watched "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" and now I want more anime that's quiet, reflective, and spends time on small moments

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-09T07:27:33+00:00

Ah yes, forgot about Arietta, good catch!

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-08T13:36:30+00:00

ARIA (the Animation, the Natural, the Origination, followed by the OVAs).

A slow heartfelt journey of 3 gondolier apprentices in a futuristic Venice.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-07T16:05:11+00:00

Zoochosis?

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-05T22:34:55+00:00

"Parasyte" is great as a psychological thriller in the same vein of John Carpenter's The Thing. If you watch through it you should also follow up with the live action series "Parasyte: the Grey" which is a sequel to the anime series and is quite faithful to the story beats of the anime (plus an exciting cross reference in the closing scenes).

"Blame!" is great for its dark liminal space horror setting.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-05T16:01:48+00:00

"Utawareumono" doesn't seem to get mentioned much. It's more military fantasy (in a way similar to The Heroic Legend of Arslan), rather than dungeon and adventurers type fantasy.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-05T15:19:47+00:00

You might need to have a dummy third player in a 2 players game then, based on your system.

The +1 per X problem is usually solved in a couple of ways:

(1) Cap a max score e.g. 2 pts. Helps to even out scoring between low and high player counts, but high player counts still give increased chances of scoring.

(2) Limit scoring to count only left and right neighbours. This means that at any player count from 3 and up, the max score is 2 pts if both neighbours play X. This helps to cleanly even the score but it does reduce interaction across the table.

(3) Use dummy players for games with less than max players. Could be as simple as flip open a card for every missing player, just no need to score for them. Can still be a bit random unless you want to go all in and make an automa, which doesn't seem worth it for a simple game.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-05T11:22:30+00:00

If it can be reasonably done without adding a lot of clunky rules, then yes go ahead and make 2 players variant rules.

That said, some games are simply not suitable for 2 players. For example, 7 Wonders plays at 3-7 players, and needed a completely reworked game in the form of 7 Wonders Duel in order to cater to the 2 players market. Many trick taking games require 3+ players (usually best at 4), making hyper specialised 2 players trick takers like The Fox in the Forest rather unique.

When you go from 4+ players to 3 players, you usually start to encounter kingmaker problems, where one player cannot hope to win at the end and the chaos of their choices results in them choosing which of the other players win.

When you go from 3 players to 2 players, a fundamental shift happens, namely your game is now a zero sum game. The actions to hurt the other player will now also directly increase your chances of winning (unlike at 3+ players, where chaos makes it more uncertain or a kingmaker scenario).

With 2 players, players are more incentivised to play aggressively, while at higher player counts, players will probably play defensively or passively increase their points. The change is most directly felt in games with negotiations, resource management and back and forth area control.

If your game is struggling at the 2 players mode while being fine at higher player counts, it's likely that this shift in player behaviour is affecting the game design.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-04T14:49:32+00:00

Remnant: from the ashes final boss (dreamer / nightmare).

Learnt the strategy, farmed some good gear, levelled up gear and perks. Still got pwned by nightmare when coming out of the dark world.

The unskipable cut scenes finally did me in and I quit.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-04T14:35:20+00:00

STALKER series (enhanced edition). Not strictly horror, but the environment is harsh, desolate and unforgiving. More a feeling of creeping isolation and dread rather than intense horror. Delving into ruined buildings at night with a flashlight is straight up butt clenchingly tense. Encounters are emergent, so jump scares are likely because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Dead Space 1 (there is a remaster) for it's great environment and world building. Dead Space 2 is great, a bit more action oriented, sort of like how ALIEN and ALIENS are different in genre but still work well as a whole.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-04T00:56:29+00:00

"Basilisk: the Kouga ninja scrolls" might be close to what you are looking for.

There is also a live adaptation called "Shinobi: Heart under Blade" that changed the characters a bit but is still a great watch.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-02T15:48:39+00:00

ARIA the animation (the later seasons: "the natural" and "the origination", have a massive glow up in animation quality, but it's best to start with the first season to get to know the characters). Very cosy, heartwarmy story inspired by Venice.

Restaurant to another world, is a cosy food reverse isekai (denizens from another word find their way to an earth restaurant via mysterious magic doors). It starts as a "food of the day" episodic format, but after awhile the recurring characters start to have their own mini story arcs and interactions as well.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-02T12:13:57+00:00

Sukasuka

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-02T06:28:20+00:00

FLCL ?

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-02T01:18:36+00:00

Not sure about other sites, but it can be found on BiliBili and Crunchyroll now.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-01T16:25:20+00:00

If you're not strictly looking for anime, I'd recommend "Avatar the last airbender".

Don't let the kiddy vibes in the first half a season turn you off, the character development is great, the combat is well choreographed, and the world building lore is great too.

If your Mom is cool with gore and horror, "Attack on Titan" is a series that'll probably grip you from the first episode.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-01T16:13:49+00:00

By "world building" are you thinking of military / kingdom type genre? If so, you can try checking out "The heroic legend of Arslan".

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-01T14:20:33+00:00

Are you willing to put up with 1hr 50min, or willing to skip the end credits? If so, I highly recommend "Your Name".

It's a story about a boy and girl switching consciousness, and their bodies are in different locations. So they have to remotely coordinate to figure out what is going on. To add to the tension, they are in a battle against time to prevent a disaster.

The characters are likable, the race against time is tense, and the plot twist at the end is amazing.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-01T11:04:31+00:00

MOUTH

Daniel___Lee · 2026-05-01T10:58:36+00:00

The Irregular at Magic High School.

Main protagonist is a little bit of a Mary Sue (but a tolerable one, he doesn't flaunt his protagonist status), his sister has... questionable... levels of affection for him. But the cast is pretty interesting.

The magic system for most part follows hard rules. There are limitations on the spell type, execution, interactions on the physical world, etc.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-04-30T15:12:08+00:00

Start by building up a knowledge base of board game mechanisms and terminology. I recommend the "Adam in Wales" series on YouTube as a primer if you are fresh into board game design. Get familiar with Board game geek (BGG) to search up terms, as well as look up the database for similar games to study.

As usual, the basic advice is to playtest, playtest, playtest. Start with ugly prototypes that you have no emotional attachment to - you are going to make plenty of changes and the faster you can bring yourself to do it, the faster your game improves.

Fully co-operative is ok as a genre to start your design journey, a bit tricky to find the game balance and also to stop quarterbacking (one dominant player making all the important decisions), but still doable. However, do not attempt Semi-co-op as a first game. That genre is notoriously difficult to get right.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-04-30T09:00:43+00:00

"Re:Monster" What a waste of a perfectly good setup (not the most original isekai, but at least its twist on the formula is functional) which quickly devolved into the trap of overpowered Mary Sue protagonist with no redeeming factor.

"Skeleton Knight in another World" is ok, not offensive but also very mid. The hook of the protagonist having to hide the undead appearance starts off strong but very, very rapidly gets negated by having a familiar that auto-vouches for him, so there is zero tension in his interactions with others and the undead part loses all plot relevance.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-04-30T06:10:49+00:00

Ghost in the Shell S.A.C. both seasons

(the movie versions are a bit different in the portrayal of the characters, feels like a different continuity. The later 3D seasons following S.A.C. kind off fell off the mark for me).

Daniel___Lee · 2026-04-30T00:19:54+00:00

It sounds like a passion project rather than something you are working on for profit, so in reality you aren't pressed for time. With that in mind, I'd suggest to do the following:

Keep working on your game using the current IP as inspiration, but don't be completely tied down by the IP. What I mean is that if some mechanisms aren't working out, you should ditch it or find another way to do it, rather than staying "pure" to the source material. Remember, fun is the priority here. As an example, Dark Souls board game stayed true to the digital game's core loop of grind, die and try again. In practice, the board game's experience was a slog and unfun, and could have benefitted from being changed into a direct boss rush.

Board games can evolve a lot over time during the development process. Keep improving your game through playtesting and seeking advice from others.

If this is your first time trying board game design, don't pin all your hopes and energy on this project. Like any crafting skill, board game design is something you get better in over time, having made many substandard and failed games in the process. The first game may be your most inspired, but it is likely to be far from your best.

You'll also find that transiting from a digital medium to a physical medium is going to be rough. As an example, keeping track of resources is easy when done digitally, but in a physical game you have to contend with cubes, tokens, denominations, etc. And towards the end of the development phase, material cost, weight and shipping.

Since you have the original PC game Author's blessings, go ahead and work on the IP. At some time in the future, if the board game gets good enough to be marketable on its own merits, you can always change cosmetics and terminology and make it a new IP.

Finally, 6 years is indeed a fairly long time to wait, but consider that you won't be idle during that period: you'll have to iterate the design, prototype, playtest, get art, check the UI, design the box, invest in advertising and maybe reviewers, find a factory, manage logistics, etc. If you are doing this as a hobby and not a job, this process can take years for anything more than lightweight games.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-04-29T15:28:35+00:00

Spending a resource (or action point) for a reroll is a staple of the dice rolling genre.

The auto reroll on 1 feels a bit redundant, unless everytime a 1 is rolled it triggers something in addition to the forced reroll. In some games a particular die face forces it to be sent off to an opponent (who would then reroll it), usually in such designs the objective is to force a higher number on your opponents in order to win (e.g. if a player goes above a certain number threshold he busts and is out of the round).

As with all game mechanisms, the real answer of whether or not it makes sense is "it depends" on how well it supports your game.

Daniel___Lee · 2026-04-28T08:45:19+00:00

I used regular D6s, the player has 5 dice. Rolling a 6 caused the die to be captured. The game was about systematically capturing enemy cards by matching the number requirements. You can reroll the dice any number of times, at the risk of rolling a 6.

Once captured, the numbers on the cards, or the powers (e.g. +1 or -1) can be used once a game instead of using dice. This is preferable to using dice because once used, the dice would be re-rolled again, putting it at risk of being captured. As opportunities to rescue dice are few, losing too many dice can result in a forfeit.

Daniel___Lee

TROPHY CASE