"...just keep swimming!"

But what does that mean? Were we designing a board game based on Finding Nemo?! Not quite...rather, it means that we first agreed to follow a kind of spiral development model that looked like this:

Define a decision that needs to be made.

[We need to pick a theme!] Brainstorm Solutions

[Wild West, Outer Space, Political, Medieval, Dystopia...] Try out and discuss solutions

[Wild West is overdone and Politics is too sensitive...] Vote on a solution.

[Three for Dystopia, one for Outer Space, and one for Political] Integrate 'winning' solution into game.

[Dystopia it is!] Repeat

[What's next?]

The entire point of the process was to keep the project moving forward. Oftentimes, we would have multiple solutions to whatever problem we were working on and "lively" debate would ensue. While these types of discussions are great and can lead to quick solutions, they can also cause analysis paralysis. This usually happens when people try to nitpick the absolute best solution, or they get entrenched behind their favorite solution and won't budge. Both of these cases can cause the project to get bogged down or even deadlocked. However, by calling for a vote and forcing everyone to accept and support one solution, we were able to collectively move on to tackling the next problem and keep the project moving forward.

We found that an easy way to implement this strategy was to meet every Tuesday. At these meetings, anyone was welcome to propose something to tackle. We would then discuss the problem and usually post a summary in our Facebook group for tracking and ongoing discussion throughout the week. Then, at the next meeting, we would present our ideas, discuss them, and usually vote on one solution. This allowed us to quickly move on to implementing the solution instead of endlessly discussing the problem.

Brainstorming

Our first two meetings were traditional brainstorming sessions. We mainly discussed what kinds of things each person liked and disliked in other board games and what they wanted to see incorporated into our game. The goal of these two sessions was to aggregate some high-level ideas about what kind of game the group would be interested in making.

The key features we derived from these meetings were:

Teamwork - there were too many games where essentially one player on each team could quarterback the game and play for their teammates which isn't very fun for everyone else.

- there were too many games where essentially one player on each team could quarterback the game and play for their teammates which isn't very fun for everyone else. Strategic Movement - moving a meeple around a game board is just so satisfying!

- moving a meeple around a game board is just so satisfying! Social Interactions - games are just more fun when you get to verbally interact with your friends...or maybe we just talk too much...

In general, we felt that there were a number of games that captured each of these aspects well individually, but none that combined all three. So we set out to try and create a game that integrated each of these aspects in fun and unique way.

Initial CONCEPT

Our next step was to develop a couple very crude initial concepts, either individually or in small groups. Even if the rules were less than half-baked and the theme didn't quite make sense, the point was to simply present straw-meeple game (as it were) to get the process started.

We ended up with three initial games; each made from an assortment of cut-up cardboard, 3x5 notecards, and components taken from different games in our collection. (Can you guess what game we took those hex tiles from?) After playing through each game as best we could, we would stop to discuss the pros and cons of the game we just finished.