Lords of the what dungeon now – Design Journal #0

I’m starting a game design journal. I doubt that this journal will interest many people. So I’m doing it for myself.

I’m doing it to vocalise my process of designing games that I’m doing right now as a hobby. To help me reflect, learn and improve as I go forward.

Right now I have two games in progress. One is a board game. One is kind of mobile in directive fiction concept. In here, I’m going to share the design progress of the board game.

Lords of the what dungeon now?

So the board game I’m designing, at moment, I call it Lords of the Undermountain. It’s a problematic name, I know, I’m gonna have to change it later but that’s fine.

I started it as a strict design exercise: I randomly picked a couple of mechanics and constraints for the game:

• limited action selection
• network building as path to victory
• checkers type “eating” of game pieces mechanic

The game concept I came up with is about battling for conquest of a dungeon. It has the kind of different kind of factions which have their own own identity and differences. Which makes it an asymmetrical game.

I’ve been working on it on and off from the beginning of 2021. It’s currently in the stage where I see that at its core, it is working.

And in general, the play experience is getting towards the goals I have for the design.

But the devil is in the details so many things are still to be polished and to be designed such as the game play and the game experience in various parts of the game.

I’m in the process of trying to streamline the game. And reinforce the positive feedback loops in the game, so that on the first play one of the players would win quite easily quite quickly.

And then other players would be able to reflect after the game what they could have done differently to make it a more even game.

That’s it for now, stay tuned

In this blog, I will babble on and reflect on, on the ongoing design, as I do it.

That’s the kind of exercise to vocalise these things to help me reflect on them. Maybe somebody will read this and comment and cheer me on. Maybe even ask me good questions, or give some advice.

All of that would be more than I would expect from from keeping this journal.