Making Games

I’m very fortunate to have a friend who’s been involved in testing many different professionally-made card and board games and he gave me a little nugget of advice. No, this isn’t like an online recipe with 3 years of intro, here it is:

⭐ The game’s fundamental mechanics still have to work and be enjoyable even when you completely strip out the theme and flavour ⭐

When I started developing the first edition of Electioneer UK 🇬🇧 back in the summer of 2024 I preoccupied myself with how to make the game feel politics-y and satirical. The core design of the game, in service of that feeling I was searching for, grew into:

• Six rounds, each with different rules, which would be in a different order each time you play

• Players had to keep track of votes, budgets, constituencies, policies and special events

• In each round each player plays in turn while the others wait

• The player who gained an early lead completely controlled the game

I couldn’t see all these flaws when I was thinking it through because how the game actually worked was hidden underneath fancy artwork (there’s a lean product management lesson here) and attempts to make the game represent reality too closely. It was only through subjecting my playtesters to it that we found it was borderline unplayable. It would have been much simpler, and faster, to design the game by thinking about the fundamental mechanics earlier and making sure they truly worked!

This took me back to the drawing board. Now both Electioneer UK 🇬🇧 and Electioneer US 🇺🇸 are balanced games that really work. Despite less focus in design on the ‘political feel’ I’ve been very lucky to have some very positive reviews both from politics students and a parliamentary researcher or two saying that it definitely has enough ‘zing’

As an example, take a look at the wildly successful Throw Throw Burrito. When you take out the goofy cards and the plastic burritos, it is essentially the card game Spoons. Perhaps, if you can respin a well-loved classic and market it, that’s the best way to make sure that the fundamental mechanics of the game (even one as simple as Spoons) work. No judgement here, the more people playing games the better as far as I am concerned!