Convention season is coming fast, so this is the perfect time to fill your pockets with over a dozen great games, including latest hit Kigi! Kigi is the game of pretty trees and tricky choices. Players use overlapping cards to "grow" trees across the table, filling the branches with colorful flowers, butterflies, and dragonflies. Check out this video tutorial to learn how to play! Please spread the word about this offer, as it ends after April 7. Thank you so much for your support!

It's transparency time again for Smart Play Games! I think it's important to be open about how my business runs and how much it earns. When I began this experiment in high-intensity print-on-demand publishing, I had no real sense of what "success" looked like. But I knew it would depend on others jumping into this market as well. But with such an opaque business model, if anyone else wanted to start their own print-on-demand releases, I figured it would be best to show what goes on behind the curtain. Get on with it! All that said, here are the raw numbers for this quarter. Top 3 sellers each month are highlighted. Month Product Total Sold Gross Sales Earnings 1/1/2015 Arf! 4 $32.96 $9.74 1/1/2015 Bird Bucks 2 $13.98 $2.44 1/1/2015 Kigi 17 $156.69 $47.99 1/1/2015 Koi Pond: A Coy Card Game 19 $199.47 $29.48 1/1/2015 Koi Pond: Four Walls (Promo Card 2) 6 $5.94 $3.82 1/1/2015 Koi Pond: Four Winds (Promo Card 1) 6 $5.94 $3.82 1/1/2015 Koi Pond: Moon Templ...