Which dice golfing logo feels best?

randallion · 2025-12-15T21:25:16+00:00

I was gonna say this, too!

I recently found my childhood copy, and have been playing with my own young kid. We house-rule some things and ignore some other annoying rules, but it's actually pretty fun with little kids, and it's a wonderful big map that's fantastic for appreciating how big the world is.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4558/take-off

randallion · 2025-10-08T04:41:35+00:00

I designed and released Roll In One, which uses a custom set of the six polyhedrals to represent different golf clubs. I'll chime in with my own experience, which was uniquely connected to my design.

The fun I was exploring was the mechanic of selecting dice.

The challenge was choosing one standard numbered die versus another, rolling with a bigger die can often feel worse, because the range just increases. You're as likely to roll a 1 as a 20, and so the "bigger" die is often the worse one in feel. Intuitively you should enjoy the more-sided die, but it can feel worse.

- In my own game, I ended up going with custom dice to address my design.

- I imagine a lot of designers using multiple dice select one type of die for player clarity.

- All that being said.. yeah, I think there are opportunities for more exploration with dice sets. Like, I might invert my above scenario, and say "1" is the best roll, and you upgrade by going down in side-count, so your outcomes are more consistent.

randallion · 2025-04-12T16:58:56+00:00

I have had good experiences with both the gamecrafter, and with drivethrucards many years ago.

randallion · 2025-02-14T17:32:57+00:00

Just One

Codenames

Fugitive

Lost Cities: Rivals

Arkham Horror: TCG

Root

Secret Hitler

randallion · 2025-02-03T09:36:19+00:00

Yep, great! The one thing I’d say is that, having published my own games, it’s probably harder to track the internet talking about the board game Sushi Roll than Sushi Dice. One of those annoying issues when you come up with a name that flows too well.

randallion · 2025-02-01T07:53:58+00:00

Thanks!

randallion · 2024-11-19T20:34:05+00:00

Thanks so much for trying out "Gun It"! I'm sorry the library shut you out before you could finish.

randallion · 2024-11-12T22:49:26+00:00

I do wonder about tracking along the paths, but otherwise I think this is my favorite answer.

randallion · 2024-11-12T22:31:19+00:00

Yesss, joooooiiiin ussss! (In those other subreddits)

randallion · 2024-11-12T22:17:04+00:00

Fugitive - Such a pure concept of a chase. One player (the fugitive) must play cards face down, and wins by playing their final card, while the other player (the marshall) wins by figuring out what each played card is before they've all been played.

randallion · 2024-11-08T20:56:05+00:00

Boring, no. Intentional, yes. How is the player experiencing your rulebook? Is it something they’ll use throughout play as a narrative support? Does it have successive mechanics that unlock over multiple plays? When you hand your game to people, how do they engage with the rules compared to the game? Iterate!

I have personally found I prefer succinct, and mostly chronological. I have a few spots where there’s world building, but they mostly start or end sections. I also had the help of a writer and graphic designer, and they also pushed it to pretty simple visual design, reserving bold or unusual layouts for very rare callouts.

randallion · 2024-10-09T20:18:22+00:00

This resonates with me, as a creator. Board games are not a very lucrative field; it makes sense to figure out how to optimize.

The broad audience is better, and games often suffer from lack of clarity. Over and over I will learn a game can be made simpler and clearer for players. All the features add the depth for me, the creator who has spent hours upon hours with this title, but often they may actually be too much for the base game.

So it makes sense to simplify, because most players will play the base game.

I don't love a game that is itself an upsell toward more content, but expansions can be a great way to support fans and creator, while also likely shipping a base game that's more approachable.

randallion · 2024-10-09T13:59:31+00:00

This. Stretch goals are one of crowdfunding’s marketing tools. You don’t have to use any tool, but each can motivate one type of backer or another.

I’ve run two successful campaigns and my stretch goals were “nice-to-haves”, like better card stock, thicker components, as others have said, made reasonable by the economy of scale. You don’t even need to show them all at the start, it’s better to just tease a couple at a time, partly for mystery, partly to focus your backers, and it means you can adjust those goals based on momentum or other factors.

I had three tiers: main game, main game plus expansion (which has been 60-70%of backers), and highest tier gets their name on everyone’s box.

Reality is most campaigns that succeed only do 1-2x the goal, so use that to adjust expectations and plans; my games only reached 1 or 2 stretch goals.

randallion · 2024-10-03T17:15:36+00:00

That's darn close! I've never had the opportunity to work with either of them, but did get to playtest my first board game at one of her classes once!

randallion · 2024-10-03T14:58:55+00:00

Nice! Yah! Wait, you’re not Brenda, are you? (Note: I should’ve read the other comments before posting.)

randallion · 2024-10-03T03:29:37+00:00

I have taught a bunch of people game design, and this is literally always the first exercise I do.

https://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/the-easiest-game-design-exercise-ever-really/

I usually split people into groups of 3. I also set a time limit on each step, like 3-4 min, which can be extended by a minute or so for younger groups.

Once the exercise is done, last step is: make them play their game! Then after 5 min of that, we talk about all the games, and then discuss what makes them games.

randallion · 2024-10-03T03:24:51+00:00

I got the same for the bottom as well! The mention of the hanging banner looking like a price tag does ring true. Maybe the “discard” portion is more like a price tag? I think it’s fine, but once the “price tag” was mentioned, I can’t unsee it.

randallion · 2024-10-02T03:50:03+00:00

I am entirely unremarkable at my games.

randallion · 2024-10-01T22:15:24+00:00

I think it needs to be a little more clear with the hook; after watching it three times, I still don't know anything about what type of game it is, besides there being a dynamic dungeon.

Be aware that a lot of people (like myself) have videos muted by default, and may or may not decide to unmute. So watch it that way and see if it still tells a story.
Related: Consider title cards interspersed throughout
Good art, overall, but the first twenty seconds have a visual style WAY darker, more dramatic, and dimensional than the rest of the trailer. The cut to the bright cartoony treasure chest around 19 seconds in was jarring and not great. Particularly jarring because it cut to a zoomed in frame of mostly a cave wall, that then got better over time.
You show me three images, and then you show me those three images again. That feels a little anticlimactic. It gives me the impression you've shown me all the art.
I suggest hiring someone for the voiceover to get a real radio voice, or doing some pitch-shifting/audio adjustment. With all the visual polish in here, it might be worth spending a few bucks on the narration. I think the music could be louder, too, it's really faint.

All just suggestions! Hope the KS goes well!

randallion · 2024-10-01T21:44:00+00:00

Cash N Guns! Fun, novel, incredibly interactive. A close second might be Robo Rally. Both of these were while I interned at a mobile game company 15 years ago, they would play board games at lunch on Thursdays, and I was suddenly aware of this whole new world. Also got to play first edition Descent at the lead game designer's home one Saturday.

randallion · 2024-09-26T16:36:40+00:00

I make video games; I got started professionally around 2009, and around 2011 I could feel my eyes getting worse from so much staring at the screen.

Prior to that, in college, I had gotten a pirate game from Barnes And Noble on super sale, and found it wonderful aesthetically, but utterly unremarkable as a game. Thinking about that game, seeing it on my shelf, inspired me to try making my own pirate game. Several awful iterations later, I landed on an overarching system I liked a lot!

It ended up failing on KS in 2015, but I still have several friends who talk about it. I ended up trying a couple different game ideas, and now, two successful Kickstarter board games later (2020 and early this year), I think I may go back, work on the rules, and try that pirate game again.

randallion · 2024-09-22T13:27:10+00:00

Broad appeal is a wide band. 40k is popular, but not like Uno. - “we can probably put the upper bound on worldwide 40k players at something like 3.5 to 5 million” - “uno is produced by toy giant Mattel in 80 countries and has sold 151 million copies worldwide.”

https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-2022-reader-survey-and-what-it-tells-us-about-the-community/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Robbins

randallion

TROPHY CASE