The Dark Imp Blog
Working with co-designers
Working with a co-designer can be a very different experience from designing alone. Get it right and the experience could be brilliantly productive and exciting. But, when you clash it can be extremely frustrating and borderline painful. So what can we do to try to...
How to set up a board game club in your school
Why board games? So why board games? There are other ways to engage learners in extra curricular activities. But board games are different; they are special. Here’s why: 1. The bar to entry is very low. Board games don’t rely on any special skills or expertise and you...
A designer’s guide to board game conventions and trade shows
The annual Spiel convention in Essen took place last week. As usual I attended with my son, Alfie, who is also a game designer. Big conventions like Spiel can be a valuable and exciting experience for a designer, but they can also be stressful and overwhelming. The...
Tiles, tracks and tessellations
Many tabletop games use repeated shape systems. Tile placement games usually use tiles of one shape that fit together perfectly, perhaps in multiple ways. While some board games have a regular printed grid for players to move around. This blog is something of an...
Swell Sell Sheets
Throughout this article I’ve referred to interviews publishers have given to the wonderful folks at Mojo Nation. Interviews can be read in full by clicking the links. What is a sell sheet? A one side page about your game. It conveys all the key information a...
How important is a name?
I’ve designed over 200 games and each one has had a name. Usually, I don’t spend much time thinking about the names for my games. I pick something that's descriptive, or just vaguely pleasing. My assumption has always been that the publisher will change the name...
Pitch Tracking
I hit a milestone this week. I completed my 1000th game pitch. I’m defining a ‘game pitch’ as a game pitched or submitted to a publisher. In a pitch meeting, I would probably pitch 4 to 7 games, so this would count as 4 to 7 game pitches. My first individual pitch was...
Blog Holiday
I'm taking a short blog writing break for a few weeks. Preparations for Mojo pitch and a couple of big game commissions are taking up all my time and need to be prioritised. The blog will be back in July.
Footsteps
Here’s a simple game for two players that just requires pens, paper and a coin.Preparation Draw 7 circles in a line on the paper, with a line through the middle circle. Place the coin on the middle circle. Place the paper so that one end of the line of circles is...
Top Tips for Super Sizzles
If you’re a game designer or toy inventor you’ve probably heard the term ‘sizzle reel’. But what does it mean? Why are they important? Do you really need one? And, if you do decide to make a sizzle reel … how, what, where, which bits??? This blog post aims to answer...
Stephen Wilson and the Big Potato Inventor Challenge
I had the privilege to talk to Stephen Wilson a Board Game Inventor who teaches part-time in a special needs school. Stephen and I talked about his experience with of working with learners at his school to enter the Big Potato Inventor Challenge - a competition for...
Digsaw Designer Diary
During most of 2020, playtesting was all online. With little desire to master the necessary digital skills, I turned my attention to games that could be played over Zoom, without using Tabletop Simulator or similar. I spent much of the year designing Roll & Write...