Software and Records

As your game design career progresses, upgrade your tools and processes.

Do not spend money

You do not need any of the following:

  • Books
  • Courses
  • Copyright
  • A website
  • A company
  • Anything legal at all

If you make your prototype on the computer, use Affinity. It's Photoshop/Publisher quality, but free.

Do not pay for art unless you're going to crowdfunding, AND your game is 100% done. A regular publisher does not want you to do the art.

There are only a handful of things worth paying for, and they're cheap:

  • If you're playtesting online: Tabletop Simulator ($20).
  • If you're playtesting in real life: Generic pieces (coloured cubes, discs etc.) Blank cards or pieces of paper.
  • A list of publishers (under $50, when you're serious and have a game ready).

If you've spent money, you have my condolences. Now, stop spending money.

Software

I did my first games in Word or Photoshop, and printed them out. Art was hand-drawn by me, and I'm not an artist — not even a self-taught one. The computer work was laborious. Printing and cutting cards and boards, repeatedly, was even more so.

I strongly suggest making your game cards in a word processor (ideally a desktop publisher like Affinity), rather than a graphics program like Photoshop. Dealing with positioning things, and hundreds of layers, is mind-boggling. One of the many problems you'll run into is trying to put icons in the middle of text.

Go and get Affinity. It's basically Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator/Publisher in one. It used to cost money, but Canva bought it for a billion dollars, and now gives it out free, to entice you to sign up for AI functions. It's not some freeware crap. Unless you're already comfortable with Adobe, go and get Affinity now.

In a desktop publisher, make each page a card, so you're not trying to cut up a larger image into cards, or managing dozens of separate files. I now put almost everything into one big file, except large boards. This means each token, icon, card, and resource is a page. It's much easier.

I see many people setting up their card file to reference a database. That way, they can just change the database, and the card will automatically update. That's great, but most of the work of a game is not in the content — it's in the structure. If you want to be constantly updating such a system, you go right ahead. I also like to see and work on the cards as they appear, not update them on a spreadsheet. Systems are good, but only up to a point.

Don't over-systematise, whether in board game design or in real life.

Uses for AI

AI can't design your game. However, it's very useful for other things. Here are some ways I use AI, and some example searches.

  • Research on other games. "List some exploration games that aren't cooperative."
  • Mechanics research. "List resources that are found in steampunk games."
  • As an advanced thesaurus. "Give me fantasy words that mean 'object'."
  • Theme research. "What crops were grown in the water, in medieval Europe?"
  • Coding Lua for Tabletop Simulator. "Make a button that puts all the meeples back where they started."

AI art

Many players and publishers are hostile towards AI art in published games. This is not relevant to you, however, as final art isn't your job.

However, AI art is extremely useful and widely accepted in prototypes. I expect I'll use it in all prototypes going forwards.

If you're generating card art, don't use the standard realistic style, as it will make your images look like a generic cross between a studio photograph and a 3D render.

Specify a drawing or painting style.

To find your preferred art style, just ask for artistic images of things. When you find something in a style you like, put it back into a chatbot, and ask it what the style of the image is. Then, when you make images, you always add that art style after your description. This makes all your art look fairly consistent.

My adventure game always used variants of "very simple line drawing style." One example is "[Description of what I wanted.] Very simple line drawing style. Realistic. Colourful. Desaturated rainy forest background."

It's also great for creating icons. The trick to getting an icon is to ask for a "silhouette".

Documents are useful

Each time I do a revision, I make another copy of the entire game folder, and number it (001 etc.) I keep every revision of my games, as I often want to recover an old component, see how I did things, or even revert the whole game to a previous state. A publisher actually asked me to revert to a previous version of my game.

When I start a design, I write a document. I start brainstorming ideas as I go. It's kind of a conversation with myself. It starts turning into decisions, and tables of data and information. If I try to make another game in this genre, I'll look back at this.

Also, I write a report for each game that I abandon. These are both cathartic, and highly informative when I try a new game in this genre, much later.

I also have a spreadsheet I call my "Game Design Index". It records all the games I've made: their names, year, number of revisions, a line of notes, and a "potential". 0 is a game/idea I'll never go back to, and 10 is something that's published and available.

I also keep a spreadsheet of playtesters, and of submissions to publishers.

Changelogs are useless

For a long time, I kept excellent notes for each revision I did. These would contain the results of my playtests, my thoughts on the revision, and comprehensive changelogs of the rules and components. After many years of doing that, I decided it wasn't worthwhile. I never really re-read my notes.

Later, I just had a spreadsheet of quick comments, and a column of major changes. That wasn't really worthwhile either. Changelogs are a waste of time. Don't do them.

These days, however, I do post my thoughts to my Discord channel. Playtesters like to read about what's happening with the game, and see the latest cards.

Changes to components are recorded anyway, as I retain a copy of every version of the game. Also, rules changes are recorded on the rules card in each version.

I do not record the feedback of playtesters. During the game, and during their feedback, I'll make notes of what needs to change. I'll erase these notes later, as I do the work.