Thematic Solitaires for the Spare Time Challenged

A blog about solitaire games and how to design them. I'm your host, Morten, co-designer of solo modes for Scythe, Gaia Project, Wingspan, Glen More II, and others.

Archive for Morten Monrad Pedersen

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Skoventyr: A marriage of nightmares - designer's diary

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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Automa Factory
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I have worked in the board game industry since 2014, fulltime since 2018. It’s been a dream come true and an awesome experience to work with my team on the solo modes for games such as Scythe, Wingspan, Terra Mystica, Glen More, and the upcoming Expeditions.

Skoventyr is different, though. It’s a game I’ve designed from the ground up myself. Instead of spending some months on a solo mode, Skoventyr has been a passion project that I poured my heart and soul into for six years.
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Mon Jul 10, 2023 10:33 am
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Skoventyr is published - 2 out of 3 down, 0 to go

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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WOOT!
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Wed Jul 5, 2023 8:31 am
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Skoventyr – spilling the beans

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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As you may or may not know, I’ve worked on a game of my own for many years in parallel to my solo mode work and I’m finally able to talk freely about it.

So, if you want to know more, please follow me on a guided tour of Skoventyr.

Board Game: Skoventyr

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Tue Jul 4, 2023 2:54 pm
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The Virtues of UX Design in Board Games

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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In many areas of product development, the better someone has done their job, the less you notice that they’ve done anything at all.

Today, I have a smart and skilled professional from such a field of expertise with whom I’ve worked over the past couple of months to improve a new solo mode.

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Fri Jun 16, 2023 2:00 pm
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Skoventyr was shown in public for the first time at Essen ‘22

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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Automa Factory
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I got home from Essen ’22 yesterday and one event stood out as completely different than the previous years: My game Skoventyr was shown in public for the first time.
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Mon Oct 10, 2022 9:54 am
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Essen ’22: Almost back to normal

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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My visit to Essen ’22 is over and I’m on a train heading back home.

The German railway system was sabotaged yesterday, which is probably the cause for a small delay, but it was completely undramatic, particularly compared to the explosive sabotage on the bridge between Crimea and Russia that also happened yesterday. It did bring back memories of my “interesting” journey home from Essen ’17, which took 30 hours instead of 6 because of flooding and the hands off approach the German railway company took to handling the issue and helping stranded passengers.

While the sabotage was far from normal, Essen ’22 was almost back to normal. The big guys, such as Asmodee were there after staying away in 2021. The audience filled the aisles more but the Saturday crowds seemed thinner than pre-COVID. My talks to various publishers indicated that sales were close to normal levels.
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Mon Oct 10, 2022 9:51 am
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Meet me in Essen – and read my guide for SPIEL beginners

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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The best time of my work-year starts in two weeks.
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Fri Sep 23, 2022 8:56 am
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The 2022 People’s Choice Top 200 Solo Games No Prize Contest

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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The yearly People’s Choice Solo Games event has become a fixture of the 1 Player guild and the host, Kevin Erskine has kicked off the 2022 edition. As usual, I’ll be hosting a contest that runs in parallel with the event.

If you’re silly enough to think that you have what it takes to make the best predictions about how this year’s top 200 list will be, then please read on. If you’re in touch with reality and realize that you don’t have what it takes, then please read on anyway .
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Wed Sep 21, 2022 1:10 pm
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Why aren’t publishers doing better marketing?

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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Sometimes when I look at the actions of people in another business segment than those I’ve worked in, I criticize them and say “why don’t they just do X, it’s so obvious that it’s much better than what they’re doing”.

Recently, I did just that about a company in my wife’s business segment and she explained to me why it wasn’t as simple as it appeared to me and I realized that my criticism had mainly been unfair because of my lack of knowledge.

Half an hour later I read a blog post about board game publishers from someone with a marketing background that started like this: “I see how publishers promote their games it’s makes me want to cry.”
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Wed Jun 22, 2022 12:39 pm
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Morten’s guide to the States of Siege series – part 11: Math attacks

Morten Monrad Pedersen
Denmark
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The previous post set the foundation for the mathematical “ANAlysis” of the States of Siege games. In this post we’ll see how we can build on that foundation to launch math attacks to get a leg up against the games.

While this post contains a lot of math, you can ignore that it if you want to and still be able to understand the conclusions.
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Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:31 am
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