Game Design

My wife and I love board games….a lot. We have a steadily growing collection that is threatening soon to expand past the confines of the bookcase in which we store it. As is the case with most things I love (music, reading, games), sooner or later I try my hand at the creative side (composing, writing, and now designing). Over the last several years, I have designed a handful of board games, and I have discovered something. Designing board games is easy. But designing fun board games is really, really hard. I’ve also done a few card games and my new favorite hobby is writing crossword puzzles. Check out some of my stuff below.

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New Earth is a game of exploration and transformation, a combination tile laying and skill point management game. It’s also my first fun board game. It’s still in “beta” because it needs a little more work, but I will only know what needs to be tweaked if it gets played. So, if you want to help me out and “playtest” New Earth for me, that would be awesome. Everything (well, nearly) you need to play is in the PDF download. This game is really fun. For 2-4 players (30 minutes per player).

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I designed Jackrabbit a few months before my wife and I got married, and I’m glad I did because we played a ton while traveling on our honeymoon. Jackrabbit is a game for two players that uses a standard deck of 52 playing cards. It’s called “Jackrabbit” because the Jack is the most important card…and rabbit…well, just because.

Crossword Puzzles

I like writing crossword puzzles way more than I like doing crossword puzzles. I hope to post new ones on this page fairly frequently; it depends on how much of my free time I can devote to writing the puzzles. If you have any feedback on these puzzles, shoot me an email. I’d like to improve at writing them. (Note: the solutions are graphics that will open when you click on them rather than downloads, so don’t click until you’re ready.)

May 25, 2013 – “Game On” (solution)
June 3, 2013 – “String Theory” (solution)
June 30, 2013 – “Fire Safety” (solution)