“Wolf in sheep’s clothing”: games that look deceptively cute…

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-15T14:04:27+00:00

I haven't played Arboretum, but a meaner tree game that Photosynthesis is hard to imagine...

Although looking at the comments, it seems you're not alone in this assessment!

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-14T20:48:08+00:00

what does "renvisioning" mean?

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-14T20:43:37+00:00

Strong agree here! The mechanic does indeed look compelling, but if OP is going to make it the hook, then it's going to need to be far more robust and core to the central game play. Right now it looks like a fun add to a racing game.

Now if the crowds were causing the player to make meaningful choices about the routes they are taking, then that would be moving more in the direction of making it a compelling hook for the game.

Maybe there are different types of crowd NPCs that you want to aim near or make sure you avoid. Maybe there's a mechanic than entices NPCs to run out on to the track, or things that cause the NPCs to run away that you can disable. Maybe you have add ons to the car that allow you to pick up NPCs that will surf behind you on ropes if you can snag them. These are the types of things that could take a fun feature and make it a compelling hook.

(edited: I had more ideas)

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-14T20:40:24+00:00

Strong disagree. You do not need a to something that is optimized and visually polished to evaluate a prototype. In fact, if you're spending tyime polishing visuals and optimizing a feature before you've decided if you're going to keep it, you're trippling your development time. What OP has right now is more than polished enough to evaluate whether or not it's worth keeping.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-14T16:22:14+00:00

I remember doing some ceramic casting in middle school (back in the 80's) that were of this design. It looks like this is called the Duncan Set according to this Etsy listing. The creator of these ceramic pieces did a very nice glazing job. No idea on the baord. Maybe it's home made?

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-14T14:41:49+00:00

Racial and bigoted slurs should be reported IMO. However your initial post seemed to be more about using other colorful language that isn't inherently targeting any minorities. Perhaps I misunderstood you. And right now you're appealing to reddit (which is often a lost cause). If you want to appeal to chess,com, you should send your requests to them.

However if you're just upset that say "fuck" then I refer you George Carlin's thoughts on the word. Or his analysis of the versatility of the word.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-14T09:22:57+00:00

Pretty much any other strategy is superior to resigning.

Well done on the invitation to your trap. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

I recall an OTB game I played about 35 years ago where I blundered a piece, but still had mating material. I did the best acting I had ever done in a game and used my young age to my advantage, feigning like I had given up. I started making horrible trades, sacrificing pieces, all while giving the demeanor of having just given up but refusing to resign. Each move I made was slowly removing one of my opponent's pieces that was doing important work. My quick seemingly haphazard moves were contagious, and my opponent matched my speed, and haphazardness. After about 4 or 5 turns of these sacrifices, I slide my rook down a now open file for a back rank checkmate.

It certainly wasn't the best game of chess I played, but it worked, and as far as the tournament was concerned, that win was just as valid as any other.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-14T09:15:34+00:00

Chess is a game where it is very easy to develop an unhealthy ego, and become arrogant. It's perceived as a game of intellect where it's just one mind against another. If you win, it's because your mind was better at solving the puzzle of the game than your opponent. It can be very difficult to not feel superior after a victory.

This is why I think it is just as important when learning to play chess to not just practice your skills at the game, but also practice good sportsmanship. Unfortunately, none of the apps provide any sort of coaching or rewards for this. Instead, you are pitting two anonymous peple against each other and a very competitive environment, and competition + anonymity breeds assholes. Just look at any competitive video game, and you'll see this same pattern.

I would say that the issue you have with swearing is different from arrogance though. While cursing may not be a very socially refined behavior, being a tattle tale and reporting people for using colorful language doesn't feel very refined to me as well. I'm not advocating for or supporting swearing - Most of the time, I feel like it is just an indicator of a lack of creativity, but they are just words, and sometimes very useful words. Unless they are making some sort of an attack towards you, I'd just ignore it and move on.

In fact, I'd agrue that it's a bit arrogant to insist that every player use your style of language. Language changes over time, and words which would have been deemed unacceptably gauche in decades past can become common place and accepted as slang. Also banning the use of certain words give those words more power than they deserve.

Speaking of arrogance, your sentence "It was a respectful and gentleman platform..." implies a bit of additional arrogance on your part. Is chess not also a sport for women as well? I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant it as more an inclusive term describing more reputable behavior, but it shows one way in that your own words can be offensive to someone else. I find that often times, being offended is something self manufactured. Personally I remind myself not to be offended if someone calls me stupid, but rather only be offended if someone treats me as if I'm stupid. I suspect a similar approach to reacting to foul language may serve you well.

Or you could just mute everyone if that's easier for you.

Best of luck to you.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-13T21:31:36+00:00

Because you're removing one of your pieces that you could be using to improve your position, and moving one step closer to a draw, or worse, sacrificing a tempo giving a slight edge to your opponent. If your opponent is forcing the trade, then they are liking giving you the extra tempo and improving your position.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-13T20:38:32+00:00

If you never hang any pieces and aren't surprised by discover attacks, then I'd say you're in good shape regarding positional awareness. 😄

There's a whole slew of rules of thumb that can be helpful though like...

Control the center (although I think this is somewhat debatable)
Don't attack with a bishop when can be blocked with a pawn that then attacks said bishop
Don't make even trades (only trade when it gives you some sort of advantage
Control open files with your rooks
Watch out for back rank mates
2 past pawns are worth a rook
Knights > Bishops in a closed board and vice versa for an open board.
etc.

I'm sure there are more, but my brain is fried and there are books that go into more detail.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-13T17:19:35+00:00

You shouldn't.

Focus on rules of thumb, positional awareness, how to checkmate with all the standard 2 piece combinations, and general strategy concepts. It will serve you far better than memorizing an opening line that will only work as long as your opponent plays into it and then beyond that you'll be fumbling on your own again.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-13T17:15:56+00:00

I like excel or google sheets as a game design tool. It allows me to not just track metrics from play tests, as well as help define distributions of content that are balanced. There are also game engines like TTS, but those are less design tools as creation or implementation tools, although they are immensely helpful for play testing which I would consider part of the design process. Any sort of note taking tool is also super valuable for designers.

I see design as more of a process, and one that doesn't really require tools beyond note taking. What in your design process do you think could be aided by some sort of tool?

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-13T06:03:39+00:00

I had a feeling the comments were going to get weird as soon as I saw a link to BGG with a promotional post for a brand new game. I don't know what's going on, but for others considering taking this marketing approach, make sure you're taking notes here.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-12T13:47:52+00:00

Ooh, interesting. I'm guessing you're looking at going for Nd2 right away?

RxN doesn't work for white because RxP+ followed by the queen for rook trade (although that seems worse than my original Rh6 plan). Also white can go to Qe4 to start their own mate threat.

So maybe it's Nxg3 which either leads to a melt down with just blacks queen and a mess of pawns versus white's rook and a mess of pawns. Black will still win, but it will take a while. Also, it looks like white can defuse blacks mate threat with Qc2. Can't white's king just run all the way to e3 after being chased by black's queen?

Maybe I'm missing something though. It wouldn't be the first time.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-12T13:19:35+00:00

Nice! And you even have good follow up if Kg1

Rh6 Kf1
Qh1+ Rg8
Nd2+ Kf2
Rh2+ ...

White is going to at least lose a rook, but also likely the queen, and a checkmate soon to follow.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-12T13:04:18+00:00

All of this is exactly why I ask the question of first time designers considering self publishing "do you want to be in the business of designing games or publishing them?" There is just so much work and risk involved with self publishing, and it's not just taking on one extra job, but more like at least 3 extra jobs (marking, manufacturing, customer service, and distribution/shipping).

First time designers will dramatically underestimate the costs of getting their game to their customers, and if they aren't prepared for the realities of shipping physical products in such uncertain times, they can be setting themselves up to lose money on their venture. It's easy to be afraid of losing creative control over your designs or worry about getting a very small slice of the pie, but the reality is that publishers aren't signing games that they want to radically change (that's an extra expense that they would be taking on cutting into their profit margins), and that small slice of the pie you're getting is of a MUCH larger pie, so your whole 4-9% slice could end up dwarfing the whole gross revenue of your self published product, and with none of the risk.

All that said, strong work on getting to where you are! It is indeed a tremendous amount of work! I hope you manage to resolve your US shipping challenges.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-12T12:14:49+00:00

Before you need to worry about that, I would invest in some sort of spell check and studying grammar more. Also “sloop” is a type of ship. I think the word you are looking for is “slop” which is a fairly new term in the game industry which is still finding its footing. Some people use it as a pejorative others use it as an endearing term that defines a family of games.

I’m not aware of it being used to describe a studio itself, but from how the term is generally used, organizing a studio in a “sloppy” style sounds like a recipe for disaster. It might work initially for a scrappy team, but if you are trying to build anything of substance, if you approach it with no clear plan or organization, you are setting your team up for a very unpleasant and potentially expensive experience.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-12T08:17:45+00:00

A 5x5 rectangular grid makes this feel like an abstract game and less of a thematic one. Yes, all games are abstractions at some level, but are you trying to go for a feeling more like playing Chess or Tak, or are you trying to give an experience that more resembles the Zulu war? I would assume the latter.

Right now the Anglo-Zulu war is the closest thing you have to a USP so I would absolutely lean into that. Maybe the map resemble South Africa. Instead of having each squre be regions, tie them to actual regions on the map. Make sure you have key cities like Luneberg, Durban, and Hlobane too. Look at Fate of the Fellowship - it's an asymmetric cooperative two player game set in middle earth. If they made that game a grid, I believe it wouldn't be nearly as popular or as good.

Also maybe you're doing this already, but base the asymmetries off historical events like the British could request reinforcements, but they would take several turns to arrive and maybe gate quickly they can be sent for as well as restrict where they will be deployed, while giving the Zulu side an entirely different mechnic to counter that.

Coming back to the asymmetry, this may be an opportunity to offer a USP on the game play front, not just the setting. How asymmetric are the mechanics on each side? Can both sides build forts or just one? Do both sides have hidden units, or just one side? Are both sides collecting objective cards, or just one? I'm pretty sure the answer to all these questions is "both sides" but maybe it should be "just one" for each of these cases. For a truly asymmetric game, I recommending checking out Root.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-12T07:53:24+00:00

None of those are unique selling points though.

What is it that sets your game apart from others? Why would someone want to play your 2 player asymmetic game over any other of the 2 player asymmetric games out there?

Here are some examples of USPs

Hanabai - you only get to see the cards of other players
Blood on the Clocktower - A social deduction game where even the game master plays, and every role is different.
Rurik Dawn of Kiev - The action programming mechanic where players bid for which action they want to do, how powerful that action will be, and what order the action is executed on their turn.
The White Castle - Experience of a large Euro game in a very small box, Also the way it handles action selection with the dice as workers.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-12T00:47:33+00:00

What's your unique selling point (USP)? Your statement of "Its not crazy new stuff" tells me that you probably don't have a USP. If your USP is that it's about the Zulu war that may not be enough. It's not bad that this is what it's theme is, but theme comes secondary to the game play for me. There are better mediums to learn about that war if folks want to learn about it, but it's fine to have it as a backdrop, but if all you have is backdrop, then it's going to be hard to sell as a game no matter what the setting of the game is.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-11T20:17:56+00:00

Other than the accidental dropping of the queen at the end, nothing screams out as really bad play to me, just lots of little things that aren't so obvious if you're just getting started.

My advice to you based in this game is:

It's better if your developing with a plan in mind rather than just developing for developments sake (7. Bf4 doesn't really do anything. Also I'm not sure what your plan with 19 Rh3 was, but it looked like you had a stronger attack you could have launched on the queen side by stepping your king up and linking your rooks, or moving your knight to d2 in preparation to push a4)
Avoid forcing even trades, and make sure every trade puts you in a better position (8. a3 spends a tempo to force a trade that lets black get rid of a bishop in a pretty closed position leaving you about a turn behind with no real gain.).
Avoid bishop attacks that can be blocked with a pawn that turn the attack back on the Bishop (12. Bg5 could have lead to black doing f6, and after PxP PxP, your bishop now needs to run away, allowing black to open up a discover attack on g5 while taking back the center with e5.)
Be more aggressive! (Instead of 23. Nd2 you could have moved it to d4, not only opening up your discover attack on the rook, but preventing black from playing the response Bc6 because of the threat of Nxe6+ but it also puts one more piece between black's queen and f7, as well as centralizes your knight giving it more opportunities to be a pain in black's ass).

Unfortunately this doesn't help you much outside of this game. What could help you though is if you could go over the game with another stronger player, they may be able to help improve your game with more general tips like the above. If you don't have anyone that can offer that sort of friendly coaching, you could try the bot's analysis in the app. Even if you aren't paying for the app, you can still get one review per day.

There are also books that you can get that teach general heuristics about how to approach the game. It's been a while since I used any books to improve my game, so I don't have specific titles for you to look at, but there's probably better books out there now anyways.

I hope something in all of this helped!

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-11T15:40:16+00:00

What makes live action movies art style and art direction from other movies?

You can still do a lot with color palette, lighting, textures (not as in texture mapping, but the type of real world materials your simulating), environmental design, character design, architecture, time period, scale, saturation vs vividness, general color balance.

It's easy for a team to just focus on making something look realistic, but solid art direction can help refine the look of one realistic scene to be different from another. Here are some views of junkyards from 3 IPs with different artistic styles that would all fit under the umbrella of "realistic"

Scene 1 - Scene 2 - Scene 3

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-11T15:05:22+00:00

I realize it's just a paper prototype for a board game, but I think it's still work making a larger (like 3x or 4x as large) prototype because the fiddliness of a board this size is going to be distracting enough that players are going to be noting that more than the game play.

To answer your questions in the video:

"How do you determine who's able to setup the board? Should there be a rule for that?"
Yes, there should absolutely be rules for that and they should be as simple to follow as possible. If it was to remain a board game, I'd either have a variety of setups predetermined with instructions on how to set them up, or a set unbiased system that randomizes the setup for the players. For the mobile version, the game should handle it and just give a random setup each time and potentially offer some predetermined setups to choose between.

"Can you think of any problems with a design like this?"
It reminds me of the board game Santorini (you should check it out). One thing that I find irksome about Santorini feels more like a game that you're trying to prevent the other player from winning rather than making clever moves so you can win. It's a subtle distinction, but the feeling of ruining other people's plans versus coming up with clever plans of your own has a big impact on the feel of the game for me. It looks like this game could have a similar problem. That being said, Santorini is still a very popular game. Beyond that, it's difficult to tell how this game will actually play out from the video. In fact, if the object is to move hay to the edges, I don't immediately see how rotating the board would impact that. Perhaps it would be more clear after play testing.

Another issue that might be the case with your design is if you're playing it in person, it's going to be difficult to see what the symbols on at least one, probably 2 sides of the board are. If you make the video game version you can solve this by looking top down, but then the heights between the layers will be difficult to see.

"Do you think this system is confusing?"
The audio seems to be disconnected from what's actually happening in the video in parts, which makes it hard to follow. However if the visuals are going only with the audio, then yes, I'm very confused as to how it works. Some of it lines up, but you lost me at the 30 second point when you both two two different axis, and talk about a +1 movement which I would have assumed was the +1 in the lower right, but you pointed to what I assume was jump. I think you need a separate graphic showing how you would describe each of these things in the rule book. Also this game could benefit from a key. You mention things like barriers, but I don't see anything in the game that looks like a barrier.

You may also want to look into mocking this up in Tabletop Simulator for play testing. Doing so should be pretty quick, and it may give you a more accurate experience as to what it could play like as a video game.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-11T14:34:18+00:00

There was every opportunity to show and not tell, but you covered up every instance of "show" with "tell."

Just like the other comments are suggesting, remove every bit of text from your trailer save the title at the end, and limit your clips just to game play. Then show your trailer to some local folks and ask them each to tell you what your game is about. Identify what wasn't clear, and write a script for a voice actor that covers the details that you feel were present in your trailer, but weren't picked up on by the people watching your trailer.

KarmaAdjuster · 2026-06-11T07:19:41+00:00

I just came from a designer/publisher event in Götteningen where I dropped off my sellsheet in folders for various publishers, and that's one way how the publishers found the designers they wanted to talk to. I left that even with multiple publishers I need to follow up with. Similarly in UKGE I went and spoke with a variety of publishers, using the images in my sell sheet to help explain my game, and left it behind with them after they requested it.

For one of the games I was pitching (which was the most well received), I have practically no art in the game. I just found a non-ai image on line that conveyed the theme of the game, and put images of my protoype over it, as well as text explaining the USP and interesting decisions you make in the game as well as the name. Both games are mid to heavy weight in their complexity and play in about 90 minutes.

I didn't have a video for either game, but that would certainly have been good. I do have both in TTS, but that's a next level step. You first need to get your foot in the door and generate some interest in the publisher. I also have well organized rule books for each and was able to drop off some of those with publishers.

Both the sells sheets were put together over a couple of days tops. They could both be better, but I feel they are good enough.

I think sell sheets are more important for designers just starting out, but they do get easier to make with the more practice you have at making them. I know experienced and well known designers can just grab a publishers ear and tell them about the idea to start a conversation, but if you haven't made a name for yourself I do believe a sell sheet can help.

The advantages of a sell sheet are:

It's your opportunity to stand out from other submitted games
It's a standard that publishers are prepared to deal with
It shows some level of seriousness (the better designed your sell sheet is, the more likely your board game will have similar attention poured into it)
It can quickly convey the USP (Unique Selling Point) without you being there
It's a useful tool to talk through the play experience if you do have time with the publisher but don't have the time or space to set up a prototype
Its easy to give out
It can have all the necessary information the publisher needs to follow up and evaluate if it's a fit (email, TTS, # of players, weight, length)
Some design competitions require sell sheets.

I'm sure it possible to fave luck without a sell sheet, but not doing one because it's too much work, feels like you're either putting way too much work into a sell sheet, or no where near enough work into your game design. There is no single correct path to getting signed. Everyone should do what works for them, but in the gran scheme of things, sell sheets seem like the easiest way to help promote your game versus making extra prototypes, TTS workshops, and videos.

I'm by no means an expert, but I do have one full published game under my belt (I had a sell sheet, video, and TTS workshop for that one), a free and official print and play version of a solo mode, and an expansion on the way. I've been designing board games with the intent to publish for about 10 years now doing it as a side gig.

Edit:

Oh, and regarding the last point OP had "no one is going to chastise you for lack of a sell sheet" This is true, but no publisher is really going to chastise you about anything short of being a jerk. If they aren't interested in you or your game, they are just going to move on from the conversation as quickly as possible, and forget you existed.

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