With all the kids here for a week, I’m looking forward to a lot of good times. Today we didn’t have anything big planned, so we were sitting around chatting about what to do. Suddenly Zack said “let’s design a board game.” It’s been about a year and a half since I last worked on designing a new board game, so I was excited to come up with something new.
Alex joined in, and the three of us talked about what the game might be. It was fun to riff on themes and ideas. Would it be a card game? Would it have resource management? Would it be serious or light-hearted, modern or historic, cooperative or competitive?
Eventually we landed on the idea of a game set in the 1700s where everyone controls a port and a fleet of trading ships. With little more than an outline, we set to work on creating player mats and pieces, decks of cards, and figuring out the resources and economy. I brought out index cards, colored pens, and my trusty game development kit.
It ended up taking a good portion of the day as we played a few turns, talked about what worked and what didn’t, updated the cards and pieces, and played more turns. Almost all of my game development has been a solo effort (with the help of friends and family after the initial game has been designed), so it was a nice change to have Alex and Zack help with the initial ideas.
We agreed to call the game Harbormaster, and after they head home I’l spend some time putting together a more formal printed design. Off we go!