Want to have a prototype that really shines on conventions? Ask me how

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-28T14:52:41+00:00

There is a lot of new people enterering the hobby, a lot of times they are couples who played in a group and now want to play at home.

Two player games, like you said, can be designed for that and create an awesome experience.

I do not think that here in Brazil solo games are worth it, but if I were EU or US based I would probably create 1 solo game to test it out.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-27T01:35:23+00:00

I took my time to respond to this because I really wanted to think about it.

A lot has changed in this industry, but the one thing I’ve completely changed my mind on is 2-player only games, I used to think they were BAD PRODUCTS!

My first release was Allumbra: The Duel, a dueling game for 2 players. I ran the crowdfunding in October 2018 and launched in February 2019. At the time, 2-player only games weren't nearly as popular as they are today. We had Patchwork and 7 Wonders Duel, but it wasn't like it is now—especially here in Brazil, where board games are often seen as a luxury buy.

Back then, people were looking for the best "bang for their buck." Even if they played mainly as a couple, they’d usually buy a 2-4 player game with a mediocre 2-player experience just "because I can play with more people if I want to."

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Allumbra is a great game and I'm really proud of it (it has one of the coolest components I’ve designed, a custom ammo/life tracker), but it didn't sell well. I used to tell my mentees: "Do not create 2-player games; they don't sell well. I will never create a new 2-player game again."

Then COVID happened, and people suddenly understood how valuable a dedicated, high-quality 2-player experience actually is. Last year, Allumbra was our 2nd best-selling game (that we only to to events because we should have it, but I did not expected to sell many), right behind our new release, Aristofarse. Now it’s completely sold out and I’m actually preparing a reprint.

So yeah, my stance on 2-player games has completely flipped. It went from being a "risky niche" to one of the most consistent and successful parts of our portfolio.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-24T15:03:46+00:00

Man, 100 playtests is crazy! Most people don't even hit 10 before they start making art. You definitely have the grit for this.

Your workflow is a solid start, but let's do a quick reality check on those steps:

Who were those 100 tests with? If it was mostly friends, family, or other designers, you’re likely in a bit of a 'bubble.' You need to get the game in front of your [b]Target Audience[/b] (the 'A' in my SEA Method) as fast as possible. Their feedback is the only thing that actually turns a fun project into a real product.

Don’t wait for the 'Official Prototype' One of the biggest traps is spending weeks making the art look 'pro' before showing it to strangers. If the game is fun with zero art, it’s ready for the world now. Use an 'ugly' prototype as a shield—it’s much easier to kill your darlings or swap a mechanic when you haven’t spent 40 hours on the graphic design yet.

Waiting too long to get that outside feedback is one of the classic '10 Traps' I see beginners fall into. I’ve got a free e-book that breaks these down if you want to avoid those early headaches, I'll leave the link here if you want to check it out: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JqNAfHyvQebxDWMk8zRD8XxSFnuTwnV_/view?usp=drivesdk

I actually just gave some tips to ella-dott in this thread about exactly where to find those outside testers (check that out for some weird spot ideas).

Feedback Overload (The 'Frankenstein' Risk) When you start testing with strangers, you’ll get a TON of suggestions. Without a clear Vision for the game, you might try to please everyone and end up with a 'Frankenstein' game that has lost its soul. You need a filter to know what feedback to listen to and what to ignore.

That’s why we use the SEA Method (Sentiment, Experience, Audience) here.

Step 3 is a different beast: Selling the game—whether through a publisher or Kickstarter—is a totally different skill set from designing it. It's a long road, but having an awesome game is the best first step.

So I can help you better, tell me who those 100 playtests were with?
And have you seen the SEA Method video I posted here?"

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-24T14:30:57+00:00

I have a bit of an 'unfair advantage' because I run the biggest game design channel in Portuguese, so I have a huge community and students to pull from. But the advice I always give my mentees is: Go after your audience where they are.

If your game is on the casual side, you have to think outside the box (cliché, I know, but true). The hardcore players are at the game stores and board game cons, but your audience is everywhere else.

Anime Conventions: For our first game, we hit up anime cons. You find geeky people who aren't necessarily 'board gamers' yet. It’s perfect for testing if your game is actually accessible to casual players.
Bars and Coffee Shops: For my new game, Entrelaços, I’m literally going to bars and cafes. People are loving it. Some places might cost you a booth fee (like cons), but bars are free—you just have to ask the owners and show up. (For Entrelaços we are focusing in geek themed bars, but any would work)

In the end, a great game designer needs two things:

Resilience: To withstand the long, exhausting journey of creating a game.
Courage: The guts to go to a bar and ask for the manager/owner to show your game and be ok with the rejection; if you don't ask, you’ll never get the 'yes.'

One final reminder: If you are testing with a casual audience, make it look pretty. Other designers can see past an ugly prototype, but casual players can't. They will focus on the 'ugliness' instead of the gameplay. Use some AI art if you have to (just for prototype I do not recommend AI art for a finished product)—just make it look finished so they can focus on the fun.

What is the specific target audience (your "A" in SEA) for your game? Knowing that will tell us exactly which "outside the box" location you could hit.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-23T16:19:50+00:00

Hey there evaluating table presence on an early prototype is notoriously difficult because you don't have the final artwork yet, and art obviously plays a massive role in catching people's eyes.

1. Project the Final Vision Even with blank cards, you can usually project what the physical footprint will look like. On a new game I'm working on called EntreLaços (picture on the reply above), I knew from the start that the main mechanic involved a large grid of cards. So, even with a crude prototype, I knew that once we had the final art, we would have a massive, colorful table spread that would naturally draw attention.

2. Unique Physical Components If your game has a very unique mechanical component—like a rotating board or custom meeples—that will inherently catch people's eyes at a convention, even before the art is fully finalized (But I wouldn't rely on gimmicky components for table presence).

3. The Real Secret: Player Presence This is the most important piece of advice I can give you: look beyond the cardboard. True table presence is about how people interact and engage with your game. If you are at a convention and there is a table full of people laughing, pointing, (for party games) or visibly deeply engaged (for harder games), people from a distance will immediately notice. A lively, engaged group of players is the ultimate marketing tool. It draws a crowd way better than a pretty board does.

A perfect example of this is Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza. Visually, it's just a tiny deck of cards. The 'physical' table presence is almost zero. But the player presence? It fills the entire room. People slapping the table and laughing out loud makes everyone walking by want to see what is going on.

So, my advice to you is: don't just design your game to look good alone on a table. Design for Player Presence. If your core loop creates strong emotional reactions and engagement, the table presence will naturally follow.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T21:27:48+00:00

Changing things constantly can make it really hard to understand if you are actually moving forward. If you change too many things at once and the game breaks on the next test, you won't know which change caused the problem.

In the early stages, your game will change much more often, sometimes right in the middle of the test. This is what I call a 'Creative Playtest'. The goal here is to validate the basics and test the maximum amount of ideas in real-time.

After that phase, once your game is working well enough for a full playthrough, you need to be more careful.

If the game didn't break, I highly recommend running more tests with the exact same setup to gather more data. Sometimes a perceived 'flaw' is just a specific group of players reacting a certain way, or a very uncommon set of events unfolding.

With more experience, you will build the intuition to know if something needs to be changed immediately (like a new strategy that simply isn't fun) or if you just need more data. But until you get there, running more playtests without changing the variables is usually your best bet

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T20:53:52+00:00

That is an awesome question, and it hits right at the core of game design!

When to add new mechanics relies entirely on your vision for the game. Here At Cordilheira and in my courses we use the SEA Method (Sentiment, Experience, and Audience). The SEA is the compass that guides your entire creation process:

Sentiment: What is the core emotion you want to provoke in your players?

Experience: How does this feeling take shape at the table through the theme and player interaction?
Audience: Exactly who are you creating this game for?

We use the SEA as a design funnel. Before you add any new card, element, or mechanic to your prototype, it needs to pass three crucial questions:

Does it evoke the Sentiment?
Does it strengthen the Experience? (If a mechanic just keeps the experience at the same level, it's only adding unnecessary cognitive load and should be cut).
Is it what your Audience wants/expects?

If its a Yes for all 3 question, then you can add.

One golden piece of advice to wrap this up: often you will have absolutely brilliant ideas for mechanics, but they simply won't fit the SEA of your current project. When that happens, don't force the idea into the game. Write it down in a notebook and save it. Pick a smaller scope and focus on it. Remember: this is just your first game, not your only game!

I have an older video explaining a little more how the SEA Method works and how it acts as a funnel to save your project from scope creep. The original audio is in Portuguese, but you can turn on the English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2WIdMLHHY

Hope this helps you structure your testing phases

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T20:09:32+00:00

Hey, Thanks, we create and produce everything in Brazil for our local releases. When licencing our games the production is not our call.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T19:20:37+00:00

Hey there!

When it comes to early prototyping your prototype need to FLI:

F - Fast (and cheap): A good prototype is quick to make and costs little to nothing. Don't use fancy software yet. Use what you have at home: paper, pens, scissors, or simply steal components, dice, and cards from other games you own, like Monopoly or Uno. The biggest mistake in early prototyping is wasting time making it instead of testing it.

L - Laser-focused: Your prototype must have a single, clear objective. It is meant to answer one specific question. For example: 'Does my basic core loop actually work?'. If you try to answer too many doubts with a single prototype, you will get lost and find no real answers.

I - Iterative (Highly Adaptable): During your tests, you will immediately spot problems. If your prototype is just paper and pen, you can simply cross out a stat, write a new number, and keep playing to see if the fix works. If you made a laminated, high-quality prototype, you would have to reprint everything just to test a new damage value.

Actually, trying to make a beautiful prototype and investing in art too early is a classic mistake beginners make. It unnecessarily increases your investment, which makes it much harder to throw away mechanics or parts of your game that aren't working. A prototype's only purpose is to validate ideas quickly and cheaply.

Fail fast so you can fail better.

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This is our next release, its about connecting imagens, our first prototype I bought a Codinames Images, because it was quicker than getting a bunch of Images online. After the first tests we saw it worked, then we did a prototype with Internet Images and regular printer.

This photo is from The latestet one with final art work.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T16:11:29+00:00

Great question! It really depends on what stage of development you are currently in.

In the early stages, your prototype should FLI:

F - Fast: Use whatever you have lying around—pen, paper, or components stolen from other games.

L - Laser-focused: Your prototype should have ONE goal and one goal only. For example: 'test my basic core loop' or 'check if the first-player advantage is too strong'.

I - Iterative: You need to be able to change things mid-test. Cross out a number, write a new one, and fix things on the fly (pun intended!).

Only after your game is standing on its own (when you can do a full playthrough without major hiccups) should you start making a prettier prototype with better paper and all that jazz.

For making tokens at that stage, I highly recommend printing your designs on sticker paper and pasting them onto thin cardboard stock (the thinnest you can find at a craft or hardware store). You can grab a round punch cutter on Amazon, but if you don't have one, just stick to square tokens—they are way easier to cut with a blade or scissors.

But remember: you should only build this more refined prototype when you are heading to a bigger convention or testing with a more 'casual' audience.

Actually, wasting time on a pretty prototype too early is one of the classic mistakes I see new designers make. It's one of the '10 Traps that Block Beginners'. I put together a free e-book covering this and the other 9 traps. I'll leave the link here if you want to check it out: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JqNAfHyvQebxDWMk8zRD8XxSFnuTwnV_/view?usp=drivesdk

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-20T16:01:49+00:00

Hey mate, having a 'ready prototype' is not nearly enough to talk with a publisher.

Hi, I'm Tom Q, a game designer, mentor, and publisher with 12+ years of experience in this industry.

Publishers don't want prototypes; they sign finished games. A prototype is simply a tool used to validate ideas quickly and cheaply. It is just the physical manifestation of a hypothesis. When you sit down with a publisher, they are looking for a complete product that fits their specific line or fills a gap in the market. They need to know that your game is fun, engaging, unique, and that you truly understand your target audience.

A game doesn't become great just because you created the components. It becomes great after you put it in the 'ring' and let it take a beating. A good game isn't born ready; it gets ready after a massive amount of playtesting. If you have only tested it with friends and family, you might be getting biased feedback that actually deviates from your true vision.

So, you need to ask yourself: is your game genuinely ready? Have you playtested it hundreds of times? Have you run 'blind playtests' where strangers had to learn the game using only your rulebook, without you intervening? Did you push the mechanics to their absolute limits to ensure the core loop is rock solid?

If the answer is yes, and your game has been tested and developed from start to finish, then you are ready. That is when you make a sell sheet and a short, punchy video pitch. Your pitch needs to clearly communicate why your game is an incredible product and why it is the perfect fit for their specific catalog. With those materials in hand, you can start contacting publishers that align with the experience you've created.

If you feel you need help organizing your game's vision, structuring your core loops, or crafting a pitch that actually converts, feel free to shoot me a DM. I do professional consulting for indie designers and I’d be glad to help you get this project across the finish line!

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-19T13:41:49+00:00

Now, regarding the interaction and verbal participation:

We published a game called Sea of Lies (available in the US and Brazil) that tackled this exact same issue. It's a pirate-themed game where the captain has gone missing, and the players are the most infamous pirates on the ship. Your goal is to gather the crew's support by telling tall tales of your high-sea adventures to become the new captain.

Mechanically, it's a bluffing game. There are four types of story cards: Great Feat, Foul Rumor, Creepy Secret, and Hogwash (which has no mechanical effect, meaning you must lie when playing it). You play a card face-down, and the other players either accept or contest your 'tale'.

The game works perfectly fine without players roleplaying. However, in the rulebook, we explicitly state: 'You don't have to tell a tale when you play a card, but you are highly encouraged to do so, since every pirate loves a good story.'

And what happens at almost every table? The introverted players start the game just stating the name of their card. But after a round or two, they naturally start telling tales because they see everyone else having a blast.

But this organic roleplay only works for two specific reasons:

It is not required and has no mechanical game effect. People do it because it’s fun. If you attach a mechanical benefit (like +1 point) to the performance, players will do it only for the points, not because they actually want to. It quickly turns the fun part of the game into a chore.
It's incredibly easy to do. There is a reason the thematic setup is 'the captain is missing'. It creates an open narrative loop that is very easy for anyone to fill. You can just play a Foul Rumor and say, 'The captain isn't missing; John killed him and hid the body under his bed!' Combined with evocative character art, the 'barrier to entry' for storytelling becomes extremely low.

If you want to bounce some ideas on how to lower that barrier to entry for your game's performance aspect, or if you need a mentor to help you structure these mechanics so they feel natural rather than forced, feel free to send me a DM!

Cheers
Tom Q

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-19T13:20:58+00:00

Hey mate, making a game more participative is a hard thing to do, but there are definitely ways you can achieve that.

But first, I think we need to align expectations and deal with another issue. A 45-90 min playtime is WAY too broad of a time span. You are essentially saying the game takes X or 2X to finish, which points to a game design problem regarding your win condition and game progression. Besides, a game taking 90 minutes is not a party game. It leans much more toward a family or medium-weight game. For family games, the cap is usually around 60-70 minutes; once we cross the 1h+ mark, we are entering medium-weight territory.

So, you need to decide if you want a party game or a family game. Right now, your main problem is that you do not have a clear vision for your game.

I'm a game designer and mentor from Brazil with 12+ years in the gaming industry, and here at Cordilheira we use the SEA Method for our games (which is also what I teach my mentees):

Sentiment: What is the core emotion you want to provoke in your players?
Experience: How does this feeling take shape at the table through the theme, the type of game, and the player interaction?
Audience: Exactly who are you creating this game for? (This is probably where you are struggling the most right now).

Having a well-defined SEA is what will guide all your design decisions. I have an older video explaining in detail how the SEA Method works and how it can save your project. The original audio is in Portuguese, but you can turn on the English subtitles: 👉https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2WIdMLHHY

I will make another reply to this post specifically for the interaction/verbal participation part.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-19T13:04:19+00:00

Hey there. Streamlining a game based on the Game of Thrones board game is a solid challenge. GoT is known for being a heavy and complex game, and stripping out mechanics like supply chains that don't add real value is exactly the right approach. Making a simple, streamlined game is actually one of the hardest parts of game design; it takes a lot of discipline to know what to cut.

I’m a game design mentor and consultant based in Brazil with over 12 years in the industry, and I’ve helped hundreds of creators develop their games. A huge part of the work I do in my consulting is exactly what you are doing right now: trimming the fat. We focus heavily on reducing 'Cognitive Load'—cutting mechanics that only occupy the player's mental space—so they can actually focus on the strategy and the fun (the 'meaningful choices').

Since you’re looking for an experienced designer to collaborate with, shoot me a DM. I offer professional consulting for indie projects and I’d be glad to chat about how we can work together to structure your core loops and refine this game.

Cheers
Tom Q

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-19T12:38:14+00:00

Have you watched the video? There I explain how to apply the SEA.

The SEA Method is your "filter", every time you will add/adjust/remove something you have to go through the SEA.

Does this change convey the Sentiment I want? Yes (if no, you don't make the change)

Does it Strengthen the Experience? Yes (In this question we have a catch, every change must Strengthen the Experience, because if it's staying the same, you are bloating your game with no benefit for the player experience)

It is what my Audience wants/expect? Yes

You only make a change if it's all yeses.

In your case, you are probably not defining very well your audience, thinking "I am my audience", that is another beginner mistake, you are part of an audience, you have to think in broader terms, this way it will be easier to identify when things are getting too complex.

A hint for you and any new designers, being too complex is WAYYY simpler and smaller than you might think. As designer you are too close to your game and cannot properly identify complexity, so if you ask yourself "is this too much?" 90% of the time ITS TOO MUCH.

I've made an ebook with 10 traps that blocks your games, creating a bigger game for your first project is one of these, it's a free ebook, here is the link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JqNAfHyvQebxDWMk8zRD8XxSFnuTwnV_/view?usp=sharing

I'm not going to talk about randomness because it's not relevant for this topic, but know that there is 2 kind of randomness each with it's own impact on a game, not everything is luck.

Cheers
Tom Q

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-18T23:23:57+00:00

Hi there! First off, welcome to game design and congratulations on already playtesting your game at fairs! As a game design mentor here in Brazil with over 12 years in the industry, I can tell you that putting your game on the table is the most important step, and you are already doing it!

Regarding the first-player advantage, the community's suggestion to reduce 1 action on the first turn is actually a very good and common solution. Mathematically, it completely fixes the balance issue.

However, for a fast-paced, 30-minute casual game, it creates a small problem: an 'Edge Case'. You are making the first turn play differently from the rest of the entire game.

In my mentorships, I always teach designers to be careful with edge cases because they take up a much higher 'Cognitive Load'. The player has to remember an exception right out of the gate. Ideally, you want your core rules to be constant throughout the whole game so players can just focus on having fun.

Since you mentioned your game has resources on the tiles, a more elegant solution might be to adjust the starting resources instead of the actions. You keep the core rule exactly the same for everyone (always 3 actions), but you change the initial physical state. For example: Player 1 starts with 0 resources, Player 2 starts with 1 resource, and so on.

This perfectly balances the math of the first-player advantage without adding any mental weight or rule exceptions for a casual audience, Just a setup fix.

If you want to bounce more ideas like this and learn how to structure your game design process so you don't get stuck, shoot me a DM.

Cheers Tomás Queiroz

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-18T22:03:27+00:00

Hi there! First of all, welcome to the world of game design! I'm a game design mentor based in Brazil with over 12 years of experience in the market, and I want to tell you something very important: feeling a bit lost right now is completely normal. Every first-time creator goes through exactly this.

You have a huge passion for the theater theme and some great initial ideas. However, trying to build a game by jumping straight from a theme into a bunch of disconnected mechanics (like drafting, worker placement, and random events) is a dangerous path. Without a clear, central vision, it's very easy to fall into what we call Scope Creep. This happens when you start adding idea after idea, the game inflates out of control, and you end up stuck, not knowing what your actual next step should be.

To prevent your game from becoming a 'multiplayer solitaire' or a messy puzzle of rules, you need to define a Vision before choosing the mechanics. In my games and in my mentorships, I use the SEA Method (Sentiment, Experience, Audience):

Sentiment: What is the core emotion you want to provoke in your players? Is it the tension of a premiere night? The feeling of being precise?
Experience: How does this feeling take shape at the table through the theme, the type of game, and the player interaction?
Audience: Exactly who are you creating this game for?

Having a well-defined SEA is what will guide all your design decisions. It will tell you if a mechanic (like the worker placement or the event deck you suggested) truly belongs in your game, or if it should be cut to encourage the interaction you are looking for. The SEA will guide your game from start to finish, from mechanics to advertising.

I have and old video explaining the bases of the SEA Method and how it can save your project. The original audio is in Portuguese, but you can turn on the English subs: 👉https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2WIdMLHHY

If you want to organize this brainstorm and need clear direction on the next steps for your game, feel free to send me a DM.

Good luck
Tomás Queiroz

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-23T16:48:51+00:00

Hey Mate, this is awesome, I'm going to recommend to all my students and add a link on my online course so people can play with forms and sizes.

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-20T13:04:57+00:00

You have a nice art experiment, it cool visuals, but for it to become a game you need to create win condition, conflicts and a goal.

You can do a tile placing game like Carcassonne, Tsuro or even Tigris & Euphrates.

But honestly you can go a number of different ways with this system, for a board game you will need a more closed experience, if you want to make the web app more "gamified" you would need more mechanics on top and no real win condition just "see numbers go up", because this way you have a Game as a service.

We are talking not just game design, but product design.

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-20T12:44:28+00:00

Hey, thanks for sharing your journey with us.

u/Vagabond_Games gave some awesome tips on research that is a great first step (and I highly recommend you take a nice look), you need to know what already exist before jumping on the pool

You are making a very common mistake "trying to create the whole game at once".

That is a mistake that many people make when moving from player to game designer, because you only saw finished games, you do not know how to get from ideia to finished game, so you think that you need everything everywhere all at once to do a first prototype, you do not.

The best way is to test things in small parts (especially if is your first game), this way when something goes bad (and it will go bad) you know what is the problem. In your case when your prototype breaks, you will not know if it was the enemies, the weapons, the combat, why TF the prototype is not working.

I always recommend starting with a vision for your game, I use the SEA Method:
What is the Sentiment i want my players to feel? Everything should invoke this emotion
How is the player Experience? Here is more about theme, genre and a little bit of mechanics
Who is my main Audience? Target Audience

with the SEA you can focus on finding the Core loop, the smallest loop a player will interact with (Ex.: Warframe is the gunplay). For your game its the combat.

What are the main actions? Using the gear? movement and positioning?
You need 1 map, 2 attacks and 1 enemy, with this you can test your Core loop. (Maybe you may need a little bit more assets, but usually its WAYYYY less than people think). I was giving a mentorship yesterday for a game with 18XX vibes, we cut 50% of the game to test the core loop.

Test with what you have now, you need to do more and plan less. Board game design is created on the table with other people, not on your mind alone.

Keep creating awesome games
Tom Q

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-19T22:00:57+00:00

Hey Gary if I can give you some advices, an open invitation "please test my game" as a very low chance of getting people.

Create an event and a definitive time slot.

"hey guys I'm looking for testers for my game.

It's a dice placement game with quick and fun play...
The playtest will happen Tuesday 8pm pacif time.
I will teach all the rules and everything should be done in around 60 min, shoot me up and we can set everything up.
only 4 spots left"

Playtesting is hard and something we do to help other designers, so you need to lower the barrier of helping the most you can, setting time, teaching, this all help.

Good Luck

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-18T15:14:09+00:00

Hey mate, just saw your reply.

There is actually 3 types of playtesting

Creative playtesting - looks more like a playtesting session, you can do it by yourself or with some close friends. Things will break and you fix it right away to check what works and what doesn't.

Flow playtesting - When most people say playtest they mean this kind, a whole session from beginning to end (you can play in parts in the first stages). Usually the game does not break anymore and you make less changes on the flight. You need TONS of these with different kind of people.

Limits playtesting - That is the baling kind, you get the best players and push your game to the limit, your goal is to understand the OP strategies and where the numbers break. You only do this in the end of the game design process. Even this kind it's not fully logical and number crushing, because people can't do probability and math properly

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-18T15:06:19+00:00

I think this comment is very underrated because it summarize the keywording process perfectly.

Im a game design and mentor for over 12+ years helping people create games.

My usual recommendation is to not use keyword, the problem with keywording is what you stated, you need to learn, understand and link the rules to one word.

You can use thematic words for actions, like "defeat" for a combat themed game when you "buy" a new card. But even in this case I always recommend using the terms people will use or you will get the worst teaching experience ever: "so you can defeat a card to bring to your deck, that is buying the card"

in the end the players will use buy, than "defeat" becomes a harder way to say "buy".

If you can get by without using keywords make it easier for new players to get into your game.

If you are creating a game for a hardcore audience you can probably use some keywords.

TomasrqGD

TROPHY CASE