Daniel Solis

(This is a rough sketch of a game from 2017, when dice placement and roll-and-writes were gaining more popularity. I was in a phase where I was just merging as many different ingredients together to see if they'd stick.  You can see some of these ideas in Pencil Park.) You’re trying to get your payloads onto rockets and into orbit. Rocket space ain’t cheap and neither is the fuel. You have to invest wisely if you want to launch!  Setup The game comes with a deck of rocket cards. Shuffle a number of cards based on player count. (Designer note: I never determined a number since this prototype never got tested.) Lay out six random rocket cards onto each of the launchpad spaces. Each rocket card has a space agency that is sponsoring its launch, like NASA, or JAXA. Each rocket has a different arrangement of spaces representing its cargo capacity. The oval below each rocket card space is its fuel, which will be needed for the rocket to launch at all.  Start of Round At the star...

This is the story of how I tried to make a cool spatial auction mechanism into a complete game, but never quite found a concept that sold to a publisher. The last version was called OORT and the details are here: Theme Pitch: The Oort cloud is the last stop for a thousand light-years, so you better stock up! Dock your ships at the right stations to claim the best supplies and send their whole fleet further into space. Gamer Pitch: This is an auction in which where you place your bid matters. A top bid only lasts once, but a lesser bid can persist for multiple rounds. ( Rules Google Doc Here ) What Worked: Top bidder wins, but doesn't stay. Players have "ship" discs valued at 1 to 15. Each round, a random segment of the board is being auctioned. Bids are placed in turns, face-down. Though the bids are hidden, you do know some information: Small ships are valued 0-4. Medium ships are 5-9. Large ships are 10-15.   You must place bids at specific spots around that segment....

I'm a big fan of designing around set collection mechanisms, but the trickiest of that design is starting with a balanced set of variables. You can use an existing familiar set like a deck of cards, or a PAIRS deck, or even a Mirror Deck . The problem is that if your initial baseline is too ordered and symmetrical, you'll get kind of boring endgame scoring.  For example, if apples, oranges, and pears are in equal quantity in a bag of chits, then any endgame scoring condition that favors one of those fruits doesn't feel unique to that fruit. If each fruit has some other attributes, like freshness, or sweetness, or rarity, then you start getting a little bit more grit in the gears. Now you've given players more factors to consider as they collect their fruits. Speaking of factors , I've always been a fan of the number 60 because it can be subdivided into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. 1 × 60 2 × 30 3 × 20 4 × 15 5 × 12 6 × 10 I like to use this basic structure to create a deck ...