Learn the Fun-damentals of Game Design by Making a Board Game in 1 Day!

WHO is this class for?

You are a creative type. You have a lot of ideas, you have stories to tell, or concepts you want people to explore. You design things, but you haven’t designed a game yet (or so you think).

WHAT will you learn?

What if a game could be the medium to tell your stories, to express your ideas and make them playable, to let other people explore different perspectives and experience multiple outcomes? And what if making that game didn’t have to take you weeks or months but it could be done you one day? 

That’s what I want to teach you: how to make your first game, to express your ideas, in as little as one day!

My name is Matteo and I am a game designer. I focus on cooperative boardgames, in which all players work together to explore big challenges, like tackling the climate crisis. I’ve been making games at the V&A Museum in London, and taught game design at many universities around the UK. But I didn’t study game design, so I’m going to share with you how I learned to make games: by taking existing games and hacking them with my own ideas and my own questions.

In this class you will learn how to:

1️⃣ Re-awaken your inner game designer by generating lots of game ideas.

2️⃣ Unpick (aka analyse) games and get inspired to make your own.

3️⃣ Turn an old game into your new one, using stuff you already have at home!

You will get:

✅ Step-by-step guidance

✅ Printable worksheets for each step

✅ Fun hacktivities (yes, that’s not a typo)

⚠️ But I’m not going to teach you how to code, or how to use a game-making app. I’m going to teach you how to think like a game designer and how to make your ideas playable. 

⏳ In less than a day you will go from zero to a playable prototype of your own board game, ready to be played with your family, friends or colleagues!

WHY take this class?

If you’re interested in designing anything for humans, then the game design skills you’ll learn and practice are both fun and purposeful. Analysing interactive systems, quickly coming up with lots of ideas, then prototyping your ideas and testing your prototypes: these are skills you can apply to any design field, in particular UX design.

And if you’re itching to express your ideas and tell your stories, think about how powerful games can be. They let us step out of our daily lives, and immerse ourselves in different worlds, with their own rules and their own roles. Unlike other media, as players we constantly make active choices: we shape the story, instead of just consuming it. 

Games can make us think, help us engage with complex questions, and problem-solve in a safe space. They can be about distant or fantasy worlds, but they can be about our own world. And we can make games about how we want to transform it. So my challenge for you is: think about something that frustrates you, something you’d like to change. And ask yourself: how could I make a game about that?