Essentials for making Board Game prototypes... on a budget

a piece of advice commonly given to board game designers is to prototype your ideas early to get testing as soon as possible you learn so much by getting your game onto the table turning an idea or concept into an actual physical thing in this video I'm going to show you the sort of materials I use when making a board game Prototype without breaking the bank [Music] I'm Porter I'm a board game designer from Wales and on this channel I share my experiences of all aspects of board game design from ideas and inspiration through play testing and development up to the eventual release of the game if you like what I do please subscribe comment and share the video so let's kick off with some lovely wooden cubes foreign [Music] the ubiquitous little Cube these come in any color you can imagine and when I started designing games I bought loads but they're surprisingly expensive one of my first prototypes contained around 100 of them I'm checking the board game extra's website in the UK just now they cost nine Pence per Cube so that's nine pounds per prototype before I even started looking at cards tiles or other tokens so what's the alternative well one cheap alternative is translucent plastic discs currently on Amazon these are just under nine pounds for 300 a third of the price of Cubes colors are a bit more limited of course but they're great for representing coins or scoring tokens another option which I love is colored plastic gems on Amazon these are currently 8.99 for 270 gems so they're marginally more expensive than the discs but considerably cheaper than cubes and far prettier and more tactile of course it depends on your theme a cube could stand for anything I struggle to see a gem as anything other than well a gem but perhaps I need to be more imaginative these are often available from stores which sell aquariums here are some similar but smaller clear gems which my wife has received among the packaging for various Christmas and birthday gifts over the years I've collected them up for a second life in some future board game you'll have noticed at this point that I have little units for my prototype components this one came from Hobbycraft in the UK and it's called a really useful boxes organizer they're not super expensive but they do keep things nice and tidy of course many designers have started to experiment with tabletop simulator or rather similar platforms to make digital prototypes which can be easily shared around the globe with no Financial investment required I've dabbled with tabletop simulator myself but I'm not going to discuss it any further in this video because frankly I dislike using the clunky interface and I'd always prefer wherever possible to work with a physical prototype with my favorite games I'm a sucker for upgraded components occasionally I'll purchase nice wooden tokens from companies like meeplesource to replace the original components and the original pieces find their way into my box of prototype pieces these can be really useful for future projects especially if the pieces are very generic like the colored houses from power grid or the wooden cones from dominant species it's less helpful when the components are unique like the firefighters from Flashpoint fire rescue now I've upgraded this game more than once and the firefighters Left Behind would be great for another firefighting game should I choose to make one but the problem is that for any of my projects I'd always need to make multiple copies to give to multiple Publishers so one set of firefighters isn't going to cut it nonetheless I keep them for inspiration one game which presented me with loads of great components was stonemeyer's Legacy game Charter Stone it was a really enjoyable game but once my wife and I had finished the campaign I couldn't see us play with the altered board again it was just a big old box to sit on the Shelf so I stripped out the components for my Supply and there are some lovely pieces in there not least the Hefty metal coins frankly I can't ever see me using these in a prototype why waste them when I could use transparent plastic pieces at three Pence a disc so the charter Stone coins are being saved to upgrade a board game that I love I've occasionally stripped components out of games that I've discarded this has generally been where the game has been unsellable and undonatable I picked up a battered old copy of Monopoly from a charity shop once for the purposes of making a video and that yielded a hefty supply of plastic houses and hotels the other components are metal tank a Sailing Boat and a parrot are lovely but not really of much use because they're unique and I'm always going to need multiples I had high hopes for a little Japanese game I picked up an Essen called here comes the dog it was pretty much unplayable perhaps I misunderstood something but I didn't want to inflict the game on anyone else so I ended up with this nice little supply of wooden dogs and their owners I'm sure I'll think of a game to utilize them one day in this drawer I have a nice selection of fruit shaped beads pick them up in a Crafting Shop super cheap and they'd make excellent components for the right project sometimes it's all about being opportunistic spotting a bargain in an unlikely place a similar thing happened with these stripy plastic cubes which make really fun alternatives to the usual plain wooden versions and I picked up a number of these little gift boxes at a bargain price too which were perfect for holding prototypes but didn't take up too much space in my suitcase for trips to Essen wooden discs are a similar price to cubes and available from the same websites but obviously they get more expensive as the size increases I picked up this set of poker chips from a charity shop for a bargain price and there are enough there to make multiple matching prototypes it's really difficult to cut a neat Circle to make a label for discs so I have two Circle paper punches at different sizes which do a really nice job of it here are some tokens from a prototype battling game that I've been working on talking of labels here's my pick for the most essential piece of prototype type of material that every game designer should have access to A4 labels one label per sheet these are easily purchased in any stationary store and they're so incredibly versatile and much easier than fiddling around with paper and glue to make tokens I simply print onto the label sheet I then use Mount board for the token and cut it down to size with a craft knife mountboard is the thick cardboard used when mounting photographs or paintings it's just slightly thinner than a carcasson tile and it comes in these A1 sheets it's hard to cut circular sections of Mount board it's too thick for a circle punch so I tend to cling on to Old circular discs from discarded games I picked up a game called coin Quest years ago it had many many such discs along with loads of gorgeous felt bags and player screens I wasn't enamored with the game but the components have been really useful for prototyping over the years another trick I sometimes use with labels is laminating the sticker sheet after printing on it but before sticking it to the mountboard I can then peel off the back of the laminated sticker and attach it to the board creating one matte side and one laminated one this allows me to write on the board with dry white marker this was the original prototype for my published game Doodle Rush another great thing about Mount board is the wide range of colors available using different colors is great because you can make tokens with different backs simply by using different colored sheets of mountboard you can achieve a similar effect with card backs by using colored sleeves I tend to print my cards on paper and then slip them into these Ultra Pro sleeves which come in loads of different colors it's a really easy way to distinguish different decks in a game and the card can easily be altered by removing the slip of paper and replacing it with a new one for a Rough and Ready prototype often for the very first play test I use blank cards you can buy a box of about 200 for 10 pounds so they're about five pence each nice and easy to write on quickly with marker pen and they Shuffle well too let's take a brief musical intermission and appreciate some of the other components I've picked up over the years [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] multiple copies of a prototype to Publishers regardless of whether it's accepted or rejected many of the prototypes end up finding their way back to me either by post or returned in person at a later conventional Trade Fair hence I've ended up with quite a stash of sand timers from my old Doodle Rush prototypes these cost about one pound each but tend to come in packs of five or six I also have a hefty supply of dry white markers from the same prototypes and of course Many Many Colored Dice from my prototypes for throne Each of which contained 40 dice now dice aren't cheap but for prototyping purposes you can scrimp on quality so most of my Throne prototypes used tiny tiny dice here are some other dice I've utilized in prototypes in the past [Music] if I need custom dice I always use these blank plastic dice in the UK they're available through an online store called blankdice.co.uk you can get them in many colors and even in different shapes here are some eight-sided examples you simply print your labels onto A4 sheets as I've described previously and cut and paste I've used these dice many many times for different prototypes and always have a ready supply but there's nothing Stopping You reusing the dice by simply sticking new labels over the previous ones this is my fourth organizer and it's a little different to my neat Hobbycraft examples this is an old Advent calendar which my wife received one Christmas full of fancy makeup and perfumes as any sensible husband would I spotted an opportunity and repurposed it for storage purposes this little draw here has some lovely laser-cut animal tokens I bought these off eBay with the intention of making an animal-based puzzle game it didn't work but I'd love to use these pieces in a later prototype they came in very affordable little sets this big drawer has loads of polyamino tiles I had the idea of making a polyomino game like Patchwork or Baron Park but I dreaded cutting all the shapes out of mountboard with a knife so I bought a set of plastic tiles intended for school geometry lessons I guess these weren't cheap at all and I don't think they were the right solution I didn't get far with the Prototype I have sections here for beads again picked up cheap from a craft store haven't found a use for them yet buttons which likewise I haven't really found a reason to use and lots of marbles I really feel this would be more marble based games potion explosion and gizmos are holding the fort but surely there's untapped potential there this drawer features an example of how not to do it in my first ever prototype I purchased fancy screen printed meeples to represent the players and each had their own player power these were costly to purchase and entirely unnecessary they really could have been represented by plain meeples or even wooden cubes I recently started experimenting with these little plastic pegs they can slot into a hole drilled into a wooden block or a piece of foam board again purchased from a craft store it's really great for a component which isn't going to move better than placing a wooden Cube they're knocking it off its intended space and not knowing where to return it you can get these pegs in bulk by buying a children's pegboard craft set they cost less than two pence per Peg for boxes I tend to keep anything which is about the right size of a decent quality and hasn't got too much garish decoration I love these little Joe Malone perfume boxes which my wife occasionally picks up great for little card games VHS video cassette cases are also good for card or dice games and these magnetized boxes which I picked up from work are just perfect for a slightly larger game they originally contained tooth whitening kits I'm a dentist but I love how plain they are I can simply stick a label Over The Branding and it's a perfect little package I recently had a real packaging dilemma perhaps you can help me my game involves flicking discs across a board and I want to create a prototype with a smooth surface to flick on which can be shrunk down to fit into a portable box to transport to trade fairs looking at comparable games Pitch Out has no board at all it simply uses the tabletop as the board this doesn't work for my game because certain areas need to be marked safranito and catacombs both feature folding boards and they're beveled so that the crease doesn't interfere with the movement of the discs I found this impossible to replicate in a homemade prototype using folded mountboard ordinary cardboard or even paper crease always interferes the third alternative is to use a system like flick of faiths with a rolled up neoprene mat now custom printed neoprene is too expensive to use in multiple prototypes so I've opted to use wallpaper which is cheap rolled up well but is of a good thickness an alternative approach was to use a cheap wipeable tablecloth material I was hoping this would fold without leaving creases but it doesn't really work so it still needs to be rolled the problem is that this means the Prototype needs to be contained in a large tube bigger than I really want to transport and the mat still needs to be blue tacked to the table top to keep it flat it's already better solutions that I'm missing well there's a neat little demonstration that board game design isn't all about thinking of clever gameplay systems and balancing cards and characters sometimes it's a simple practical problem and a touch of arts and crafts here's another example from a few years ago when I was struggling to find an affordable card holder which could collapse and fit into a small box for the Prototype which went on to become my trick taking card game pikoko one thing prototyping is not about is polished art if you're paying for art before pitching your game you're most likely wasting your money and potentially hindering the game actually getting published there's a massive amount of Creative Commons art available on the internet which you can use for free hand-drawn amateur scribbles work fine too a publisher is not going to be drawn into publishing your game because it looks pretty artwork is expensive to Commission in most cases probably more expensive than any rewards you'll see through royalties and truthfully having final art in place before pitching can actually put Publishers off they'll most likely want to change the artwork and potentially even the theme of the game to fit into their range this isn't an absolute of course I have known games to be picked up with the art already in place but this is very much an exception to the rule if you want to learn more about the board game industry click the link above and until next time all the best

Channel: Adam in Wales

Views: 9,019

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Id: iHvV1Tnd1NQ

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2022