Exploring Game MECHANICS - Designing a New Board Game

Let's talk "Mechanics" ... or "mechanisms"... Whatever! This is video #2 where I share ideas about designing and developing a board game. I'd love to hear what you think! Share any ideas/suggestions/advice down in the comments.
Enjoy!

Music Credits:

[LemorasCards]

This video wasn't at all what I was looking for, but I'm so glad I found it. Love your ideas and passion, now I feel a new sense of excitement about hexagons.

[haydengray]

The night time phase idea is GOLD! I think creating a sense of linear time adds so much to the world building.

[geeknerd]

this night time idea is great but i would definitely recommend putting in a few negative outcomes as it will make any positive outcomes even more sweet

[TylerAndToast]

Working on a game where you can trade or raid villages, towns, and cities. Trading gives you benefits while raiding gives you points.

Raid: roll a dice (0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3) for level of settlement (village 1, city 3). Lose units equal to dice. If you have units left remove the settlement for 1, 2, 3 points depending on level of settlement.

Trade: place unit on settlement. When you visit settlement claim number of currency or resources based on how many units are there. Resources/ currency are used to get more units and 1 time use item cards.
That's the basis so far

[PhilosophicalPawn]

Dude, I am in love with your thought process and the originality of what you came up with, definitely inspirational.

[aaronegerman]

I'm currently designing a Euro-y worker placement game with the theme of making pottery. It's a mix of the classic "gather resources to complete contracts" type of thing, but the contracts are custom commission pieces that require a set of materials (clay, tools, glazes) to construct. The other main goal is centered around training your apprentice worker (the other worker being your master worker). Throughout the game you'll gain experience in different disciplines such as throwing and operating the kiln, so that both of your workers are more balanced and can perform different actions as efficiently as possible. There will also be special abilities to unlock, card playing, and an area majority mechanic, as each action that you take will cost you clay cubes that must be placed onto the center wheel which constantly rotates after each player's turn. I'm still pretty early on in the process but my prototype is nearing a playtest-able state. Excited to come across your channel and follow along your journey too!

[SnowFoxDiver]

Thanks for the advice, I'm currently working on a Cooperative business game where everyone has a role in the creation of a project, with roles like Designer to decide what they are doing, Accountant to decide if they can even do it with the budget, Artist trying to get colour combos and combinations, and the Marketer trying to gain interest for the project, all while they have to keep in mind the deadline, their declining stats like motivation and creativity, stress, and the events that play to throw curveballs.

[makemaster]

you helped me so much! i am trying to desing a board game and this reey helped me😄

[arjunheart]

I'm working on a hex-based tile adventure game too. I'm using catan-sized hexes. I'm taking inspiration from Betrayal: House on the Hill for the deck drawing (i.e. a city tile draws a city card when you first reveal it). Additionally, there are 3 types of roads: stone, dirt, and bridge. When you explore a new tile, you draw tiles until you find one with a matching path. Then you play the matching path and shuffle the rest back to the bottom of the tile stack. It also uses the "legacy" mechanic of a non-shuffled deck that you draw certain cards from in certain cases (like the demon lord or legendary sword, which have special conditions to show up)

[Elfos]

A board game idea I had is... I got to thinking about the relationship between randomness and strategy. Strategy games are terrible party games because different people at the party are going to have different levels of proficiency in strategizing, and whomever is best at strategizing will win consistently- no fun for everyone else. This is especially an issue when the players are different ages, kids and adults playing the same round. But you don't want too much randomness or else you get something like Candyland that's pure luck of the draw, no player agency whatsoever. So, you need some strategy and some randomness to balance things out. How to achieve randomness? Well, there's dice, card decks, spinner-boards, tile draw bags, but I feel there's other forms of randomness that have been underutilized.
You know how Clue is really annoying because you can only make suspicions about rooms you're in, and if players want to be mean they can keep you in a perpetual loop of getting re-summoned to the same room over and over again when you're just trying to get to one specific different room? What if the whole game revolved around that, your location on the board being outside your control and you just have to be at its mercy, working within its restriction best you can. So far, I'm thinking of something like various demons that keep getting summoned to various summoer circles and players are both the demons and the summoners and have to do... something. Still workshopping the premise.

[wilfredocasas]

Hi, just started designing my first board game today: RIVER WARS - three teams: Otters, Monkeys and Beavers are fighting for resources. Beavers can build, Monkeys can steal, Otters can kill. Who will survive?

[Clark]

Only has a couple videos yet video quality is amazing. Love the vids.

[lambxxjm]

I love the portal approach to caves very creative and would work across multiple genre.

[michaeltitus]

Im designing a dice placement and manipulation game similar to marco polo. The archmage to the king has passed and the players are other mages of the order. They must complete contracts to aid other cities in the kingdom to win the kings favor and become the new archmage.

Channels and podcasts i enjoy are "Gaming indoors", "Think like a game designer" the "Board game insider" and "Board game design lab" are all great.

[beardedgladiator]

I really love the way you are breaking down your ideas, it is really making me consider ways to document my progress. Also game sounds like a ton of fun and it is a really cool idea that I could see being a really unique experience every time you play.

The game that I am currently working on is a survival card game focused on fighting back threats and balancing your use of force to avoid drawing too much attention from enemies well also making sure that you are not overrun.

[WayOfHaQodesh]

Really like your night die idea. Very cool. Would have been super fun in the 20 years or so of role-playing games.

[TheDukeOfFall]

I’ve watched this video about 15 times now lol, these vids help me get in the right headspace for design!!

[craiginzana]

This sounds like a great game! I love the theme and think it would be very fun to play with friends and replay.

[invaderjay]

Working on a tactics game where players choose a faction with unique characters, buy weapons and skills for those characters, choose to work together or not, and then build a map using hex tiles and an objective card. The theme is that the factions are all composed of villain types within a broken city, similar to Gotham City, each hired by the same Illuminati type company that wants to watch the world burn. There's also a betrayal mechanic allowing, and sometimes even encouraging these temporary alliances to corrode midgame.

First game ever, have other ideas written down as well. Not even sure if anything will ever come of it, but I definitely have learned a lot just working on this one.

[VirenMirpuri]

I just watched my first video of your channel and you have already become my favourite YouTuber! I love your content and your commitment and your politeness. Makes me happy to join this community. Ps. I just finished designing my first card game today and I wanted to learn more about mechanics. Thank you for awesome advice!