Podcast Archives - Board Game Design Lab · Gabe Barrett

Do this BEFORE designing a game | Leo Taylor

·1 hr 20 min·5 clips

Clue Escape had to recreate the “aha” of solving the mystery, not just add puzzles.

Start with the gauntlet. Leo Taylor lays out a pre-design checklist that begins with basics like player count, play time, and weight, then moves into the experience the game is supposed to create. It is not busywork. The host keeps treating the tool as something to think with before and during a project, not a doctoral thesis a designer has to finish before making a prototype. Brand work gives the conversation some bite. Leo's background with brands such as Hasbro, Risk, Clue, Dungeons and Dragons, and games seen at Target makes the advice feel tested without turning it into corporate speak. The questions keep coming back to the table. Can the designer turn an idea, a brand, or a little burst of excitement into interactions that feel good once players sit down together? Inspiration gets nicely concrete. A story about getting unexpectedly interested in rollercoaster design becomes a useful model for how enthusiasm can pass from one person to another. That charge matters. The host links it to Donald Miller's jazz example, where hearing someone who loved jazz changed how the music landed. Designers can carry that feeling across. The useful challenge is to catch what made a subject exciting, then build a game that lets players feel some version of it themselves. Nobody needs to overbuild the exercise. The conversation keeps returning to awareness: notice those table moments before the mechanics harden too much. Accessibility comes up near the end. Leo points to a Dungeons and Dragons escape-room game that mixes puzzles and combat while staying light enough for people who are not D&D experts. That example lands because it shows the gauntlet doing its job: know the audience, know the feeling, and build an on-ramp people can actually use.

As heard by us

A practical look at the questions that shape a game before it takes form.

This episode stays close to the basics of game design and asks the questions that usually come before a concept hardens into a real game: who it is for, how many players it needs, how long it runs, and how heavy it feels.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a clearer checklist before you build your next game, not just a loose brainstorm.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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