Current (and recent) designs and where they stand

I'd like to take stock in my current (and recent) active designs and see where they're at, what they need, and which I should be concentrating on. So here we go!

Colony Collapse

My most recent active design is a co-design with Aurore Inara, a friend from the Decision Space podcast Discord. Colony Collapse started out as if a sequel to Apiary -- imagine if the spacefaring bees from Apiary found a new home world to settle, and decided to rebel against their Queen in favor of a more democratic form of government... only to immediately fall victim to corruption in the form of gerrymandering to become elected mayor!

We're still taking big swings on this one. The game has been working fairly well in my opinion, with a few fiddly bits, but my co-designer and I disagree on how well certain things are working. Aurore's trying a new version that's got some significant differences and an added dynamic of a pawn moving around the board and rallying hexes to vote for you. That version did away with player influenced turn order, which is one of the major areas of disagreement we've got. I understand the first playtest of that version was weird because it was the first try with a new prototype and a new version, for example the cards weren't included in the prototype, so they just didn't use them (and Aurore didn't seem to miss them!) I like the cards in general, and it gives us another action to use (we need 6-8 actions that players will want to take each round).

We have yet to try the old version with the latest changes:
* 1st player to get to turn order track prizes doesn't get them
* Rally action (pawn moving on the board -- I'm very skeptical of this)
* Change to card display (4 card display, or you can draw N, keep 1)

I'm looking forward to trying another version (or two!) of this game

Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans

Before I got started on Colony Collapse, I had revived another of my old designs: Joan of Arc: Maid of Orleans. I finally tried a proof of concept of some dynamics I'd wanted to add a decade ago...
* Arrival Effects on the board spaces, so you have reason to move places
* Increase battle costs
* Add training track status to the goals
* Add a geographic element to the goals

Some of that seemed like a step in the right direction, but it all still needed work. unfortunately, the game got set aside at that point. Hopefully I'll remember everything the next time I get the game to the table!

Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China

Before I'd revived Joan of Arc, I had revived an even older design: Dynasty. This game went very quickly from prototyping and first play to actually being signed by a publisher! Since it's been signed, I'm not actively working on it at the moment -- until or unless the publisher asks me to make some kind of change to the game.

I'm pretty happy with how this game turned out, which is a relief after a full 20 years of thinking "that idea seems good" every time I thought about it :)

Division of Labor

Colony Collapse has been set aside for a couple of weeks now in favor of bringing Division of Labor back to the table. Not too long ago I had updated the building effects in this game and made a few other tweaks (no backing yourself up at an islands space, only 1 building per action, increased building costs, increased cube count per island space (though I forgot about this when I played again later). I took the game back off the shelf to show it to Shem Phillips of Garphill Games and get his opinion. He seemed to like it quite a bit, and had some great ideas for it in general.

The biggest issue is certainly downtime, especially in a 4 or 5 player game. Some other niggling complaints include arbitrary limits (such as only using 2 colors/actions per turn rather than just using all the cubes in your pile). These are all complaints that have been coming up in every iteration of the game, and I've finally gotten around to making a big change to try and address them. The other night I played a 2p game with Rick and tried a proof of concept of a version that does away with rounds in favor of a continuous flow of turns, and it showed promise! Now I want to try it again, with some tweaks and with more players to see if that's the direction I really need to go, or if the previous version feels better

That's about all the games I've been working on lately... feel free to weigh in on which is the most interesting to you in the comments. If I can get up the impetus, I ought to do a detailed update post on each of these games, with links to rules and everything. That would probably be a good idea!

What I've been playing / testing: Q1 & Q2 2026

 I feel like I haven't been posting in my blog lately, so here's what I've been playing (on BoardGameArena) and what I've been testing (on Tabletop Simulator) lately...

What I've been playing

I've discovered a lot of new games on BGA, some good, some not for me. Lately I've been pretty lucky to find a number of games I've been enjoying quite a bit on there:

Emberleaf is a cute game featuring cute, anthropomorphic animals wandering from clearing to clearing in a forest, collecting resources, building stuff, fighting off bad guys, and making promises. Your cards have come-into-play effects, activated effects, slide effects, and drop-off effects, and on your turn you either bring a card into play, or slide all your cards in play to the left. Setting up to trigger multiple slide effects can be pretty fun, and managing your cards in general is an interesting puzzle. After several plays, I think this game holds up -- it's good!

Dinogenics is a fairly standard worker placement game about running a dinosaur zoo, but it absolutely oozes with Jurassic Park theme. The more I play it, the more I like it! In this game you collect DNA cards to make a set and create a dinosaur, but you have to have the right size pen to put it in or it'll rampage - wreaking some havoc on your park. You can build stuff, including hotels to house visitors, which bring in money and points (if they survive). Some dinos are carnivores, and require an upkeep of goats, while others are omnivores or herbivores. Each dinosaur type has a special rule (T-rex's are worth a bunch of points, but require 2 goats each turn, and when they rampage, it's double bad... Brontosauruses are big points, and don't need a pen, but require 4 DNA cards to create, Ankylosauruses can co-exist in a pen with another type of dinosaur without either one rampaging, Stegosauruses earn you extra money each round, Triceratops like to be in pairs, etc. There's a pretty good variety of dinosaurs, and a lot of fun special cards you can get. I don't agree with every design choice, but man - what a fun game!

Soothsayers is interesting for a few reasons, not the least if which is that it feels like something I might have designed! It's a role selection game where you can upgrade your ability at each role. At 2p there's a real tug-of-war sort of feel as you fight back and forth for the Fate tokens (VP) for having the highest card in each suit and highest tarot in each suit as well. I've been enjoying it 2p, but it seems pretty cool multiplayer as well.

dnup is a unique sort of shedding game, where each card has 2 values, and one thing you might do is rotate your whole hand 180 degrees, switching all cards in it to the other value. You can also pick up your opponent's cards from the board, which sounds counterintuitive when your goal is to get rid of all your cards. Like Race for the Galaxy, I prefer this at 2p, where you get 2 turns in a row - it feels like you gave a lot more agency that way 

What I've been testing

I'm still plugging away at my playtests, trying to get in 2 playtest nights a week. My players' attendance had fallen off, in part because I always start so late (gotta wait until the toddler's asleep), but I think also in part due to people's availability on Thursdays -- I've recently switched to Mondays instead, and a couple of times I got some of my old players back, but it's still hit and miss.

But the struggle for players aside, I've managed to get playtests in fairly regularly. Here's what's been on the virtual table over the last few months:

Dynasty was a crazy ride. 20 years in the making... once I had an actual prototype, I played it a bunch in a short time, and then it got signed by a publisher! The only time I played Dynasty since then was irl with Corbin - the rest of my games have been on TTS.

Division of Labor had some new tweaks that I wanted to try, and strangely, for the life of me I don't remember what they were at the moment! Hope I wrote them down!

Joan of Arc - Maid of Orleans was another old design (only 1/2 as old as Dynasty) that I revived and played a couple of times. I've added a few aspects I've always wanted to try, and I was making some progress, but now it appears that game has been set aside again for another idea that came to mind...

Colony Collapse - The Decision Space podcast Discord is one I spend a lot of time in. they have a pretty healthy design subsection, and once in a while they host a little design jam (an informal challenge to create a game in a short timeframe, given some parameters such as component, thematic, or mechanical restrictions - much like the old Game Design Showdowns at BGDF). Not too long ago, they posted restrictions for a new design jam. As usual, I wasn't too interested in working on a new game for the jam... but as usual, an idea struck me, and I ended up designing a new game. This time, the idea that struck me wasn't exactly the design jam parameters, but rather a mechanism that someone (named Aurore) suggested. The mechanism sounded neat, so I asked Aurore if she wanted to work together on some game using it or something similar. In tossing ideas around for that, I joked that we could plug Aurore's gerrymandering game (another game she had been working on, potentially for a previous design jam) into this design wholesale. I had playtested the gerrymandering game, and thought it was a really neat idea, and once I made that comment, I couldn't think of anything else to do with the game we were working on, so it became another attempt at the gerrymandering game. As for theme, for some weird reason having to do with the game jam restrictions, we were thinking of bees, but there are several bee-themed games out there already. This would not normally deter me, but it got me thinking of how one might approach a common theme like that, and one way was to lean into it and create a sequel to an existing bee-themed game. So this design is tentatively called Apiary 2: Colony Collapse, and the story of the game is that the spacefaring bees from Apiary have found a new homeworld, and have decided to revolt against their queen and set up a democratic form of government... only to immediately succumb to corruption in the form of gerrymandering to get elected! I am amused by that story, though if Stonemaier isn't interested in the game, I suppose it could just be called Colony Collapse and not be about those spacefaring bees specifically.

Forbidden Art is my friend Steve's rondel game about necromancy - compel undead minions to pillage artifacts and bind demons! I like that game a lot, and have made plenty of suggestions for Steve, many of which I think have been keepers (especially a big change to how the Compel action works)

And I've had yet another new idea recently...

New ideas

The other day I saw an announcement for Wingspan Pocket, a new pocket-sized Wingspan game from Elizbeth Hargrave and Stonemaier Games. Wingspan is pretty cool, and I suspect a compact version of it would be good -- but mainly I just thought that a good title for my compact EmDo game Microcosm could have been Eminent Domain: Pocket Universe. To be clear though, I'm really happy with the title Microcosm - I have no regrets on that front at all. So I wondered... is there another compact EmDo game I could design that could appropriately be called Pocket Universe? I've said before that I was done creating EmDo content, but then again, last year I made a cooperative mode (EmDo: Coalition), so I guess you never know!

Here's what I've got so far for a compact EmDo game, inspired in part by the back-and-forth nature of 2p games I've been playing like Soothsayers, dnup, and Toy Battle:

Imagine there are 3 planets in the center of the table, between 2 players (this is a 2p game)... one Advanced, one Fertile, and one Metallic (like EmDo)

On your turn, you play a card for its effect, then put it into one of the 6 standard EmDo action stacks (maybe they're coded to a subset of the stacks, so you can choose between 2 or 3 of the stacks to put it in). Then you do one of the 6 EmDo actions with strength equal to the number of cards in that stack:

• Survey: Draw cards
• Colonize: Tuck cards from hand a certain way under one of the planets (these count as colonies). If there are enough colonies (and you have the most), gain control of the planet
• Warfare: Add ships to one of the planets (cards off the deck, tucked a certain way, counts as fighters). If there are enough fighters (and you have the most), gain control of the planet
• Produce: Add resources to one of the planets (cards off the deck tucked a certain way count as resources.. or maybe have tokens for resources. Maybe in this case, you add ONE resource, but your strength has to be high enough to do so, based on how many resources are already on there?)
• Trade: If there are enough resources on the planet, discard those resources and take control of the planet (str must exceed number of resources). Otherwise... maybe switch a card to a different zone (toggle something between Colony, Fighter, and Resource)
• Research: I dunno, maybe move stuff from planet to planet? Or gain a permanent tile thingy that helps you (req str based on tile "cost")?
• If you control 2 out of the 3 planets at the start of your turn, you win. You control a planet by having the most colonies (minimum X), the most ships (minimum Y), or if you've traded with it (see above). Once controlled, the planets can be taken away by the opponent, but it costs a little more (or you have to exceed what the controller has on it)

Maybe the planets list their minimum colonize/warfare/trade costs (Fertile is easier to take by warfare, so lower warfare cost, higher colonize cost... Metallic is the other way around, and Advanced is in the middle)? Who knows but I think it's nice if they're not so symmetric.

That's as far as I've gotten, and I haven't tested it at all (though I have made most of a TTS prototype)

How does that sound to you so far? Let me know in the comments!

The List - May 2026

I just checked in last month with The List, but I already have some updates to it!

Rather than having to read through all the same old entries to find the new info, I think I'll add a News section at the top here -- then below the fold can just be a simple list, without commentary, and the changes can be summarized at the top of the post:

News:

Signed Game news:

No news on Taiko Kiri or Usurpers (though I have seen some rules editing movement on TK in the last couple of days). The big news here is about Dynasty: the Spread of Culture in Ancient China -- a publisher played it, loved it, and signed it! 

Also, Crusaders has been signed by a new publisher, who I think will print the Amber/Crimson Knight (5/6p) expansions!

Current Active Design news:

The only game of my own I've really been working on lately was Dynasty, as well as my friends' games (Henge and Forbidden Art). Now that Dynasty is signed, I'll need something to work on...

• A new game (I have ideas about a game called Roost, where you play as a bird couple building a nest)?
• A recent project that got backburnered (Peanuts & Crackerjacks)?
• An older idea that seemed promising (Joan of Arc, Isle of Adventure, Worker-ception, or False Prophet)?

Any suggestions?

====================================================

Published Games:

- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG) [theoretically signed by a publisher!]
- Isle of Trains (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) (BGG)
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) [New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) [now available from Renegade!]
- Crusaders: Divine Influence (BGG) (expansion) [now available from Renegade!]

- Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes (BGG)
- Gold West: Bandits promo (BGG)
- Gold West: Trading Post promo (BGG)

- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo (BGG)
- Brainfreeze

Development Projects
Games I've done freelance development on

- Amun-Re expansion [Alley Cat Games 20th Anniversary edition] - Heavy Development

- Harvest (BGG) [by Trey Chambers from Keymaster Games] - Heavy Development

- Holiday In Rome (add BGG link) [by Cory Andalora from Pandasaurus Games - coming soon!] - Heavy Development

- Expeditions (BGG) [by Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games] - Consultation

- Fled (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2024 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

- Forelords (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2025 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

Unofficial Development Projects
Games I've unofficially helped develop

- Henge [by Rick Holzgrafe]

- Forbidden Art [by Steven Carleson]

Signed Games
In line to be published:

- Usurpers (FKA Apotheosis) (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe) [signed by a publisher!]

- Taiko Kiri (co-design with Steve Carleson) [signed by a publisher!]

- Dynasty [signed by a publisher!]

- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) [signed with a new publisher!]
- Crusaders: Divine Influence (BGG) (expansion) [signed with a new publisher!]

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [might come from the new publisher]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [might come from the new publisher]

Currently Pitching Games 
"Actively" looking for a publisher 

(though I haven't actively been doing much of anything lately!):

- Sails & Sorcery (Co-Design with Michael Mindes) [pitching to publishers]

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Exhibit (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Keeping Up with the Joneses [pitching to publishers]

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain) [pitching to publishers]

- Alter Ego (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Dice Works (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Suburban Sprawl [pitching to publishers]

- Balloonatics [pitching to publishers]

- Politica Galactica (FKA "Revampsterdam") [pitching to publishers]

- Division of Labor (FKA "I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement") [pitching to publishers]

"Finished" Unpublished Games 
abandoned/backburnered designs that are "done":

- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print] [trying to find a home]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Ready for art] [trying to find a home]

- Worker Placement Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam idea, July 2022)

- Press-Your-Luck Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022)

- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]
- Rolling Realms: Jaffee Realms (for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)

- The Sixth Realm (FKA Deities & Demigods) (BGG) (Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan, heavy dev by Drake Villareal at FFG)

Current Active Designs
Games I'm actively testing or working on:

... [crickets] ...

Backburnered Designs
I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:

- Eminent Domain: Coalition [solo mode]

- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

- Joan of Arc

- Kingdom Realms (KBGames 3-lane game jam entry, Nov 2022)

- 18-card Point Salad (KBGames 18-card game jam entry, July 2024)

- Isle of Adventure (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

- Truck, Boat, Plane

- Peanuts & Crackerjacks

Promising Recent Ideas:

- Worker-ception [with David Short]

- False Prophet [Mancala/Worker Placement]

- Come And Play [Sesame Street memory/rondel game]

- Candyland Game [Candyland/No Thanks mashup]

- Press Your Luck Candyland [Candyland variant]

- Hanabi Wonders [Hanabi/7 Wonders mashup]

- Stable Genius ["Wingspan of Horses"]

- Eminent Domain: Legacy [campaign mode]

- Which Witch is Which

Old Standbys
Games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:

- 8/7 Central [Abandoned]
- Hot & Fresh [Abandoned]

- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG) [Abandoned]

- Reading Railroad [Abandoned]

- Moctezuma's Revenge [Abandoned]

- Kilauea [a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere] [Abandoned]

- Automatown [with Michael Brown] [Abandoned]

Misc and Really Old Stuff
Most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:

- 9-Ball
- Blockade Runner
- Roman Emperors (my version of someone else's game)
- Admirals of the Spanish Main (my version of someone else's game)

- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- The Untouchables
- Day labor game based on craps

- Rondel Role Selection

- Scourge of the High Seas [deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]

Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China

 About a month ago (maybe two by now) I said I should make an in-depth post about Dynasty. So here we go!

History

As I have said, Dynasty is at once my newest game design, and one of my oldest. I had the idea for this game a full 20 years ago (!), a game where you would gain access to resources by founding villages. Where you'd move leaders around and conquer each other's villages. Where you'd invent technologies... and in doing all this, you'd assimilate other players' culture, taking their culture chits onto your player board, and as you fill up your board with chits, you gain benefits such as upgrading villages to cities to gain access to more, and rarer, resources.

I revisited these ideas time and time again over the years, in blog posts, or in my notebook. At one point I assembled 1/2 of a physical prototype (I suppose that's still around here somewhere), but I never finished it -- my biggest hurdle was creating a large tech tree full of technologies with costs and effects. I knew what I wanted a lot of the effects to be, but actually creating the tech tree seemed like such an onerous task that I just never got up the impetus to do it.

Rebirth

A couple of months ago thoughts of Dynasty crept back into my mind again, and this time I enlisted the help of ChatGPT to just list out a bunch of (a) resources that would make sense in an ancient China setting, and (b) a list of inventions that came out of China in that era. I had some from before that I'd looked up or read about, but I figured I could use a big list to choose from, then I could figure out what game effects I wanted to use, assign them to various inventions, to finally build the tech tree that had been holding me back.

While I was at it, I asked the chat bot to map the inventions into tech areas with sensible pre-requisites. It took some doing, and a fair bit of my own editing, but the AI output was at least helpful in that it got me over the hump to create this tech tree, even if the output wasn't a nice, finished tech tree on its own.

The other things I needed to create a playable prototype were a map board and iconography. The board seemed simple -- I'd always imagined an outline of China, split arbitrarily into 8 or 10 regions, each region with a particular resource in it... the "common" resources would appear in 2 regions each, the "uncommon" resources would appear in 1 region each, and the "rare" resources would not appear in any regions, they would come from cities or technologies. I asked the chatbot to help me create a simple map of China divided into 10 regions, and hilarity ensued:

So I decided to back up a step. I told it "Let me go simpler.... let's start with a simple outline of China, as if drawn on parchment with calligraphy, black lines on parchment" (it did, see below). Then I asked it to "please draw similar black lines to divide that map into 5 regions, each one touching 2 others." Again, hilarity:

For those counting along at home, that image on the right has more than 5 regions! In fact, it has 10, which is what I was after in the first place, so I called it a win and edited it in MS Paint or GIMP to tweak some of the lines and stuff

On the next bit, the chatbot did a better job... I needed player icons, so I asked it to create 6 ancient-China appropriate icons that are simple, distinguishable from each other, and legible at a small size (say 1/4 inch circle):

Culture icons

Then I asked it for icons for the resources. There are 10 different resources, so it ended up overlapping colors on some, and in true AI fashion, it used kind of detailed art rather than simple icons. Also in true AI fashion, it gave me 11 "icons" for 10 resources, it mislabeled one of them when I asked it to add labels, and then it weirdly changed the image on one of them when I asked it to fix that -- in the end I just discarded the unnecessary one: 

First try

Mislabeled the silkworm one

Two silk! Close enough.

It did a fine job with Village and City tile images. I later added culture icons to these in GIMP for ease of scoring:

Next I wanted images for the four main actions in the game. It did a great job except with the labels, so this final version was just the 2nd try:

Now it was time to finally tackle that tech tree! AI had been pretty helpful thus far, so I was hopeful it could help me get this thing made somehow. I listed all the effects I wanted to have -- I came up with about a dozen of them -- and asked it to pair the effects with some of the inventions we'd listed previously in a way that made some kind of sense. After some back and forth and some consideration on my part, the chatbot created this 1st draft of a tech board for me:

I could tell right away that a better way to go would be to have it make the techs, and then assemble it myself in GIMP, and eventually, that's exactly what I did. Also, I added a few techs to bring the total to 16, and I assigned resource costs to each:

Later I revamped the costs, but that's not too relevant to the story

The next step for this tech tree, after some playtesting, will be to increase the costs pretty much across the board, and maybe even add more different resources to help ensure that a player won't just have everything they need in mid-game, making it interesting to keep getting access to resources, or else choosing to trade for them.

New Action Selection Mechanism

As I mentioned in my last post, nowadays games like this generally have a logistical or personal puzzle involved in the action selection, and I also like engine building in games (as I've said before, all I can do is design Eminent Domain over and over again). So, I gave it some thought and came up with an action selection mechanism that sounded good to me: 

Each of the four actions in the game will be dealt a random assortment of action cubes (color coded to the actions, of course). Each turn you'll choose an action to resolve, then you'll take a cube from that action's space in the display and add it to your player board, powering up the action associated with that cube. For example, you might do a Village action, then take a red cube from the village space and place it in the red (Leader) section of your player board, powering up your future Leader actions.

When you get to 5 cubes of a color, you get a bonus action of that type, then discard some of those cubes from your board, dropping your power level back down a bit (you actually lock one cube in first, and discard the rest, so over the course of the game that action still gets stronger in general). And when you take the last cube from an action space, you trigger a mini-scoring based on which space it was (for example if it was the Invent space, the players with the most and 2nd most Inventions get a reward), then all of the cubes are cleared out of all the action spaces and they're refilled like during setup.

I like how this is working out. In a way it's like Eminent Domain's deck learning in that each turn you do an action and get stronger at an action, but unlike EmDo, in this case it's not necessarily the same action (currently it could be, though I've considered a rule that makes it impossible to power up the same action you just took -- I'm not sure it's worth the hassle though).

First Playtest/Early Iterations

Finally, on Feb 12, 2026, after 20 long years of thinking about this game, I got it to the table for a first test! We had a shaky start as I realized I'd costed early game things kinda high, and so nobody could do much at first, but after a few turns (and an audible to removing resource costs on gaining leaders), we actually began to be able to play for real, and from that point on it went very smoothly. What a relief!

After that first game I had some obvious tweaks and changes to try the next time. Each of those early playtests led to improvements pretty quickly, and a short 3 months later I found myself playing the game with a prospective publisher!

Success!

The development timeline on this game has been very atypical for me, so I guess it stands to reason that after the unusually long 20 year idea-to-prototype phase, the prototype-to-pitching phase should be an unusually short 3 months. And to continue the "everything is unusual" nature of this game, I was super excited that the publisher reps who played the game all seemed to like it quite a bit. In fact, they wanted to play it some more on their own, and about a week later I got the best kind of response email you can get from a publisher:

We played Dynasty again and love it even more. We are interested in signing it!

And sign it they did! As of yesterday I have a contract in hand, and I'm super excited for this game to move forward. I understand these things take a long time, so I won't hold my breath, but when it gets close to time to launch the game, or a kickstarter campaign, or whenever there's official news to share, I'll be sure to post about it anywhere I can :)

The List - April 2026

It's been a few months since I checked in with The List, and I think I have some updates since then. Let's take a look at how things are going...

Published Games:

- Terra Prime (BGG)
- Eminent Domain (BGG) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Escalation (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Exotica (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Oblivion (BGG) (expansion) [new edition coming 2024 or 2025 from a new publisher!]
- Eminent Domain: Microcosm (BGG) [theoretically signed by a publisher!]
- Isle of Trains (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) (BGG)
- Isle of Trains: All Aboard (Co-Design with Dan Keltner) [New edition from Dranda Games with included expansion]
- Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done (BGG) [now available from Renegade!]
- Crusaders: Divine Influence (BGG) (expansion) [now available from Renegade!]

- Dungeon Roll: Winter Heroes (BGG)
- Gold West: Bandits promo (BGG)
- Gold West: Trading Post promo (BGG)

- Yokohama: Achievements & Free Agents promo (BGG)
- Brainfreeze

Nothing new just yet... I moved The Sixth Realm down to Finished But Unpublished. 

Development Projects - Games I've done freelance development on

- Amun-Re expansion [Alley Cat Games 20th Anniversary edition] - Heavy Development

- Harvest (BGG) [by Trey Chambers from Keymaster Games] - Heavy Development

- Holiday In Rome (add BGG link) [by Cory Andalora from Pandasaurus Games - coming soon!] - Heavy Development

- Expeditions (BGG) [by Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games] - Consultation

- Fled (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2024 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

- Forelords (BGG) [by Mark Swanson, coming 2025 from Odd Bird Games] - Consultation

Still no new development projects, at least not paid ones. I haven't been doing any consulting or development lately, but I have been helping a couple of my friends/playtesters with their games...

Unofficial Development Projects - Games I've done unofficial development on

- Henge [by Rick Holzgrafe]

- Forbidden Art [by Steven Carleson]

I've known both Rick and Steve for many, many years, and they are my most consistent and frequent playtesters. As a matter of fact, I've got a co-design with each of them currently signed by a publisher! Rick and Steve are each currently working on a rondel game, and I'm pretty fond of both of them.

Henge is a shared-pawn rondel game about building a henge and attracting druids to check it out. We've been testing it at my playtest sessions, and I really like the game it's come to be! I hope he finds a publisher that likes the game as much as I do.

Forbidden Art is a necromancy themed rondel game where you command undead minions to power up your actions -- in a way it's like Crusaders, but the minions don't automatically move around your personal rondel. In the game you pillage artifacts, and use them to bind demons, and I think it's pretty cool how it all comes together. This one's a little less finished than Henge, but in both cases I feel like I've been able to offer helpful ideas to improve the games.

Signed Games - in line to be published:
- Usurpers (FKA Apotheosis) (Co-Design with Rick Holzgrafe) [signed by a publisher!]

- Taiko Kiri (co-design with Steve Carleson) [signed by a publisher!]

Not much news about Steam Kingdom (FKA Taiko Kiri) (co-design with Steve), but the publisher has started getting some art done -- I've only seen the cover image and some tile art so far, but it looks cool! 

It's been several years since Usurpers was signed, and I've been skeptical it'll ever actually come out, but I recently saw some potential movement on the publisher's Basecamp thingy, so that made me a little hopeful again. I guess we'll see if any further progress is made on it.

Currently Pitching Games - "actively" looking for a publisher (though I haven't actively been doing much of anything lately!):

- Sails & Sorcery (Co-Design with Michael Mindes) [pitching to publishers]

- Riders of the Pony Express (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Exhibit (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Keeping Up with the Joneses [pitching to publishers]

- All For One (BGG) (Co-Design with David Brain) [pitching to publishers]

- Alter Ego (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Dice Works (BGG) [pitching to publishers]

- Suburban Sprawl [pitching to publishers]

- Balloonatics [pitching to publishers]

- Politica Galactica (FKA "Revampsterdam") [pitching to publishers]

- Division of Labor (FKA "I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement") [pitching to publishers]

Not much progress, but I have had some pitch meetings recently that may be promising. In a few cases I met with a publisher and ran down my Pitch List, and in some of those cases it seemed to generate at least a little interest. I had a playtest of Sails and Sorcery scheduled last month with one publisher, but had to reschedule at the very last minute due to a conflict with a work meeting (should be able to have that meeting soon). And I have a different publisher wanting to try Division of Labor.

I'll note that my wife came up with a much better title for Let's Go Balloon Racing, and you can see it above: Balloonatics. In other Balloonatics news, I got Claude AI to create a web-playable version, and it works! I've tried to get it to do Keeping Up with the Joneses and Dynasty as well, with some success (still working out the kinks on those)

"Finished" But Unpublished Games - abandoned or backburnered designs that are "done":

- Crusaders: Crimson Knight (expansion) [not coming soon from Renegade :(]
- Crusaders: Amber Knight (expansion) [not coming soon from Renegade :(]

- Eminent Domain Origins [Ready to print] [trying to find a home]

- Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (dice game) [Ready for art] [trying to find a home]

- Worker Placement Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam idea, July 2022)

- Press-Your-Luck Microgame (KBGames 18 card game jam entry, July 2022)

- Wizard's Tower (BGG) [Abandoned]
- Watch It Played [Abandoned]
- Now Boarding [Abandoned]
- Rolling Realms: Jaffee Realms (for Jamey Stegmaier's Rolling Realms)

[- The Sixth Realm (FKA Deities & Demigods) (BGG) (Co-Design with Matthew Dunstan) [Final Frontier Games]]

It still hurts to have Crusaders expansions and EmDo games in this category, but I'm still hopeful they'll find new homes some day. I have a lead for Crusaders, but unfortunately all my leads for EmDo have dried up.

Current Active Designs - these are the games I'm actively testing or working on:

- Dynasty [Risen from the dead!]

The only game of my own I've really been working on lately is simultaneously a new one and one of my oldest... Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China is a design that's legitimately 20 years old, and I've finally gotten around to making a fully playable prototype... and I'm happy to report that it works! In fact, I rather enjoy it. I mentioned it in a recent post, but I probably ought to do an in-depth post about that  game. 

Backburnered Designs - I kid myself into thinking that I'm still working on these:

- Eminent Domain: Coalition [cooperative mode]

- Isle Of Trains: The Board Game (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

- Joan of Arc

- Kingdom Realms (KBGames 3-lane game jam entry, Nov 2022)

- 18-card Point Salad (KBGames 18-card game jam entry, July 2024)

- Isle of Adventure (Co-Design with Dan Keltner)

- Truck, Boat, Plane

- Peanuts & Crackerjacks

I have moved Truck, Boat, Plane (the game I made with Corbin) and Peanuts & Crackerjacks to this category because they're not games I've really been working on, and I don't really see getting back to them anytime soon.

Promising Recent Ideas:
- Worker-ception [with David Short]

- False Prophet [Mancala/Worker Placement]

- Come And Play [Sesame Street memory/rondel game]

- Candyland Game [Candyland/No Thanks mashup]

- Press Your Luck Candyland [Candyland variant]

- Hanabi Wonders [Hanabi/7 Wonders mashup]

- Stable Genius ["Wingspan of Horses"]

- Eminent Domain: Legacy [campaign mode]

- Which Witch is Which

I've added a new title to this category, which at this point is merely a glimmer of an idea... Which Witch is Which is a simple, maybe kid's level deduction game about a coven of witches, where players will be dealt cards showing different unique witches (some have pointy hats, some don't, some have cats, some have ravens, some have cauldrons, some have jack-o-lanterns, etc), and will have to deduce stuff, like in In the Name of the Rose, or Clue. I'm not sure how they'll go about doing that, but probably some mix of asking questions and passing cards around.

Old Standbys - games which have been around, 1/2 done and untouched, for years:
- 8/7 Central [Abandoned]
- Hot & Fresh [Abandoned]

- Odysseus: Winds of Fate (BGG) [Abandoned]

- Reading Railroad [Abandoned]

- Moctezuma's Revenge [Abandoned]

- Kilauea [a designer showed interest in co-designing, but that didn't go anywhere] [Abandoned]

- Automatown [with Michael Brown] [Abandoned]

Notable that Dynasty moved up to Current Active Designs!

Misc and Really Old Stuff - most of this I'll probably never get back to, but I like keeping it around just in case:
- 9-Ball
- Blockade Runner
- Roman Emperors (my version of someone else's game)
- Admirals of the Spanish Main (my version of someone else's game)

- Investigative/Tabloid Journalism
- Red Colony
- Clash of the Kingpins
- Time = Money
- Dating Game
- Ticket Please
- The Untouchables
- Day labor game based on craps

- Rondel Role Selection

- Scourge of the High Seas [deckbuilding game with 2 center rows]

What I've been working on... Dynasty (finally!), PYL: Rondel, PU/D design with Corbin, and some rondel games by my friends

It's been far too long... an update is long overdue at this point! So here are some recent games we've been testing in my playtest sessions, mine, as well as a couple of my playtesters':

Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China (finally)

My latest design is also one of my oldest... Dynasty: The Spread of Culture in Ancient China started as an idea for a game... *checks notes*... almost 20 years ago(!) I have revisited the idea many times over the years, I even have 1/2 of a physical prototype around here somewhere, but I never got around to finishing the prototype or getting it to the table.

Originally, I figured there'd be a few different actions in the game, and you'd just choose one to do each turn. The last time I started thinking of this game, I considered that just picking an action each turn might be a bit boring, or old fashioned. Nowadays, in a game of the type or scope that I expected this game to be, there's generally a logistical or personal puzzle involved in the action selection (in addition to interactive play on the board). So, I gave it some thought and came up with an action selection mechanism that sounded good to me, and then I -- finally -- got a prototype together and tried the game!

The mechanism is this: there are 4 actions in the game (Leader, Village Conquer, Invent), each color coded. During setup, you draw some random colored cubes out of a bag to put on each action space. On your turn, you choose one of the actions to do, resolve it based on your "action level" in that color, and then claim one of the cubes from that space and put it on your player board, powering up the action associated with that cube. So it's kind of like EmDo's deck learning, only you don't get better at the action you do, you get better at some other action. This mechanism adds a little bit of engine building, and a simple entangled decision -- balancing the actions you want to do with the actions you want to power up. When you get a 5th cube of a color, you get a bonus action of that type and then you discard some of those cubes, reducing your level in that action. And finally, when the last cube is taken from one of the actions, a "mini-scoring" occurs, rewarding whatever that action does, and then all of the actions reset like during setup. 

At the beginning of that first play, it was immediately obvious that I'd messed up the costs of some things, there was very little we could afford to do at first. But after a few early turns and an audible on certain costs, the game actually started to feel pretty good! It's hard to describe the feeling of relief I felt when finally playing this 20 year old design, and having it actually work out alright!

Peanuts and Crackerjacks

Over in the Decision Space Discord, the host (Jake) mentioned something about boardgames evoking the decision space of sports, and it led me to think of the similarities between Baseball and the rondel mechanism. This pretty quickly led me to a design based on a "push-your-luck rondel," where your personal rondel is a little baseball diamond.

After some sketchy attempts, I figured out that I was approaching it all wrong, and pivoted a bit -- while the game could still be described as PYL Rondel, it's more of a Yahtzee mechanism now. You roll, lock, and re-roll some dice, then move your meeples around your rondel doing actions. Sometimes they get out, sometimes they get home -- scoring a run. The player with the most runs at each scoring phase gains *fans*, and at game end, the player with the most *fans* wins the game.

The theme of the game is managing a team in the golden age of Baseball. A lot of the actual baseball game stuff is abstracted away, but I tried to keep things making as much sense as possible without trying to simulate a baseball game.

I think this one is OK, not great... maybe it has potential to be better, but I've been unhappy with the occasional bad rolls. I had some ideas to modify what bad rolls mean exactly to try to mitigate that, but the game got set aside when I started playing other things.

Truck/Boat/Plane

One day when my 7-year-old was home from school for the day, I turned to him out of the blue and said "do you want to design a game together?" To my surprise, he was on board! So I got some pieces out, and started asking him what he wanted the game to be about. I tried to prompt him as much as possible rather than direct the design myself, but I did add some mechanical details here and there. In the end we came up with a dice drafting pickup/deliver game that's kind of like a really light Logistico or something. There's a game board depicting 4 islands in the water, connected by bridges, and each player has a truck, a boat, and a plane. Each island has a warehouse an airport and a dock, and all other land spaces have 2 colored cubes stacked on them. Each round you roll 3 dice per player and then draft them, picking a die and assigning it to one of your unused vehicles. So every round, each of your vehicles moves once, according to the die assigned to it -- trucks move on land, boats move on water and planes move wherever. When you stop on a space with cubes, you may load the top cube into the inventory for that vehicle on your player board. When you stop on the appropriate building, you deliver all of the cubes of that color (the islands are color coded) from that vehicle -- sliding them down to a scoring zone on your board.

When you make a delivery, you get a little upgrade card for that vehicle, making it move better, or giving it some ability. Then at game end, you get 1 point per cube delivered, 1/2 point for undelivered cube in your vehicles, and a bonus for each set of all 2 colors you have delivered.

I won't say it's the deepest game ever, but it could be a lot worse -- I actually think it's kinda fun, and I love that it was co-designed by my kid!

Henge

One of my regular playtesters is Rick Holzgrafe, designer of Villages of Valeria, as well as a couple of Railways of the World expansions: Railways of the Western US, and Railways of North America. I have known Rick for, I don't know, probably half of my lifetime by now! We met online at BGDF.com, and in person every year at KublaCon and BGG.con for a long time -- I like to tell people that if you look at the board for Railways of the Western US, you'll see Tucson, AZ on the map where most games would use Phoenix. Rick used Tucson because that's where I live :)

Rick has been playtesting with me ever since I started playing online (so about Pandemic-time), and even before that he came on board as a co-designer on Apotheosis, a game which was signed some time ago, and may eventually yet come out under the title Usurpers (so watch for that!)

Rick has had a number of designs over the years, and we've tested them at my playtest sessions now and again. Some of them I think are pretty good, and a few I think are publish-worthy... but none so much as his latest design, Henge. I *really* like Henge.

Henge is a shared rondel game -- there's a big rondel with a single pawn, and on your turn you advance it up to 3 spaces for free, or pay to advance farther ($1/space). The actions you take are to obtain stones, carve them, install them in a henge, and attract druids to check them out. One thing I like about the game (and it's something I lobbied for in development) is that the stones must be transported to the henge before they can be installed. There are a few spaces on the board or a few effects that can make your stones arrive at the henge immediately, but mostly they advance down little transport tracks automatically whenever you advance the pawn past certain lines on the rondel. I love the idea of things going on in the background while you play -- you get a stone, then while you wait for it to transport to the henge, you stop off and get income, maybe you attract some druids, spend some time ornately carving the stone so you can install it in a premium location, whatever.

Henge also includes a little engine building, and you can concentrate more on building or more on druids (though of course you'll probably do a little of each). Once the henge is mostly complete, the game ends, and the player who did the best job wins!

Forbidden Art

Another regular playtester / old friend is Steve Carleson, and he's had some games ideas a number of times over the years, but until recently never really pursued them. Not too long ago he had an idea I thought was promising, and I offered to come on board as a co-designer, and now that game has been signed by a publisher! Don't worry, I'll be sure to post when there's information to share about that!

Steve's current game is another one I like a lot, and I think it has great potential... this one's called Forbidden Art, and in it you play as a necromancer, commanding undead minions to help you pillage powerful artifacts, distort them, and use them to bind demons. It's another rondel game (rondels all around!), this time with a personal rondel, not unlike Crusaders. Also like Crusaders, you have minions in each rondel wedge which power up your actions, and one of the actions in the game lets you move them around your board to make certain actions stronger (while making the actions they leave behind weaker)