2024 was not a fulfilling year for me design-wise. As my new family became my main priority, what time I had available was spent preparing Crumbs! for manufacturing and the inevitable admin of running a small business. This meant that developing new ideas and playtesting had to take a back seat.
But in 2025, having settled into family life and with Crumbs! going through the manufacturing process, I was able to think about what I wanted to achieve. The past six years(!) of Minerva have seen me focus on publishing my two games, Swatch and Crumbs!, whilst developing other games during their quieter periods. It means that a lot of ideas have built up over that time which I feel I haven't had a proper chance to explore.
Whilst the focus to concentrate on one design for a significant time can be a virtue for a designer, there is a lot of value in rapidly prototyping and developing a number of ideas. Getting a feel for what works and what doesn't, streamlining the prototyping process, and discovering new ideas or solutions. I wanted a structure that would encourage me to do this over the course of the year, so I decided to dedicate a three months each to a total of four games, and blogging about the process.
I have a number of games in varying stages of development, ranging from ideas in my head to thoroughly-playtested prototypes. I'd like to tackle games at these different stages as part of the challenge. Although this may change, here are the games I intend to work on:
Six Days Of Silence (Development) - A limited communication co-operative game which sees up to six members of a decimated spaceship crew attempt to guide their ship home whilst avoiding a deadly threat on board. The first concept for this game actually came not long after I started working on Swatch in 2019, so it has seen some decent development and playtesting but is in need of an overhauled prototype and tweaks to almost every aspect of gameplay.
Tesserae (Prototyping) - A Roman mosiac-building microgame, where 1-2 players use the 'I split you choose' mechanism to place cards, made of different coloured triangles, together and score points for creating shapes and patterns. I came up with this idea in lockdown in 2020 and slowly created a prototype, but needs playtesting properly.
Metropolitan (Prototyping) - A route-building and light economic game about the formation of the London Underground network and its rival companies, using a (hopefully) innovative card-based action selection mechanism. My most recent prototype, this got playtested exactly once over a year ago before other priorities took over. This is also the largest game I've currently designed.
Wayfinders (Concept) - A (currently) solo microgame of a Polynesian tribe exploring an archipelago, settling on islands and trading with others. Using only nine cards to build a board, with a combined variable round length and weather system mechanism. This was a recent idea inspired (unsurprisingly) by watching Disney's Moana with my daughter. Discussions with Jon (designer of Crumbs!) furthered this and my desire to put a prototype together spawned the idea for this challenge.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the games above, and if there's a particular game in that list you're most interested in seeing me develop, let me know! I've also been talking to a couple of other designers about developing their games, so they may also make an appearance.
My next blog post will come soon after this one and cover my efforts in January. I guess you'll have to wait and see which game I decide to tackle first!
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