Game Mechanic | Nerdlab

018 – Artificial Intelligence in Board Games – Part 1

March 15, 2019 / by Marvin / Game Design, Podcast / 1 comment

In Episode 18 of the Nerdlab we will talk about AI which stands for artificial intelligence. AI is a form of intelligent agent that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving a goal. While this is also a huge topic in computer science, we will only focus on AI […]

017 – Ending Games using Fatigue & Exhaustion Mechanics

March 3, 2019 / by Marvin / Game Design, Podcast / 0 comments

In Episode 17 of the Nerdlab we will talk about the topic “How to finish a game” and will especially deal with the situation when a game takes much longer than expected. To avoid this situation in our games, we will also look at some fatigue and exhaustion mechanics that can be used as secondary […]

015 – Aeons End & The Early Design Phase with Kevin Riley

February 14, 2019 / by Marvin / Game Design, Interview, Podcast / 0 comments

In episode 15 of the Nerdlab, I have the honor to interview Kevin Riley designer of Aeons End, one of my favorite games. Kevin shares with us some incredible design principles that I’m definitely going to apply to my game design as well. And To be honest, I think every card game designer should follow these principles. […]

013 – Turn Order and Initiative in Cooperative Card and Board Games

February 1, 2019 / by Marvin / Game Design, Podcast / 0 comments

Hello fellow adventurers, In today’s episode, we are discussing Turn Order and Initiative in Cooperative Card and Board Games. My goal for this episode is to identify the different aspects of various turn order mechanics in order to enrich our game designer mindset. Hopefully, this will help all of us to create the best possible turn […]

012 – Co-Op Mechanics Part 2 – Fighting the Alpha Player Problem, Creating Team Decisions and Adding Tension

January 25, 2019 / by Marvin / Game Design, Podcast / 4 comments

Hello fellow adventurers, In today’s episode, we are discussing co-op game mechanics that can be used to: Fight the alpha player problem Foster team decision situations Add tension to the game What are the main goals of co-op mechanics: One problem in co-op games is the so-called quarterbacking. What it means is that one player makes […]

011 – Co-Op Mechanics to Encourage Teamplay in Card and Board Games

January 18, 2019 / by Marvin / Game Design, Podcast / 1 comment

Hello fellow adventurers, In today’s episode, we are discussing at least 8 mechanics that can be used to encourage team play in cooperative games What is a Cooperative Card Game? A co-op game is by nature a game in which players work together as a team, usually against some kind of AI. In most co-op games […]

009 – Keyforge – A Game Developer’s Review of the Unique Deck Game (UDG) Concept

January 4, 2019 / by Marvin / Game Design, Game Review, Podcast / 1 comment

Hello fellow adventurers, and welcome in 2019. Let’s start this year by talking about the Unique Deck Game (UDG) Keyforge from Richard Garfield and Fantasy Flight Games. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the core concept of unique deck games and some of the mechanics of Keyforge in particular. Therefore, I decided […]

007 – Health Mechanics in Board and Card Games – Part 2

December 20, 2018 / by Marvin / Game Design, Podcast / 0 comments

Hello fellow adventurers, In Episode 7 of the Nerdlab, we will focus on health tracking in card games. This is the second part of a 2 part series on health mechanics. In the last episode, we analyzed the different aspects of health systems and formulated some questions you could ask yourself in order to find […]