How to Design an Engine Building Game with Elizabeth Hargrave
·54 min·5 clips
Wingspan starts here in mid-flight. The host frames the conversation as a return to May 2019, just after the first print run sold out. The timing gives the episode its charge. This is before the million-copy story, before the Spiel des Jahres, and before the long run of awards and attention. The design still feels newly hatched. Hargrave talks through obstacles, process, and how Wingspan moved from a different early idea into an engine builder. That keeps the conversation useful. Engine building is not treated as a fancy label. The host keeps asking what makes the machine work once people are actually sitting at the table. Habitats do real work. Birds in the wetland tend to help card draw because that habitat already gives players cards. The same thinking spreads through the rest of the design. Hargrave wanted enough birds in each habitat so players could spot a direction early and lean into it. Forest does food. Wetland does cards. Bird powers sit on top of those basic actions, and that is where the engine starts to feel like it has some pull. Then the episode gets into the knotty part. How much should an engine builder reward focus, and how much should it push players across connected systems? Wingspan lets players double down for a while, but Hargrave says she still wanted them using all three habitats. That is the workshop heart of the conversation. The host keeps circling the tension between discovering what the game wants and steering it with intent. Exceptions matter too. A few birds bend the habitat logic, and those oddballs stand out because they change what a strong path can do. By the end, the host sounds newly aware of the grind behind the elegance. Engine building means layers, incentives, balance checks, and enough restraint to keep one route from taking over.
