This week I had the chance to talk to Carlo Bortolini, a fellow game designer (Memoarr and Riftforce). Riftforce is a dueling card game that involves factions, drafting, combos, and different strategies. All the good stuff I love so much about card games. So I was very happy to talk to Carlo Bortolini and learn more about the design process of Riftforce. We found out that both of our games (Riftforce and Mindbug) share many aspects of their design philosophy. But that is only one of the many topics we discussed on the show. Other topics were for example:

Enjoy listening to Carlo who was a wonderful guest on the Nerdlab sharing a lot of very valuable insights.

Riftforce Website

This week I have the incredible honor of hosting one of the best game designers in the world. He has designed countless games and it doesn’t seem like he is going to stop And the majority of them are incredibly successful. For example he designed Kingdomino, Five Tribes, Seven Wonders Duel, Shadows over Camelot, Abyss and many many more.

His games also have been nominated for a wide variety of awards. Among others, he has already won the highly desired prize: “Spiel des Jahres or Game of the Year” with Kingdomino in 2017. And also this year, just recently, Dragomino the kids adaptation of the game was also nominated for the Children’s Game of the Year.

I am 100% convinced we all can learn a lot from his experience in the industry. So please enjoy the episode with Bruno Cathala who is going to share with us how the typical design process for him looks like.

Image Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Cathala

This week I have the honor of hosting Tom Lehmann, one of the best game designers in history. I wanted to talk to him for quite a while and am very happy that I now have the chance to do so. He has been designing many many games over the last 20 years. What makes his games special and unique for me personally is how he always manages to keep player turns short but also diverse at the same time. Often you don’t have the entirety of all possible options available during each of your turns, which makes them feel very different. This is especially true for some of his most-known games like Race for the Galaxy, Roll for the Galaxy, and Res Arcana. Another thing that these games have in common is that they are using victory points in clever ways to determine the winner of the game. And that is actually the topic we are going to talk about today. But he also designed many games without Victory Points like Pandemic Expansions.

In this episode, we talked about the advantages and disadvantages of victory points and how to apply them in games.

Here is a link to his newest game using victory points: Dice Realms

This week follow up on the topic of E-Mail Listbuilding as a Game Designer. Last week I talked about why you should start an E-Mail List. This week the focus is on how to do it.

In the podcast, I cover the high-level process of:

In the past, I didn’t put enough effort into building my E-Mail list. That’s what I am going to change now. And I will take you with me on this journey. So if you want to build your own list of raving fans…

This week we tackle a very important topic. Last week I talked about why it is important to pput yourself out there and be active in the board game community. This week I am going to talk about why I think it is super important to create a relationship with the people you get in touch with. Personally I think E-Mail is the best way to get into 1-to-1 conversations with your followers and turn them into raving super fans of your future products.

In the past I didn’t put enough effort into building my E-Mail list. That’s what I am going to change now. And I will take you with me on this journey. So if you want to build your own list of raving fans…

This week I talked about the importance of being part of the community and why it is so important to give without asking for anything in return.

These are some of the topics we talked about on the show:

If you want to join our Nerdlab Game Design Mastermind Groups, you can apply here:

Join a Mastermind Groups

This week I have the honor of hosting one of the best game designers in history. Without overstating, I can say that he and his games are the reason I got interested in game design in the first place. And I know many of you feel the same way. At least, you’ve repeatedly asked me to invite him to the podcast. I hope you enjoy my interview with Richard Garfield, designer of Magic the Gathering, Keyforge, King of Tokyo, Artifact, Bunny Kingdom, Android Netrunner, Robo Rally, Vampire the eternal struggle, and many many more.

These are some of the topics we talked about on the show: