| Title | : | Board Games to Create and Play: Invent 100s of games with friends and family |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1911624296 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781911624295 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 178 |
| Publication | : | Published October 3, 2019 |
Board games are back in vogue - with board games cafes popping up all across the UK, they're no longer something to play on a rainy day, but a fun and social activity for every day of the year! In this interactive gaming book, Board Games to Create and Play teaches you how, in just half an hour, you and your friends can come up with a new game and start playing immediately. Just decide on a theme for the game, pick a rule set from the book, agree on some variations, doodle onto one of many board game designs and gather your die and counters!
Completely dippable and possible to play in any order, this book is packed with tips, tricks and mechanics on how to design the perfect game. At the front of the book, there is an introduction to how everything works and what you'll need to play the games. What follows next in a beautiful package of 20 board game designs, each repeated three times for replayability. There are then three tutorials and a cheat sheet to get players started, a cornucopia of suggested games to push you in the right direction, and then 25 different rule sets, each introducing a new concept, to encourage players to think outside the box. Whatever the experience level of players, the game that you create from this book will always be playable, entertaining and surprising. Each board you create is easy to pull out and can be played again and again. So whether you play video games, mobile games or want to have a go at designing the next classic tabletop, this book is perfect anyone who wants to flex their creative muscles!
Board Games to Create and Play: Invent 100s of games with friends and family Reviews
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Originally published October 3, 2019, at BORG.com.
Board Games--New book provides all you need to create and play your own board game
Review by C.J. Bunce
A book released this month from Pavilion Books will have kids of all ages creating their own board games about anything they can imagine. Kevan Davis and Viviane Schwarz's new oversized hardcover book Board Games to Create and Play has everything anyone from kids to adults can use to learn about the mechanics of what makes board games work. And it has 58 templates of 19 sample boards, cut-out cards and tokens, and 40 rule sets to get players to draw up new games on their own.
Beginning with pull-out sample games, readers will quickly learn the building blocks to make a great game. Using the principles of Snakes and Ladders aka Chutes and Ladders as a starting point, readers can grab a pen and start marking up the game, filling in blank spaces with their own themes, goals, challenges, barricades, and rules. You can incorporate dice or cards, or not, and use any kind of object for tokens or design something for each game. Whether you prefer Sorry or Clue, Monopoly, Life, Parcheesi or Payday, or combine rules and technical difficulty to make your own role play board, the sky is the limit.
If you think the artwork in the preview below looks a bit basic, that's the point--you're not limited by your own artistic skill. This is about being creative, using your imagination to create that game that has yet to be invented, but using the game prompts--in essence story prompts--to get you started. And the education on gaming maneuvers, sequences, planning, and strategy is surprisingly insightful. Even experienced game creators are bound to learn something here. The writers explain components of rules, like burning fuel, action cards, non-player pawns, using money, hidden treasures, running fights, movement tokens, and out-of-time rules. It also has a handy theme generator and sample mash-ups of rules to begin with.
(a seven-page preview is available for viewing at BORG.com)
Board Games to Create and Play is great fun, and the book and tear-out pages can be housed for re-use in a cover sleeve and cover, which also comes with a protector strap. Board Games to Create and Play is available now. -
Our family has had a lot of fun making, adjusting and playing the games in this book. The games are created by combining a choice of boards with various different rules. The boards are all based on a fairly simple pattern where players move around a track, a bit like snakes and ladders but with junctions, loops and dead ends. You can then write actions in the squares and decorate the boards for different themes. Various rules and win conditions can be applied to create different games, including cooperative games, collecting games, races and battles.
The basic template does mean that some of the games feel quite similar, but it also allows a variety of board game play and design concepts to be explored without starting from scratch each time, making it accessible to children as well as adults.
The success of an individual game depends on how well you set it up and balance the rules and actions in the squares. This means that some of the games won't be very good, at least the first time you play them. However, this is part of the point, encouraging players to experiment with game design and with iterating and improving a game. -
This book is so smart. It would be a great item to take on vacation, to add to your family game nights or give as a holiday gift.
I included it in my book feature "Season’s Readings: Deck Your Shelves with These New Holiday Releases" (Johns Creek Lifestyle magazine, December 2019) which you can see here:
https://issuu.com/lifestylepubs/docs/...
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Bought this as a Christmas gift for my kids-- I like the way the book is set up and I think it will indeed get well-used by them.
