Think Like A Game Designer - Drew Corkill — Design Solo Game Systems, Speed, and Shipping at Scale (#101)

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

About DrewDrew Corkill is a UI/UX designer with nearly 15 years of experience and a deep background in graphic design, who has quietly become one of the most prolific creators in tabletop gaming. Alongside Gabe Barrett, Drew is the driving force behind the “Solo Game of the Month” initiative, he’s launched more crowdfunded games than almost anyone in the industry, building a system that prioritizes speed, iteration, and consistent output. Drew first connected with me as a student in the Think Like a Game Designer Course, where his early work on Small Time Heroes evolved into a breakout success with multiple expansions and campaigns. In this episode, Drew shares how his background in UX shapes his approach to game design, what makes solo games uniquely powerful, and how community, structure, and relentless iteration can turn creative ambition into a sustainable career.Justin’s Ah-Ha Moments:* Threats, Timers, Treats: Drew had one of the clearest frameworks I’ve heard for solo game design. If you want a solo game to generate excitement, you need pressure (threats), urgency (timers), and reward (treats). Miss one, and the whole thing feels more like a puzzle than a game. This is a simple checklist, but it’s deceptively powerful.* You Don’t Build Alone: What stood out to me in Drew’s story is how much of his success came from the environment around him. Community, feedback, and deadlines are force multipliers. Left on your own, it’s easy to stall, but put yourself in a room with people who are building, and everything speeds up. This is true whether it’s a course, a group, or just a few people you trust.* Cut to the Experience: When you take something digital and try to make it physical, all the excess gets exposed. You can’t rely on automation or hidden math, instead you have to decide what actually matters. Drew’s approach is to strip things down until the fun is obvious. That’s a useful lens for any design. If something is slowing the player down without adding value, it’s probably not pulling its weight.If you’ve ever had a game idea but didn’t know how to turn it into a real, playable design, my Design Labs program walks you through the entire process. With 60+ lessons, practical assignments, and a private Discord community, you’ll learn how to move from inspiration to prototype, playtesting, iteration, and publishing.Show Notes:“I was like, well, I’ll just make my own version of what I want.” (00:07:01)This is one of those deceptively simple origin moments. Drew couldn’t find the experience he wanted, so instead of waiting, he built it. That impulse, where you’re moving from consumer to creator, is where a lot of design careers actually begin. If something feels missing in the games you’re playing, consider it a compass, and try to fill the gap.“If it’s distracting from the fun […] then it’s a baby that has to be killed.” (00:27:30)This is Drew being brutally honest about design discipline. It’s easy to fall in love with clever mechanics, complex systems, or ideas that felt great during development, but if they slow the game down or pull players out of the experience, they have to go. Prioritization is key, because not every good idea belongs in the final product. Remember, most of the time you should be removing anything that doesn’t serve the core experience, no matter how much time you’ve invested in it.“To design a solo game is much easier than it is to design a multiplayer game.” (00:42:47)Drew loves to design solo games. Late in the conversation, he gets tactical about why his “game a month” system works. Solo games reduce complexity, which makes them faster to design, test, and ship. Solo games are easier to iterate on, because until very late in the process, you are the only designer and playtester needed to refine the prototype.You can find Think Like a Game Designer on these platforms:* Apple Podcasts* Spotify* Youtube This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I speak with world-class game designers and creative pioneers across multiple industries. Each episode takes you on a deep dive into the creative process, exploring the nuances of game design and the extensive cultural, technological, and business factors influencing various creative fields. Tune in for practical tips and inspiring insights that will expand your creative perspective, whether it's inside the gaming realm or beyond.

I have something I am so excited to finally announce. If you are serious about designing games, not just thinking about games, not just listening to the podcast and dreaming about games, but actually finishing your own designs, then I have created something for you. It is the brand new Think Like a Game Designer design lab. It is a step-by-step system

that I have created and tested with dozens of other creators and other aspiring designers that includes over 60 lessons to take you from generating ideas to building prototypes to finding playtesters, refining your core design loop all the way through publishing,

running a crowd fund, and even getting hired in the industry. You'll also get access to my private design Discord filled with me, members of the Stoneblade team, and other creators all actively building games.

Plus, I've got some incredible bonuses for people who join right now and for longtime fans of the podcast. If you're ready to stop pretending and start actually designing games with intention. Check out the Think Like a Game Designer Design Lab at Justin Garydesigns.com. In today's episode, I speak with Drew Corkill. Drew has been a UA-UX designer with nearly 15 years of experience and even longer in graphic design. And he now launches more crowdfunded games than I think anybody else in the world as part

of the solo game design of the month. He originally joined my Think Like a Game Designer Masterclass about six years ago where I saw him working on his game that is now a massive success, small-time heroes, with multiple expansions and multiple crowd funds. He was able to get a full-time job in the industry. And so it was really fun to get to both pick his brain about his areas of expertise and UIUX and how it applies to games to be able to learn about how he manages incredible pace of crowd funds to talk about the experience in the course and how it helped them and all the different aspects of finding a group of like-minded designers support and guidance for your games. And the specifics of designing solo games, including the key principles of what makes a solo game

tick, what would make a game successful if you wanted to pitch it to him, including the concept of threats, timers, and treats, which we talk about. So a really fun deep dive, a really great experience for me to get to see the results of the Think Like a Game Designer course. It's something that I am so passionate about to be able to help inspire other designers, getting to actually work with them directly and now seeing them succeed just lights me up. If you think this is something that might be of interest to you, you can now join the Think Like a Game Designer Design Lab, the completely redone version of this course that has over 60 different video lessons, access to the exclusive Think Like a Game Designer Discord, all of the fun things that come from working

with a group of incredible people bringing your project to life. But whether you do or don't, this interview with Drew has a ton of great insights, a ton of great principles to take out of and was a real joy to record. So without any further ado, here is Drew Corkill. Hello and welcome. I am here with Drew Corkill. Drew, this is it, man. I'm excited to have you here. Yeah, really excited to be here. I can't believe I'm on your show. Yeah, man. I mean, you know, this is so, so we're going to get, we're going to get your full origin story here, but it's been awesome for me because you, you know, we kind of first met and really connected when you were a student in the Think Like a Game Designer master class, and you have turned

into an incredible success on your own right as a designer. And before that, you were as a graphic designer. So I wanted to, you know, both share your story because I think it's awesome personally. And I think it's a great thing for people to hear what that looks like, right? Going from the kind of, you know, dream to the reality. And so, why don't we just, you know, not only with successful crowd funds, getting now a full-time job and all the things in the industry, everything that you kind of wanted. So let's start at the beginning, though. You know, what kind of brought you into games and what got you kind of into the industry in the first place? And then we could talk about the course and everything else that came after that.

Cool. Yeah. So originally, a magic player from long, long time ago, you know, just playing around as a kid in middle school and high school. And that was kind of where I started, but I've always been playing games from a very young age. And game design really started when I played hearthstone, actually. First, when it came out, I got really big into it, started to play competitively in tournaments and almost made it to BlizzCon one year, which was pretty awesome. And I loved playing around with just the card interactions and knowing like a card pool intimately and seeing where each thing connected. And I was the guy who always brought the weird decks to the tournaments that everyone got mad at, you know, when you beat them with these weird decks that had crazy

combos in them. So I really feel like the first game design that I've ever done was like deck building in hearthstone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, you know, more commonly in the people I speak to, Magic, is that, uh, that radioactive spider bite. but Harstone is of course, you know, massive. And this idea that you're playing a game where you're building the game within the game, right, where you're able to sort of work in this confined space and then build something that's a cool, unique experience, whether it's be competitive and powerful or, as you described, more wacky and weird in creating a specific experience.

It really is kind of game design writ small in a way that I think is hard to overstate. You know, things like, you know, TGs and RPGs and stuff like that where you're really building the experience is a great way for people to kind of get their feet wet, you know, sort of playing in somebody else's sandbox to cross some metaphors awkwardly. I think is a cool starting point. So what made you go from there? Because there's plenty of people to play Magic, plenty of people to play Harstown, play people that build decks, and very few of them that make the leap into the industry.

So what got you to make that jump or what did that look like? Yeah. So after Harthstone became like an addiction and maybe a little too much of a problem for my life, I gave it up. And I had this, like, desire to play a game like Heartstone, but not on a digital interface. And so I kind of, like, started searching for that and couldn't really find it. And so I was like, well, just make my own version of what I want. And so that led me to, like, the board game design lab podcast where I just listened to hours and

hours of it while, you know, putting my kids to bed, listening to the podcast, basically listen to every single episode of that show. And I'm a graphic designer, and I decided that I wanted to reach out to Gabe Barrett and see if you just needed any help. This was probably about nine years ago. And yeah, I just sent him an email saying, hey, I'd love to do some free design work for you. I know you're working on board games from listening to your podcast. Do you need me to help you with anything?

And he said, sure, yeah, that'd be great. So he gave me a tiny little job, and I did that job. And he said, wow, you're actually good at this. I should probably start paying you. And so from that moment on, we've been working together. I did his first ever kickstarted campaign. And fast forward about 10 years, I'm now the creative director of his company Best with One Games.

Yeah. And so your story is one that I really just want to emphasize. This is the advice I give all of the time that have a skill that is whatever it is that you're good at, that you can add value in. That's not necessarily game design itself, but that is important to the industry. so it can be graphic design, it could be marketing, it could be programming, it could be customer support, it could be, you know, community building, any of a million things that games companies need to function. If you've got leverage in one of those areas, it's a superpower and can bring you in

to be able to be game design adjacent and then kind of weasel your way in for, to be able to do the things and being willing to work for free because what you're actually getting is not far more important than any hourly rate you're going to get is that exposure, the chance to prove yourself, the experience, the connections, all the things that then, you know, if you do good work and good work being defined is not just like high quality, but delivered on time and you're good to work with, which are, that triumvirate is shockingly rare. Then, you know, you can, you could definitely, you know, find success that way. So, you know, kudos for taking that leap and and for doing that. So then, so you worked with him and started doing graphic design and started

any pain as a graphic designer, but that's still not at being a game designer. It's important skill set. And I guess, you know, before we shift to your leap into game design, I think it's worth lingering on that core expertise, right? A lot of people don't understand what makes good graphic design. They don't understand what, you know, outside of, you know, it's pretty pictures or icons or whatever, right? What is it that, how do you approach graphic design? What do you think is the most important about good, what distinguishes good graphic design and bad graphic design in games? Sure, yeah. And so on top of graphic design, I'm also a user interface and user experience designer.

That's been my career for about the past 13 years. And I've just done graphic design as a freelance job. And I feel like those are really tied in together of what makes graphic design good, is thinking about how the user or player is going to be interacting with your components, and then putting that into a system that they can play with and explore that's intuitive for them to use. And so really like some of the biggest pieces of good graphic design is actually kind of similar to game design. I feel like simplicity, clarity, and kind of like making things that should go together, go together in the same place. And that all kind of increases the user

experience if you are, you know, laying out things that make sense to them as a rooted the card. So having information chunked together, so it's easy for a user to see what it is and instantly connect with what it means because of the things around it. Yeah, so there's a lot to unpack there. A lot of things I agree with. And maybe let's see if we can like bring forward some specific examples to make this more concrete for people. Right. So I think that there's, you know, the simplicity I can, I can, you know, understand it's going to have sort of less things on a card or less elements there. When you talk about chunking information well or presenting information well, are there examples that you could come to mind of like either from games people recognize

or your own projects that they might know that could show like where a choice was made or where something is maybe even not in their conscious awareness is actually making the game more approachable or achieving those goals? Yeah. I'm trying to think of a card layout that has chunking in it. Well, like, for example, I'll buy you some time with stuff that I think about here. Right. So there's, you know, when you look at a magic card, right, as a core example, right, there, the cost of the card is in the upper right hand corner.

It's very big and noticeable. It's the, you know, kind of the biggest piece of information on the card. That means that it is useful to see it right away. It's clearly important. If I'm holding it in my hand and fanning out my cards, I can see that information very readily. So it's in a specific space and it specifically has a high priority in terms of like size and placement and coloring to show that it's going to draw my attention. At the same time, attack and health, which are numbers used on a magic card in combat are in the same location

at the bottom of the card. And so I know when I'm looking for combat information where both those numbers are relevant, I would see those in the same space. They're not as emphasized as a casting cost because they don't matter as often. But when it's in play, where now the bottom of the card being covered, like it might be in my hand, doesn't matter as much. So those are like a couple of things that come to mind, you know, immediately as examples of like how information is, you know, chunks together and prioritized in a layout on a specific game piece that does some work there.

Does anything else come to mind in your after that example? Yeah, definitely. And to go on with like a magic card, you know, you could consider, like I consider chunking like keywords, having keywords bolded. And then sometimes, you know, if there's enough text, you can put in what that keyword does. So now you're connecting the keyword to some text that connects those two pieces together. And sometimes you'll even have like a keyword with a color, which means a certain thing that's, you know, so that color is now attached to another piece, which is also attached to a rule.

And so you're kind of creating these like interconnected pieces that allow a user to see something. connect it and then not even think about it afterwards. Yeah. And I know like when we've done, so I talk a lot about the core design loop, as you know well from the course and hopefully listeners know by now, where we go through this process of iterative testing, right, where we'll have a kind of idea and we'll test a game loop and the core tension of a game and the key things that are there. And, you know, I think just to emphasize the point is that the same thing needs to be happening with your graphic design, right? the same ability to like test this, does the information come across clearly? Are people asking questions about it?

Do they understand what's happening? Does a card look too clunky? I mean, we had a version of the game Grass Fed that I've been working on, which is a farm to tabletop deck building game. And it's, I had a version of it that we made and prototyped last year at GenCon. And it ended up having so much text on the cards explaining everything. And it became, it looked very complicated. and it turned people off.

So even though it was totally clear what to do, if you just read it, it was actually a net negative. And so we ended up revamping the whole thing and turning it almost all into icon language. And so it takes you a second to learn the icons. But once you do, it's every card looks like a,

you know, like a farm in a field and a thing, you know, it feels right for the game for the genre. And it ended up being faster and easier and more approachable. So two questions then. One is, you know, is there,

you know, what does your process look like for how, you actually test and iterate on your graphic design to kind of learn what's happening? Or if there's a second part to that question would be how, you know, are there specific cases that come to mind where you would, you've had something that you thought was going to be a brilliant take? And then you showed it to people. And it was like, oh, nope, that was totally wrong.

I had to change that. Yeah, I'll go with the process for me because I actually think this is an interesting point that we might disagree on a little bit. And so I know in your course, we've, we've, often talked about making a prototype quickly, dirty, and potentially not very pretty. And I've sort of pushed against this quite a bit with everything that I've done. And I think mainly that's because I am a graphic designer. And so for me, something that would take someone, a couple hours, takes like 20 minutes. And so I'm able to quickly create something that looks good.

And then so what I'll do is I'll start with the overall user interface of the component that I'm working on and try and do my best job to like make it clean and nice and follow a lot of the user experience rules. And so generally, even if it's an early prototype, I'll have a fairly good looking prototype with graphic design and potentially even like some art, but mostly like colors and just a really nice clean layout. One of the things that it helps me do is it helps me visualize exactly what needs to be on that component. And so I do a lot of thinking about game design while I'm designing my interface.

And so it creates restrictions of the things that I should put on the card or that I need to design that will go into the card. And a lot of times I'll have all these big ideas and realize that if I put all of that on the card, it's just going to be a mess. And so it really helps me like see what I'm doing. And then I take that and make sure that everything I'm, I'm designing goes towards the simple UI that I've designed. And then from there, during play testing, I'm always testing the graphic design as well. And so I'm watching how people interact with my cards or components and seeing where

they're having trouble. And so while I'm iterating on the game design piece, I'm also iterating on the graphic design and the user experience by watching people during play tests. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I appreciate the pushback. All right, just because I do something a certain way and teach something a certain way, It doesn't mean that it's right for everybody.

And I think in particular your case where you can, when I say make a quick and dirty prototype, if you can make a quick and pretty prototype, that's great. Like just most people can't do that. And so, you know, the key is the problem is that I have had people and you met some of them when they come to the course. They've spent hours and hours and sometimes weeks and making really nice looking prototypes or even getting professionally printed ones that they ordered in. And then we find out their core game loop doesn't work and everything has to be scrapped.

And you could have spent all that time learning that lesson way faster. So that's the main reason there. But the more reps that you can get through the core design live with things that look final or that are attempts at final, the more you're going to learn about that piece and the better your learnings are. So I do think that there's obviously value there. And I think what I will do, because I'm not a graphic designer, is I will go through that. I go through a what I call a kind of mental play test before I bring anything to the table. Like I will picture what I think the board should look like and what all the pieces of information the player needs and actually mentally walk through taking a turn and passing the turn and what that feels like and where there.

And I will find hiccups and problems and things like, oh yeah, there's too much on this card or this, you know, actually people won't, this part's going to be confusing. And that will save a ton of time because I don't have to prototype anything. I just do it in my brain. but the more, you know, the faster you can get the reps out, the better is kind of the name of the game. And if you have a skill set like you do, or I know some people who are, you know, they're programmers. So for them, it's actually faster to make a digital prototype than it is to make a physical prototype. And so that's, you know, also fantastic, but outside of my wheelhouse. So if you've got a competitive, a unique competitive advantage in your process and you can lean into that, that seems like a big win.

So then, okay, so we've talked a little bit about, you know, graphic design and UI and what matters there and how we make them good and how we test them. And then let's let's move and talk about this jump from saying, okay, cool, I'm a UIUX designer, I'm a graphic designer, I'm working in the industry, working on games, but I'm not a game designer yet. What's that, what's that leap look like? So the first game design project I ever did is I started playing rogue like video games and I was working with a software company and I wanted to make a video game. And so I got a bunch of developers together and I said, hey, let's do this thing. And, you know, none of them knew how to develop, you know, code in unity or, you know, whatever video game

language we were going to use. And I quickly found out that the first step of creating a video game is to create a physical prototype. And so I was like, oh, well, that's actually just a board game. And so why don't I just make a board game instead of a video game because I can do most of that by myself. So it sort of started with this big idea with a bunch of people and then went to I don't actually know how to do this but let's do something I do know how to do.

And yeah, so I just started playing around with a, you know, it was like a pandemic type game that was a survival game and obviously was pretty horrible. But yeah, I've got a bunch of work friends to come and play it and designed it and made it look pretty and probably wasted a lot of way too much time on that.

But yeah, so yeah, even graphic designer, waste a bunch of time on graphics, right. Definitely. But yeah, so I kind of got the first couple out of my system and then moved on to, I had an idea of, you know, at the time, Slay the Spire was just a digital game. And I really wanted to capture that feeling of playing hearthstone, playing Slay the Spire, playing that type of game that I was sort of like looking for in the beginning. And, yeah, I decided to just make it myself. And I thought, you know, so far, I've always wanted to, to like deck builders, but I've never actually really liked them that much. They didn't

give me the feelings of what I wanted. And one of the big things I realized was I didn't like having currency cards in my hand because I didn't like to pay for stuff to then get cooler stuff put into my deck and then get rid of all the bad stuff. And so, you know, I kind of like use Slay the Spire as a foundation and realized that was one of the things they were doing. And then there was a long process of like, how do I condense a digital game and make it usable and playable on the tabletop? And so that kind of started my journey with small time heroes. And that's when I found your course and signed up for it, sort of at the beginning of me playing around with this idea. Yeah. And I remember, yeah, I remember the early versions of that and working through that with

you. And it's, it's been exciting to see it evolve. And, you know, it's a decent enough place. even when you started, you had some good ideas there. Let's linger a little bit on this idea of going from digital to physical, because I think this kind of port process of moving from one medium to another is really fascinating, right? Because digital obviously has a lot of advantages when it's like, hey, I can do a lot more complicated things and the game just resolves it. And there's making a bunch of stuff that would be impractical in the physical game.

And then there's things the physical game presents that it doesn't. So how did you think about taking kind of, in this case, the best of Slay the Spire and bringing it to tabletop? What constraints did you find? What opportunities present to themselves as you wanted to get this same emotional impact of a digital game onto the physical table? Yeah, the biggest thing for me was figuring out how to not do as much math as you needed to do. Because, you know, on the digital game, the math has done for you. All the decisions of like how the cards work are made for you. You can kind of just drag and hit things and it'll work, you know, fairly well.

And so one of the biggest things was taking like the general unit and dropping that down so the math was easier. And so I think in Slay the Spire, I believe, you know, their basic attacks are six, I think. I played around with what did it look like at two, three, and four. And I decided on three as kind of being my base number because it was allowed, it could be divided, it could be increased, but the math still came pretty easily to do with that number. So that was sort of like the big step was like where do I take out some of the hardship that the computer is doing for you to make it easier to do on the table. Another piece that I worked with was how do I streamline the process? of playing and going through the game and the core loop of the game. And I feel like I really condensed down what Slay the Spire is to like just the exciting parts that I like.

And that's mainly doing battle. And so I kind of, I started with like everything. And then I took it all down into here are just the core pieces that I like interacting with. And that was battle and adding cards to your deck and finding cool combos. And so my whole piece was iterating on that until I got it down to something very simple that took very little time to go through that entire loop. And so what was it like then, you know, one, yeah, I love that philosophically, right? The, you know, taking every designer I know starts way too complicated, especially, you know,

when they're getting started and then whittling that down to real find like, what's the core of the fun and get rid of everything that gets in the way? And I'm quite sure I gave you that exact advice in the first version I saw. And so, yeah, let's talk a little bit about what was your experience like in the course? because I think, you know, I don't get to interview people after the fact now, right? Now that you've got your game that's been crowdfunded and had expansions and had a lot of success and a lot of acclaim. You know, what was it like taking that through the course? How did the course help you?

What was the experience like from your side of the table? Yeah, I mean, it was just, it was great having you be available to me to just ask all my questions that I wanted to ask. And it helped me, it got me way further than I would have been if I hadn't been in the class. I think one of the big pieces that happened fairly quickly was I volunteered for you to do a playtest in my game and we played like a couple rounds of it. And at one point I had this like thing that I thought was clever where it was like a different shuffling mechanism. So you didn't actually have to shuffle your deck, but it sort of shuffled it. You basically discarded into three piles and then combined those three piles together. And you looked at it and you're like, this is way too complicated for something as easy to.

shuffling. You're like, for me, someone who likes to think about all of this stuff, I'm going to take like five minutes figuring out where to put each card. So I know exactly where they are and try to remember that. And that's not fun. And so like it was this really great, well, what I thought was a very clever mechanism. And correctly, you identified that it was too complicated for what it was giving to the game. And so like I was really excited about killing my darling.

and you know, you sort of help lead me there to like focus on like I said, the simplicity of the game and how do we make sure that everything is as simple as it is and then increasing, you know, the getting the maximum play out of all the pieces without adding complexity to it. Yeah, elegance. Elegance is a key, key principle of design and a lot of the lessons in the course talk about that. I think that the, I mean, it's funny because, yeah, I have this experiences, you know, even today with designers on my team. people there who are like, you know, they'll have this really, whatever, I'm not going to throw them into the bus. I do this still to this day where I'll have things that I'll bring to the table that are like, oh, look how clever I am. Like, look at this cool interaction that has all these things. And then you can, I can, you know, I see people's eyes glaze over at the table or somebody

that just starts going in the tank for spending 20 minutes to figure out, well, you know, how to orient their card or whatever. And so, yeah, it's a, it's a key piece where, you know, if that is the core of your experience and that's where you want people to focus, cool, be as complicated as you want, right? But if it's something that ends up distracting from the fun or the process of figuring that out isn't fun,

then it is a, you know, it's a, it's a baby that has to be killed as, as we say, playfully here. And then, um,

uh, from that, uh, that spot where you're sort of, you're in the course and you took the initiative to, you know, put your game up first for testing, which can be very, you know, intimidating, right?

You're not only you're, am I going to tear it apart, which is part of the job, but you're, you know, in front of everybody else in the class. What was the vibe like from the people in the class? How did it, you know, because I've often, from my perspective, like, obviously I'm here to help, but I think that the community in that group was the real superpower. So what was your interactions like with the community? Did they, what lessons did you potentially learn from others that were in the, in the group? Yeah, it was, I mean,

I mean, the community is definitely one of the key pieces of the course and everyone on there is just amazing. Specifically, during my test, I kind of played mostly with John and Aaron. And they took my game so far and provided so much feedback and, you know, it definitely would not be the game it was without having them play testing it. And they just were with me all the time playing it. And, you know, even it's a solo game, but it plays at the, you know, I wanted to get it to play to four. And so a lot of the testing during your class was like, how do I take this game and make it work at four? And then iterating it on it, iterating on it with those people or members of the class until I realized that like, I shouldn't make it a four player game because that's not what it wants to be. But yeah, like John specifically would help with, it's actually an expansion character that I was working on six years ago.

ago, but the cleric, he was just always in there playtesting that thing until, like, he was telling me how broken it was, but wanting to play it. And so I was like, well, it's, it's fun that it's broken. So how do we get it down and make it a little more fair? But yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's, and that's now, now that that, that tees us into the, into the solo game design, right? Because a solo game design is a really interesting space, right? A lot of my games nowadays have solo, um, play versions of it, cooperative versions of it. I don't think I've ever designed a game that's only solo

play before. There's a lot of things that are different in a solo play experience. So, you know, one of like, the definition of broken is a little different and there's a lot more room for brokenness in a sense, right? Even Slay the Spire as an example, like

there's definitely builds you can have in that game that are like, okay, you're just going to win this thing. You're going to crush it. And that can be fun if it's happening rare enough, right? If it's just every time, it runs the experience. So how do you think about designing a solo game? What makes a solo game great?

And what do you think is key to that audience? Like, what are they looking for? I think what's key to the solo audience is, I think there's two types of solo gamers. There's people who like to puzzle things out and make sure they know exactly what they're doing and thinking about that for a long time. And so, like, the idea of analysis

paralysis is actually kind of a good thing in a solo game, which is I think one of the reasons why designing for solos is so fun is because a lot of the stuff we're told not to do as designers you can do in solo games because you don't care how long it takes you to do your own turn. And you don't care if you've created a broken combo because it's fun to do that. You're not doing that on another player. And so there's a lot of freedom within that.

So there's the solo gamers who like to, you know, puzzle out everything and know exactly what they're doing. And then there's the solo gamers who just want to play with cool stuff. And that's kind of where I tend to go. And so just creating a sandbox for someone to play in. And because you're not doing it with other people, that sandbox can have things that are annoying, things that you wouldn't normally put in a multiplayer game,

just because if you die, then you die and you start over again. And there's no hard feelings about what you've done to another player or if you've lost the game at all. Yeah. Yeah, I've definitely found I can be more evil on the other side of things too, right? I can have the bosses and the villains, like, can do nasty things to a player that I would never, like, want players to do to each other because then they're going to have a fight, you know, in real life. But so both sides, right? You can, you can feel super powerful and do broken things to the boss and to the villains and to the objectives, whatever. you're trying to do to solve your puzzle. And the game itself can be more villainous than in a PVP environment, I think is all right. Let me ask a question that it's always kind of wandered because I don't play solo board games.

I love playing board games, but if I'm going to play a solo game, my default is to play a video game. I have all the experiences of that. And I don't. What is it that's drawing people to solo board games? games specifically as opposed to the alternative? Why is that? And it's a big market and there's a lot of people, you know, again, I make games for this audience, but I'm not a member of that audience. So it's a little, I'd love to understand more like what you think the unique draw is here that

really pulls people in. Yeah. It's a lot of the same things with just collecting board games tie into it. And it, if you are playing a game by yourself, you theoretically have, you know, as much time as you want to play that game. Whereas if you're playing with people, you need to set up a time to meet with people. You need to have friends who like board games. And so you're sort of getting rid of the barrier of entry by just saying, I'm going to play this by myself and I don't need anyone else to do it. And so I'm a good example where I just don't really have friends who play board games. And so my wife sort of likes them, but not really. And so I'm really the only person that I can play board games with in my life currently. And so I go out.

the, you know, as a solo gamer, I look at it in terms of like, this is a cool hobby that I get to explore. And it's all the same pieces that are involved with just board games in general of, you know, I get to research it. I get to hear about all the cool mechanisms and get excited to kickstart this thing. And I'm doing it because I know that I'll have time to play it by myself because I don't have to rely on other people. And so also I'm, you know, on the screen most of the day. And so to get away from a screen, like, you know, instead of just playing a video game, I can sit down and play something that's not connected to technology. And yeah, it's just kind of like on your own time. You get to do it and you don't have to worry about other people. I think it's sort of the biggest. Yeah, no, that, I mean, that makes sense, right? This collector idea, like I have the physical thing. I can get excited about it showing up. I can and I know that I'm going to be able to play it. Make sense. There's many, many games that are on my wall of shame that I have and have never played because I can't get a group together to play them. So, so that definitely makes sense to me.

And yeah, there's just a fun experience. I still getting away from screens and having the physicality. You know, I playtested a lot of Ascension tactics solo when we have our campaign mode. And it was just that game was so cool because you had all the cool minis on the board and you could see what was happening. And so there's definitely a visceralness that comes from that as well. You know, it was just pretty cards. And there's something there for sure. Okay.

So we went, you know, you were able to take this. you have a core graphic design skill, you have work as a graphic designer, you go to the course, you refine your game, you get it to be what you find, you know, you discover what it's meant to be,

which is just a solo game and a core experience like that, and you get it to a place where you feel good about it. What, how do you go from there to, to crowdfund success? Yeah,

this one was kind of a long road for me. So I, I was set on publishing it myself. I was going to do it all. I was going to publish it. I was going to do it all. I was going to do the, the manufacturing, do the shipping. I was all ready to go. I worked on it and I actually had a

print and play version of the game. And I was meeting with some people that were helping me out with marketing and different things like that. And they were like, why don't you just release your print and play first and just start gaining a market or gaining an audience? I mean, and so what I did is I just ran a Kickstarter campaign for my print and play version. And I got, I don't know, maybe 250 people, 500 people to back the print and play campaign. But what that forced me to do is I sort of put in deadlines in this print and play campaign of like every month I was going to release new content. So it was sort of this like fun thing where someone could back it and then have monthly content up until I, you know, said I was done releasing content. And so I did that and definitely did not stay on track with releasing new content every month.

But once I finish that, I sort of like had my game in an even better spot than where it was before, almost ready to crowdfund if I wanted it to. And I created an audience and, you know, people printed it and were sharing it on social media and stuff like that. So while it wasn't like successful at that point, you know, I was I was starting the steps towards building an audience for my game, which I was then going to crowd fund the physical game. Then we started the solo game of the month thing, Gabe and I, together. And through that, after seeing the audience that he gathered and knowing he was, you know, someone who would likely publish my game if I wanted it to be published, I just reached out to Gabe. I showed it to him. And he's like, yeah, this is great. I'll publish it whenever you want. And then it took me a couple more months to decide that I actually wanted to give it to someone else to publish. When I realized I didn't have enough time to do all the things that I wanted to do and publish my game, I just decided to say, like, we have a great audience who's going to, you know, love this game. Why not just do it with Gabe, even though it's not the whole whole shebang by myself? Yeah. And it's a good point to linger on because a lot of designers face this choice.

And as someone who's been on all sides of this, right, I have built my own company and launched my own games and launched my own crowd funds. And I also have a bunch of projects that I do, I design for other people, right? And including massive ones like Gundam Assemble and Oshy Push and Baccagon and a variety of others. And so I will tell you, I have a lot more fun just making games for other people because I just get to do the game and the cool stuff. I don't have to do all the hard work of bringing the thing to life. But, you know, there's also the aspects of, you know, you have full control of the thing and you get to exactly mirror your vision all the way through. And, you know, if it goes well, you know, the more is at risk, but more, there's more rewards potentially if you own, you own the property and everything. what do you you know when you were going through that it was just you just were wanted to do it yourself

but you never had the time and that was the primary deciding factor is that is that was there other things that played into your do you do you still have harbor desires to do your own thing or you happy with the path you got yeah I think I still want to do my own thing but I also realize like where I'm at right now like it almost is my own thing so like when I pitched small time heroes to Gabe I had done all the graphic design for it I had done the art direction. I paid for most of that myself, which, you know, I got, he paid me back for once I sold the game to him. But like, I, it was basically my vision. And Gabe was like, I'll publish it for you. I'll do all the stuff that you don't want to do. And then we'll get

the game out into people's hands. And so for me, it was like a really easy way to work with someone that I like working with and have the entire creative freedom that I wanted in the game. And I'm just basically making less money, but, you know, don't have to do all the, the stuff like shipping and manufacturing that I was definitely scared of when I started. So the biggest reason that I didn't do myself is I was just so scared of having something happened with shipping the game and how do I handle that? And what does that look like if something does go wrong? And something will go wrong, I promise you.

Something always goes wrong. I've been doing this a long time. Things still go wrong. Yeah. I think I don't think I'm not sure if I've ever actually delivered a project on time. I've really tried. I've really tried. Every time I'm like, all right, let me give an estimate that's like twice as long as what I think I'm going to need. So I know I can do it. And somehow it still takes long.

So yes, this is very hard stuff to do. And again, you know, even if you quote unquote make less money, you know, the time that you have can be put towards other projects and other things you want to do and, you know, more money from other channels and or more time with your family or making games or playing games. So the tradeouts. us are real and I definitely always encourage you. There's not one right answer here, but understanding the realities of what each path maintains. And as you know, the course has stuff for everybody on that, right?

It has tips for how to crowd fund and how to market and launch your own thing and publish your own thing as well as how to pitch to a publisher. And we did a real live, you know, did real pitches to publishers at the end of the course and have connections through those things. So there's a lot of different paths. And I always generally, I recommend, I think what you did was so smart. And let's speak to marketing and audience building here because the, you know, releasing your game for free as a print and play, some people would say, well, why would

anybody buy it? Because they just got it for free or, you know, for a low, low price. Why would they, you know? And of course, the opposite is actually true, right? You build a core audience that loves the thing. They both want to support you. You've been a good, you've been in communication with them and giving them something really cool. People want the nice version.

You know, I mean, I remember being afraid when we launched the Ascension app. that I was going to cannibalize ascension sales, right? Because a box of ascension was $40 and you could have gotten the app for $5 then and now it's free. Right? Why would you buy a box? And the exact opposite happened. People loved the game so they wanted to buy the thing. So it grew the brand.

And so that was great. And then you know, then you, you know, what walked into this process of doing a board game a month, a game a month, which sounds crazy to me. And we were lucky if we get three crowd funds in a year or two is usually the most we can pull off. So what does a what how do you do that? Like what is going on? What is your how does how do you market that? How do you launch that? How do you pace that?

Like what's going on there? Talk to me about your crowdfunding process. And and I mean, that's I think I can't. My guess is you have to be launching more crowd funds than anybody else in the industry at this point. I imagine that's probably true. Yeah. So we've been doing a solo game of the month.

So one game a month for now we're coming up on two years and four months about. We did take off like a single month. I believe in December last year, but have, I think, launched 25 games at this point. And yeah, it's crazy. It's probably a really dumb idea, but we're making it happening. It's a lot of work. But there's a lot of things we did that I think made it work and made it make sense for the scope of what we were doing. I think one of the big things is the solo game piece of it. To design a solo game is much easy. than it is to design a multiplayer game. So what we found is there's a lot of indie designers who these are kind of their first games are doing,

and they're pretty decent games. And I think one of the key pieces of designing a solo game is that you can iterate on it way faster than you can with a four-player game that takes two hours to play through. Again, just like buying the games, you have no one stopping you from playtesting. You can just play test and iterate and iterate and iterate. Obviously, you need outside feedback at some point, but I think you can get your game to a much better place before you start letting other people see it because you're just iterating with yourself. But one of the other key pieces was the scope of the games. And so we originally, when we started this out, we Gabe found out VHS boxes. So plastic VHS cases.

And he said the whole premise of solo game of the month was we're going to take these plastic VHS cases. And we're going to put small games inside of them and basically use a Button Shy model and sell them. And so Gabe found like the only man. Explain Button Shy model for people that don't know. Sure. Yeah. So Button Shy is a company that produces 18 card wallet games. And they, I don't know actually how many games they produce a month, but they basically have a subscription model where you kind of buy all the Button Shy games.

on a frequent basis. I think they might do like quarterly, so they do like four games every quarter. I think that might be how it is. But the idea was just like a very affordable way to get lots of small games and that happened frequently. And so, yeah, so that was our model was small games every month.

And we found these VHS cases. Gabe found the one person in China or one manufacturer in China who was still making these things and bought thousands of them because boxes are like one of the most expensive pieces in a board game and so what we found out was like if we have 500 people a month backing these games it's sustainable

so we came into it knowing that we're doing small box games which you know are created faster not only on the game to potentially on the game design side but on the graphic design side the manufacturing costs and also even just the barrier to entry for the consumer. We sell our game, the base small games are sold for $25. And so for someone to look at a game that they think is cool and be like, oh, it's only $25, why not buy it?

And so I think the cost of the game created an audience for us. And so we started out small. But every month that we made these games, people kept coming back. We have a percentage of our audience who has bought every single game that we've made, which is insane. And so one of the other pieces is I kind of created this brand for solo game of the month. On GameFound, every project we have has a little logo that says solo in big letters on it. That's on when you scroll through the main page of GameFound.

It's also on our like the heading images in the GameFound page. And it's also on our branding on the boxes. And so you have this line of all of the same size boxes, all with this solo branding on it. And so, you know, creating a brand that worked to increase collectibility was another piece to it. And so we just started going and created an audience that has gotten to be really big. And people kind of just auto back them because they just like the idea of collecting every single game we put out. Yeah, that's wonderful. So this process of, you know, building us, doing the math, right, and building something that puts you in constraints,

like as one of the lessons from the course, constraints, breed creativity, forcing you to work within a literal box and solo games that are easier to make, let you iterate faster, build the relationship with your audience, consistently deliver value, and then over time that scales up,

it's a, you know, it's a slow and steady path to success, which is, I think, one of the more reliable ways to go. That's, it's great.

And you found a niche in the marketplace for yourself, right? That's like not, not a lot of people were fighting for and that you can kind of become a dominant player in. So that's really fantastic.

So is that do you have any ambitions for games with multiple players? Are you working on anything along those lines? Do any of the you know, what's a or is it, are you happy with this solo play is the primary focus for the foreseeable future? I think

solo play for me is going to be the primary primary focus, I am playing around with what does it look like to have a solo game that is best with one, but also can be played with other people and is just as fun. Now, Small Time Heroes was a one to two player game. And some of our games that we sell do support multiple players, but generally it doesn't go above two. I am working on a skateboarding game that is going to be solo focused, but will allow for, right now, the plan is up to four people. So it is something Gabe and I have been thinking about is like, how do we create a solo game, but also increase that market for people who want to play it with other people? And so I think, you know, we're looking into

sticking with having a primarily solo focused audience, but what does it look like to try and find games that play best at one, but also are just as good at multiple player counts. And so, yeah, it's hard to find that, but I think we're in the search for it. And yeah, I'm working on one right now. Okay. And so, first of all, I'm intrigued by the skateboarding game. As someone who's designed and published a skateboarding TCG called Superdeen. I don't know that.

Yeah, that's right. I've really fun. We were at the X games. We had a big booth. and we were, it was wild. We had a lot of licensed, you know, big name people on it. It was a, it's an interesting market that, I don't think that there's a huge overlap of TCG players and skateboarders in reality, but it was a really fun game to work on and learn

about that world. But what does, what does working on games look like for you these days? So you guys are taking in submissions from other designers, you're working on this internally, I think it's a little column A, little column B. What does that process look like as you build and that and launch these things at the most insanely rapid pace of anybody I know? Yeah, one of the nice things is Gabe and I are both game designers at this point. And so, you know, I would say many of our games are designed by Gabe.

Well, actually, I've only designed one, so that's not true. But we take part in the design. So that helps free up, you know, two to four games a year that we're going to be working on. And then, yeah, Gabe is just scouring the internet for people who have solo game designs. And I think at this point, we've created enough of a name for ourselves that people know that, hey, if I want to pitch something, I can pitch it to Best with One, and they'll at least look at it. And so, yeah, it's a lot about designing our own games and looking for other people's games that fit within the constraints that we have,

which are the small box sizes and solo focused. All right. Well, so as an exercise, there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast that want to be game designers. They have the option to come join the new thing like a game designer design lab and come work with me and my team directly to learn stuff. But also, I think as an exercise, building a solo game that's limited, fits in that small box. And it's something that you could build and test on your own and iterate quickly and get into your hands. what would they do to potentially get something that they could pitch to you? What does that look like? I mean, just emailing Gabe at bestwith1.com and sending him a submission.

I would love to see everyone in our course play around with designing solo games. I've already talked to one person who's asked if, you know, give me some constraints and what you guys are looking for. So I know that we at least have one person playing around with some solo game designs to pitch to us. But yeah, if I'm in the course, I would love to play your guys as games. And yeah, look at them and work on iterating them. And I imagine, you know, because we're publishing so many that there's a pretty good opportunity that a solo game from the Think Like a Game Designer class is going to publish. So, you know, one, of course, you and everybody else that's a former, you know, students in the course has access to the Discord and everybody that was in it before is getting free access to all the new stuff, you know, the new, the new conversation.

and new work we're doing. So I hope to see you active in there, even though I know you're busy now. And, but I want to dig in a little further. Like what makes, if what makes, if someone's going to submit and Gabe's going to get a flood of emails from listeners to this podcast, what makes a game stand out?

What's going to be something that will make it more likely for that to get looked at, more likely to get played, more likely to get accepted, more likely to get published? Yeah. Yeah, so I'm looking at the thing that I sent to one of the students, and I wrote Paxa Punch. The game should feel bigger than the box that it is in. Also constrained, too, the box size that we have. That theme is really important to us.

We work with a great artist Cole, and he is another reason to the ability to create so many games is he's just an amazing artist who works incredibly fast, so matches with our model. So we can take a theme and make it into something really cool using his artwork and my graphic design. One of the pieces that Gabe talks about with solo games is he calls them the three T's, which are threats, timers, and treats. And so essentially, you know, solo games that have threats to go up against, treats that incentivize players and timers to create tension within the game. we tend to avoid beating your own score games. That doesn't mean that those are completely out,

but we try to not have those as much. And yeah. Treats, that's great. I love that. Yeah. Anything else comes to mind? Because these are great. These are great.

And what is like what fits in this box? Like is what's a component limit or range? What looks like? Yeah. I mean, essentially cards is we use a lot of cards because they're easy to print. They're cheap, and they fit a lot of content on them on a small component. And so...

Is there a range of cards that you consider to be ideal in one of these kinds of boxes? Not necessarily. I think, you know, we tend to go to poker size cards because those are just the most common. But we've actually used a lot of different size cards. In the game, Rome, Fate of an Empire, we actually had to shrink the cards to kind of a weird size. So it actually fit in the box. and so we every once in a while will like change the card size so the amount of cards can fit into the box which a lot of people hate because they can't find sleeves for that type of card but the box dimension at least of the small box is 197 by 116 and so you can fit a decent amount in there but yeah obviously like no giant like components you know keeping cardboard down to a minimum and focusing mainly on cards or you know, small components.

I'm trying to think of like what other small components there might be. But yeah, mostly cardboard and cards is what we mainly focus on. Okay, well, maybe I'll focus some of this upcoming class on on some of this particular puzzle because I think it's an interesting one to solve. It would be awesome. So very cool. Awesome, man. Well, are there other things that you want to say, to the audience or to people who are thinking about joining the course or thinking about taking the leap to becoming a game designer that, you know, you've now kind of successfully made this jump and are kind of living the dream. Not kind of. You are living the dream. And what would you, what would you say to those folks?

I would say, just go for it. Having support, I think, is the biggest key to have being a successful game designer. And I think the course and the community that you've created is perfect for that. And it's just like such a wonderful place to come and share your ideas, even if you're not getting any feedback on them. It creates accountability. It just is a place to go where you know you'll be supported in what you're trying to do. And there are definitely other communities on the internet that do that. But I think this one specifically is a level above just because of, you know,

there is a cost to entry, which, you know, keeps out a lot of riff-raff. But I think it also creates more of, it creates an importance to what you're doing. And it means that you're actually devoted to doing it. And so sometimes when you get into a situation with something that's free, you're all excited about it. And then you get in there and don't actually interact. But if you, I feel like if you've actually thought about it and invested time and money into it, you're more likely to succeed.

And the community that you've created is just like, we'll support that and allow you to, you know, play test your games and just hear your ideas. And yeah, have a wonderful place to be a game designer with other game designers. Yeah. And I want to emphasize those points broadly, right? Obviously, I hope a lot of people join the course.

I'm glad you got value out of it. I believe people will. But outside of it, you gave principles that I think, regardless of if people get it from, you know, my course or anywhere else, like that idea of having, a community of like-minded people, putting real stake in the ground, like putting real investment into what's happening, making it real, making it not just a hobby or something that you kind of one day might do, but putting some kind of deadlines and investing in a course, investing in a

buying a booth to demo your game at a convention, like, you know, something that says like, okay, this is happening, makes a big difference. Trying to find other people who are, you know, game designers are on the path to being game designers so they can give you feedback and look at those early prototypes and give you the kinds of feedback that's helpful and also that they can commiserate with you because a lot of the processes can be rough, right? I mean, you're, you're, killing your babies, you're having, you're trying things that don't work. You're spending a lot of time in this iterative loop and having other people around you that can, you know, give you the support and the add-a-boys or that people who can cry on their shoulder or what is not going

well. Like, all of that stuff is really important. So I just encourage everybody to like look for that community, right? If you're passionate about this stuff, which if you've listened to this podcast, you clearly are. You know, finding, it's one thing to listen and I try to provide as much useful information as possible, you know, for free, but I also think you've got to find a way to do the thing. There's no substitute for doing the work and going through the loop process. So whatever it is that can force people to do that, perhaps threats, timers, and

treats, which I think are acting just great goal, great tools for getting anybody to do anything. I just love that. having a deadline, having consequences of that deadline and having rewards for yourself along the way and positive experience along the way, that is a great way to get you to do stuff solo, whether it be a game or building a game. So I love that. Awesome, Drew.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for being an incredible part of the course. Thank you for lighting up. It lit me up when I got to see your success and hear your story. So I can be the one cheering you on. It's the thing I love the most about what I do now is getting to kind of inspire and help others to live the life that I, you know, I feel very lucky to live. And now I get to see that in you.

And so for other people that want to follow the stuff that you're doing, be it's multi-time heroes or other things, what's the best place for them to go? I think the best place as of now is you can either join us on the best with one Discord, where we mainly answer questions there or just go on to GameFound and type in solo the game of the month. And you'll see all the projects that we've done and possibly, uh, possibly. can buy some of them. And if not any of the ones we have ready, you can follow the next campaign, which will be coming generally the second Tuesday of every month. Awesome, man. Well,

keep crushing it, Drew, and I look forward to seeing you lurking in the discords and getting to play. And I may, whatever, I may even try to get a solo game pitched to you. That sounds like a fun project. Love it. Awesome. Talk again soon. All right. Thanks, Justin. Game design is a craft. And like any craft, it gets better with structure, feedback, and repetition. You're able to learn better when you're surrounded by like-minded people who support each other and lift each other up. The Think Like a Game Designer Design Lab is designed to give you all of that. Over 60 lessons from idea to publishing, a private game design discord, and exclusive bonuses

for those who join now and have been longtime podcast listeners. It's also the lowest price I've ever offered these exclusive lessons. And so you don't need to wait for a new class or wait for another opportunity. This is the opportunity. If you're ready to level up, if you're ready to build a career that you're passionate about, build the game you've been dreaming of, this is your time. Go to Justin Garydesigns.com to learn more. And thanks for listening.

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