Diaries of a wannabe board game designer, entry date 16th May 2025

The jorney begins. How did I end up here?

What does it actually take to turn a spark of inspiration into a playable card game? In this first diary entry I walk through the earliest, messiest part of the design journey and share the concrete lessons I’ve learned so far:

Why “a good game” is more than a clever idea

Building the very first paper-prototype – and why your kid’s teddy bear makes a perfectly ruthless play-tester

Iterating with family feedback: tracking play-times, win ratios, and “this-is-boring” moments

Killing the fear of idea-theft – ideas are cheap, finished games aren’t

Essential resources

BoardGameGeek: cataloguing, research, and the best reality check on earth

Board Game Design Lab podcast: a goldmine of design wisdom (I binged 50 episodes in two weeks!)

Next hurdles:

finding a theme that truly fits, deciding between self-publishing and pitching, and lining up broader blind-playtests.

If you’re sketching your own game—or just curious about how much work hides behind that neat little box on the shelf—this episode will give you a candid look at the very beginning of the process and the mindset shifts that keep it moving.