Hi, and welcome to the game designs page.

This is the page where l will be going through, the rules of board game creation and design info,. Other themes (puzzles, etc) will be included, also!

Ok...For starters, board games usually have these features...

• a playing board

• playing pieces

• and a dice of some kind.

Also when developing board game ideas, try to keep the playing board size small.

Makes sending the finished prototype easier to send about to interested toy companies.

And also makes the design aspect much easier, because you don't have to worry about, folds getting in the way.

You are quite welcome to fiddle with the board and playing pieces, and make them larger or smaller, etc, but...

you may end up with higher costs because instead of going to a company that mass produces these items, you will have to do them yourself.

And since the costs can move into the 10's to hundreds of thousands of dollars, its best to stay with off-the-shelf board game elements.

If you want to do it yourself, it is best to pay a professional graphic artist to take a look, or at least get totally unbiased feedback first.

Just make sure that if it is someone you don't know that you get them to sign a "Gag-Order" first.

Puzzles and toys the same thing, keep the cheap elements and change the overall design, to keep costs down and increase your overall success.

If you have a brilliant idea, (like Rubik's Cube) then disregard my advise, but generally it is best to keep costs down to a minimum until you have had a success or two, then try more riskier concepts.

Also go with a toy company when showing your ideas about, you may get a smaller cut of the profits, but you will save yourself substantial amounts of money, (unless you get lucky) in producing something that most toy companies won't touch, because of such and such a issue.

And get feedback about your overall design, before approaching a toy company.

No use showing a pub game which has pastel colours everywhere, your daughter may love it, but the guy with the money in his pocket, ready to buy a pub game won't.

And no use creating a board game design or product from scratch and mortgaging your house to find out later that navy-blue is the best dominant colour to use with Monopoly or money creation related concepts?

Asking the toy company you are seeing for any puzzle books that you could rummage through, could make you a fortune even rich if you are lucky, but well off is good too.

I personally did this myself, with my first success.

The toy company that l regularly visited, lent me some toy and puzzle books. I couldn’t take them away with me, because they weren’t available in Australia, and costed about $80 each, but they let me take a quick look through them while l was there.

One book had a lot of 17 – 18 century puzzles in it, and l came across a steel, oval shape with holes through it, and you had to move a cut ring from the top to the bottom, to solve it.

I though, why couldn’t it be modified, so a jigsaw type cardboard be used, and instead of a cut ring use some shoelace string which would have to be laced from the top hole to the bottom one, while staying on certain graphic areas on either side of the board?

I approached my toy company, with the game design, and initially they were reluctant to take it on, because they thought that they had to create a plastic board for it!

I then pointed out that you could manufacture it yourselves, (the company that l go to had on site manufacture of jigsaws, etc) and then the lights went on.

The contract was signed, and a year of development later, it hit the shelves in Australia, then internationally.

I also developed other game designs from their books, but they didn’t see the light of day. But you get the point.

Asking the toy company you are seeing for any puzzle books that you could rummage through, could make you a fortune even rich if you are lucky, but well off is good too.

Another less productive but still worth doing tip, is every time you go and see them take a look at their display stock.

Coming up with a variation or several different game designs, to some successful products that they are already selling is a good way to go.

Much easier to sell them a variation to a relatively new concept than something that has been done to death.

And adding several elements into your board game designs will add value for money to the purchaser. If you have a choice of buying a snap type game and another version that also has another 2 sets of cards and a board for the same price, you will purchase the more value for money option. And it will sell much better or have a far better chance of a toy company taking it on.

Come back again, l am still working on the content and diagrams for this page.

Go to Toy and Game inventor introduction or Inventors.

Thank you for visiting the game designs page.