I've invented a board game (although board games bore me rigid) and would like to make a prototype. I found it quite easy to design in MS Word but when I pasted it into MS Paint it sort of moved about. It's design is not so different from a Ludo board so am looking for a programme that will enable me to do this simply. Any tips greatfully recieved.
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Many thanks Stig. All I need now are some boardgame nerds to trial it for me.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com
http://www.bgdf.com (Board Game Designers Forum)
http://www.playtest.co.uk/
When you say board game bore your rigid, have you played many modern board games? Not the sort of crap sold in Toys R Us and Argos (a million and 1 Monopoly rethemes and the same old crap Hasbro/MB have been selling for the last 50 years). Have a look at Boardgamegeek at the sort of games that are out there, you may be surprised. Having designed a few board games and possibly having a number published next year, you need to play a lot of games to see how they work mechanically. Most people's exposure is Monopoly (usually played wrong, everybody seems to play their own rules) and Risk. Risk isn't necessarily a bad game, but Monopoly is a fairly terrible game. As a hint, roll and move is a bad idea generally. Players want to make meaningful decisions, not roll dice and simply do as they're told, where is the fun in that and where is the actual game?
ps. Totally agree about rolling a dice all through the game...yawn!
pps. Cheers for the forum linky thingy.
ppps. I'm crap at maths.
Boardgamegeek has Board Game Design forums, but the sheer volume of info on there can be overwhelming. However, posting there will usually generate good feedback from a wide-range of gamers.
I guess the most important thing to understand is that game design is a lengthy process. I've got a game that is going to be published (small print run, around 500 copies) early next year. I came up with the original design late last summer and it came out pretty much fully formed (i.e. the idea came out as a fully formed, playable game, rather than just an idea that took a load of work to get into something approaching a playable form). It's still taken well over a year of testing and tweaking to get it into a publishable form.
Also, do it because you like the game, not because you want to make money. Game designers don't make any money, there are a handful of full time game designers in the world, everybody else does it part time or as a hobby. Outside of Hasbro/MB, no body is selling games in massive quantities, so even a really successful game will probably only a designer a few thousand pounds.
WIth that in mind, it might be work considering Print and Play. Basically you release the files for your game and people print up and play their own versions. I've released a few games this way, even got nominated for an award a couple of years ago. It's a good way of getting people to play your game, and there have been quite a few print and play games signed up by publishers recently.
Have you tried paint shop pro?
Infection Express is a single player game, nominated for an award in 2010. Currently working on the 3rd edition, which will be the final version.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/57139/infection-express
City of Guilds: The Dice Game (There are other City of Guilds games I'm working on) is the one getting published in the new year:
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/106782/city-of-guilds-the-dice-game
I have at least 2 other games that publishers have approached me about, one of which I think is close to "complete" (as compete as a design can be, you can tweak forever) and likely to get published in the near future (i.e. within 2 years, publisher has a load of work to do on their part before publication of a game)