Daniel Solis

Yay! Here's the conclusion of the 2-part lesson in designing a CCG-style prototype card template. I hope you find this useful as I discuss inserting variable icon images into inline variable text, among other useful little tricks. The next series of videos will cover a few miscellaneous lessons like how to set up 3x3 card sheets and make variable lines separating sections of body text. Then we'll go into a deeper case study of how I designed the cards for an early version of A La Kart. Hope you enjoy the videos! Please support the series at Patreon!

I challenge Board with Life 's Chris Bryan to a duel on the fields of Carcassonne! Meeple a Meeple. Join us at my twitch channel on Friday 2/26 3pm EST and watch my glorious yet magnanimous victory or my humbling and petulant defeat! Either way, it'll be fun times on a Friday afternoon. See you there!

Back in December 2015 , I was noodling a simple turn order drafting mechanism with some random bits I had around the lab. Little did I know that a similar mechanism had been incorporated into Madeira , but I thought it worth posting about for posterity in case I explore it for future designs. A 5 player game starts here: From first to last, each player moves their pawn beside any card and takes it, along with any of its chips: Once the cards and chips are gone, the pawns remain, thus establishing a new turn order for the subsequent draft. I could see this drafting mechanism imposed onto a track, so on any turn you can move up to 5 spaces forward, collecting whatever is available on that spot. There would need to be competing but comparable motives for collecting a card, moving up in turn order, or moving along the track. I'm very curious to see a racing theme for this mechanism. What do you think?

The mailing address surveys just went out to Kodama: the Tree Spirits backers! Check your filters and respond ASAP. Eeee!

Drew Hicks and I are working on a top-secret project that calls for a solitaire variant. Neither of us has done much solitaire development yet, so I thought it would be good to talk to Willie Hung since he's an avid solo gamer. We asked about the basics of what makes solo gaming so appealing to him and how to capture that fun. Below are his responses to our questions, which I thought were very useful for anyone who ventures into the realm of solo play. Do you find "grades" a satisfying victory condition for a solitaire game? In other words, certain spans of victory points are categorized as being C, B, A, A+, etc? I find them quite satisfactory. It beats just trying to get a "high score" as many other games have done before. Good examples are Imperial Settlers , Skyline , Hostage Negotiator , and The Gallerist . Even games like Dungeon Roll have small "achievement" awards to strive for that I found amusing. In addition, the victory point ca

I love games like No Thanks , Little Devils , For Sale , 6 Nimmt , and The Game , which use a deck of sequentially numbered cards, no suits, and barely any other components. It’s a wonderful design challenge that I return to from time to time. In that exploration, I came up with a list of “poker” hands that you could put together with a deck of 50 numbered cards numbered 01-50. These should work with any size deck, with some slight tweaks. I’m not sure how or when I’ll use this mechanism, but I share it with you here for your own games if you want to use it. These hands are ordered from best to worst. Fool’s Hand 01, 23, 45... At least three cards with an ascending sequence of digits. If tied, the highest rank in either hand wins. (This is a Star Wars joke for the fans out there.) Straight Flush Good:    0 3, 1 1, 2 8, 3 4, 4 2 Bad:     0 3 , 2 4 , 0 5 , 3 6 , 1 7 Ugly:    1 8, 2 0, 1 3 , 0 4 , 5 0 Ascending sequence of five cards. If tied, good beats bad, ba

Molly Ostertag illustrated "Curse You, Robin Hood!" omg! OMG! I'm so happy with how these five characters turned out. She provided the line art and I did my best to add a few pops of color that wouldn't get in the way of her awesome work. Below is a time-lapse video of the coloring process. And check out how it turned out below:

Here's something silly and fun I did for my birthday. I asked my Twitter followers to draft my arena deck. I posted each screen on twitter and followed the commands of whoever responded first. Turns out the deck wasn't too bad! Check out the playlist below.

It's my birthday, so I thought it would be nice to do something special and crowdsource a big list of mechanisms! These apply to either area control games or worker placement games as triggers for special actions. Peruse this list next time you need some inspiration for your game design. The bulk of this list came from my twitter followers, which you can find on this thread . Thanks, tweeps! If you ___ [this space/area/territory], do [action]. enter enter from the north into enter from the south into enter from the east into enter from the west into leave leave empty go north from go south from go east from go west from complete start the turn in end the turn in start the round in end the turn in start the phase in start the phase in start the game in end the game in destroy destroy an area adjacent to have simple friendly majority present in have simple unfriendly majority present in have more present than all other players combined in have least pre

It's been about two months since I posted the rules for " Curse You, Robin Hood! " for public feedback. To summarize it, you're a merchant in the time of Robin Hood. You're trying to get rich, but not rich enough that Robin Hood notices your stockpile and robs from you. Each player simultaneously reveals a card from their hand, then some players engage in mandatory trades based on whether they play matching ranks or highest/lowest ranks. Here's the gist so far: + Many funny surprises as a result of the simultaneous reveals and mandatory trades + Great quick playstyle for tavern play ~ It's feather-light, which is a plus or minus depending on your group's preferences - Though it is easy to play, it is hard to know how to play well - Nuances of negotiation aren't immediately apparent My options going forward are, very broadly speaking: A. keep it light OR B. develop a heavier game with this core mechanism AND 1. put it on a POD site

A couple days ago Matthew G. asked me how to use InDesign to automatically highlight certain text without having to manually do it. He was generous enough to let me record my demonstration of two methods I've practiced over the years. Check out the video above for details! Hope it helps!

I had the great pleasure of attending Whose Turn Is It Anyway? this weekend. It was a lovely experience and a great opportunity to stretch my muscles on some heavier games. Ever since publishers asked me to design more "middleweight" games, I've struggled to find a definition for that category. Certainly my existing catalog favors helium-light gameplay. My experience is very limited in this sphere so I'm actively trying to sample more heavier games this year. If I want me to design "middleweight" games, I better try out some heavy games so I can properly calibrate my perspective. From Japan to France Back to Whose Turn! I tried out Iki: the Edo Artisans , designed by Koota Yamada, and Orléans , designed by Reiner Stockhausen. I had very good teachers for both games so I picked up the nuances pretty quickly.  Neither had the hefty ponderous atmosphere that I had expected "heavy" games to have. They were both certainly long games, clockin