Game Design

One of the best tools in gaming's arsenal to expand the range of people playing games is an engaging theme. A game may be incredibly well designed, but it's hard to tell that from the box, and so its theme often has to do the heavy lifting of drawing in potential players.

I consider myself an “accidental inventor.” I’ve been a tinkerer all my life, and lately I had been creating family games, but I never considered myself an inventor. Not until those unforgettable three months in early 2014 when I won BigLeap’s “Games that Make Us Smarter” challenge, and went on to sign a license agreement for a game with FoxMind.

Matt Leacock is a game design legend, particularly in the realm of cooperative games. As the designer of Pandemic, Forbidden Island, and Forbidden Desert, he has risen to international acclaim

How Unpub has improved Planet Chasers, a game of solar system exploration in which all players share the same dice roll to move their rockets, but must decide when to spend fuel to use the full roll.

FireBreak is a cooperative forest fire fighting game. It was made better over a series of Unpub events because of designers and players who were willing to play it and offer constructive feedback.

Sen-Foong Lim and Jay Cormier are the game design duo behind But Wait, There's More!, an infomercial-style improvisation game now on Kickstarter. In this interview, we find out more about them and some tips for game designers.

The Summer 2014 issue of Casual Game Insider is now in stock and available for sale! Print and digital versions are available.