Drayer Ink

Boardgames

  • Testing One Person’s Trash

    A little while ago, we had the pleasure of play-testing OPT with fellow Portland game designer Evan. One of the first things Evan spotted was a silly mistake – on classic playing cards, the number and the suit symbol are in the same corner. I designed my cards with the numbers and suits in different…

  • Ladybird Logic: Mushroom Maze

    This is one of those games that comes to you in a series of flashes of inspiration, and is very quickly a fully-formed, playable game. Here’s a bit of a story about how I developed a whole game in just over a week! Inspiration I was in Craft Warehouse, a locally-owned craft supply company that…

  • It’s been a while

    And a WHOLE LOT has happened since our last post. For a start, we live in the USA now! But I will catch you up on all of that in a minute. Let’s talk about all our game designs in progress right now, first! The Valley We have our first professional prototype and it is…

  • Any Other Name – Flower Cards

    Any Other Name – Flower Cards

    Flower cards are both the most important and the most difficult element of Any Other Name – here’s why!

  • Any Other Name – testing, testing

    Any Other Name – testing, testing

    We tested Any Other Name, and it went well – really well! Only a few tweaks to the rules and cards, and we can test it again!

  • Any Other Name – the draft components

    Any Other Name – the draft components

    After letting the game simmer away in the background, I made a couple of little breakthroughs that meant it was ready to print for testing!

  • Any Other Name – draft rules

    Any Other Name – draft rules

    We tested the draft rules over the weekend of December 12th, 2020. Here are the rules as we tested them.

  • Any Other Name – a tender seedling

    Any Other Name – a tender seedling

    I decided to expand a light-hearted joke into a fun family game. Here’s a bit about how it evolved!

  • Any Other Name – the roots

    Any Other Name – the roots

    Star-crossed Flowers I have another game in progress, and it’s called “Any Other Name”. This is, of course a reference to the often-quoted paraphrase of a Shakespearean quote, “a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet”. It is extracted from a scene in Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet argues that their family names…

  • After the play-test – where to from here?

    After the play-test – where to from here?

    After the play-test – where to from here? We asked the questions and we have some Plans… read all about it!