Board Game Design

Semester(s) Offered: Spring

Credits: 4

Course Call Number: GAMES-GT 152, GAMES-UT 352

Prerequisite(s): None

Taught By: Geoff Engelstein

Board game design is a one semester course for students who want to dig deeper into tabletop games, from design to history to manufacturing. The course includes discussions of higher-level design topics such as balance, player psychology, elements of the board game design toolkit, such as turn structure, actions, and economics, and practical realities of production, contracts, and manufacturing.

Upon completion of this course, the student will:
1) Learn about the full spectrum of board games, and design techniques for each.
2) Understand player psychology, and how to leverage that in a design.
3) Analyze how the physical reality of table-top games affect cost, design, and manufacturing.
4) Explore the experience of playing a game, from deciding to buy it, to unboxing it, to learning it, to playing it, to mastering it.
5) Learn the differences between theme-driven, mechanics-driven, and experience-driven design.
6) Learn to think analytically about game mechanics.
7) Tackle the always-challenging task of communicating how to play your game, from title to contents to rules-writing.
8) Explore different methods of designing games to see which one fits for your style and tastes.