A Game Design story by Cat Drayer, aged almost 44

Once upon a time, there was an unpublished game designer called Cat. She was working on SO MANY ideas, but none of them were finished.

One day, she heard about a game design competition. It was for games about words. Cat liked games about words, but she didn’t have any ideas for one. This made Cat feel sad.

Emily was also a game designer. Emily had lots of ideas for games with words, but not enough time to make them all on her own. Emily decided to ask other people to work with her. One of those people was Cat, which made Cat very happy.

Emily’s idea was called:

Wordy Laundry

Emily showed Cat her idea, and Cat decided to start work straight away.

Emily had a strong outline for the game, and the artwork she wanted done, so Cat started there and drew lots of pictures, then tested them with some 1970s fabric designs from the internet.

Cat thought they looked pretty good, and Emily agreed, so Cat developed her own fabric designs to use, inspired by all the ones they found.

Cat made a first draft prototype, and she and George played it, and it worked quite well! It gave Cat and George lots of ideas to make the game work better, and they worked through them, and then Cat showed them to Emily.

Emily had new ideas, too, and together, they hammered out a version of the game that was ready to play with other people. Emily took Cat’s drawings and uploaded them onto Tabletop Simulator, and they played Wordy Laundry with Koyomi, and it was good, and silly, and fun.

Cat and Emily knew that a good game deserves a good box, so they swapped ideas until they had one that they thought would work.

After working through a lot of ideas, they chose a simple version of the box for the competition, which has a budget limitation, and a dream version for the “deluxe”.

So Cat uploaded the updated versions onto The Game Crafter site, and added a draft of some words and pictures, and ordered a prototype. Emily, who is very good at making TGC store pages, started working on making the one for Wordy Laundry as good as it can be, and soon, they will enter it into the Word Up design competition!

If you want to follow along with Wordy Laundry and even be part of the game development, please join us in the Wordy Laundry Facebook group!

I also did some fun 70s portraits of the two of us for the Wordy Laundry page.

EMILY WILLIX is a game designer who loves creating fun, thinky games in small packages. She signed her first game, Battle Dentale, with Bright Eye Games in the UK in 2021. Her games have been finalists in the Game Crafter’s 2021 BGDL Solo Duo Challenge and the 2021 Gateway to Games Contest, as well as the 2021 and 2022 Cardboard Edison Award, and the 2021 Ion Award. Emily is always on the lookout for ways to make games more earth-friendly, and operates her company, Small Furry Games, from a solar- and wind-powered sailboat currently located in the Dominican Republic. When she’s not designing games, Emily is probably proofreading another game designer’s rulebook. Or playing a game. Or thinking about games. But when she’s not doing anything game-related, she spends her time making YouTube videos, maintaining an old boat, and playing music with friends. Learn more about her current projects at www.SmallFurryGames.com.