Daniel Solis

I've been told in the past that speed puzzle games don't really sell well, but I saw a lot of Dimension and Dr. Eureka being played at BGGcon, so surely there's some room for that category in the market. Here's a quick idea for a speed puzzle game: You have 16 discs featuring conceptual pairs on either side of each disc: cat/mouse, dry/wet, sun/moon, city/country, plus/minus etc. Flip a puzzle card. Two teammates must arrange the discs in the correct shape, with the correct sides visible, within the 30-sec time limit. In the example above, you'd score 1 point for for each disc in the correct position with the correct face visible. Then you swap out teammates La Boca style and tally individual points across several puzzles. It's a start, but the kind of component-based design I'm going to develop more often as I explore game ideas beyond the chrome ceiling .

It's been a while since I explored the simple physicality of cards as a play component. The success of Kigi's overlapping mechanic got me thinking about it again. I wanted to make another game that used a similar mechanic, but in a different way. At the same time, I've always wanted to come up with some puzzle "system" that could be iterated over and over again for new puzzles. I'm thinking of things like Sudoku or Masyu . I've been playing a lot of La Boca and I liked the idea of a real-time team puzzle game that expanded to a large group. I thought I could use overlapping cards as the puzzle component somehow. Whenever I work on a new game idea, I immediately dig into my longbox of assorted playing cards. I have about 300 standard playing cards from various cheap decks that I use to cobble together my alpha prototypes. So I just grabbed five different cards and started overlapping them, seeing what I could piece together as a game mechanic. He...

Here's a solo dice puzzle for you. It's an oddly hypnotic way to spend a few minutes before giving up in frustration. Setup Gather a block of 36 dice. Roll a die. Place it on the table. On Your Turn ... Roll a die. Place it adjacent to a die already on the table. Gradually, you'll create a branching dice formation. As soon as you create a contiguous chain of 3 or more with matching results, remove all the matching dice in that chain. Chains do not count diagonally adjacent dice. Only vertically and horizontally adjacent dice count. Restrictions 1. Your formation can't extend past a 6x6 grid. Note: There is no board. The overall formation of dice simply can't extend taller or wider than 6 dice. Thus, the first die you place is technically the center. As you add or remove dice, the outerbounds of your formation can shift dramatically. Indeed, over time, the formation may seem to crawl like an amoeba over the table. 2. You may not remove any dice that wo...

Next time you're on a plane and the magazine's crossword puzzle is all filled in, just look for a QR code. With it, you can play this solo puzzle game! It's not like you were going to actually scan the code, right? Your quest is to enter the maze, escape with the treasure, all while avoiding the minoqaur! Stuff You Need One player (That's you!) A QR code A pen Setup Every QR code has three squares along the corners of the code and a fourth, smaller square embedded in the lower-right. In this game, they represent chambers for special items that you can equip as you explore the maze. Draw a sword, cloak, key and treasure as shown above. Finally, draw a little dot in the center of the code, or as close to the center as you can. This is the minoqaur. Begin You can enter the maze at any of the blue dot noted above. Rules You and the minoqaur will take turns. In each turn, you will move or tunnel, then the minoqaur will move or tunnel. Keep track of all moveme...