Foils - party autobattler that boils down the CCG experience to 30 minutes or less
@perryjon.bsky.social makes great games that are fun, clever, and have (a sometimes surprising amount of) depth. I haven’t tried this once yet but I’m excited to see where it goes.
Empires Above - big serious 4X space opera
@zintismay.bsky.social has made an epic sci-fi game with sleek systems. I’ve always had fun playing previous versions of this game and I’m looking forward to having it on my shelf some day.
Once and For All - time travel lane battler
Wildstar - sci-fi western dice locking game
I’ve gotten to play both of these games from @jakekbarnhart.bsky.social and they are very cool. I need to play Once and For All again because even after a couple of games at PAXU I barely scratched the surface.
Game Makers Guild Philadelphia will have a bunch of designers coming to @unpub.org!
We’ll be at table F1 all weekend. Look for the red tablecloth.
Here are just a few of our designers and their games: 🧵
Components for Smash Dash board game prototype spread across a table, including large hex-based track tiles, various player aids, item cards, troll movement dice in 3 different colors, and chunky wooden blocks and barrels for obstacles on the track.
And here are most of the components for Smash Dash, a real-time combat racing game for asymmetrical teams of 2 (and a crooked referee). Fortunately the changes I’m testing at Unpub required only minor updates to a few cards and player aids.
🎲✂️
Many sheets of paper of different sizes spread across a table, filled in with different colors of pen to varying degrees, comprising the Roll the Stars trilogy of roll&write games. In Seed the Stars players are Cosmic Creators, rolling dice and using those numbers to create galaxies of stars. In Rule the Stars players are spacefaring Civilizations, using templates to draw lines on the galaxy map created in the previous game. In Sail the Stars players are Starsailer Captains hauling cargo between the civilizations of the previous game, trying to store up enough credits and see the sights one last time before retiring to a quiet corner of the galaxy.
Final stage of Unpub prep!
This is a smattering of blank and filled player sheets for Roll the Stars, a trilogy of roll&write games where the map produced by one game is the starting point for the next game.
Look for it on the red tablecloth at the Game Makers Guild Philadelphia table (F1).
🎲✂️
I think Unpub will help with the transition…
NO NO NO YOU DON’T
GUYS LET ME PLEASE SPREAD THE GOSPEL OF FREE TAX USA
federal is free, state is $16, handles even my chaotic freelancer taxes just fine, same step-by-step “designed for normies” kind of interface as TurboTax but NOT EVIL
tell everyone you know
www.freetaxusa.com
It went pretty well! Some important things broke but the players had fun anyway, and I think the fixes will be straightforward.
Protospiel Philly starts today! I’m excited to finally get my roll&write Sail the Stars to the table, a game I’ve been thinking about for YEARS but only just made the prototype this week. 🎲✂️
Reinstate our teammates now! Kickstarter is retaliating against our union members for our legally-protected strike action in October 2025. Four union members have been laid off or forced to leave our union by leadership, despite clear business needs for these members' roles. Email Kickstarter's CEO and tell him this is illegal and unacceptable! e@kickstarter.com
Despite being back at work, Kickstarter is retaliating against our teammates for our legally-protected strike action from last year. Tell Kickstarter’s CEO this is both ILLEGAL and UNACCEPTABLE
Really nice article by @gengelstein.bsky.social on one of the most fundamental tools of game design. I'm constantly doing these kinds of EV calculations while designing, at both early and late stages of the process. gametek.substack.com/p/great-expe...
Come join Game Makers Guild Philadelphia for playtesting this Sunday 2/15 5-10pm at The Philly Game Shop 🎲✂️
fb.me/e/ccH7FRidA
Finished my daily calls (voice mails this morning) begging my reps to not fund the group that could haul me off the street with impunity for "looking Asian".
Now to my regular begging people on social media to please make the calls too. It takes 5 mins. Get over your anxiety - people are dying.
Come join Game Makers Guild Philadelphia for the first playtesting event of 2026 this Sunday 1/25 5-10pm at The Philly Game Shop 🎲✂️
fb.me/e/3RHfI8nnW
UNPUB Festival hotel room block closing soon. Discounted rate for attendees, book by February 11th to stay onsite at the convention.
Want to make the most of Unpub Festival? Worried about late-night FOMO? Stay onsite to maximize the fun!
Book by Feb 11th for attendees-only discount:
https://www.marriott.com/event-reservations/reservation-link.mi?id=1747848194805&key=GRP&guestreslink2=true&app=resvlink&inventoryMissing=true
🎲✂️
Gingerbread version of the hot streak box, topped with fondant versions of the racers, Mom replaced with santa
Top down view of the box included Hot Streak written in icing on candy ribbon
Close up of the fondant racers
It's the final stretch till Christmas. Here's my gingerboard creation for 2025. May those risky gift requests pay off.
@cmyk.games
Come join Game Makers Guild Philadelphia for the last playtesting event of 2025 this Sunday 12/28 5-10pm at The Philly Game Shop 🎲✂️
fb.me/e/42jIZgELn
0:22. Fewer buttons
Mentioned?! It’s the first one! Guaranteed to be seen by even the people who scroll through the least. Congrats!
Finally I got to show Elemystic by Jamie Sabriel to a few new people. I love this perfect little battle of wits in 9 cards.
Late Saturday night Hot Streak by @perryjon.bsky.social was a huge hit as usual. Every race was exciting even though all 3 had the exact same outcome.
Other new-to-me games:
Gugong by @modgames.bsky.social was great, and Tornado Splash by Moyuki Adisawa was wild and challenging.
Living Forest by @severinhorror.bsky.social and Heat by Asger Harding Granerud & Daniel Skjold Pedersen I had only ever played on BGA and were fun to try in person.
Babylon board game with tiles on multiple layers covered in little plastic fountains, stairs, bridges, and statues.
Also got to try Babylon by Olivier Grégiore, which I had seen at First Look last year but didn’t get a chance to play. And this was the only time all weekend I actually took a picture of a game!
As for published games, in the First Look area I got to try L’Oaf by @bartgamedesign.bsky.social, a great easy-playing game with an excellent name about lazy bakers. Fun tragedy-of-the-commons demonstration.
Work on my designs continued with some playtesting, a couple of publisher meetings, and a very productive brainstorming session with my co-designer @jongilmour.bsky.social
I’m thankful for an excellent #PAXUnplugged this year:
Game Makers Guild Philadelphia had a table in the @unpub.org room and we had local designers testing their prototypes there all weekend. I got to play a couple of cool games from @jakekbarnhart.bsky.social and @jamesfirnhaber.bsky.social
I remember this one. It’s fun! Great distillation of games like Diplomacy and Game of Thrones.
Board game map of circles containing numbers with straight and curved lines of different colors connecting them in intersecting patterns.
Probably not. It’s a roll&write where you use templates to draw paths on a shared galaxy map and it looks like this:
Come to Unpub and look for the red tablecloth!
