A collection of thoughts and commentary from the Diceratops team regarding our design process, our creative experiences, and the stories that add another dimension to our work.
3 Communities for the Aspiring Game Designer
Game Designers exist in a creative field where it is next to impossible to succeed by yourself. In this article, I want to highlight three board game communities I’ve interacted with in the past year who continue to provide a constructive space for board game development.
3 Advertising Frustrations Plaguing this Independent Publisher
Advertising sucks, but we all need attention to succeed. Thus, the small, independent publisher grapples with forces magnitudes greater than itself to eke out a measly audience. Here’s some issues I’ve been running into recently.
Where is the Audience?
Man, self-publishing is rough.
I mean, it’s not like there weren’t warning signs from every single resource on the topic, but dang. Self-publishing got hands.
The good news is that, for Mana Mania, a good number of things are already taken off of my plate. The art and graphics are minimalistic and done by our team or by friends at a low rate. We’ve got a manufacturer lined up who will take care of shipping, albeit at a slightly higher cost than some other potential suppliers. No, the biggest hurdle is just getting the audience together.
9 Balancing Mechanics for TCGs & ECGs
The task of balancing is unique to most every game, and it should be: if you can balance your project in the exact same way as some other game, what’s the difference between the two? Each game faces its own challenges in the tradeoff between flavor, fun, and function. However, games within the same genre will often converge on strategies for fulfilling these needs.
Control vs Aggro in Stoicheion
Now, Stoicheion is a far cry from the mechanical complexity of Magic. Although Stoicheion does have almost double the colors, it lacks the deck construction mechanic and decades of card effects that form into an entire ecosystem of heady rulings. But across Magic’s many formats and set releases, the ways in which players build decks have converged on several principals. Of chief interest to us is the line between Control and Aggro decks.
Relaying Ray & Maelstrom
The first article I posted on this blog was about Ray (an element from our game Stoicheion) and the trouble it was causing us from a design standpoint. Sad to say, that was not the end of its troubles – though the bigger mischief maker was truly one step over.
The Magic Numbers
As an Engineer, I have a tendency to focus on the math. When this crosses into my role as a game designer, I’m all too comfortable getting into the nitty gritty of calculating the likelihood of different scores, the maximum values certain effects can add to cards, the efficiencies of defenders based on hit points vs average attack values, and other nerd stuff like that. I won’t shy away from admitting I’ve calculated mana curves by hand for some of my magic decks.
Don’t Make Me Move
’ve gotten plenty of suggestions from play testers to add/alter an element that would cause another player to shift along the Leyline, or to switch places with a player on the Leyline. While I immediately understand where they get this idea from, I’ve kindly dissuaded them each time. To know why, I’ll first explain some other effects Stoicheion has tried on for size.
I Rays You This
Let’s talk about Ray. During Stoicheion’s development, we ran into an issue where Ray just seemed bad. Across every group, at every stage, from every level of familiarity, players never failed to mention that Ray was suboptimal as an Element. And when one of only nine elements stinks, that’s a problem.