Daniel Solis

Unpub 6 is in just under a month! I'm bringing almost all of my self-published games to pitch and present, but here are 6 games I'd like to highlight in particular. You may have seen my last post on the subject of "sale sheets" or "summary sheets" , but I've since expanded this to a whole series of at-a-glance summaries for handing out to publishers. Curse You, Robin Hood! You’re a merchant of Sherwood Forest trying to get rich while dodging those thieving Merry Men. Get as much treasure as possible, but not so much that Robin Hood notices you as a target! Koi Pond A zenlike, fast-flowing card game. Collect colorful koi fish and keep your pond as balanced as possible. Monsoon Market In 1405, a Chinese emissary sails the Indian Ocean, reporting the quality of each market along the way. It’s time to get busy! Earn a reputation for accurate orders or rush off any old goods in bulk. It’s a race to earn the fastest fortune in the Monso...

Last week Paul Dean published a really interesting article for Rock Paper Shotgun about board game publishers, Tabletop Simulator mods, and copyright. He asked for comment from several smart people in the board game industry, and also me for some reason. Go check it out then come back here. When Paul interviewed me for his article, I admit that Tabletop Simulator wasn't really on my radar. I found the Steam interface rather opaque, so I never really explored that marketplace much. I knew Tabletop Simulator was out there, though, and this was as good a time as any to finally deep a toe into that pool. As you might have seen from my rather permissive stance in the matter, I see TTS modding as something similar to print-on-demand. Both are emerging technologies with creators trying to get  tabletop games out faster and more affordably. Both are still very niche media channels, too, so I feel a bit of kinship there. After having been approached by many digital app studios th...

All aboard! The first expansion for Light Rail is now available! Light Rail: Downtown adds enough cards for two players to play out a full four-player city. New cards have three different buildings, making them more valuable for building routes.  The Express lines count as double-segments to quickly build a majority claim to routes, but have no terminals so play them carefully! So go get Light Rail: Downtown ! Don't forget, this is an expansion that requires Light Rail to play. Pick that up, too!

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).

You can tell when I've had a busy month when I don't post so much, so here's a bunch of news in one big roundup! (Photo by Ashley Humphries ) Gen Con 2014 Report Reports from DriveThruCards booth say there was a LOT of activity this year. Though they decided not to do any retail sales this year, there were still plenty of walk-ups who had heard about my games and grabbing discount code coupons. DTC has been generous enough to extend the discount code for everyone to use: SP2014GC for 25% off all my games ! Light Rail to be Published in Brazil FunBox Jogos has just agreed to publish Light Rail in Portuguese! You may recognize FunBox as the Brazilian publishers of the most striking edition of COUP on the market. Really lovely sense of design and art direction on that team, so I look forward to seeing what they can do for Light Rail. Solar Senate Cover Reveal Because this month has been so busy, Solar Senate may be about a week late to launch, but for n...

I'm happy to announce my newest game LIGHT RAIL is now live on DriveThruCards ! It's a route-building game about rival companies vying to take credit for a futuristic city's brand new light rail network. Definite inspiration from my love of Carcassonne , Cable Car , and Tsuro . I hope you enjoy it! Here are some preview pics: Another great print job from DriveThruCards! Get your copy of LIGHT RAIL now! As with all my new products, there is an early bird discount that will end as soon as my next product goes live. Catch this train while you can!

Here is the rules doc for LIGHT RAIL if you'd like an early look. I appreciate any clarifying questions or notes you might have since this was a very tricky game to present in print. Explaining the city limits was the hardest part since I'm so accustomed to explaining it in person, where I can use body language and verbal cues to communicate much more easily. Here is a screencap of the two pages which explain city limits:   I tried to convey a physical space first by using one human hand as a frame of reference. From there, I introduced a simple, legal placement. Then I examined two other options for placement and explained why they were illegal. Finally I wrapped up with two other legal placements which would have more complicated consequences for other spaces on the board. I imagined this as a spiral, taking the simplest situation and spinning out to progressively more distant edge cases. I hope that was all clear! Again, if you'd like to review the whol...

Light Rail will be one of the more simple and elegant games in my catalog. Fast gameplay, approachable but difficult decisions, tricky spatial strategy elements, and a fair bit of luck. Playtest comments have all been positive for a light filler. Experienced gamers like the twist of sharing routes as an area majority mechanism instead of routes being exclusively one type. Puzzling out the logic of the emergent game board has been the most difficult hurdle, but that might be the one little fiddly rule that makes the game a satisfying challenge of mastery. My aim from the earliest iterations as "Train Town" was to make a tile-based path-building game as approachable as Tsuro , replayable as Carcassonne , using no components aside from cards. I think it's pretty much baked! The only rough edges are some graphic design issues to make the Building icons distinguishable against the background at a distance and wording the Objectives more clearly. Minor photoshoppin...

Last year, I was tinkering with a game called Train Town that made the short list in a Korean board game contest, but ultimately didn't make the cut. I've been polishing that concept off lately and trying to trim out all the awkward gameplay while still keeping the core route-building thinkiness that I enjoyed. All this on top of the constraints of a standard deck of cards made for a curious challenge. I've got this core system pretty nailed down and ready for some more thematic twists. For now, here's the basics. Take turns playing cards of their own color in a staggered brick pattern. If you complete a route, check who has the most segments of their color on that route. That player will score points equal to the number of different symbols on that route. In the final version of the game, these symbols will be building icons. If two or more people share majority, they both score. In this case, pink and blue both have an equal number of segments, thus sc...