Daniel Solis

It was a fast, productive playtest period for Trickster: Fantasy the past few weeks. It was nice to get back into that rapidly iterative process again for a new game. What began as a paper-thin activity is now becoming a very easy-to-learn but surprisingly deep strategy card game that works for groups as big as seven players. Biggest Challenge: Needing More Choices As usual, I began playtesting this concept ASAP. That meant the bare minimum of a functioning system that I knew wouldn't completely break down. Essentially, I had a core loop and not much else. At that point, it was only the second-player who really made a critical push-your-luck decision. Everyone else was sort of on autopilot. To be a truly interesting game, I needed each player to make a decision on their turn. Solution: Hero Powers I always planned for the "Trickster" franchise to be a series of games with uniquely themed artwork, which naturally implied different characters in each deck. That ...

It's almost here! After months of playtests, editing, more playtests, and more editing, Heir to Europa by  +Nick Ferris will finally be coming to DriveThruCards very soon. But first, we need your eyes to do one last typo-hunt and grammar check on the rules document. All those months of editing can really give a team tunnel-vision, so we need a fresh crowd of brains to take one more look and spot anything we missed. Download the rules PDF here. Heir to Europa is a sci-fantasy card game about a world undergoing a succession crisis. The various factions of Europa engage each other in psychic contests to literally win the minds of the people. Players take on the role of shadowy conspirators trying to predict who will eventually win the throne, thereby becoming the power behind that throne. The gameplay is based on classic trick-taking card games, heightened with very clever twists that open up subtle new strategies and surprising tactics. Certain cards have special abilit...

I've been watching season two of Tabletop Deathmatch with avid interest. The production values, presentation, and overall organization is light-years past season one. (And season one was pretty good!) To recap: Tabletop Deathmatch is a reality show competition held by Cards Against Humanity and its business partners to find the next great tabletop game. The first eight episodes this season focused on introducing and teaching each game in the contest. No judging, just tutorial. This bit was fun to watch for general interest, but I was much more eager to see the subsequent evaluation by a team of top industry judges. So far only four of these judging episodes have been released, but each has offered extremely useful advice for any beginning designer. Here are five lessons I've pulled out so far, in no particular order. Present the game you have on the table right now.   Not the game it could be or the game it used to be. If you've worked on a game a while, it'...

Big news! Kigi will be officially translated and published in Japan by Gamefield ! In Kigi, players "paint" a tree by placing cards along branching organic paths. It's a very easy game to learn, but presents interesting spatial puzzles and lots of replay value. This game has been a huge hit with families with varying play experience. Get the English edition here! Here's a video tutorial: Here are some photos of the original edition. The release date and final packaging isn't determined yet, but I'll keep you posted!

I've long felt that the persistence mechanics from Risk: Legacy would translate well to a card game and be a natural fit for the print-on-demand market. (Check out this old post from 2012 breaking down my early thoughts on what it takes to "legacy" an existing game.) I just couldn't figure out a good theme for the game. Well, this morning I had a quick brainstorm over twitter with Quinn Murphy, and he really unlocked a juicy premise: The theme is a generational family drama, like Downton Abbey. The fallout from each game represents the shifting fortunes and relationships between each of the characters. Let's assume you could add legacy mechanics to a trick-taking game. Each card has potential relationships with any other card in the deck, waiting to be filled in after several games. In time, you'd have a complex web of relationships between any two cards. For example: Indebted to... This card cannot win a trick if ____ is also in play. Married...

The Inquisitive Meeple just posted a very long interview with me over here . We cover a LOT of territory there, including graphic design, getting started in the game design craft, and the false binary choice of print-on-demand vs. traditional publishing. Here's a snippet: When you talk about elegant games or game design – what do you mean? Daniel: Smarter people than me have talked about this at length, but these days I prefer the term “ eloquent” over “elegant.” The past few years, “elegant” has become synonymous with “minimalist,” but that is not always the case. Elegance is simply a ratio of the complexity at the start of the game to its complexity in the middle-to-late game. A game can have a relatively high learning curve, but if it opens up into a constellation of even more interesting choices, then it’s still elegant. A game can have a very shallow learning curve, but not open up at all, so it’s not elegant. Meanwhile, I like “eloquence” because it im...

Howdy folks! I'm happy to announce an open playtest period for Trickster: Fantasy , the first in a series of light card games, featuring new art and mechanical twists in each deck theme. You saw an early draft of this game last week , but after some rapid iteration it's ready for public playtests! This game is suitable for big group gatherings where you want an "icebreaker" that gets everyone to the table for a few minutes. I want to make sure the core game is 100% solid before adding the "fantasy" twists, which is where you come in! Check out the link below and share your thoughts! --> Download the PDF here