Hello! Still early in the process, but I've been having a blast prototyping my first game: Goblin Arena. It's a sword-and-sorcery cooperative game where you and your friends are a band of heroes fending off hordes of baddies. Setup is quick, the rules are simple, and games have been lasting 45 minutes to an hour. Drawing lots of inspiration from Gloomhaven, D&D, Slay the Spire, and Magic the Gathering.

Choose from 4 different heroes, each with abilities for movement, health, armor, a special talent, and a unique deck of 10 cards. Each turn, draw up to 3 cards and play as many as you wish. Save cards in your hand to block attacks on the goblin's turn. Straight-forward rules control how the goblins move and attack. Occasionally, the goblins will surge ahead and might catch you off guard! Each turn, the Goblin Boss will summon more goblins out of a randomly determined gate into the Arena, so you'll have to defeat him to stem tide.

Edit: I’m not looking for feedback on the video itself (though thank you to those who gave it!) I’m looking for people’s perspectives on whether anything stands out as the hook of the game, based on watching the video.

Hi all,

I’ve designed a game, playtested 100+ times and got great feedback.

But when I’ve submitted to publishers, I’ve not had any bites yet.

Im at the stage where I think I need to focus on my elevator pitch - I.e. how do I describe the game in a compelling way that hooks people?

I would love your advice on this with your fresh and unbiased eyes, based on getting an overview of the game from this video:

https://youtu.be/tuIPlM6ROhY?is=N6I-IleY3oz32USP

Thank you so much!

My game is an Area Control game where a troop of mercenaries working for each of the biggest MegaCorporations (the players) retake a city from the grasp of a terrorist group to exfiltrate several "Metahumans".

Each area is a building/zone of the city and in some cases it was difficult to convey it into an icon (despite the card having the name on it) so i left it as it is.

Now, in the nth review i decided to make a better version of the buildings that didn't looked like buildings.
The second image is the set of current icons, with which im happy, and i think the new ones fit well.

Do you think it match the style of the general icons, or the last 3D is too overworked?
Do they read well? Should i aim for a more 3D style with the current ones?

Any suggestion for the Crater will be welcome.

We loved working with our brilliant artist Gabriel Costa and think it's important to showcase the process of card creation in this AI filled world. What do you guys think? Came out cool? Worth doing videos like these for all the cards?

Hi Everyone,

MageStone is a game that's all about blocking and positioning units. Each player controls 1 Mage, 1 Priest and 6 Warriors. The object of the game is to collect MageStones across the board and return them to your base. With every MageStone at your base, your mage gets stronger and stronger. The first Mage to return 6 MageStones wins the game!

Dice based combat. - Best way to describe it is a combination of Risk and Chess.

Try it out below; any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

[MageStone - Free Online Fantasy Strategy Board Game](https://magestone.net/)

Hi everyone,

I was just curious about this topic and wanted to ask. I work in cross border e-commerce in Germany and there is a lot of panic especially with small and medium sized businesses about the EU's new/updated PPWR policies. It's a headache.

Interestingly enough there hasn't been any reaction about this in the boardgame or Kickstarter "industry" so far as far as I can tell. I know that most supporters come from outside the EU (US, UK) but you can't ignore all of the EU during your campaign, right?

So what is going on? Is the industry just not aware of the implications? Do they just note care? (Honestly, wouldn't be the first time for Kickstarter projects to ignore EU regulations and laws). Am I just missing something?

Hey everyone! I’m a fairly new designer and headed to PAX Unplugged for the first time this year! I want to make sure I get the most out of my time there in terms of networking and meeting people, and I’m wondering if anyone has any advice on how to do a convention “correctly” as a designer who hopes to sign games at some point.

I went to GenCon once a few years back and that’s my only experience with conventions. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[DEVLOG] A RECAP OF MY 2ND DAY IN MY FRIEND'S CITY

My best friend invited me to his girlfriend's birthday, and he booked me a flight to his city. He also wanted me to playtest my game in his community.

Here are the things that happened:

• We had 3 matches in the evening
  • 2 matches won via Economic Victory
  • 1 match won via Elimination Victory
• Everyone easily learned the game very quickly
• At some point, I let them play the game and teach each other
• Surprisingly, 1 player tried to take a strategically aggressive approach in 1 of the matches
• We got good feedback from the owner; one thing to look at was the duration of the game
• - My best friend also mentioned the player who got eliminated early.

After the event. My best friend and I worked on the issues that the game was having, and we did the following updates:

1. WORLD CYCLE

• Cycle happens when a player lands on the starting tile
• Originally, World Cycle has 6 cycles, and each cycle has an effect on the game and gives an amount of gold depending on the cycle. For example: World Cycle 3 gives the player 3 gold and allows FREE MOVE, which means all players can choose 1-6 steps during this cycle
• Now, we still call it the World Cycle, but we moved the game effects to the Event Deck, and we limit the number of cycles the game can have. At the 20th cycle, "The Last Stand" event occurs.

1. THE LAST STAND

• During this event, all attached items and magic that are combat-related are considered.
• The first thing to check is the remaining players.
  • If 3 to 4 players are remaining, everyone does a combat check by rolling the combat dice. The top 2 players will proceed to the last stand
• During the face-off, both finalists will do combat rolls until a player runs out of Heart Tokens
• Additionally, The Last Stand will also occur if there are 2 remaining players left even though it doesn't reach the 20th World Cycle

1. GHOST PLAYER / DEFEATED STATUS

• We made sure players who are eliminated are still included in the game by changing their status to Defeated instead of Eliminated
• The Ghost Player resources and inventory cards are recycled or returned to their decks
• He/She is also not allowed to win nor to interact with players directly in order to avoid Kingmaking
• He/She has the task of bringing Tragedy effects to all remaining players or drawing Event Cards by rolling a Ghost Die during his or her turn

With the following changes, the game consistently ends around 60 minutes at full gameplay but can still end earlier, around 15 to 30 minutes.

I'm a solo game designer and I've finally reached the part of this process that I don't think I was prepared for.

You spend all this time coming up with an idea, designing it, testing it, changing things that don't work, making the artwork, figuring out production, and eventually you have an actual finished game sitting in your hands.

And then comes the question:

How do you get it outside your own circle?

I've been working on social media and talking to local people, but I'd really like to hear from other indie/solo designers who have already crossed this bridge.

What actually worked for you?

Reviewers? Conventions? Local game stores? Reddit? Facebook groups? BoardGameGeek? Paid advertising? Sending copies to creators? Just slowly building a community?

And are there any good Reddit threads, communities, Discords, articles, or other resources specifically about the marketing/discovery side after the design and publishing work is done?

I'm not looking to advertise my game here or drop a sales link. I'm genuinely trying to learn this side of the business.

I put a hell of a lot into making something I'm proud of. Now I'm trying to figure out how a one-person designer makes sure his game doesn't live and die with himself, his friends, and the handful of people who happened to find it.

I'd love to hear what worked—and what absolutely didn't—from people who've been through it.

Moved over to this area. Hopefully im in the right spot now.❤️

So currently one of the things I'm struggling with in my gameboard design is just how big to make the pieces, map tiles, and the overall map board itself too.

From what I can tell, most of the board game manufacturers tend to keep affordable board sizes under 27" (few exceptions allow one dimension to go up to 36") but the game I'm designing requires all players to have an "equal" distance from the "center" of the gameboard ideally.

The problem I'm running into though is that certain game pieces of mine are best suited for about 1.5" or larger in size, which in turns requires the underlying map tile pieces (hex shaped) to grow considerably large as well since they are Flower style Hex Tiles (1 hex plus 6 more hexes around it). However this quickly pushes these map tiles to be 4.5" in diameter, which very quickly eats up a lot of chipboard/punchout slugs.

Is there an ideal size any of you prefer to play with or am I just trying to make my game too big? For context, it's a war game, involving armies, generals, forts, etc. so pieces need to be sizeable enough that you don't feel like you need tweezers to pick them up.

G'day! I thought I would just pop over to say hello to my brothers and sisters in the board game design world from the ttRPG design world!

How long have I been working fulltime as a game designer:

11+ years.

What I've made:

This is a shelfie of the books I've self published to date (14 hardcover, 8 softcover, over a dozen PDF only, and loads of miniatures (not shown here)). I've also got a miniature skirmish game, and I've been working on a board game with another designer for a couple of years now (I'm not quite ready to share that one publicly)). I've always loved to make stuff :)

I'm mainly known for my post-post-apocalyptic sci-fi work, but I've also made techno-magical fantasy, gothic horror, eldritch pirates, dieselpunk, and more

Where do I make money (in order):

1. Most of my income comes from Crowdfunding.
2. Conventions (I live in Australia... I'm crazy jealous of you guys in the USA and Europe!).
3. Distributor (I work with Modiphius who sells my books overseas).
4. PDF sales (via DriveThruRPG).
5. Patreon.
6. My own webstore.

I would also like to add that a MASSIVE part of my cost saving (so not income, but of equal value) is that I do as much myself as I can. I do all the graphic design, nearly all of the writing, all of the marketing, etc... I hire illustrators, and a couple of writers who do what I cannot.

My important marketing methods (in order):

1. Mailing list (start building yours now!).
2. Community building (Discord).
3. Social media (facebook is top).

I've not included crowdfunding here, as I see that primarily as a point of sale and not an audience builder.

Some non-standard advice (I posted this 5+ years ago on the RPGdesign subreddit):

1. Get incredibly good in at least one game during your life.

Not just good in relation to your friends, but good enough to compete competitively. Games have layers, and you will only start to see the deeper flow and structure once you ‘see the matrix’ of a game. For me, this was Company of Heroes 1.

I will note that if you're older (30+ years old at least) you may be able to achieve this level of insight without actually achieving this level of skill in a game.

• 2) Don’t get so caught up playing lots of different games.

Looking at what other people have already done is a great way to see how others have answered various design questions/problems. But finding your own unique design solutions will require you to sit in a mental void and to draw upon atypical sources of inspiration from your own life. Leaning on the work of existing designers may lead to the creation of a good and popular game, but never a ‘special’ game.

Play a range of games... but don't get too caught up in other people's work. Its a balance that is hard to describe.

• 3) Originality is good, but people don’t want it as much as they say.

If something is too original it will be hard to digest, and very few people will play it enough to see its depths. People have a ‘game language’ that they unconsciously use to quickly understand a game, this is created by the ecosystem of games that they’ve played. I like to use a rule of thirds for my games; 1/3 commonplace, 1/3 familiar and 1/3 original.

• 4) More content is a bad substitute for quality.

But it is a temptation because it’s a quantifiable way to solve unquantifiable creative process questions. Avoid bloat at all costs, cut out EVERYTHING that does not add value to your game. Your first game should be small and good, this was a mistake that I made.

I'm constantly cutting OK ideas for GOOD ideas, and then cutting GOOD ideas for GREAT ideas. This is 99% of the design job.

• 5) Be kind; to your team, your fans, your suppliers, and your rivals.

Bringing a creative vision to fruition requires a large amount of willpower, and this often comes in the form of ego. The creative fields are also focused on personal skill and the celebration of fans; this can also swell a person’s ego. But ego is a corrupting force, not just to a person’s character but also to their creative works and their ability to understand people. Fight the growth of ego through humility and kindness.

• 6) Ideas are cheap; the real value sits in a person’s ability to bring ideas to completion.

Don’t be precious with your ideas and solutions, sharing them openly with others will prevent you from becoming stagnant and will force you to continually grow. Being an open book with my thoughts and processes has been incredibly healthy for me. Also, learn to FINISH things. That final 10% of a project can suck, but learning to complete things is rare and valuable skill.

Hiring Artist:

When hiring an artist they MUST be 2 of these 3 things:

• Good (skilled at drawing cool art!).
• Cost Effective (this does not mean cheap, just that their pricing is competitive for the quality of their work).
• Professional (clear communicator, prompt, understands briefs, etc...).

If an artist is just 1 of these then they will be a drag on your project. If they're all 3 then they will learn to increase their price or move onto projects that pay more (I've had many of my artists move onto film and digital games to make great money, and it was a privilege of mine to have been a stepping stone on their path!!).

------------------

I hope some of this is of some help :) I'm happy to answer any questions, and I will be sure to be back here once I'm ready to share my board game.

My socials:

• Facebook
• Instagram

Where I can download regular play cards decks for free?

Obviously everyone has their preferences; but from what I understand/read/hear, those who value games of tactics and strategy, tend to not love mechanics of chance aka dice yet it’s the most common form of battle determination. Is this simply because of its versatility or lack of alternative systems capable of capturing the “uncertain/chaotic” nature of warfare.

What are some alternative forms of combat resolution that you’ve seen in games that don’t rely on dice or deterministic card descriptions or multi mathematical +1s and -1s? Or all tabletop wargames doomed to heavy stats and dice rolls?

*Please note that this is an early prototype version of the game. Component quality, art, and materials used are likely to change through continued refinements and improvements. The purpose of this video is simply to demonstrate how the game is played and showcase the core game loop.

I’ve been working on a simultaneous action tile drafting game for a little while and one of the main things that I wanted from the start was a sense of speed. I had been trying to find a creative way around using a straight up timer, but at this point I’m putting more consideration into the timer idea.

I don’t like sand timers for my game because you have to watch them and when everyone is playing simultaneously it can be missed. A sound timer I assume will add to the overall cost. Phones with timers are ubiquitous, but I prefer the idea of having everything you need included in the box (just a little nitpicky I know).

So I wanted to get some people’s opinions on timers in general and to see if anyone knows of other timing mechanics. For reference, my first iteration used a limited pool of tiles and when they were gone the round was over, but in my current version I’m looking into having all tiles available, so that wouldn’t work.

I was going for a 90 second or so trailer and have paid for it as finished.

Today, I got thinking, did I miss an opportunity to go on about the wood components and metal coins or would that have been awkward with the theme? I was going for a cinematic feel with very little direct gameplay narrative. This is at the top of the Gamefound page and because of the length and structure, I do not think it is built for cold advertising, more for people who find the campaign and are more video-leaning than reading-oriented.

Marketing is definitely where I tend to get very indecisive! I think this will work to take a warm backer to either get them to buy or to hopefully get them to scroll down the page which will have a lot more info. I am also hoping to make a homemade "how to play" video for the page at some point.

Hi everyone! I’m the publisher working on Foréa, a cooperative wooden dexterity game designed by Gaëlle Dumont.

Players build a vertical forest together by stacking trunks, treetops, and animals.

The goal is simple: complete the forest while making as few pieces fall as possible.

It is designed to be accessible for kids aged 6+, but during public playtests I’ve noticed that adults are often just as invested, especially once the forest gets taller and every placement becomes tense.

I’d love your honest thoughts:

Does a cooperative dexterity game like this interest you?

Would you see it mainly as a family game, or something you would also bring out with adult friends?

Do you think it can find its audience on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter?

this is a game i came up with a couple years ago, only played it with a small number of friends and would be interested to see what other people make of it.

the game played by is for two opponents on an n×n square board (usually 8×8). each player has n pieces which are arranged as two chevrons facing each other (this is one of the more interesting starting positions ive found though needs modifying for odd numbers of n).

the primary mechanic of the game revolves around pieces being immobilised if they are surrounded by a certain number of their opponent's pieces - with the goal of the game being to place a piece on your opponent's back rank AND for it to not be immobile at the start of your turn (the idea being that it could be moved off of the board altogether).

during their turn, a player can move a free piece to any adjacent unnocupied square.

however, a piece is determined to be unable to move specifically if, when considering the 3×3 grid of adjacent squares, the pieces belonging to the same player as the piece in question (including itself) number less than that of the opponent's pieces.

i.e. if the piece in question was surrounded by 2 of its opponent's pieces and 0 of its own player's pieces, it would be immobile - whereas it would be moveable if surrounded by 2 of its opponent's pieces and 1 of its own.

have included a gif of an example game though forgive the terrible quality i used the free version of an animation app which only allows me to export at like 144p or something stupid.

the game should be playable using chess/checkers /go sets etc

As i said I've played this game successfully a few times with friends, though I've never tried to thoroughly test it for game breaking mechanics so not sure if it might need some precautionary rules on that front.

One point is that sometimes the mobility of a piece needs contesting, which usually is resolved fairly easily, though I haven't yet established a formal procedure for this (I wouldn't be sure what should happen if an immobile piece was moved and wasn't noticed by either player until a couple of turns later, for example).

Some feedback I have had is that the game is trivially easy, in that good moves can be figured out with little foresight and suboptimal moves are rarely punished - though I'm not sure to what extent this might directly stem from the ruleset itself or if it's more to do with the novelty of the game and that there isn't a very well established strategic meta yet, as I will say I have noticed the complexity of the game increase since playing more consistently with the same people.

would be interested to hear people's immediate thoughts on this or see what people think if anyone gets a chance to give this game a play test. would be particularly interested to see if anyone knows any similar games with a more established history I could look into.

thanks

I've been working on a worker placement game for about ten months now, mostly solo development with occasional playtests from my regular Tuesday group. Somewhere around session 25 I started noticing a weird pattern: I kept "fixing" imbalances that were really just my playtesters figuring out better strategies over time, not actual design flaws.

Case in point, there's a resource conversion action that felt criminally underused for the first fifteen or so plays. I almost cut it entirely. Then one playtester found a combo with the market phase that made it suddenly one of the strongest moves in the game. Turns out the action wasn't bad, people just hadn't found its purpose yet.

This has made me a lot more hesitant to make balance changes early. Now I try to wait until at least three or four different playtest groups have hit the same wall independently before touching anything. Single-group feedback almost always turns out to be about that specific group's blind spots rather than the actual math.

Curious what threshold other people use. Do you set a minimum number of plays before allowing yourself to tweak numbers, or do you go with gut feeling session to session? I'm realizing my instinct to "fix" things quickly was probably slowing down actual convergence on good design more than helping it.

I am currently (re-)designing a tricktaking game (cards from 0-5 each 8x, three non-trump suits, one trump suit, some other twists) where there are minor trumps and major trumps. It should be obvious at a first glance which card wins a trick - Which I am struggling with.

The game is about collecting points in your tricks, each card being valued equal to their rank. Now all 2s and 1s are trump (the major trumps). Then there are supposed to be the lower trumps: two 5s, two 4s, two 3s, and two 0s. Generally within a suit the card of the highest rank wins the trick - which doesn't work when you apply it to the trump suit as a whole (therefore minor and major trumps), which is supposed to be of one color. Just changing the values doesn't work, as the point allocation (rank=points) is vital to the design of the game. It should be obvious at a first glance which card takes a trick. I am currently using a crown symbol to differentiate the trumps, but don't love that.

Do you have any examples of tricktaking games with minor&major trumps with an intuitive graphic design?

I am working on a social card game which uses questions and wordplay. Essentially, players have to ask one another questions to get the other player to say a specific word. In my initial design I had a question tracker, where there was a limit of how many questions a player can ask before they lose a life (this was a sheet and a token with the token sitting on the players' current question count); however, I found that a lot of the time players would forget to track themselves and ultimately lose count, which took away a big part of the pressure in the game, as the fun came from players giving one another ridiculous answers.

Instead, I have looked into adding a time limit, but I've found this extra pressure takes away from the absurdity of the game and just gets players to cheese their questions instead, or just get too stressed out. I also believe that sand timers are bad at keeping players accountable because they're silent and tedious to flip over, especially for a more casual game like mine.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how best to keep players aware of a system like this? Since question tracking and/or timers are a way for the players to lose, it's an integral part of my game.

I’m exploring a different direction for the miniatures in my board game and I’d love some outside opinions.

Instead of detailed miniatures that try to faithfully represent each hero or creature, I’m experimenting with something closer to “totems”: simple, stylized physical pieces that represent beings from the game world rather than being literal miniature versions of them.

Think more along the lines of the pieces from Jumanji (recognizable and full of character), but simplified and symbolic.

I’m sharing a few examples here.

What I’m mainly trying to figure out is:

- Do the different totems feel like they belong to the same visual language?

- Is the level of simplification consistent between them, or does one feel much more detailed than another?

- Do you think this direction has more personality than using conventional detailed miniatures?

- Are there any board games you know that use a similar approach to representing characters or creatures?

I’m still exploring the idea, so criticism is genuinely useful. Any thoughts or references are welcome!

Hi everyone,
I’ve recently made a ~2min pitch video for my game which I plan to use when submitting the game to publishers.

Obviously a 2min video can’t explain the whole game.. the goal is simply to communicate its core, give a clear idea of what the game is about and what makes it interesting and hopefully make a publisher want to contact me for more information if they see potential in it.

So I’d love some feedback from other designers,
after watching it once, do you understand the core of the game? Is the hook clear?

I’m mainly looking for feedback on whether the video works as a first introduction to the game for a publisher, thanks

Thanks to a recent post and my finding out about boardweaver, I have been able to create an online playtest for a new game i've been working on. I think i'm finally at the stage where its stable enough and am looking for willing playtesters to help give some feedback.

Game: The Architect, a competitive 2–5 player tabletop game currently playable online through Boardweaver.

Objective: You play as Runners infiltrating a controlled network. Race from Entry through 14 network layers, reach Root, steal the Payload, then complete the inverse route and transmit it before another Runner does.

Each turn you:

• Play Mods to alter the network, protect yourself, or interfere with rivals.
• Roll for Bandwidth and use it to move.
• Choose between the faster, more dangerous Mainframe and the slower, safer Undernet.
• Manage Exposure—reach 5 and you crash, lose ground, and may drop the Payload.

What we are (trying to be):

• Route-building race: Navigate a two-row network to Root, steal the Payload, then complete the opposite route back to Entry.
• Push-your-luck movement: Roll for Bandwidth, choose between fast dangerous Nodes and slower cooling Nodes, and manage Exposure to avoid crashing.
• Shared-hand tactical interaction: Mods and Exposure occupy the same limited hand, forcing choices between movement, disruption, defense, and risk management.

The online version handles setup, legal moves, card effects, and bookkeeping. A game is roughly 30–60 minutes, depending on player count and familiarity, but you can also play single player against bots in around 10 minutes.

I’m especially looking for feedback on:

• Whether the first game is understandable without a teacher. Time to value/learn basics
• Whether movement and route choices feel meaningful vs luck of the die
• Whether Exposure creates tension in route planning and mods without feeling arbitrary.
• Whether Mods and blocking create useful player interactions.
• Whether the game moves at the right pace, particularly after someone reaches Root.

This is my first bug prototype playtest outside friend groups so any and all feedback would truly be helpful and appreciated. You don’t need to know the rules beforehand, and honest critical feedback is much more useful than politeness.

Play here: https://www.boardweaver.com/play/the-architect?version_channel=public_playtest

If you’d rather join a scheduled multiplayer session, comment or DM me and I'll look to schedule some times. You can also follow along in the boardweaver discord channel on updates and provide feedback there too.

Thanks—I’m happy to answer questions about the design or rules.

Out of the long lists of "do and don't" of game design, what did you find didn't work for you or was counterproductive when you were a new designer?

That's the discussion topic, I'm adding my own perspective/experience but it'll be a long read, feel free to take the question at face value and comment as you see fit, I'm more interested in others' experiences than necessarily comments on my own.

I myself started my design journey because I couldn't find any games fitting the theme and genre of game I wanted. Adventure/exploration, and more importantly seaplanes (specifically with miniatures).

The first few months I just did my own thing, without reading any forums/reddit/blogs, didn't watch youtube videos about game design. Really learned as I went, wrapping my mind around design and iterating my mechanics. Once I started reading online/watching videos etc I realised that a lot of what I had done goes against often repeated advice / "best practices". But it worked for me, and the more I looked at /heard some of the advice the more I thought that I could've only gotten as far as I did because I did it my own way.

Here's some of the advice and my own approach/thoughts;

Start small - This somewhat contradicts the advice of "design the game you want to play yourself".

I wanted an adventure/exploration game with miniatures, with a procedurally generated map that's never the same two games in a row. I wanted different weapons, crew members, equipment, missions, the whole lot. Sure, half a year down the road I had occasional thoughts of "starting small is probably good advice", but if I hadn't been designing the game I wanted to play I likely wouldn't have stayed motivated.

Don't spend money/time on art - For people who are getting into game design with a dream of making heaps of different games or building a career, this is good advice. Making barebones artless paper prototypes they can iterate and throw away at the drop of the hat.

For me as an artist/creative this wouldn't have worked. Already on day 1 I had an artistic vision of what I wanted, and had to start looking for public domain art I could quickly populate my tiles/cards with, icons for custom dice, and designing some rudimentary 3d models.

To some of us art matters, a lot. Seeing others say that spending time on art is "wrong", or that you shouldn't do it, is frankly almost offensive. Art and being creative is my passion, you think I'd get anywhere with game design if I couldn't at the same time dip into making it appealing? Granted I'm not spending $10,000 hiring others for a game I don't feel is complete, but I certainly have spent more on art supplies and various pieces that I would've had to pay for a finished off the shelves game in the same size.

Pushing people not to use/create art, or being specific about what art they're "supposed" to use, is frankly gatekeeping.

Don't be afraid to kill your game - Again this may work well for those intent on a career, making heaps and heaps of games to learn quickly. For me, I had a very distinct idea of what I wanted to design, that's not something that I'd be changing. If I can't make an adventure/exploration game in the style I've envisioned then I likely wouldn't continue. I'd rather iterate it to get where I'm going slower, than starting over heaps of times to get something that works for others, but fast.

This also somewhat goes hand in hand with the next point, playtesting.

Playtest quickly, kill your game if it doesn't work - I've seen this mentioned over and over, and came to realise how deep/difficult a topic playtesting is on its own. The caveat to this advice is that you're meant to playtest with your target audience. For a new designer that's hard to know, who exactly is your target audience? How will you find them? What games can you compare yours to so that you can gather people who like that game and might like yours?

While I'm making my game "for myself" I of course want others to enjoy it as well, but hearing "if others don't like it then scrap it and start over" rubs me the wrong way. Then yet again that works for those aiming to make games for others, finding a type of game design that has wide appeal.

I've luckily mainly shown my design to people who ended up enjoying it, or were supportive enough to see what I was going for so weren't negative. Only one person told me it wasn't for them, but they explained in detailed how they simply don't like the type of game, with dice rolling, random card draws, etc. So, not my target audience.

Miniatures vs standees - More of a hot discussion topic than necessarily design advice, but as a miniature painter / maker this one hits pretty hard. I specifically want miniatures in my game, I wouldn't be interested in designing a game without any. Seeing the at times very negative views about miniatures is pretty heartbreaking.

Anyway, that's what I got for now. I'm forgetting a heap of other points, but maybe they'll pop up in the comments. Eager to hear what others have to say on the topic.