It’s worth talking about who should test your game—since play testing is tied so closely to prototyping. In the very beginning, it should be you. Save others some grief and spend time thinking about interactions, how your game will work, and even walking through a mock game…by yourself. You can fix a lot of obvious problems this way.

Then, you’ll want to move on to testing with close friends or family who can provide meaningful input before you unleash a 10% completed game on an unsuspecting general public. Just realize that friends aren’t always willing to provide difficult (but definitely valuable) feedback. But, sometimes they can still help catch low lying problems.

“Average” players will often highlight problems where experienced gamers are able to “fill in the gaps.”
Make sure you’re testing people of the right demographic. If you’re making a family game, it’s best tested by (wait for it…) average kids and parents more than hardcore strategy board gamers who don’t have kids. “Average” players will often highlight problems where experienced gamers are able to fix, “fill in the gaps,” or smooth over real play problems or problems in your documentation—sometimes without you noticing.

Later, focus on testing with people you don’t know: a real cross section of experienced players and non-players trying your game. The more eyes, and the more perspectives, the better. Also, the more ages, backgrounds, and personality types, the better.

If you’re creative you can often get focus groups for free
So, where do you get access to testers? Many specialty game stores are happy to have inventors test games at their game nights. You can also try friends of friends, or game time at your local library or school. Of course, you’re just capturing your local demographic this way, but it’s still valuable. If you’re creative you can often get focus groups for free (or for just the cost of a pizza).

Fast Response

On a handful of occasions, we were able to see problems early in a play test. Rather than continue limping along during play with those issues, we ran into the studio, made a few quick changes, printed out a few replacement cards, and swapped them out with the problem ones. It took less than 15 minutes. If that’s not practical, don’t be afraid to write a fix on your protos with a permanent pen. You can do this in the middle of a game, buying you time until you can really fix the problem.

Too many cards? Take some out mid-game. To few? Add more. A single issue often masks important, but less visible ones. The only way to make real progress is to fix each problem and see if others are introduced, or if others go away. If you have problem cards or game board elements that you replaced, pull them out of play so they can’t get mixed back in and file them away for historical purposes. It’s fun to see where you came from…even the mistakes or problems. Capture Everything.

I took an archaeology class in college where the instructor was obsessed with capturing information. I’d expected that on-the-dig info should be really detailed, but he wanted to know who was in which seat in the van when driving to the dig, what you had for lunch, who you talked to. Everything. I wrote up a 100 page report on a single day trip and he slammed it for not being extensive enough. I think he was a little OCD. But he brings up a good point for game developing. When you’re having your prototypes tested, it’s good to capture lots of information. How many people played? When did they start and stop playing? How old are they, and what are their names? This can be handy when you’re trying to tune game length, target ages, etc. And of course, you should watch people’s expressions and gestures. Are they having fun, frustrated, waiting in anticipation, excited, bored?

Wrapping up

While early protos should have plenty of rough edges, at the end of your project, you’ll want to have a board game or card game mockup that looks as close to production quality as possible. Even simple things like colors, size of text, etc. can affect not only people’s perception of the game, but game play itself. Working on game play and then trying to “make it pretty” at the very end will introduce problems when they’re too late to fix. Plus, having a production-looking sample will give your factory something to reference when making your game. Most mistakes come from miscommunication or wrong assumptions, so a printed sample is far better than just a “softcopy” file. And, if your project is like most, you’ll be on a short schedule. You’ll likely need to get product photography done with a prototype instead of production product since the factory will produce your cards and/or game components at the same time as your box. You may need protos as trade show samples, to show press, or to do any number of marketing or sales activities. Next, we’ll next cover how to make your own prototype cards, and later cover mocking up board games.

There are a lot of questions here. And there are great resources both online and in print to help you with some of them. But when we were starting out, it was tough to find info on how to make a board game prototype or how to make a card game prototype. So, we thought we’d capture some of the ways we’ve done it to make things easier for those starting out.

In this post, we’ll cover a quick intro to prototyping and testing since they go hand in hand. Later, we’ll look at this in more depth and we’ll look at how to mock up a card game and game board. Many board games include cards so it’s good to learn how to make both even if you mainly want to focus on board games…

It’s rare that you can make a game that won’t need changes from the first concept.

Knowing how to prototype or mock-up your own games is important. Why? Because it’s always best to iron out “bugs” in your game when it’s cheap and easy to make changes. It’s rare (read: near impossible) that you can make a game that won’t need changes from the first concept. Changes become more expensive—and take longer—the further along you are in the process. Once someone else is making expensive prototypes for you, it’s no longer cheap or easy to make changes. So DIY (do it yourself) pays off—a lot—in the beginning.

Back to the Beginning

Let’s assume that you’ve already got your initial board game/card game idea thought out and are ready to move on to mocking up an early prototype. Before you begin prototyping, it’s always helpful to have thought about your game at a high level and make sure you have at least your basic ideas captured. For that, use sticky notes, blank paper, graph paper, drawing materials, flowchart or “mindmapping” software, a spreadsheet…anything that’s good at letting you brain dump ideas and information and (this is key), letting you change both later. Most of these tools are cheap or free.

Also, remember that prototyping can also be a great tool for sparking new creative ideas, or improving them. So don’t always wait to start on mockups until you think your idea is 100% perfect, or you’ll never get started.

And Beyond

In our next post, we’ll talk about why to make a prototype. Hint: protos aren’t important for the reasons that many new game designers think.

Names are important for games today. A name says a lot about a product, and can instill a sense of fun. For example, the name “Flibbix” comes from the words “Flip,” “Blend,” and “Mix.” These describe how you make a board game (or build a board game board) with Flibbix. Plus, we think the name’s kinda fun to say.

But some games are named for historical reasons. For example, American “Football” has a funny name, considering a foot only touches the ball a few times a game. It turns out that the game is a decedent of Rugby (or officially: “Rugby Football”), where you actually do use your feet on the ball…hence the shortened name “Football.” I guess they couldn’t call it “Handball,” since that name’s already taken. International “Football”—called “Soccer” in the US—seems to fit the name better since that game is still mostly about feet.

Back on topic, today we’re really not here to talk about names, but games. No matter what kind of football you prefer, there’s a classic indoor game that’s a blast to play. It’s especially a great game for those times when you don’t have any other games around: all you need is a piece of paper, a table, and a partner to play. Plus it’s a DIY (Do It Yourself) game. And we love DIY. By the way, you can mix this into your Flibbix game. Land on a Custom Tile and you can have a Finger Football shootout to see who gets to move ahead 8 spaces.

For those who haven’t played before, Finger Football is loosely based on the idea of American Football. The funny thing is that “Finger Football” is an even more mixed-up name, since there’s no foot or ball in the game at all. It’s a blast, though.

How to play:

Items needed:
- 1 piece of paper. US letter-size paper (8.5″ x 11″) works fine. A4 paper likely works as well.
- A rectangular table

Number of players: 2

How to Make a Finger Football:

Follow the steps in the images below to make your own Finger Football:

Playing for a Touch Down:

1. Flick or slide the Finger Football across the table towards your opponent’s end of the table. The goal is to get it all the way to their end of the table so that it’s sticking slightly over the edge of the table without falling off.
2. If you’re able to get the Finger Football to go slightly off the opponent’s end of the table, without falling off, you score a “Touchdown” (6 points). You can now try for a Field Goal.
3. If you slide it off their end of the the table, they can try for a field goal (see below) and get 3 points for making a field goal.
4. If you don’t slide it far enough (so it’s on the table, but not hanging off), then the other player “receives possession” and it’s their turn to take a shot for a touch down….from wherever the football is located.
5. If the football goes off of the sides of the table, it’s out of bounds, and the other player can go for a touch down from the point where it went off the table… or straight across the table from that point.

Playing for a Field Goal

1. You or your opponent should hold your thumbs and index fingers in the shape of an “L” and a backwards “L” so that the index fingers point at each other and thumbs point up. It should look the bottom corners of a picture frame. That’s the field goal.
2. You or your opponent hold the Finger Football so one point of the triangle is resting on the table, one held by a finger on top, and the third points towards the field goal.
3. Try to “flick” the Finger Football between (through or above) the field goal posts
4. Made it? Add an extra point to your touchdown.

Goal of the Game

There aren’t strict rules about how many points it takes to win the game. Pick a target number of points before you begin playing. Maybe 40 is a good number for you, or 60.

Or just play as long as you have time, and see who has the most points at the end.

That’s it! Have fun.

We’ve gotten a lot of requests for a Flibbix intro/demo movie. We think you’re onto a great idea, so we took your advise and made one. Flibbix is an amazingly fun game, and we’d like to see more people experience the joy of making a game that’s perfect for them. It’s such a revolutionary new idea that it helps for people to visually see how it works to really “get” the concept. So we finally got that intro video posted. You can find a YouTube version here…

…or you can view it in higher quality QuickTime format. Click the images below for a medium-size movie (7.6MB) or a large (17MB) high-def movie that show you how to build a board game (or make a board game) with Flibbix—and what all the buzz is about.

One of our little ones had some friends over on a rainy day, and the kids were all playing hide-and-seek in the house. They were having a blast, but hide-and-seek gets kind of old once you’ve been “found” and are waiting for others to get caught. Or it’s a lot of work if everyone hides, but the person who’s “it” only has to find one person.

To get all of the kids more involved, I suggested they give “Sardines” a try. They all looked at me like I was speaking Sanskrit or something. Turns out that none of the kids had ever heard of the game Sardines (including mine…I know, I know).

Every kid should experience the excitement of Sardines…you wait until found, then the person who finds you has to hide with you. After a while, the hardest thing was trying not to laugh (or keeping the person with you from laughing). But that was half the fun. And then more and more people try to squish into the hiding spot and stay quiet enough to keep from being found.

After their blank stares, I suddenly felt old or something. It was like I’d said I could buy a hamburger for a nickel back when I was young. Or that I remembered back when it was horses, and not cars that roamed main street. But, then it got me thinking of the wealth of great games that are out there.

So, we’ll be resurrecting fun, old game ideas from time to time and posting them here. Some of these may be related to Flibbix in some way, or maybe they won’t be. Almost anything can be rolled into Flibbix if you want (land on Custom Tile and you have to play one quick round of Sardines). But either way, it’s worth digging up some forgotten gems. And Sardines seems like a great place to start. So without further ado:

How to Play Sardines

Players: You’ll need at least 4 players. The more, the better.

How to Play:

1. Choose a person to be the “Sardine” (to hide). Everyone starts in one room.
2. The Sardine leaves to go find a hiding spot while everyone counts to a nice, high number (give it 50 or so).
3. Once the group is done counting, players split up and try to find the Sardine.
4. The first person who finds the Sardine hides in the same spot as the Sardine.
5. The next player who finds the first two players, hides with them as well.
6. Repeat this until the last player finds everyone else hiding together.
7. For the next round, the person who found the Sardine first gets to be the sardine.

Tips: It’s best to play in a place that has hiding spots large enough for a few people to hide together. And, you’ll want to search alone, if possible. Half the fun of the game is finding the other players without having others know you found them.

Have fun playing! If you have other forgotten game gems that we should highlight, drop a note in the comments.