Game Design Philosophy: Retrospective

The Game Design Philosophy series charts a systematic method of designing a board game prior to releasing it for play testing.  Each lecture highlights a specific step in the process and explains why the step is important.  To clarify how to execute the steps, I develop the game Underground Street Racing to provide examples throughout the lecture on how to follow the process.  In the last post I release Underground Street Racing as a print and play.  Below is a link to each article in the series with a one sentence summary about its topic.

Articles:

The Controlling Idea 
The importance of developing a controlling idea that you will refer back to help guide your decisions as you develop your game. 

Avoiding the trap of Theme Vs. Mechanics - Most Read

How the controlling idea makes it easier to tweak your theme and mechanics in your board game design.

Translating the Controlling Idea Into Theme and Mechanics

A conceptual breakdown on how to turn your controlling idea into game actions that fit your theme.

Iterative Design

Improving your board game mechanics, theme, and controlling idea by making iterative designs of your board game.

Writing it Down - Has Link to Print and Play of Underground Street Racing

How the processes of writing down the rules of the game reveals potential problems that you can fix before play testing.


Bonus Article:


Playtesting the Controlling Idea


A follow up article to the Game Design Philosophy series that shows how to use the controlling idea to better utilize feedback from playtesting.