We’ve made good progress with our game over the last few weeks after switching it from a space combat game into a factory builder (there are more similarities than you might think!). It’s essentially a flip & write where you’re gathering resources to construct fantastical equipment that produces and distributes a range of sweets.

What connects time travel, space combat, and a sweet factory? The answer is our first game design which has been through several Doctor Who style regenerations over recent months! This blog discusses our first game’s various resurrections.

One of the first pieces of advice we were given was to build an audience before releasing a game - the logic being that you can design the best game in the world, but if no one knows about it then no one will play it. In such a crowded marketplace it’s unlikely that word of mouth alone will help a game to attract attention, and great designs can slip under the radar. This blog sets out our thoughts on how first-time designers might be able to generate that audience.

Our game went through its third major redesign over the last 2 weeks. The last version was playtesting ok, but I had a new idea that meant scrapping a fairly large part of the game and creating a new prototype!

I have since read that there is a tendency for new designers to throw a lot of different ideas into their early games through an abundance of creativity and a lack of experience! We certainly fit that bill! Our first draft had way too much going on…

The first thoughts to spill out on the page involved bouncing around three distinct ‘eras’ of time. My instinct was to choose popular periods used often in board games and time travel shows/movies:

• Pre-Historic,

• Roman,

• Modern - 1980’s.

Three eras become three overlapping circular tracks on a shared board that players move around collecting resources to rebuild their time machine. The points where these tracks cross over represent a rip in space-time allowing the player to move into a different era.

So how do two people develop a board game when they’re separated by hundreds of miles? The wonders of technology mean that there are several off the shelf software packages, and the one we were already familiar with was Tabletop Simulator by Berserk Games. For us, this was the perfect solution - the interface is built with the non-technical in mind, and it didn’t look like too much effort to polish a rough and ready prototype into something you would be happy to share with a wider community. Easy right? Not quite.

So what’s the idea? It started with the theme.

Time travel stories in fiction are something I’ve always enjoyed, watching Quantum Leap as a kid or Star Trek when they slingshot round the sun to save the whales or the brilliant back to the future trilogy (child of the 80’s if you haven’t guessed yet!).

Best to start as I mean to go on, I want to document the process of designing our first board game. And I want to be honest about it! I've played games in one form or another my whole life but settling down and having 2 little kids saw gaming take a back seat for almost a decade. As with many people the pandemic provided me time through enforced isolation, (after the kids were asleep!) stranded on the little island that is our house. That time re-connected me with board games and via the magic of zoom & the internet, I also re-connected with my oldest gaming buddy, my brother.