I think I mentioned this before, but I want to reiterate how cool the Flywheel game design group is and how grateful I am for them. Ostensibly we meet every Tuesday night (I try to go as often as I can) and playtest each other’s designs, offer critiques and talk about game design in general.
Mischa originally turned me on to the group. Even though he’s back in NOLA, he remains a font of useful info and insight via email. He teaches us the deep magic hidden below the surface of the boardgamegeek.com web site!
We meet at Dan’s house. Since there are at least two of every name in our larger gaming group, he has been dubbed “Monkeyman” Dan, presumably from his Monkey Lab game rather than any simian proclivities. Dan has a wide range of games in the works and I’m always impressed when he pulls out a new prototype. I can characterize his designs as elegant. The games are straightforward and easy to learn, yet have deep strategy and well thought out game mechanics. This is really hard to do and he makes it look easy. He has released Chains of Fenrir as a self-published venture and is shopping Monkey Lab around. Monkey Lab is brilliant and is as fun as it sounds.
Ian’s games tend to have wizards and/or space ships, which is awesome. His current labor of love is Taktika, which is a game combining strategy and dexterity, as you have to flick wooden disks around the playing surface. The game looks fantastic and it is super fun.
I’ve only seen a few of Marc’s games, but they exude polish and fun. In Rocket Yard, players compete to build rockets with components of varying quality and be the first to launch. His Honeypot game has been out for a while. I bought a copy, but haven’t had a chance to play it. It comes in this sweet tube and is printed on a handkerchief, evoking old school classics like Cosmic Wimpout.
There is another Mark who I haven’t met yet as he is usually entwined in Bunco Night, which also falls on Tuesday night.
John is a new addition and is certainly the most prolific of the group. He has been creating one game a month and releasing it on his web site for quite a while!
Most of us are going to BoardGameGeek.con next weekend and it has been fun discussing various strategies to get more exposure for our games. Dan had the idea of using the stones from Chains of Fenrir as markers in House of Whack and I thought that was pure genius. Hooray for cross-promotion!