Modern designer board games are absorbing, surprisingly educational, and incredible examples of well-designed cognitive experiences. Count me in.

A game of The Gallerist I played earlier this year. In The Gallerist (designed by Vital Lacerda in 2015) players play as owners of competing art galleries, buying and selling art, and managing collectors or upcoming artists.

About

The turn of the millenium saw a surge in a new kind of entertainment: designer boardgames. Boardgame designers were now looked as authors of the experiences they were trying to build, and boardgames were growing in production quality, imagination, marketing budgets and collectible value. The 2010s are looked as the golden age for board games, and every year thousands of these are born.

I came into boardgames in 2011, and I've been invested ever since. Boardgames are games primarily: they are created so that people who participate have fun. But modern designers have been pushing game design to be more like a memorable event it is with any other experiential platform. Board games have become storytelling, nonlinearity, engaging decision-making, tangible colourful objects, strategy, hope, personality, and concientiousness all rolled into a cardboard box, and some of them are as innovative as innovation might allow. And as a creator, boardgame design is downright compelling.

Without getting into details, boardgame design in essence is the design of experiences, just like UX or Service Design. Here a theme, a premise or an interaction is researched and distilled down to quantifiable components that are then used as building blocks to create 'mechanics', or logic, that makes decisions in response to the decisions of the user or player. This time spent by these players can be studied, tweaked and refined to give them the exact emotional, intellectual or social satisfaction as desired by the designer, such that they may want to return to participate in the experience again.

Progress

Over the years I began to spend more time conceptualizing real world systems, stories or experiences that might be believable, enjoyable and balanced enough to be reduced to a dance of numbers, art and components. Some of them sound ridiculous or uninteresting, but some of them seem to warrant more time and elaboration. Many of them are still usable mechanics for a future product.

Some of the concepts that I am currently working on are a heavy, detailed game about the recent history of Mumbai and the people that control it, and a light-weight card game about pulp-fiction novelists. But the one that has had the most development over the past 18 months is Overskies.

Overskies

Overskies is a medium weight Euro-style game about trading and area majority, set in space. Set some time in the future, players fly spaceships across planets trading goods to gain influence on them. Noticeable mechanics include Area Influence, Pick Up & Deliver on a Rondel, Resource Management, and a modular board. The game is intended for ages 12+ for 2-4 players, and a session lasts an hour post learning.

Version 1

Overskies started as a concept for entry into a Mint Tin Box Game Contest: a game which had components that fit in an Altoids tin box. During some exploration I figured I could build a small game that took mechanics from two games I adore: Area Control from El Grande (1995) and Pick-Up Deliver from Istanbul (2014). For theme, I loosely based it on inter-planetary shipping set a few hundred years from now, mainly because of some of the mechanics it let me integrate, but also in an attempt to set a trading game in an environment different to mediterranean/seafaring themes popular among such games.

After a few simulations, I put together some artwork and built a prototype to begin playtesting. Over the next few months and enough balancing tweaks later, it got enough play to be considered for fully-fleshed out version. The game had a nice trajectory, but it deserved more detail and layering.

Version 2

Early 2020, while working on a fresh art style for the game, I decided to build a browser-based edition of a new expanded version, largely due to playtesters being inaccessible early during the pandemic. This integrated new choices and interconnected systems in an attempt to make it meatier. This version was playtested more than 25 times.

The setup for Version 2, just before the start of a new game.

This nine-sided tile sits in the centre. The planet tiles shown below surround the centre tile to build the modular main board.

Some of the 'Ally' cards, an addition to this version that introduces assymetrical powers for the players.

Artwork for the box cover.

While in the process of completing a rulebook, a series of playtests with a new playtesting group of experienced designers brought attention to possible problems not noticeable at first play. According to the feedback, the game had now become convoluted for what it was really trying to do. The mechanics themselves felt well thought of, but the pay-off didn't fit the effort, and the additional layers were taking away from the elegance of the first version, and thus made it less fun to play. The art style too was percieved to be 'serious' and disconnected to the casual nature of the game. After some deliberation, I agreed and considered to re-build the game from bottom up, simplifying everything that didn't feel necessary, but attempts to retain the fun presented by the mechanics.

Version 3

For Version 3, I identified the specific decisions that the game offered players that they might have most enjoyed, and built the rest of the design around. This version has lesser variables to think of at any given decision fork (3 types of goods or demands instead of 7 each, board has 9 spaces instead of 10), and entirely eliminates the additional learning curve associated with symbols that indicated the actions offered on any planet, since every good itself had an action associated to it. The art for a boardgame is generally at the discretion of the publisher, but I did choose a style which was brighter and visually rich such that a playtester may find it more approachable. This version has been playtested 6 times.

The setup for Version 3, just before the start of a new game.

The modular main board is built by randomly rearranging to outer 8 tiles, while the center tile stays in place.

Current Status

I am currently in talks with publishers, and Overskies should see publishing later in 2021, subject to acceptance. A test version is also currently available to play online, so get in touch if you would like to give it a go (and have a couple of friends and an hour to spare). Development on the other games mentioned above are in progress.