- Print and play!
- Posts
- Make games you want to play
In partnership with
Don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been feeling quite giddy lately.
After all, Micro May is coming!
With game designers gearing up, ideas flying around, and campaigns lining up one after another, I’ve got a feeling this year will be special.
One of the games making a return this time is Dragon vs Kingdom. A pass-and-play released in 2024 that visited my table more times than I thought it would. It might be one of the first PnPs that made me lean toward non-solo games. That should speak volumes!
And now it’s coming back with a second edition. And you know when it’s launching. The blessed month of May.
Which feels like the perfect excuse to not just look at the game again, but to take a step back and look at the mind behind it.
Chris Backe.
For this issue, I’m revisiting the conversation I had with Chris, pulling out one moment that stayed with me, and might stay with you too.
Chris, what advice would you give to aspiring game designers, especially those interested in PnP games?
Print-and-play games are a great place to get your feet wet. They’ll necessarily be easy to make, quick to iterate, and won’t involve a ton of special components. This limits your design space in a good way – a lot of newer designers want to pack a ton of different mechanics into one game, which makes them more complex very quickly.
With that said, don’t force your game to become a print-and-play game. The right form for your game might be a card game, a bigger game with a board, or a print-and-play game. Let your game speak to you – sometimes it’ll whisper things like ‘you know, if you added a set of cards, it’ll create a new layer of interesting decisions…’ or somesuch.
Make games you want to play – statistically speaking, you’ll be playing it more than almost anyone else for a long time. It’ll help keep your enthusiasm up as you’re working with graphic designers, making your crowdfunding page, working with reviewers, and so on.
Interested in reading the full interview? Click, click.
Dragon vs Kingdom is a gem. Read my experience?
- Tas.
Every headline satisfies an opinion. Except ours.
Remember when the news was about what happened, not how to feel about it? 1440's Daily Digest is bringing that back. Every morning, they sift through 100+ sources to deliver a concise, unbiased briefing — no pundits, no paywalls, no politics. Just the facts, all in five minutes. For free.